“Good find, Robo. Good boy!” After patting her dog, she marked the item with an evidence spike and photographed it with her cell phone, leaving it in place for the crime scene techs to process. “Let’s see if we can find something else.”
As she neared the gravesite, she spotted Detective Stella LoSasso and Sheriff McCoy. She also recognized a third figure as Dr. McGinnis, Timber Creek’s sole physician and the Timber Creek County coroner. Sixty-something, the doctor had a mop of silver hair, which he wore longish in a 1960s style reminiscent of The Beatles. It drifted around his head in the light breeze that flowed uphill, making him easy to identify even in the dim light. Stella was snapping photographs of the body while McGinnis hovered next to it. When Stella finished, he squatted down to get a closer look.
“So she was found at six thirty-seven, and school let out at three o’clock,” McGinnis said. “That’s our window.”
“That’s right,” Stella said, looking up at Mattie and acknowledging her with a nod before turning her attention back to the doctor. Dressed casually in jeans and a brown jacket with a Timber Creek County Sheriff’s Department emblem on the sleeve, the detective looked like she’d left home immediately when called after hours. She’d scraped her long chestnut hair back and secured it at the nape of her neck, and the twilight touched on natural highlights that ran through it.
“Did you find footprints?” Sheriff McCoy asked Mattie quietly as she drew near. McCoy was a large African American man, easily six foot three, and he presented himself in an unflappable manner that made Mattie glad to have him in charge. No surprise to her that she also felt a small amount of comfort in his presence, since he’d been the young deputy who’d rescued her when she was six years old, the night her family fell apart.
“Yes,” she said. “I marked them. We’ve got several good ones. Robo also found a cap on the same route.”
McCoy raised his brows and nodded before looking back at the body, drawing Mattie’s attention toward it as well.
Dr. McGinnis was probing the victim’s face with gloved fingers while Stella held a flashlight. “We’ve got some rigor setting into her jaw and facial muscles, but . . .” He looked up at Stella. “May I move her slightly?”
“Yes, but let’s move her as little as possible for you to get the information you need. I’d like to preserve this scene for our CSU.”
Apparently Stella believed they were dealing with a homicide too, though accidental death would have to be ruled out. Someone had been up here with Candace, and that someone would know exactly what happened.
Dr. McGinnis lifted one of Candace’s arms and then replaced it, pushed gently against a leg. “Rigor is starting in her extremities. I’m thinking she’s been dead right around three hours, maybe a little less.”
Stella glanced at her watch. “It’s five after seven right now. So you’re estimating around four o’clock, maybe shortly after.”
“Rough estimate.”
“I understand.” Stella passed a gloved hand near Candace’s face without touching it. “Petechiae here.”
Dr. McGinnis touched the tiny purplish-red spots that dotted the area around her nose and mouth. “Yes, most likely from suffocation. But no bruising on her neck.” While Stella continued to train the light on the girl’s face, he raised one of her eyelids and revealed bloodshot whites around the staring, opaque eyes.
Stella swept the light to Candace’s hands. “She has some broken fingernails. Let’s go ahead and bag her hands before we do anything else.”
While the two worked with the body, Mattie tried to come to grips with what this meant. A thirteen-year-old girl’s life had ended—a life that didn’t have a chance to even get properly started. Although the father had come to mind as her first suspect, she tried to think of other possible motives for the teen’s death. Drugs. Every recent death in Timber Creek had been drug related. They had to at least consider it.
But there were other options too. What about teen rivalry or jealousy? Timber Creek didn’t have a gang faction, but infighting among the different groups—the jocks, goths, cowboys, nerds—wasn’t uncommon. Even so, it was hard to imagine one of them killing another.
A random killing by someone passing through town? Another long shot. Whoever killed Candace appeared to have known her. And the people who came up this hill were typically kids or someone else associated with the school.
Stella’s conversation with the doctor brought her attention back to them.
“I’m glad you could identify Candace,” Stella was saying. “Saves us from having to make her parents do it.”
McGinnis wore a somber expression. “I’ve been this child’s doctor since she was a little girl.”
Mattie hadn’t thought of that. But of course, this man was the only doctor in town.
Sheriff McCoy spoke, his voice deep and solemn with sympathy. “I know how hard this must be for you, Dr. McGinnis. Can you share any thoughts about her and what might have gone wrong up here?”
The doctor nodded, but he looked back at Stella. “I need to get a body temperature. Under the arm will do. We can disturb her clothing as little as possible.”
“All right.” Stella assisted, both of them moving the girl’s body with care. “This is a skimpy top she has on under her jacket for this time of year. And pretty fancy underwear.”
Mattie caught a glimpse of a black spaghetti-strap-and-lace concoction covering a chest not yet fully developed. The girl was barely past the training bra stage.
After placing the thermometer, McGinnis shifted from kneeling to settle back on his heels to wait, obviously uncomfortable holding the position on the rocky ground. He looked up at the sheriff. “Candace had a respiratory condition, asthma, and several allergies that would set off her episodes. Her condition has been relatively under control with medications during the past few years. I haven’t seen her in my office as much as I used to. But it concerns me that it looks like she’s died of asphyxia.”
“Any thoughts on that?” Stella asked.
“There are some plants up here that might have set her off,” McGinnis said, glancing around the area. “You should search her pockets for her inhaler.”
Mattie spoke up. “Her mother said she found Candace’s inhaler on her dresser at home.”
McGinnis looked at Stella. “Another thought . . . she could have choked on something like a piece of hard candy.”
“Shall we look in her mouth?” Stella asked.
“We should,” McGinnis said, carefully removing the thermometer, reading it, and then making a notation on a pad. “But if it’s lodged between her vocal cords, I won’t be able to see it.”
“Let’s have you take a look anyway.”
McGinnis took a scope from his kit, and while Stella helped him open the girl’s jaw as much as possible considering the rigor, he peered inside. “I can’t see anything. If there’s anything there, it’ll stay put for the medical examiner to find.”
Each time Stella and the doctor moved the girl, they returned her to the position in which she’d been found, arms bent and hands crossed carefully on her chest. Stella gestured toward the corpse. “Do you have an opinion about the posing?” she asked McGinnis.
Pausing to think, the doctor stared at Candace and spoke slowly. “It looks like someone who cared about her put her in that position.”
“I agree. Or someone with remorse,” Stella said.
McGinnis shrugged. “I suppose so.”
“Most kids carry a backpack or something to and from school,” Mattie said. “I haven’t found anything like that up here.”
Stella acknowledged Mattie with a nod. “Let’s turn her slightly, Doc. Doesn’t look like there’s anything under her, but I’d like to take a peek.”