Carefully, still narrating, I curled the tongue back into the shoe and placed the shoe into a third evidence bag I labeled SMALL RED SHOE/TOE. I gathered up the plastic sheet and placed it into another bag. I placed all the evidence bags into a large plastic bag labeled EVIDENCE in big red letters.
I pulled my gloves off, one at a time, gripping the wristband of the left, pulling it down and inside out, over my fingers. Holding the left glove in the right fist, I pulled that one down over my fingers and over the other glove, securing it inside the right, to keep the evidence I had touched in place. The scent in place. They went into a final evidence bag with a separate Chain of Custody form. I switched off the tape recorder and repacked my forensic supplies, setting the final bag on the top of the truck.
Closing the SUV hatch with the evidence inside, I took the bagged gloves and COC with me into the house, then washed my hands thoroughly at the kitchen sink, carrying the last bit of evidence with me as I moved.
With Jas already gone for the morning, the house was empty and quiet. Her bowl, smeared with yogurt and blueberry cereal, was in the sink, filled with water, next to her glass. I wasn’t interested in eating, though my daughter had left a box of Cheerios on the table with a clean bowl and spoon. My baby taking care of me, as she had since Jack had died, reminding me to eat.
The transition from child to caretaker had come early in Jas’s life, forced on her by her daddy’s death four years ago and my withdrawal into grief. I had spent the last two years letting her know I was fine now, but the habits learned in fear in the weeks after Jack’s funeral had proved impossible to break. I touched the bowl, almost smiling, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting my fingers fall away. I breathed again. Stress management. Sure. That would work. I took a third breath and forced it out hard.
There were a lot of things I had to do. The first one was to stop and think clearly. Not an easy task after a twelve-hour shift that had included two gunshot victims from a gang-related shoot-out, a three-car pileup and a near-drowning. But there wasn’t a hurry. No one was going to die if I paused and took the time to collect myself.
So I showered, slathered on sunscreen, dressed in jeans and tank top, then pulled one of my husband’s old flannel shirts over it, letting the tail hang out. Riding clothes. Things I could wear all day, if needed. I paused once to sniff the fabric. I had washed the few things of Jack’s I wanted before packing all the others off to friends and relatives. The shirt no longer smelled of him. I slipped on heavy socks and short-heeled western riding boots, found my hat, grabbed outdoor supplies and went back into the morning, feeling better now that I had decided what to do.
In the sunlight, still carrying the gloves, I made my way to the barn and checked on Johnny Ray to make sure he had done the chores. There were days when the stable hand was so far gone in the bottle that he never woke up, which had happened in a permanent way to his twin brother not so very long ago. Today Johnny Ray was sober, which could mean DTs tomorrow, but he was capable at the moment, and that was all that mattered. I had other constantly sober help, but Johnny had no place else to go. If I fired him, it would toss him down into total ruin faster. And when he was sober, he was an excellent stable hand. “Morning, Johnny Ray,” I said. “Saddle Mabel for me, will you?” I asked, choosing an old Friesian Jack had purchased years ago.
“You’re gonna ride?” he asked, surprised. “For fun?”
I hated to ride, so the question was legitimate. “Not for fun,” I said.
Though huge enough to pull a fully loaded wagon or carry a knight wearing a suit of plate armor and weapons, Mabel was a placid mount and took easily to saddle and bit. She was too old for much work, but I needed her calm nature this morning. When he was done, I told Johnny Ray to lock the other dogs in the tack room with water and food and put a long leash on Cheeks. If he thought my orders peculiar, he didn’t say, just moved from task to task with an unrelenting, steady pace. While he worked, I made the first call to law enforcement.
“Sheriff’s Department.”
“This is Ashlee Davenport and I’d—”
“Hi, Ash. How you doing?”
“Buzzy?”
“’At’s me. Miss you at the hospital. Ain’t been the same since you left and went to the big city to work. What can we do for you?”
“Thank you, Buzzy. I’m at the farm, and the dogs brought something to me this morning. A child’s red sneaker with a part of a human foot inside.”
Buzzy went dead quiet. As his silence lengthened, I walked from the barn, cell phone held close to my ear. Buzzy was a paramedic who worked part-time for 911 and in various dispatch jobs for law enforcement. One could call dispatch any time and stand a chance of having Buzzy answer the phone. “You hear me?” I asked.
“Yeah, I hear you. You joking? Something about this new forensic course you took?”
“No joke. I wish it was. I found it at 7:52. The shoe and evidence are in the back of my old SUV in evidence bags, timed and dated, with audio description and a Chain of Custody.”
“You got a shoe with part of a foot. No body?”
“Not with me, no,” I said, managing to sound wry and jaded instead of near tears. “But I have a couple ideas where it might be.”
“How…? Never mind.” I could almost see Buzzy scratching his head as he pondered how to investigate and interrogate a toe. “I’ll get an investigator out your way ASAP. And maybe a crime-scene crew?” He was still perplexed. I’d had longer than him to figure out what came next and understood that I didn’t have a crime scene. All I had was a toe.
“Dogs, Buzzy. The canine team. To find the body. I’ve got four hundred acres here. There are farms on the east and the south, and an illegal garbage dump nearby. Not to mention I-77 close by, where a body could be tossed.”
“K-9’s up near Ford County helping track a suspect of a bank CEO shooting and aborted robbery. But I can send a crime-scene team out.”
I sighed. “Buzzy, I’m going to look for the body. I’ve got one of the Ethridge boys’ old tracker hound dogs—it’s done work for the K-9 unit—and we’ll be heading west from the barn. Cheeks has worked with horses before, so I’ll be on horseback. I’ve got my cell phone with me.”
“Why west?”
“Sycamore leaf,” I said. “There was a sycamore leaf in the laces.” I hadn’t even thought about my reasons for heading west until he asked and I paused, surprised. “I don’t have many sycamore trees on the property, but there’s a small stand of about four…. Just head west from the barn, Buzzy. And have your crime-scene crew take the shoe in the evidence bag and the voice tape in the back of my truck. I’ll provide digital photos later.”
“Gotcha. Cavalry’s on the way.”
Snapping the phone shut, I stuffed it in a pocket. Clicking to Mabel and Cheeks, I took up reins and leash. Together, we ambled to my truck where I removed the tote of forensic supplies, added in bottled water, a compass, sunscreen and a box of Fig Newtons, and looped the bag over the saddle horn.
Satisfied that I had what I needed and that the old dog would stay out from underfoot properly, I looked up at the saddle—up and up. My stomach fluttered at the thought of sitting up there with all that power beneath me. I braced myself. I could wait here like a good little girl and let the cops handle