Murder in the River City(7)

He realized he hadn’t been here, except as a cop, for more than fifteen years.

Sam ignored the gaggle of media as they were unloading their equipment. How had they beat him? Police scanners, no doubt. But still, they inundated him with questions he had no answers for. If he had, he would still have responded with the same, “No comment.”

“Welcome back, Sam,” Officer Riley Knight said when Sam walked under the crime scene tape.

“Thanks. Good to be home.” When he accepted the position in Los Angeles two years ago, it had seemed like the right thing to do. His life had been falling apart, professionally and personally, and L.A. was an opportunity for advancement and change.

But Sam wasn’t an L.A. cop at heart, and he missed his friends and family in Sacramento. When the Sac PD chief called him about an opening on the homicide squad, he said yes.

“Is John here?

“On his way,” Riley said.

Though they didn’t have assigned partners, the homicide teams worked as a unit, and John Black was the senior detective for his team. Two years ago when Sam had been with the gang unit, he and John had crossed paths often as gangs and homicide went hand-in-hand. John was one of the few cops who hadn’t turned his back on Sam when it came out that Sam had turned his partner in for accepting bribes.

“What do we have?” he asked Riley. His back was damp from perspiration. It wasn’t even noon and the heat had already won for the day. People waited behind crime scene tape, irritated they couldn’t get relief in the shallow river below.

He had little sympathy, not when he had a murder to investigate.

“A lot of unhappy swimmers,” Riley grumbled. He gestured toward the cliff, a thirty-foot sloping drop to the river, which was running extremely low this summer. Tangles of cottonwood and willows, their roots spreading along the cliff, dominated the vegetation. “Female victim,” Riley said. “Approximately twenty-to-twenty-five years of age, blonde, spotted by a family who came early to beat the crowds.”

“Did anyone touch the body?”

“No, we haven’t gone down yet, waiting for CSI and the deputy coroner. They’re en route. We’ll need a team to pull her up. Try to do this too fast and she could roll into the river.”

Sooner rather than later. This heat was going to make the body wholly unpleasant to work with. “What makes you certain it’s a homicide and not an accident?”

“Take a look for yourself.”

Sam walked over to the cliff and looked down. Fifteen feet below, about halfway between the edge and the river surface, the blonde lay sprawled over a tangle of roots attached to low-lying trees. Her eyes were nearly opaque, even in the early stages of death. Her body appeared unmarked except for the obvious bruising around her neck and blood over half her face.

“Detective”—Riley gestured to an area five feet to his left—“we marked off this area because of possible blood.”

Sam looked over at the large thirty-by-thirty foot space of asphalt that had also been cordoned off by Riley and the other first responders. In the center was a marker next to what looked like a large smear of dried blood, about a foot long.

Sam looked down at the victim, then at the smear. Strangled, likely from behind. He pictured the possible series of events: killer pushes her down, or she tries to run and falls. He bangs her head into the ground. Perhaps continues to strangle her, she fights, her face rubbed half-off by the rough surface as she dies.

It made sense—the victim was killed in the parking lot and conveniently dumped over the edge of the cliff. But here, the riverbank was wide enough to catch her body, making her easier for someone to spot.

Brutally violent. Anger. Possible sexual assault, though the victim appeared fully clothed. They’d need to wait until the autopsy.

“Who found the body?” Sam asked.

Riley glanced over to where still more people were gathering by the cordoned off area. The news crew was filming, using Sam’s conversation with the cop as backdrop. He gestured with his head. “That father in the Giants cap with the two young boys.”

“Talk to them?”

Riley nodded. “They parked there”—he gestured to a small pick-up truck—“at approximately 9:15 a.m. and started down the path. A reflection caught the dad’s eye and he spotted the body.”

“No one else saw anything?”

“Only two other people were in the lot. We talked to both of them—I have their names and tags. Nothing unusual.”

“Thanks.” He glanced over at the attractive, petite Simone Charles who’d been a rising star in the forensics unit two years ago. He hadn’t seen her since he’d returned.