Page 120 of Secrets Along the Shore

Through the tarp, I can see the victim is dressed in an orange blouse and jeans. What I suspect is a necklace pendant—a sizable piece of copper-colored metal shaped like an owl—lies where her neck should be. There’s too much decomposition to make out anything else.

“Tell me,” I say, and wait as Tasha clears her throat.

“We got a call this morning.” She lifts her gaze and points to the outcropping above. “The ledge sits on property owned by a guy named Rick Taybolt. It’s hard to get to, basically inaccessible except by four-wheeler or UTV. The Moore family lives down the road from Taybolt, and their seventeen-year-old, Anthony, has a habit of taking his dad’s Gator to that ledge to smoke a little pot every now and again.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Yesterday, Anthony’s sister is telling him about the trial and the verdict. About the women and how they were left, and that one was buried. Anthony says, ‘It’d be wild if that’s what that guy was doing out there that night.’ His sister asks what he’s talking about, but Anthony just wants to drop it. Finally he tells her that last May he was out on the ledge after midnight, and saw a car pull in down here with its lights off.

“The moon was bright enough to see the car, but not much else. Plus, Anthony was, what—ninety, a hundred feet in the air? Bottom line, he can’t make out any details. The truck parks and the guy—or whoever, Anthony can’t say for certain—gets out. He moves around the car, so now, in addition to the low light, the clump of trees is blocking Anthony’s view. He might have heard digging sounds. He’s not sure. After about forty-five minutes, the driver takes off.

“Anthony’s sister freaks out, starts thinking her brother may know about another body, and tells her mom everything.” She holds her palm out. “And now here we are.”

“This kid never checked it out for himself?”

“I asked him the same thing at ten o’clock last night. He says—likely due in large part to his activities that night—he forgot all about it by the next morning. Until his sister made the buried body comment, he hadn’t thought about it since it happened.”

“You’ve been dealing with this since last night?” I ask.

She blinks slowly before sighing. “All night.”

My shoulders drop. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“And say what? That some kid saw something suspicious a year ago? We just finished up the trial yesterday. You were exhausted. There wasn’t any point in dragging you in unless there was something to drag you into.”

“So is it there?” I don’t have to be more specific. We both know what I’m talking about.

Tasha nods. “The plastic was wrapped tightly, especially around the arms and legs. There’s enough preserved to make out the writing.”

Not such a Perfect Princess now.

“You think it’s him?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it sure seems to be lining up.”

Drawing the conclusion that Fogerty is responsible for the dead woman in front of me wouldn’t be so much a jump as a slight lean, but I hear what she’s saying. “Anything else?”

“Appears to be an African-American. Decomp can change pigment somewhat, so we’ll have to wait for confirmation. Gold guesses she’s in her twenties, but again, we’ll have to wait for the report.”

Sheriff Vickers walks up to us, his heavyset frame—the result of his decades-long diet of root beer, beer-beer, and nachos—testing the limits of his uniform. His typically good-natured expression is sour, worry lines creasing his forty-three-year-old forehead.

“Sophie.” Sheriff Vickers offers me a sharp nod, which I return. “Heck of a business here,” he says, rubbing a hand against his jaw.

“It is,” I agree. “Any idea who she is?”

“Not yet. Gold is doing what he can here”—he ticks his head at the crime scene tech—“but most of it’ll have to wait till he gets her back to the morgue, given the bad shape she’s in. We’ll run DNA, see what comes up, but that’ll take several days. In the meantime, I’d love to have you on this. I mean, take the weekend if you need to, but?—”

“I’m not taking the weekend,” I counter. “Fogerty’s sentencing is Monday. We need to know what’s what by then. At least as much as we can.”

Tasha nodded enthusiastically, her dark hair bobbing. “Agreed. If this is Fogerty, and we put together enough evidence to prove it, we can go to his attorneys before Monday. Possibly convince them to push for a deal that incorporates the sentencing on the convictionsanda plea in this new case. Then we could avoid another trial.”

“It would be nice to give this victim’s family quick justice, save the county a lot of money, and be done with this monster,” I say, thinking out loud.

Sheriff Vickers shakes his head. “I don’t see him confessing. Why would that waste of skin do anything to make anyone’s life easier? He’s already getting life, at a minimum,if not worse. What’s his incentive?”

“Not dying? His attorney might be able to exchange a guilty plea in the new case for a recommendation from the D.A. for life without parole forboththe new case and the current convictions. Of course, they’ll have to hope the jury takes the D.A.’s recommendation to heart, but it might be the only chance they have of saving his neck.”

“That’s a big ‘might,’” Sheriff Vickers says, rocking on his heels.