it was crisp and cold. There weren’t any buildings along this stretch of the road. The landscape was barren and gray. The trees that lined the bank of the river had lost their leaves, and their branches looked naked and sharp. Nick walked the rest of the way to the flat, nondescript bridge. Down beneath him by the river, a team of policemen were sealing off the area, running police tape from stakes they had planted in the wet soil. Even though their light was no longer necessary, a few of them were still carrying flashlights, the lamps burning yellow holes into the thin fog. As Nick watched them, a white Channel 11 news van pulled to a stop on the bridge. The passenger window rolled down, and a heavily made-up woman leaned her head out, holding her coiffed hair carefully in place. “Sometimes I think you must drive in with the cops,” she said to Nick.
Nick glanced back at her over his shoulder. On camera, the makeup made the woman look older. In person, Nick thought, she looked like a young woman with too much cream on her face. He noticed a smear of rouge in one of her eyebrows. He didn’t bother saying hello. “I don’t have the equipment to carry around that you do, Sheila.”
“So what’s it like down there? They letting the media in?”
Nick was noticing the hostile way the driver of the van was eyeing him. “I just got here. I don’t know.”
“Well, we’ll see you down there, Nick.” The window closed, and the TV van pulled forward, searching for a place to park and set up. Nick felt the woman’s eyes on his back as he crossed the street.
Looking for a path down to the riverbank, he walked to the edge of the bridge, then took a step into the thick brush. The soil was muddy, and his feet sank with every step. He felt the mud seep into his shoes, then through his socks. These were his newest running shoes, his orange and black Nikes. He would have to clean them when he got back home.
The highest-ranking cop on scene was a beat officer Nick hadn’t met before. They were still waiting for the homicide detectives to arrive from headquarters downtown. “What do you have?” Nick asked the cop.
The officer pointed toward the body. Nick could smell the coffee the man had been drinking a few minutes before. “As far as we can tell, she was murdered somewhere else. Her body’s cold. The killer must have brought her out here to dump the body.”
“Who was she?”
The cop sized him up. “You’re with the Telegraph, right?”
Nick showed him his press card.
The cop read it and, satisfied, handed it back. “A hooker—a streetwalker from downtown. First and Second Avenue.”
“Who found her?”
The cop shrugged. “A couple of kids on their way to pick up papers. You know, for their paper route.”
“They still around?”
“We got ’em in a van up on the street.”
“Can I ask them a few questions?”
Again, the cop shrugged. “It’s a free country.”
“You got a name for her yet?”
“Claire Scott, we think. She was reported missing a few days ago. Someone’s on their way out to ID her now.”
“You mind if I take a look?”
“Be careful not to trample anything until Homicide gets here,” the cop said. “But one or two pictures won’t hurt, I guess.”
“Thanks.”
“Just tell Benson I sent you over.”
Nick was aware of the tracks his footsteps left in the muddy ground as he walked toward the body. No one stopped him as he approached. Maybe because the victim was a prostitute, Nick thought. No one cared. Aware of the damage he was causing to the crime scene, though, Nick himself stopped about fifteen feet from the body. When he could smell it. He stared at the pattern of ugly blue and purple bite marks the killer had left in the whore’s yellowing skin. He raised his camera to his eye, using his telephoto lens to bring the naked corpse closer to him. The apparatus made a satisfying click as he noticed the blood matting the tuft of hairs at the woman’s vagina. Nick found himself blinking as he took the camera away from his face, swallowing to keep himself from becoming sick. The killer had entered the woman with a blade.
Turning away, trying to forget the small cloud of flies buzzing above the rotting flesh, laying their larvae in the prostitute’s wounds, he caught sight of another set of tracks in the muddy soil. He let his eyes follow them until they disappeared into the tall grass and nettles feeding off the river. Noticing something unusual about the footsteps, he looked back at the tracks he himself had left, deliberately comparing them. He raised his camera again and snapped a few pictures of the muddy footprints. Then he backtracked, retracing his steps away from the body.
The cop who had let him pass was busy turning Sheila back from the crime scene. Nick waited for him to explain that her crew would compromise the evidence. But you let him through, Sheila said, pointing toward Nick. The officer’s face remained impassive. Maybe I shouldn’t have, he said. Up at the bridge, a convoy of five or six cruisers was pulling to a stop, lights flashing, splashing the river valley with waves of electric color. That’s Homicide now, the cop said to the TV crew. You talk to them. As of now, the crime scene’s sealed, and I’m going to have to ask you to step back. Come on now, you, too, he said to Nick. Step back up to the road.
“Let me ask you something,” Nick said as he approached the officer again.
The officer didn’t respond directly. “Just keep walking.”
“You take a look at the set of footsteps leading up to the body?”
“Yeah, sure,” the officer said, irritated.
“You notice anything odd about them?”
“Like what?”
“Go take a look at them again,” Nick said. “You’ll see. Whoever left them wasn’t wearing shoes.”
“How do you know?”
“Go take a look at them again,” Nick repeated.
He passed Detective Adam Stolie without saying hello. The detective had his hands full. He glanced at Nick without noticing him. A teenage boy was walking in front of him, threatening to break away from the group of policemen and to run down the embankment toward the body half hidden in the grass. Stolie grabbed him by the shoulder to restrain him.
“Yo, Daniel,” the detective said. “Slow it down, would you? We don’t even know it’s your mom yet, okay?”
Nick stopped at the edge of the bridge. He propped his camera on the low concrete barrier to steady it, then zoomed in on the body. Ten minutes later, he was able to snap a few good pictures of the boy identifying his mother, his face drawn, destroyed.
It began to rain as Nick left the crime scene. Sheila was helping the Channel 11 crew stow the camera equipment into the back of the van. As he walked past in the direction of his car, he smiled at her, but he didn’t slow down.
“You know,” she said, finding her voice, “I saw
