Before He Covets. Blake Pierce

of old footpaths winding through the foliage and around the trees but that was it. Without realizing she was doing so, she took the lead in front of Bryers as she tried to keep up with Clements. On occasion, she had to swat away a low-hanging branch or wipe away stray strands of cobwebs from her face.

      After walking for two or three minutes, she started to hear several mingled voices. The sounds of movement grew louder and she started to understand what Clements had been talking about; even without seeing the scene, Mackenzie could tell that it was going to be overcrowded.

      She saw proof of this less than a minute later as the scene came into view. Crime scene tape and small border flags had been set up in a large triangular shape within the forest. Among the yellow tape and red flags, Mackenzie counted eight people, Clements included. She and Bryers would make ten.

      “See what I mean?” Clements asked.

      Bryers came up beside Mackenzie and sighed. “Well, this is a mess.”

      Before stepping forward, Mackenzie did her best to survey the scene. Of the eight men, four were local PD, easily identified by their uniforms. There were two others that were in uniforms but of a different kind – state PD, Mackenzie assumed. Beyond that, though, she took in the scene itself rather than let the bickering distract her.

      The location seemed to be random. There were no points of interest, no items that might be seen as symbolic. It was just like any other section of these forests in every way Mackenzie could see. She guessed that they were about a mile or so off of the central trail. The trees were not particularly thick here, but there was a sense of isolation all around her.

      With the scene thoroughly taken in, she looked to the bickering men. A few looked agitated and one or two looked angry. Two of them weren’t wearing any sort of uniform or outfit to denote their profession.

      “Who are the guys not in uniform?” Mackenzie asked.

      “Not sure,” Bryers said.

      Clements turned to them with a scowl on his face. “Park rangers,” he said. “Joe Andrews and Charlie Holt. Shit like this happens and they think they’re the police.”

      One of the rangers looked up with venom in his eyes. Mackenzie was pretty sure Clements had nodded this man’s way when he’d said Joe Andrews. “Watch yourself, Clements. This is a state park,” Andrews said. “You’ve got about as much authority out here as a gnat.”

      “That might be,” Clements said. “But you know as well as I do that all I have to do is make a single call to the precinct and get some wheels moving. I can have you out of here within an hour, so just do whatever it is you need to do and get your ass out of here.”

      “You self-righteous little fu – ”

      “Come on,” a third man said. This was one of the state cops. The man was built like a mountain and wore sunglasses that made him look like the villain from a bad ’80s action movie. “I have the authority to throw both of you out of here. So stop acting like children and do your jobs.”

      This man noticed Mackenzie and Bryers for the first time. He walked over to them and shook his head almost apologetically.

      “Sorry you’re having to hear all of this nonsense,” he said as he approached. “I’m Roger Smith with the state police. Some scene we’ve got here, huh?”

      “That’s what we’re here to figure out,” Bryers said.

      Smith turned back to the seven others and used a booming voice when he said: “Step back and let the feds do their thing.”

      “What about our thing?” the other ranger asked. Charlie Holt, Mackenzie remembered. He looked to Mackenzie and Bryers with suspicion. Mackenzie thought he even looked a little timid and afraid around them. When Mackenzie looked his way, he looked to the ground, bending over to pick up an acorn. He moved the acorn from hand to hand, then started to pick at the top of it.

      “You’ve had enough time,” Smith said. “Just back up for a second, would you?”

      Everyone did as asked. The rangers in particular looked unhappy about it. Doing everything she could to ease the situation, Mackenzie figured it would help if she tried involving the rangers as much as possible so tempers didn’t flare.

      “What sort of information do rangers typically need to pull from something like this?” she asked the rangers as she ducked under the crime scene tape and started to look around. She saw a marker where the leg had been found, marked as such on a small clapboard marker. A good distance away she saw another marker where the remainder of the body had been found.

      “We need to know how long to keep the park closed down for one thing,” Andrews said. “As selfish as it might sound, this park accounts for a pretty good chunk of tourism revenue.”

      “You’re right,” Clements spoke up. “That does sound selfish.”

      “Well, I think we’re allowed to be selfish from time to time,” Charlie Holt said rather defensively. He then regarded Mackenzie and Bryers with a stare of contempt.

      “Why’s that?” Mackenzie asked.

      “Do either of you happen to know what sort of crap we have to put up with out here?” Holt asked.

      “No, actually,” Bryers asked.

      “Teenagers having sex,” Holt said. “Full-blown orgies from time to time. Weird Wicca practices. I’ve even caught some drunk guy out here getting frisky with a stump – and I’m talking pants all the way down. These are the stories the Staties laugh about and the local PD just use as fodder for jokes on the weekends.” He bent down and picked up another acorn, picking at it like he did with the first one.

      “Oh,” added Joe Andrews. “And then there’s catching a father in the act of molesting his eight-year-old-daughter just off of a fishing path and having to stop it. And what thanks do I get? The girl yelling at me to leave her daddy alone and then a firm warning from local and state PD to not be so rough next time. So yeah…we can be selfish about our authority from time to time.”

      The forest went quiet then, broken only by one of the other local cops as they made a dismissive laughing sound and said: “Yeah. Authority. Right.”

      Both rangers stared the man down with extreme hatred. Andrews took a step forward, looking as if he might explode from rage. “Fuck you,” he said simply.

      “I said stop this nonsense,” Officer Smith said. “One more time and every single one of you are out of here. You got it?”

      Apparently, they did. The forest fell into silence again. Bryers stepped behind the tape with Mackenzie and when everyone else busied themselves behind them, he leaned over to her. She felt Charlie Holt’s eyes on her and it made her want to punch him.

      “This could get ugly,” Bryers said quietly. “Let’s do our best to get out of here post-haste, what do you say?”

      She went to work then, combing the area and taking mental notes. Bryers had stepped out of the crime scene and was resting against a tree as he coughed into his arm. She did her best not to let this distract her, though. She kept her eyes to the ground, studying the foliage, the ground, and the trees. The one thing that made little sense to her was how a body in such bad shape had been discovered here. It was hard to tell how long ago the murder had occurred or the body had been dumped; the ground itself showed no signs of the brutal act being carried out.

      She noted the location of the placards that marked where the different parts of the body had been found. It was too far apart to have been an accident. If someone dumped a mutilated body and placed the parts so far apart, that spoke on intentionality.

      “Officer Smith, do you know if there were any signs of bite marks from possible wildlife on the body?” she asked.

      “If there were, they were so minuscule that a basic exam didn’t reveal any. Of course, when the autopsy comes in we’ll know more.”

      “And no one on your crew or with local PD moved the body or the severed limbs?”

      “Nope.”

      “Same