Unfortunately, Frank was left to worry alone. Now standing at the bottom of a hillside on Hamilton Ranch, Frank had a bad feeling that this was another ripple that eventually would be like a tsunami, threatening to drown the entire community, if not the country.
“I figure that gully washer of a storm we had the other night loosened the soil up on the hilltop,” Undersheriff Dillon Lawson was saying. “The old wooden casket swept right down the hill to end up broken open in the pines.”
Frank nodded in agreement at Dillon’s assessment as he shifted his gaze to the corpse. He’d seen photographs of mummified bodies, but this was his first in the flesh. The skin was dark and hard, stretched over the bones in a gruesome grimace. The victim had shrunk to skin and bones, her clothing pooling around the shriveled torso and limbs.
What made the sight even more ghastly was the long hair still attached to the skull. Now, covered with mud, the woman’s hair lay in muddy waves above her.
“This is remarkable,” Coroner Charlie Brooks said as he knelt next to the corpse. “I’ve never seen one preserved quite this well. The body had apparently been buried in this wooden box, which kept it from animals, but the fact that it didn’t decompose...” He scratched his head. “Remarkable.”
Frank thought about what a shock it must have been for Harper Hamilton and Brody McTavish when they’d found it. He’d taken both of their statements after getting the call and rushing to the scene. While the two had come by horseback, he and Dillon had taken an old logging road that ended at the top of the hillside—and the original burial site, given the hole left there.
Brody had assured him that they hadn’t touched anything. “We called as soon as we saw what it was.”
Harper had been visibly upset. “Who is it?” she’d asked in a whisper.
“We don’t know yet, but it appears to be an old grave,” he’d told her.
“So, not anyone we might know,” she’d said, sounding relieved.
“More than likely not,” Frank had said, though he couldn’t be sure of that until after Charlie did his job. Unfortunately, he had his own suspicions. He just hoped he was wrong.
“You’re both free to go, but we’re going to treat this area as a crime scene until we know more,” he’d told them.
“What would make it mummify like that?” Dillon asked Charlie now.
“Probably a variety of things. There are two kinds of mummies, anthropogenic, those created by the living, and spontaneous, which are created unintentionally due to natural conditions. I’d say this one is spontaneous.”
“Spontaneous?” Dillon asked.
Charlie looked up from his inspection of the corpse. “The internal organs are removed from the anthropogenic mummies and chemicals are used to preserve the bodies. Spontaneous ones have occurred in extreme heat or cold or conditions such as those found in bogs.”
“This certainly isn’t a bog,” Dillon pointed out.
“True,” the coroner agreed. “In order for the body to mummify under these conditions, I’d say she was buried at the top of the hill where there is little vegetation and the soil is much drier than the soil down here in the trees. The body would have had to go into the ground in late fall before the soil was completely frozen and then the weather would have had to have gotten very cold after that. The winter temperatures would explain the absence of flesh-eating organisms, like maggots. Cold also slows or completely stops the body’s bacteria from decomposition, resulting in a mummified body that could last thousands of years.”
“So it could be an old settler’s grave, right?” Dillon asked. “Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve uncovered one in Montana.”
The coroner shook his head. “The nails in the coffin aren’t that old. Also, the clothing’s all wrong. She’s wearing jeans.”
“Don’t blue jeans date back to the late eighteen hundreds?” Dillon pointed out.
Charlie considered the corpse. “If I had to guess, I’d say she hasn’t been here that long. I could be wrong. She is well preserved.”
Frank said nothing. He had a bad feeling he knew exactly how long this woman had been here. “Any way to estimate how old she was when she was buried?”
The coroner considered the mummified corpse for a moment. “Young. Maybe teens, early twenties. I’ll know more when I get her on the autopsy table.”
“What are the chances of getting any DNA that we could use to try to identify her?” Frank asked.
“I’m hopeful,” Charlie said. “Scientists have been able to extract DNA from mummies a whole lot older than this one. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Will be interesting to find out who she was,” the undersheriff said as he motioned to the shattered remains of the wooden box the body had been buried in. “Wasn’t much of a burial.”
“Looks like an old feed box found on places all around this county,” Frank said. “Let’s make sure we take the box in as evidence.”
“Wait,” Dillon said. “You’re thinking foul play?”
“Just covering all bets.” Nothing like a hard rain to loosen the soil and unearth all kinds of things, he thought.
Charlie reached out to take some strands of the victim’s hair between his fingers. Rubbing off the mud, he said, “I can tell you one thing. She was a redhead.”
Frank stepped away, needing to take a breath. Dread had settled like a bad meal low in his belly.
Behind him, he heard the coroner ask Dillon, “Have you taken all the photos you need? Then I’m ready to move her.” An assistant who’d been waiting patiently in the pines at some distance now moved in with a body bag. “Let’s roll her over. Easy... Hold up.”
Frank had been lost in thought when he heard Charlie say, “Sheriff, I think you might want to see this.”
With growing dread, he stepped back to the scene.
“She was wearing a leather Western belt,” the coroner said, looking up at him. “Assuming it’s her belt, her name is tooled into the leather. It says Maggie.”
THE SHERIFF SWORE, pulled off his hat and raked a hand through his graying blond hair. “Maggie?” he repeated. It appeared that he hadn’t jumped that far after all to the conclusion that had his stomach roiling.
“Do you know who she is?” Charlie asked. He was new to the area. The undersheriff was also looking at him quizzically. Dillon, too, wasn’t from around here so neither of them would know.
“A teenager went missing, hell, it must have been almost thirty-five years ago now,” Frank said. “She just up and disappeared. A lot of people thought that she’d run away. It wouldn’t have been unheard-of, especially this girl. Her name was Margaret Ann McTavish or Maggie as everyone called her.”
“McTavish?” Dillon said. “A relative of Brody’s?”
“His cousin. I was in my midtwenties when she vanished. Maggie was eighteen.” He shook his head at the memory of her and avoided looking at the remains lying in the mud. It broke his heart to see her like this.
“She was a beauty. Green eyes, long red hair, with a wild streak. So it was no wonder that everyone figured that she’d taken off. Rumor was that she’d