“Did you know the victim?” she said gently, but the woman still winced at the word.
She shook her head. “No. I’m new.” Her voice trembled, but she paused and it toughened. “I don’t really know any of the students, not yet.”
Stephanie talked her through the discovery of the body, taking notes while watching the woman’s body language and tone of voice, weighing almost unconsciously the truth of what she was saying. There was no deception that Stephanie could detect, at least not about this victim and this crime scene. There was a hint of fear, but it probably had as much to do with being the focus of police attention as anything else.
“Did you touch anything?”
“The rope. I tried to undo it.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back. “I thought, I mean, I didn’t know if she was—” Her voice trembled again and she stopped talking.
Dead, Stephanie finished for her mentally. “Did you see anyone else this morning?”
“No.”
“Do you always run at this hour of the morning?”
The woman shook her head, blond curls escaping. She tucked them back behind her ears. “This was the first day of classes,” she said. “I have to teach this morning.”
Again, it sounded like the truth. She didn’t look like she’d spent the last couple of hours tying someone to a tree and her clothes weren’t wet.
“I need to get going. Can I leave?” she said, arms wrapped around her body again. She was shivering, but Stephanie doubted it was from the cold.
“I think you’re a little shocky,” she said. “You should probably see someone. Why don’t you let one of the officers take you over to the hospital to get checked out?”
But the teacher was shaking her head before Stephanie was finished. “No, thanks, I’m fine.” She forced a smile. “I’ve got to teach this morning.”
Stephanie thanked her and signaled for Officer Schaeffer to walk Ms. Kavanaugh back to the school. Then she retraced her steps to Oz, paying close attention to the ground around her. The grass was short and sparse in places, the ground softer the closer she got to the water. There was at least one visible footprint and she pointed it out to the CI taking shots. It made her wonder how the vic had gotten here. Walked? And if she were going for a swim, wouldn’t she have brought a towel?
Suddenly Stephanie thought of something and looked up. Circle. Tree. Naked body. Rope. “Where are her clothes?”
“What?” Oz turned from the body.
“The vic. Did she walk up here naked?”
He looked around. “And without shoes? Her feet weren’t cut up.”
Stephanie felt a little glimmer of excitement that faded when she found out that the clothes had already been bagged by an overzealous investigator.
“Stupid shit,” Oz grumbled once they’d taken a look. “Watched too many episodes of CSI and think they run this show.”
“So she comes up here and leaves her clothes in a neat little pile, takes a swim, and then someone comes along and ties her to the tree—”
“And what? Waits for her to die?”
“Unless she didn’t wasn’t supposed to die,” Stephanie said.
“What do you mean?”
“What if was a game or some sort of ritual?”
“Like hazing?”
“Yeah, something like that. Maybe it’s a club initiation.”
Only the headmistress denied that such a thing was possible at St. Ursula’s. “There is no hazing at St. Ursula’s,” she said, shaking her head at them as if they were foolish even to suggest such a thing. “Our girls simply would not tolerate anything like that.”
They were sitting in the headmistress’s office, admitted to the inner sanctum because she wanted them off the front lawn and away from the all-too-curious eyes of other students and teachers. A carafe of good coffee had been brought in by the secretary, along with porcelain cups with saucers and a silver cream-and-sugar set. It was all very dignified and seemed completely incongruous after the scene in the woods.
The crime scene investigators had been packing up when the captain called in on Oz’s phone to let them know that the victim couldn’t be revived. It was once they’d finished explaining this to the headmistress that she’d invited them into her office.
Oz looked like he didn’t know where to put his feet and the chair he was sitting on had creaked ominously when he sat down.
“I understand that the police have to ask these questions,” Sister Rose Merton said, “but it’s completely out of character for our school.”
Stephanie recoiled inwardly at that statement. The way Sister Rose said “the police” sounded suspiciously like someone saying “the help.” Like any good detective, she schooled her features so they wouldn’t reveal the hostility she felt toward this woman. It wasn’t personal as much as a knee-jerk, blue-collar bias from the daughter of a cleaning lady.
“We’ll need you to identify the body, Sister,” she said.
“Oh? But is that really necessary? I have trouble believing that this poor person could be connected in any way to our school.”
Stephanie blinked and even Oz looked stunned. “Well, we think she’s probably a student,” he said slowly. “She’s pretty young.”
“What? One of our girls?” Sister Rose sounded truly shocked. “I mean, I know she was found on our campus, but I just assumed…” her voice trailed off.
That tragedy only happened to other people? Poor people? Stephanie purposely slurped her cup of coffee before letting the cup clatter into the saucer. Coffee splashed onto the small table and Sister Rose’s eyes flickered to it, but she didn’t say anything.
“She had very distinct red hair,” Stephanie said. “About shoulder length. And a small tattoo of a butterfly on her left shoulder.”
Sister Rose frowned. “A tattoo? That doesn’t sound like a St. Ursula’s girl, we don’t allow—” She stopped short and her face changed.
“What?” Oz said. “Do you know who it is?”
A hand crept to Sister Rose’s mouth and she nodded, eyes large. “But it can’t be,” she whispered. “Not one of our girls.”
“It might not be,” Stephanie said. “But if you think you know who it is we really need to contact that girl’s family.”
“Morgan Wycoff.”
“She’s a boarder?”
Sister Rose nodded. “Just started last year. I think her mother thought it might help her fit in.” She fiddled with the pin on her lapel and looked up at them with concern. “That poor girl. Her poor mother.”
“Her family lives in town?”
“Yes. Her mother. It was just the two of them.”
“Do you have Mrs. Wycoff’s address? We’re going to need it.”
“Of course, of course.” Sister Rose went into the other room.
“That’s a little weird,” Stephanie commented in a whisper.
“What?”
“That she didn’t just assume it would be one of the students.”
Oz shrugged. “Nobody thinks it’s going to be someone they know.”
Stephanie thought about her own happy or at the least indifferent memories of