Dead Wrong. Janice Johnson Kay

for the victim. Maybe for all women. Meg never had known. The man who had killed in exactly this way, who had left the body posed just as this one was posed, had insisted he was innocent. Was still protesting his innocence from the state penitentiary, where he was serving a life sentence.

      Feeling sick, she said, “I’ll talk to the kids. You call for a crime scene crew. We need pictures.”

      Giallombardo nodded and went back to the Explorer.

      Meg knocked on the window of the pickup and then opened the driver side door.

      “Chris Singer?”

      The girl, a waif with a blotchy face and red, swollen eyes, nodded.

      “And you are?” Meg asked the boy.

      “Colin Glaser.” He was trying to sound manly. The squeak at the end undermined his effort. He gazed through the windshield toward the ghastly sight. “That woman… She’s, like, dead.”

      “Yes, I’m afraid she is.” Meg heard the grimness in her own voice.

      He shuddered.

      Meg looked at both of them. “Can you tell me when you arrived? Did you get out of the pickup? Touch anything?”

      In unison, their heads shook violently. “We never got out,” the boy said. “I wanted to get the hell—the heck out of here, but when I started to back up Chris said we should call 911. And wait until the cops got here. So we locked the doors and that’s what we did.”

      “We were only here like a minute before we phoned,” the girl said.

      They’d been cutting school, Meg learned, because they had been having a relationship crisis. Despite the boy’s comforting arm around the girl, Meg guessed the relationship was dead now. Chris had called her dad, who was on his way out here. He wasn’t going to be a happy man.

      She thanked them for being responsible, then left them to wait for the girl’s father.

      “Let’s take a closer look,” Meg said to Detective Giallombardo, who obediently followed her. Both slipped on the slope of red cinders as they scrambled the eight or ten feet up, then edged toward the body.

      Unless bloodstains provided a trail—and they were going to be a bitch to spot on volcanic cinders this color—it was going to be impossible to tell where the UNSUB parked, whether he dragged or carried the body, etc. How much Luminol did it take to spot blood in a landscape this vast? Footprints and ruts didn’t last in loose cinders, which tended to rattle downslope to fill any hole even when there was still a foot in it. Meg knew, because she’d climbed up to the crater several times as a teenager.

      She crouched beside the victim, Giallombardo standing right above her.

      Legs splayed in a grotesquely inviting gesture of sexual come-on. The savage bite marks on the breast were made by human teeth, if Meg was any judge. Maybe they’d get lucky and at least get a decent bite impression to match up with a suspect later. Arms spread to each side. The victim had been allowed no dignity in death.

      And then there was the jockstrap. To appearances, it had been used to strangle the woman. It looked brand-new. Bought for the purpose.

      This wasn’t chance. The staging was identical to the murder six years ago that had cost Meg her son in every meaningful way, though he still dutifully arrived at her door for family holidays.

      She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Giallombardo said, “Identical to what?”

      Meg froze, her instinct to keep family history private until such time as there was no option. But when it came down to it, she’d been a cop too long to hide evidence.

      “The crew’s coming,” she said, glad of an excuse to put off the moment of truth.

      “And Dad,” the young female cop observed.

      A red SUV was gaining fast on the official convoy. It fishtailed once but didn’t even slow. As a parent, Meg understood.

      She and Giallombardo scrambled and slid their way back down to the foot of the lava cone. Crime scene techs bundled up as they climbed out of vehicles—as afternoon fell, the air became icier. Meg estimated the day hadn’t reached ten degrees Fahrenheit when the sun was at its height, and the temp had probably already dropped to six or eight degrees with sub-zero to come tonight. Her cheeks and nose were numb.

      She directed the crew to get them started, some spreading out to search for evidence, the photographer beginning to snap pictures, the coroner waiting to get to the body. The girl’s dad erupted from his SUV almost before it skidded to a stop, and she flung herself right over her boyfriend into Daddy’s arms.

      Meg introduced herself, explained the situation and asked if he’d drive both kids back to town. “We’ve got his pickup boxed in.” To the boy, she said, “Colin, can you get someone to bring you out here tomorrow after school to get your pickup?”

      He nodded.

      To his credit, the father squeezed the boy’s shoulder and said, “Come on, son. Your mom home from work yet?” He led the two away and was soon backing out.

      Meg leaned against the fender of her black Explorer. The young cop who’d been promoted to detective all of a month ago waited with a patience Meg admired.

      Trina Giallombardo had risen fast in the ranks. She was only twenty-six, twenty-seven. A local girl who had gone to Oregon State to college, then come home. As a cop, she was smart, steady, mature beyond her years and dedicated. When Meg had interviewed her for the promotion, she’d claimed to have always wanted to be a detective.

      She wore her thick, shiny dark hair drawn tightly into a bun. Big brown eyes dominated an olive-complected face that gave an impression of stubbornness and intelligence rather than beauty.

      Meg would have given anything to have Ben Shea, her longtime partner and brother-in-law, here instead. But Ben had broken his idiot leg—thank God not his neck—trying to keep up with Abby on the ski hill. His leg was still in traction.

      But why did I have to bring a novice? Meg asked herself. Instinct? She didn’t have a clue.

      Gaze on the crew, spread out like giant ants below their hill, she finally answered Giallombardo’s question. “Six years ago, we had a murder that looked just like this one.”

      “Six years…” Giallombardo frowned. “I was away at college. Wait. Not Will’s girlfriend?”

      “You know my son?”

      “Only by sight.” Did red tinge her cheeks? Hard to tell, with both their faces damn near frostbitten. “I was two years behind him in school. But I saw him play basketball. And since he was president of the student body…”

      Meg nodded. “His girlfriend was raped and murdered when she came home with him for spring break from college. She was strangled with a jockstrap, and the cup was pulled over her face. She was posed just like that.”

      “Oh.” The young cop exhaled the single, soft word.

      They stood in silence while she processed the implications. “Isn’t that your brother-in-law’s ranch up the road?”

      The fact that this body had been dumped so close to her sister’s home was already bothering Meg. Their family had been targeted once before. Surely not again. Surely this had nothing to do with the Pattons. It was happenstance that the previous victim had been Will’s girlfriend. She’d gone to a bar on her own and left with the killer. She’d probably never even mentioned her boyfriend or the fight they’d just had.

      Giallombardo interrupted her thoughts. “Did you catch the killer?”

      Meg nodded. “He’s supposed to be serving life.”

      They both glanced involuntarily toward the body.

      “Paroled?”

      “We’ll find out.”

      The photographer