Greta Voss's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

The body lay in the salt flat behind the feed store, and Greta Voss knew she had two hours before the wind erased it. She crouched in her white coat and pulled on pale gloves. The sheriff stood ten feet back with his hat in his hands. He wanted her to talk. She would not talk until she was sure. The dead man was face down. Around him, the dust held a story. Greta read it the way her father read weather. One set of prints came in slow. The killer had stood still beside the body long enough to leave two deep heel marks. Waiting. She had seen that same still print last month, on a case she still could not close. She brushed a gloved finger through the powder near the man's collar. Pale grit lifted onto the leather. Not the yellow dust of the flats. Something whiter, finer, almost chalk. She had bagged the same trace before. No prints on the body. No prints on the belt buckle. Only that dust. "Voss," the sheriff said. "Give me something." "Not yet." A black shepherd sat at the sheriff's heel, ears forward, eyes on her hands. The dog had tracked the scent from the road and stopped here. It would not go past the body. Greta noted that. The killer had left on foot in a direction the dog refused. She walked the perimeter twice. She measured the heel marks. She compared them in her notebook to the sketch from last month. Same depth. Same wait. Same pale dust on the victim's shirt. Same killer. She was certain of that much. She was certain of nothing else. One body could be an accident of method. Two bodies were a habit, and a habit had a shape. But she had only one crime scene on paper. The first killing, months back, had been logged as a ranch death. No samples kept. A bleached cattle skull had been propped on the fencepost above that body, and the deputy on shift had written it off as a prank. Greta had argued. She had lost. She stood and faced the sheriff. "It's the same man who did the ranch hand in spring." "You told me that was nothing." "I told you I wasn't sure. Now I am." He stared at her. "One print and some dust." "He waited beside both of them. He'll do it again." The sheriff looked at the dog, then at the horizon. "Bring what you have to the station tonight. If it's thin, I can't move on it." She drove into town with the sample jar on the seat beside her. The police station squared the corner ahead, lamps already lit. She had one scene on file and one in her notebook. She needed a third she would not get in time, or a way to make two speak like three before the wind came up again.