A body sprawled facedown on slick rock. Arms and legs splayed. Blond hair soaked and trailing into foamy puddles. Even from a distance, Douglas recognized the small frame and delicate line of the neck.
Olivia.
For sure.
Dead.
For sure.
His father stepped up beside him, tensing as he looked at Olivia’s body. “It’s her.”
“Yeah. I’m afraid so.”
“We need to be the first to examine the body. If she fell, fine. If she didn’t, we need to know what happened. I’ll get the climbing gear.” Aiden hurried away, not giving Douglas time to respond.
If she fell.
The words seemed to hang in the air. The other possibilities hovering with them.
If she hadn’t fallen…
“We were supposed to meet for lunch,” Merry said, and Douglas wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or to herself.
He turned, studying her pale, pretty face, searching her dark, hollow eyes. Haunted. That’s how she looked. How she always looked. Despite her smile, despite her easy laughter, there were always shadows in her eyes. He’d noticed them before he’d asked her to lunch, had wanted to find out what caused them, but Merry had shut him out. “Were you here looking for her?”
“Yes. She was late, and she didn’t answer her phone. I got worried and came to make sure she was okay. I thought maybe she’d overslept or her car hadn’t started. I never thought…” She shook her head.
“You went to her apartment first?”
“Yes. The door was unlocked, and I walked inside. Checked her bedroom. She wasn’t there. She loves the bluff and looking out over the bay. I thought maybe she’d come here and lost track of time, so I came to check. I don’t know what made me look down. Maybe just a feeling that things weren’t right. Do you think she fell?”
“I won’t know until I get down there. For now, I’m going to assume that’s what happened. Unless you know something that makes you think differently.”
She hesitated, her dark gaze skittering away. “I don’t.”
Lying?
Maybe. Or maybe she was still in shock, still trying to wrap her mind around Olivia’s death. He couldn’t blame her if she was. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He’d seen Olivia the previous day, pushing Charles’s twins in a double stroller, a smile on her face.
He shoved the image away.
He needed to focus on the job. There’d be time to mourn later.
He scanned the ground near the cliff, looking for signs of a struggle, some clue that would help put together a picture of what had happened. No footprints, but a few feet away, the earth seemed scuffed. Nearby, a black shoe lay near a clump of winter-brown foliage, and he crouched nearby. Woman’s sneaker with green shoelaces.
“It’s Olivia’s.” Merry crouched beside him, reached out. He snagged her hand before she could grab the sneaker, felt the tension beneath smooth skin.
“We need to leave it for the evidence team.”
“Evidence of what?” she asked, tugging her hand away and tucking it into the pocket of her coat. Her cheeks were red from cold, her breath coming out in quick puffs that hung in the icy air.
“Of whatever happened here.”
“You ready to go down, Douglas?” Douglas’s older brother, Ryan, approached, climbing gear flung over his shoulder, his face hard. Deputy chief of police, he’d earned his title through hard work and commitment to the job. Keira and Owen were right behind him, Aiden taking up the rear. Every Fitzgerald police officer was in attendance, but there was nothing they could do for Olivia. Nothing but recover her body, notify her next of kin and see that she had a proper burial.
“I’m ready.” He slid into the gear as Merry watched, her body so tense and tight he thought she might break.
“Why don’t you wait near your car, Merry? I have a few questions I’d like to ask when I’m finished here.”
“Sure.” She seemed relieved by his suggestion, happy to be allowed to leave the cliff. He watched as she ran toward the cottage, her hair flying wild behind her.
“She seems upset,” Keira said.
“She and Olivia were pretty chummy, so that’s not surprising,” Ryan responded as he helped Douglas hook into the harness. “Ready, bro?”
“Ready.”
“Take the camera down with you. The way those waves are crashing, we could lose evidence quickly.” His brother Owen, a detective with the police department, handed him a camera, and Douglas tucked it into his pocket.
“Will do.” Icy spray seeped through his uniform as he rappelled down the slick rock.
Olivia’s body lay a few feet away, water lapping at her hand and seeping over the surface of the boulder under her. He snapped photos quickly, gulls screaming overhead as he worked, his mind separating fact from emotion.
Olivia. Living, breathing, laughing Olivia.
Dead.
It was his job to chronicle the scene. Make sure nothing was missed. He couldn’t let sorrow cloud his vision or his objectivity.
Blood stained the blond hair at the back of Olivia’s skull, and he snapped a picture.
Bruised cheek.
Snap.
Arms and legs splayed.
Snap.
Bruises on one wrist that might have been finger marks.
Snap.
He frowned, studying the angle of Olivia’s head and neck. She lay facedown, but the wound was to the back of her head, the skin behind her ear broken. A deadly blow, for sure. He snapped a close-up of the wound and glanced up, trying to imagine a way that she might have fallen and slammed the back of her head into the face of the cliff. Pounding waves had carved a shallow hollow beneath the bluff, and it would have been difficult for anyone to fall into the rock wall. Didn’t mean it hadn’t happened, though.
He snapped a photo of the cliff’s edge. Snapped another of the scene, Olivia’s splayed body on dark gray rock. Nothing else but a fist-size rock that lay a foot from the remains. He crouched next to it, used his flashlight to turn the heavy stone. A few long strands of blond hair clung to it, glued on by dark clotted blood.
And he knew what he was dealing with.
Not a horrible tragic accident.
A murder.
TWO
