of this boulder was a body. The right arm was clearly broken, bent impossibly beneath the remainder of the body. A stream of blood was trailing down the boulder, mostly dried but still wet enough to seem as if it was still flowing.
“Hell of a sight, ain’t it?” Tate asked, standing beside her.
“Yes, it is. What can you tell me for sure at the moment?”
“Well, the victim is a twenty-two-year-old male. Kenny Skinner. As I understand it, he’s related to someone higher up on your ladder.”
“Yes. The nephew of the FBI’s deputy director. How many men out here currently know that?”
“Just me and my deputy,” Tate said. “We already spoke with your pals in Washington. We know this needs to be kept quiet.”
“Thanks,” Mackenzie said. “I understand there was another body discovered here a few days ago?”
“Three mornings ago, yeah,” Tate said. “A woman named Malory Thomas.”
“Any signs of foul play?”
“Well, she was naked. And her clothes were found up there on the bridge. Other than that, there was nothing. It was assumed to be just another suicide.”
“You get many of those around here?”
“Yeah,” Tate said with a nervous smile. “You could say that. Three years ago, six people killed themselves by jumping off of this fucking bridge. It was some kind of record per location for the state of Virginia. The year after that, there were three. Last year, it was five.”
“Were they all locals?” Mackenzie asked.
“No. Out of those fourteen people, only four living within a fifty-mile radius.”
“And to your knowledge, is there maybe some sort of urban legend or reasoning behind these people taking their lives off of this bridge?”
“There’s ghost stories, sure,” Tate said. “But there’s a ghost story tied to just about every decommissioned bridge in the country. I don’t know. I blame these screwed up generation gaps. Kids these days get their feelings hurt and think offing themselves is the answer. It’s pretty sad.”
“How about homicides?” Mackenzie asked. “What’s the rate like in Kingsville?”
“There were two last year. And so far, only one this year. It’s a quiet town. Everyone knows everyone else and if you don’t like someone, you just stay away from them. Why do you ask? You leaning towards murder for this one?”
“I don’t know yet,” Mackenzie said. “Two bodies in the span of four days, at the same location. I think it’s worth looking into. Do you happen to know if Kenny Skinner and Malory Thomas knew one another?”
“Probably. But I don’t know how well. Like I said…everyone knows everyone in Kingsville. But if you’re asking if maybe Kenny killed himself because Malory did, I doubt it. There’s a five-year difference in age and they didn’t really hang with the same crowds from what I know.”
“Mind if I have a look?” Mackenzie asked.
“Be my guest,” Tate said, instantly walking away from her to join the other officers who were scouring the scene.
Mackenzie approached the boulder and the body of Kenny Skinner apprehensively. The closer she got to the body, the more aware she became of just how much damage had been done. She’d seen some pretty grisly things in her line of work, but this was among the worst.
The stream of blood was coming from an area where it appeared Kenny’s head had smashed against the rock. She didn’t bother examining it closely because the black and red illuminated in the spotlights wasn’t something she wanted popping back into her head later in the night. The massive facture in the back of his head affected the rest of the skull, distorting the facial features. She also saw where his chest and stomach looked as if they had been puffed out from within.
She did her best to look past all of this, checking over Kenny’s clothes and exposed skin for any signs of foul play. In the harsh yet inefficient beam of the spotlights, it was hard to be sure but after several minutes, Mackenzie could find nothing. When she stepped away, she felt herself start to relax. Apparently, she’d been tensed up while observing the body.
She went back to Sheriff Tate, who was speaking with another officer. They sounded as if they were making plans about notifying the family.
“Sheriff, do you think you could have someone pull the records for me on those fourteen suicides over the last three years?”
“Yeah, I can do that. I’ll make a call here in a second and make sure they’re waiting for you at the station. And you know…there’s someone you might want to call. There’s a lady in town, works out of her home as a psychiatrist and special needs teacher. She’s been on my ass for the last year or so about how all of the suicides in Kingsville can’t just be suicides. She might be able to offer something you might not find in the reports.”
“That would be great.”
“I’ll have someone include her information with the reports. You good here?”
“For now, yes. Could I please have your number for easier contact?”
“Sure. But the damned thing is glitchy. Need to upgrade. Should have done it about five months back. So if you call me and it goes to voicemail right away, I’m not ignoring you. I’ll call you right back. Some stupid thing with the phone. I hate cell phones anyway.”
After his rant on modern technology, Tate gave her his cell number and she saved it into her phone.
“I’ll see you around,” Tate said. “For now, the coroner is on the way. I’ll be damn glad when we can move this body.”
It seemed like an insensitive thing to say but when Mackenzie looked back at it and saw the gore and broken state of the body, she couldn’t help but agree.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was 10:10 when she walked into the police station. The place was absolutely dead, the only movement coming from a bored-looking woman sitting behind a desk – what Mackenzie assumed served as dispatch at the Kingsville Police Department – and two officers talking animatedly about politics in a hallway behind the dispatch desk.
Despite the lackluster feel of the place, it was apparently very well run. The woman at the dispatch desk had already copied all of the records Sheriff Tate had mentioned and had them waiting in a file folder when Mackenzie arrived. Mackenzie thanked her and then asked for a motel recommendation in the area. As it turned out, Kingsville only had a single motel, less than two miles away from the police department.
Ten minutes later, Mackenzie was unlocking the door to her room at a Motel 6. She’d certainly stayed in worse places during her tenure with the bureau, but it wasn’t likely to get any glowing Yelp or Google reviews. She paid little attention to the lacking state of the room, setting the files down on the little table by the single bed and wasting no time in diving into them.
She took some notes of her own while she read through the files. The first and perhaps most alarming thing she discovered was that of the fourteen suicides that had occurred in the last three years, eleven of them had been from the Miller Moon Bridge. The other three included two gun-related suicides
