A deep drainage ditch also created a barrier at the easternmost edge of the land, curving toward the cul-de-sac.
A 1992 white Corolla sat in the middle of the cul-de-sac, nose pointed west, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. The driver’s door hung wide open. Someone sat behind the wheel, forearms bent at the elbow, elbows leaning on the steering wheel.
From a distance, this looked odd.
“Something’s not right,” Harry remarked.
The two women, walking the horses as they’d finished their bracing canter, picked up a trot toward the car.
They rode up onto the road.
Tucker immediately warned, “Dead!”
The two horses snorted.
“Oh, my God.” Sue grimaced.
Harry dismounted, handing her reins to Sue. “Got your cell?”
“Harry, don’t go over there.”
“Call the sheriff’s department. Tell them Thadia Martin is dead at the end of Pheasant Lane, the dirt road off Barker’s Crossing Road.”
Accompanied by Tucker, Harry walked to the open door. Thadia, in rigor mortis, did not yet smell terrible. The night had been cool. The stink would come up by midday. If they hadn’t found her in two days, the odor would have been unbearable to all but vultures and dogs.
“Harry, don’t touch her.” Sue was aghast.
“I won’t. I don’t want to destroy evidence, but as we’re the first ones here, I should look.”
Sue tried to avoid looking at the macabre sight of a woman in her early forties, hands straight up, jaw wide open, eyes bulging. She couldn’t see Thadia’s legs under the steering wheel, which prevented them from becoming as bent as the arms. A body in rigor mortis is difficult to remove. That would be the ambulance team’s problem.
Sue marveled at Harry’s matter-of-fact approach. She did not marvel that Harry knew the deceased. Harry knew everybody.
Harry touched nothing. She carefully looked for a sign of struggle.
No struggle, but Thadia’s throat had been neatly slashed. Blood had spilled on her blouse; some had spurted on the windshield. Startling though this sight was, Harry’s curiosity kicked into high gear. She walked to the passenger door, did not open it—again, for fear of destroying fragile evidence. She peered in the window to see if she could get a view of Thadia’s right side.
A small carton, which she reckoned to be six inches square, rested on the passenger seat. Thadia’s purse was in the passenger-side footwell.
Harry walked close to the hood and peered in.
Thadia wore a short-sleeved buttoned blouse, her sweater thrown in the backseat. Harry noticed her bracelet. She returned to the driver’s side. The bracelet had slipped down to her elbow. Harry could clearly see it was a scarab bracelet and one scarab was missing. She’d not noticed the bracelet on Thadia before, but then one doesn’t wear the same jewelry every day.
“Harry,” Sue called.
“Coming.” Under her breath, Harry muttered, “Shit.”
Tucker, hard by Harry’s leg, looked up and stated, “She never had a chance.”
The chill dissipated while Harry and Sue waited for the sheriff’s department. Given that there was a nasty accident on Garth Road, it took Rick and Coop a half hour to reach Pheasant Lane.
Rick slammed the squad car door. Furious at the delay, he merely nodded at Harry and Sue while walking to the corpse. Upset herself, Coop first questioned her neighbor, then Sue.
“Look at her throat, Coop,” Harry instructed after telling Coop all she observed on first finding Thadia. “Neat work.”
Sue had less to tell, although she had taken note of the time they’d found Thadia: 10:13 A.M.
“You two can leave now. I know where to find you.” Coop waved them off.
“One more thing, she’s wearing a scarab bracelet. One is missing. I still have the one I found in Paula’s driveway, if you want it,” Harry said.
Tucker wished she could communicate with the humans. Fear, a powerful perfume, lingers. A dog can detect such an odor even after dogs pass. There was no fear odor on Thadia. That meant either she wasn’t afraid of her killer or the killer struck in a nanosecond.
Coop joined Rick, leaving light footprints in the dirt, for the dampness still clung to the road, the dew just melting on those fields and roads now touched by the sun.
He looked up at his partner. “Given the rigor, I’d say she was killed last night. It was forty-eight degrees at my house, cooler here. That factors in.”
“No sign of struggle.” Coop exhaled.
“No stranglehold or someone reaching out, face-to-face, to throttle her.” Rick stood back. That would leave small bruise marks. There were none. He again put his head into the driver’s side. “Just one clean cut.”
“Wish the photographer would get here.”
“Me, too. I’d like to get her body into the cooler. And I want the fingerprint team here pronto.”
A fly buzzed near Coop’s head. She shooed it away. “Nothing touched her. No nibbles. For a night hunter, this was a free lunch.”
“True, but there’s so much game out there now. The flies are discovering the body.”
“Rick, I read somewhere that a fly knows you’re dead two seconds after you breathe your last.”
“Luckily, she breathed her last at night. I’m hardly a fly expert, but I think they’re daytime insects. Ever think about it, the stages of death, I mean?”
“Sure,” Coop replied. “As law enforcement officers, we have to. The condition of a corpse, the time of exposure, all that stuff.”
“No, I mean, who discovered the body first? It’s usually not a human. It really is a fly or an insect. Then, if the body’s left out, the buzzards find it. The other carrion eaters come round. And then there are the bugs that burrow under the body so it will eventually collapse into the earth.”
“Pretty revolting.”
“To us. If you and I were vultures, this would be a beautiful sight. And you know, if those carrion eaters didn’t exist, the earth would be choking with dead. There’d be Alexander the Great and piles of humans on him. There’d be old bears from the 1400s and mountains of little grasshopper exoskeletons.” He shrugged. “Be a goddamned mess.”
“You’re right.”
They waited, silent. A crunch in the distance announced someone’s arrival. Turned out to be photographer Charlotte Lunden driving up.
Rick waved as she parked behind them.
“Be a minute,” she called out as she stepped onto the road.
Leaning back in, she plucked out her camera.
“Come on. You’ve seen a lot worse.” Coop led her to the body.
As Charlotte took photographs from every angle, also paying attention to the vehicle in case any evidence at all might be there, she coolly commented, “Good shape. That’s a plus.”
“Yep,” Coop replied.
“Two deaths in less than two months of women who both worked at Central Virginia Medical Complex.” Charlotte kept snapping.
Coop nodded. “That had crossed my mind.”
“People have heart attacks in their twenties. Paula’s death appeared natural.” Charlotte adjusted the lens.
“Yeah. And her autopsy didn’t show a thing.”
“Curious.” Charlotte, who’d been leaning over the old car’s hood, stood up and checked her camera. “Bet you when this one’s opened up, her heart will have scar tissue.”
“How do you know her?”
“Class behind me at Saint Anne’s. She’d played lacrosse and field hockey. I ran track. Just couldn’t get into anything where you swung sticks.” Charlotte laughed. “Thaddy ran with the rich kids, the drug crowd. Every school has one. Scared me then, and scares me now.”