It was a stupid question. When I followed Allen’s gaze to the men standing beside the trucks, I spotted Griffin instantly.
His legs were planted wide as he stood beside that familiar black truck. His hands were fisted at his hips. The words go away might as well have been etched on the brim of his faded black hat.
I steeled my spine. “Lead the way, Allen.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He set off through the tall grass, walking to the four-row barbed-wire fence past the ditch. With one hand pulling up the second wire and a booted foot pressing down the third, he opened a gap for me to duck and slide through.
I took his place, holding the wires for him, then it was my turn to lead, walking toward Griffin.
“Winslow.” His voice was flat. Unreadable.
“Griffin.” My voice sounded much the same. I had a job to do. “Can you show us the body?”
He nodded for us to follow him past the line of trucks.
A younger man was sitting against the tire of the last pickup in the row. Beside him crouched another man, older, with a handlebar mustache and a tan cowboy hat.
The kid on the ground looked pale. Tear tracks stained his cheeks. He must have been the one to find the body. I’d seen enough faces like his to know who was the first on the scene.
“Conor found the girl,” Griffin said, keeping his voice low as we walked toward the corner of the fence. Beyond it, rocks clustered at the base of the cliff.
“I’ll have to question him later.”
“Sure.” He nodded. “He works for us. I sent him out here to fix fence.”
“What time was that?”
“Around ten. We worked in the barn first thing this morning for a couple of hours.”
“Did he touch the body?”
“Probably.” He sighed, then led the way over the fence.
The posts were wooden here, the wires too tight to stretch, so I planted a boot on the bottom brace and swung my legs over. Then I set off toward the cliff, walking slowly to take it all in.
A trail of broken grass had been made, probably from Conor and Griffin. Otherwise, the area seemed untouched.
Griffin and Allen stayed close behind as I set the pace to the rocks, moving as methodically up their steep face as I had through the flat meadow. We climbed until I reached a landing spot.
And a broken body.
I flipped off the switch in my mind that panicked at the blood. I shut down the emotions that came with a gruesome death. I swallowed hard—I did my job—and surveyed the scene.
The body was of a young woman, facedown. A few errant strands of blond hair blew in the breeze. Death blackened the area beneath her smashed skin and bones.
Most of the blood had dried and hardened in sticky pools and trickles from where it had flowed. She wore a white dress, the skirt mostly unharmed where it brushed her ankles. The bodice would never be clean again.
Her arms were splayed to the sides. One leg was bent at an unnatural angle. Only a few patches of smooth, graying skin remained on her calves. Otherwise, bone protruded from the surface of her limbs.
“Another one,” Allen whispered.
I looked over my shoulder. “Another what?”
He pointed to the ridge above us.
There was a trail cut into the rock about halfway between us and the cliff’s pinnacle. I hadn’t noticed it on the drive. The path disappeared around a bend, probably where it descended down the hillside, but the end was directly above us.
Had this girl been pushed? Had she jumped?
“What am I looking at, Allen?”
“Suicide,” he explained.
Damn. “Why do you say that?”
Allen and Griffin shared a look.
“What? What am I missing?”
“You’re new here.” Griffin spoke the word new with such scorn it was like he’d taken those three letters and thrown them in my face. “This isn’t the first body found at the base of Indigo Ridge.”
“How many others have there been before?”
“Two.”
Two. This made three. Holy. Shit. What the hell was going on? What had I just walked into?
“We’ve had a string of suicides in the past ten years.”
I blinked. “A string of suicides.”
“Seven total.”
“Seven?” My jaw nearly dropped. “That’s almost one a year.”
Allen’s shoulders slumped. “It’s been like this domino effect. One kid does it. Another decides to do it too.”
I pointed to the ridge. “And this is where they come?”
“Not always,” Griffin said.
I took in the girl’s bare feet. The smocked sundress. Had she been in shorts or jeans, I might have thought this had been a hiking accident.
“Do we know who this is?” I asked.
“Lily Green,” Griffin answered. “Conor thought so, at least. They are about the same age. I think they were friends.”
There was nothing left of the girl’s face. So how had Conor recognized her? Maybe from the blue butterfly tattoo on her wrist.
“Allen, are you good to take photos of the scene?”
“Yes. I was, um . . . I was here for the last one.”
The last one. My stomach rolled. “All right. I’ll call the station and get the medical examiner out here so we can get the body moved. The sooner we can identify her, the sooner we can notify next of kin.”
“You got it, Chief.”
“I’ll need to talk to your employee now,” I told Griffin.
He answered by retreating down the rocks.
My head was spinning as I followed.
Seven suicides in ten years. That was crazy. That was too many. Suicide rates were higher in rural areas than cities, but seven suicides in ten years . . . that was too many.
I knew it happened with young kids. And Allen was right, sometimes it could become this domino effect. We’d had the same thing happen at the high school in Bozeman for a few years. Three kids had attempted suicide, two had died.
The principal and teachers had jumped all over it after the second death, making sure they were watching the kids more closely and providing outlets for other students to report friends who might be at risk.
Seven suicides.
In this tiny community.
How had I not known about this? Why hadn’t Pops told me? Why hadn’t this been brought up during my interviews? I’d asked plenty of questions about past criminal cases. Though maybe they hadn’t considered these crimes. Had these at least been documented?
The questions rolled through my mind as I followed Griffin to the fence and climbed over. Then I put them all away when we joined the other two men at the trucks.
“Conor, this is Winslow Covington.” Griffin crouched beside the young man. “She’s the new chief of police and she’s going to ask you some questions.”
The kid looked up from his spot on the ground, his face etched in sheer heartache and terror.
I bent so he wouldn’t have to stand. “Hi, Conor.”
“Ma’am.” He sniffled and dragged a forearm across his nose.
“Mind if I ask you some questions?”
He shook his head.
The man with the mustache clapped Conor on the shoulder, then stood and walked to the truck’s tailgate, giving us some space.
Griffin stood, but his feet didn’t move. He towered over us as I asked my questions and took my notes.