Pale Immortal Read Free Page A

few weeks she got a call from her old boss, telling her how things had fallen apart since she'd left, and asking what it would take to convince her to return. She knew she should go. Even her father seemed to understand that.
    "Don't stay here for me," he'd told her more than once.
    But it wasn't just her father keeping her here; the town had finally gotten to her. Her excuse to remain in Tuonela was that it was nice living in a town where the only deaths she saw were due to car accidents, hunting accidents, and natural causes.
    Right.
    Here was a violent murder in the heart of one of the most bucolic settings on earth.
    "Could someone get my kit from the van?" she asked.
    After putting on a Tyvek suit and slippers, she photographed the body and the surrounding area.
    Her father, Police Chief Seymour Burton, came up beside her. He smelled like the cigarettes he pretended to no longer smoke. "The killing didn't take place here," he said.
    She felt reassured by his quiet presence. Very few people could carry off being cool, but Seymour managed easily. He was James Dean if James Dean had lived to be seventy.
    "No," Rachel agreed. "The body was dumped."
    "And I'm guessing by an amateur. A first kill."
    "But why dump a body in the middle of town?" she asked. "Almost seems the killer wanted her to be found."
    "Or panicked," Seymour said.
    "Local?" Rachel mused aloud. "Or someone passing through?"
    A nearby officer was listening. "Gotta be somebody passing through," he said with conviction.
    Seymour eyed the officer in that slow way of his. "Why's that?" he asked, even though it was obvious he already knew the answer.
    "Nobody here would do such a thing."
    Seymour looked from the officer to the body. For a moment he didn't speak. "Don't ever think it couldn't be a friend or neighbor. Most homicides are committed by people who know the victim. Our job is to find out who may have wanted to kill her. We'll start with relatives and friends and go from there." His voice was smooth and placating, not in the least condescending. The officer nodded and ducked his head.
    "Let's finish up and get the victim out of here," Rachel said. It bothered her that the young woman was lying there nude for all to see. That kind of bla- tant exposure was different in a small town, where there was little anonymity. In L.A. she wouldn't have felt the need to hurry and cover the body.
    "Anybody recognize her?" Seymour asked.
    "I... I think she goes—I mean, went to school with my son," an officer said. "Mason and Enid Ger-ber's kid."
    There was a murmur of agreement.
    They put up numbered crime scene cards.
    The grass hadn't been packed down. There were no tire marks.
    Two officers spread a plastic sheet on the ground next to the victim. On top of the sheet they placed a body bag. Rachel had wrestled with a lot of dead bodies, and they weren't known for their cooperation. Once the victim was in place, Rachel zipped the bag and attached an evidence seal.
    Dan, Rachel's assistant and the closest Tuonela had to a crime scene investigator, began vacuuming the grass in hopes of finding some small piece of something.
    From her kit Rachel pulled out a tool shaped like a small shovel. She crouched above the area where the body had been lying. Using the tool, she scraped and dug, depositing clumps of grass and dirt into an evidence bag.
    "What are you looking for?" Dan asked.
    Rachel was aware of her audience: patrol officers standing in a semicircle, watching, waiting.
    "Blood."
    "And ...?" Dan prodded.
    "Ground's too wet to tell."
    "I can take care of that." He poked around in the evidence kit to lift out a plastic spray bottle of lumi-nol, normally used indoors to expose trace amounts of blood. Dan had probably been waiting months for a chance to use it.
    He sprayed the area in question, then produced a small, battery-operated black light. Nothing. He sprayed again, then tested with the light.
    Still nothing.
    He looked up at Rachel, silently communicating his