“Jesus, how can you eat that crap all the time?” Grimacing, she turned her head away from the bag with the donut rolling around in it.

“I don’t understand that sugar phobia of yours.” Spencer shook his head.

“I don’t understand why you’re not so wired from all that sugar that you’re buzzing around the room like a popped balloon.”

“Ah, you’re both here. Good. Good.” Chief of Police Craig Denver stuck his head through the door that led from his office. “Let me grab my coffee…”

Denver disappeared momentarily, then was back in a flash with his oversized mug and a manila file. He took a seat at the head of the table and busied himself with a napkin and a coaster and his glasses, as if postponing whatever it was he had brought them here to discuss.

“I hate this part of the job,” he sighed. “You both know that the administrative details of this job drive me crazy. Paperwork, reports, statistics… waste of my time. But you don’t get to pick and choose, not in this job, not in any.”

Cass bit back a grin. She’d heard this same spiel right about this time last year. And the year before, and the year before. She suspected that the intro was for Spencer’s sake. He’d only been with the department for a few months.

“Let me guess. The insurance company asked for an updated training manual again,” she deadpanned.

Denver nodded.

“Updated and expanded.”

“And you want one of us to volunteer to sit down with Phyl and proofread the pages before she sends them in.” Cass toyed with a fingernail.

“That about sums it up.” Denver smiled.

“It’s Spencer’s turn.” Cass twirled her pen. “I did all the proofing last year. And the year before.”

“Then you have the experience, don’t you?” Spencer’s eyes narrowed. His wife had already issued an ultimatum about him spending too many of his off-duty hours on department business and he’d sworn he’d make an effort to spend more time with her and their new baby, and less time working.

“Fair is fair, Spencer, and I-”

Phyllis Lannick, the chief’s secretary, poked her head in the doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt, Chief, but Officer Helms is on the phone and he says it’s an emergency. He sounds rattled.” She pointed to the phone on the small table behind him. “Line two.”

Denver raised an eyebrow as he reached for the phone.

“Emergency, Helms? Hey, hey. Slow down. Take a deep breath and start over…”

The chief went silent then, listening. The color drained from his face.

“I have Burke and Spencer right here. They’re on their way. Goes without saying that no one touches anything until the scene has been processed. Keep everyone out of the area until I can get the county CSI out there.” He hung up and turned to his two detectives.

Before either could ask, he said, “The manual will have to wait. They just found a body out near Wilson ’s Creek.”

“A body?” Cassie asked as if she’d not heard correctly. “Where along the creek?”

“Right outside of town, near Marsh Road. Just look for the cars. Apparently all three of our patrol cars and a couple of emergency vehicles are already there, parked along the roadside before the bridge. You won’t be able to miss them. Try to keep everyone in line until the county people arrive. I’ll meet you there.” He shoved his chair out from the table, muttering, “Just what we need, a homicide right as the season opens.”

“Homicide?” Cass paused on her way to the door and turned.

“That’s Helms’s take on it. See if he’s right…”

The body lay on its side on a rock worn smooth by the fast-moving stream known locally as Wilson ’s Creek. The woman had been young-late twenties, early thirties, Cass was thinking. She knelt carefully to visually inspect the victim, whose unseeing eyes were open and whose silent mouth still held its last scream. Bare arms, lightly sunburned to right above the elbow, were flung over her head, one hand trailing in the water. Her very long dark hair spilled over her face and into the creek, where the swift current wrapped some strands around her fingers. One leg was curled over the other, almost demurely.

“You didn’t touch her, did you?” a voice from behind asked tentatively.

“No. Of course I didn’t touch her.” Cass looked up to find the county’s lead crime scene investigator, Tasha Welsh, surveying the scene.

“Good. Hope you all watched where you walked.” Tasha’s eyes scanned the entire scene, the two detectives, the body, the uniformed officers milling about the black-and-white cruisers parked up a slight rise on the side of the road.

“Actually, we came in along the stream.” Cass motioned behind her, indicating the direction.

“That explains your wet jeans.” Tasha approached the body slowly, then turned and looked at Cass, who held a camera in her right hand. “Start from here, this angle, and work your way around that way…”

Tasha pointed to Spencer and said, “Either smile for the camera or move.”

Spencer moved.

“Blood on the inside of her thighs,” Cass noted as she snapped another shot.

“She’s probably been raped. And grass stains on the backs of her heels, Burke.” Tasha pointed to the victim.

“Which means she most likely was dragged for at least part of the way,” Cass said as she aimed the lens again. “Should be easy enough to find a drag trail if he came in from the road. Go take a look, Spencer, while I finish up here.”

“You want to start on the road up there?” Spencer pointed to the area where the shoulder was widest.

“I want to start all along this area. Go tell Helms and the others to space themselves out and begin looking for depressions in the weeds. Remind them to tread lightly, though. We don’t want to lose any evidence by stomping on it.”

“They should know that,” Spencer said over his shoulder.

“Yeah, they should. Remind them anyway. If there’s anything here, I’d like to find it before it’s obliterated by someone else’s footprints or by the rain they’re calling for this afternoon.”

Cass continued to photograph the body for another ten minutes before turning her attention to the growth of cattails off to the right of the body. They stood as tall as cornstalks and as thick as blades of grass. Anyone coming through there would have left an obvious trail. She stood quietly and surveyed the terrain. Up there, off the shoulder of the road, was a stand of bamboo that could have provided some cover. She’d start there.

There were tire marks from a dozen cars-possibly even from the cruisers-on the soft sandy shoulder, but she stepped carefully around them anyway. The bamboo ran for about twelve feet along the roadside, then dropped off into marshland where only rushes grew. They had yet to reach their full height, and to Cass’s mind, the logical place to walk if one was carrying or dragging a body would be right there at the point where the bamboo and the marsh met.

Predictably, about ten feet in from the road at the point where the bamboo ended, the grasses were slightly tamped down into a narrow path, which continued for another twenty-five feet into the marsh and ended in a larger, more haphazard depression. Cass looked over her shoulder, up to the point where the path actually began, and could almost envision the scene as it had happened.

He carried her from the car through the bamboo, Cass thought, then she must have become heavy, and he let her down back there, right where the weeds begin to bend. He dragged her down this far; the dragging of her body made the path, such as it is. Then he dropped her here.

Why had he dropped her here?

She stood for several long moments, listening to the light breeze set the rushes in motion. The body was fresh, the young woman hadn’t been there for long. Late last night, Cass surmised. She squatted down near the depression and studied it, looking for something that would help her to see what had happened here. It took her almost ten minutes, but she found it: two sections of reeds, bunched and broken, spaced almost two feet apart, at either side of the top of the depression.