Deviations by Mike Markel Page A

after
business hours. The nearest house from a development was even farther than
that.
    I said to Ryan, “Did we get anything off a canvass?”
    He shook his head no.
    The crime-scene where we were standing was fifty
yards from the newest building being constructed. All we could see was the
foundation, with rebar sticking straight up around the edges like a bad punk
haircut. The construction site was bare except for three trailers and a mobile
home labeled Medway Construction sitting on the dirt. Off in the distance I saw
a bunch of other equipment, hulking yellow and orange metal, caked with dirt,
and a couple of shiny silver lunch trucks parked near another construction
site.
    A uni came out of the plastic tent and walked over
to brief us.
    “That new building.” I pointed to the construction
site. “What’s that gonna be?”
    She looked down at a clipboard. “That’s Henley
Pharmaceuticals.”
    I nodded.
    The chief said to me and Ryan, “Weston’s body was
called in around 1:45 pm by one
of the construction guys from the Henley site.”
    Ryan said, “So we think the killer drove up and
parked on the dirt road we just came in on?”
    “Yeah, that’s what we’re thinking now,” the chief said.
“There’s no evidence Weston was out here walking around yesterday. There were
no scheduled events or anything. And no reason she’d be out here at night.”
    “So we think the killer either drove her here and
killed her or killed her someplace else and dumped her here, right?” I said.
    The chief nodded.
    Ryan said, “Any forensics on the road?”
    The chief shook his head. “It’s just dirt,
hard-packed from two dozen guys’ pickups every day. No tire tracks, no
footprints.”
    I dragged my foot back and forth. There wasn’t
even loose dirt on the surface to take a print from a shoe or boot of a guy
carrying a dead woman. “Can we look at the dump site?” I said.
    The chief held up the tape as Ryan and I walked
under it.
    “This is the place.” The chief pointed to the dirt
that looked just like all the other dirt on the construction site.
    I shielded my eyes from the sun as he opened an
envelope and pulled out the photos.
    One was Weston’s body, lying on her left side as
if she was sleeping. The hair from the right side of her head was covering her
face. The top four buttons of her blouse were opened, but the photo didn’t show
her bra or anything. It looked like her slacks were unbuttoned at the waist.
Another photo showed four buttons scattered on the dirt. A tape measure showed
they were all within about three feet of the body.
    “If the buttons are on the ground here, doesn’t
that mean the guy attacked her here, ripping open her blouse?” I said.
    “Probably,” the chief said, “but not necessarily.”
    “How’s that?” I said.
    Ryan said, “He could have killed her someplace
else, dumped her here, then ripped open her blouse.”
    I looked at him. “Now why would he do that?”
    “We’re meeting with the ME at one o’clock. We’ll
talk about it then.” The chief turned and headed back to the car.
    * * * *
    I waited at my desk till a
minute before one o’clock, hoping Ryan would come so we could go downstairs to
the ME’s office together. But he didn’t, and I walked out of the detectives’
bullpen, down the central hall, down the one flight of stairs. My heels clicked
on the tile floor as I passed the workout room, the shooting range, and the Evidence
Tech’s lab. I walked into the ME’s office.
    Ryan and the chief were standing off to the side,
talking. They looked up and nodded, both looking real serious.
    Harold Breen ambled over, wearing a sad smile. He
put his big arms around me. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said, giving me a hug. I
could feel him kind of holding back, like he’d hurt a few people and someone
told him to be careful. “Good to see you.” I could smell the liverwurst
sandwich, wrapped up in wax paper, in his left hand.
    I hadn’t seen Harold since I