ONE



PRESENT DAY

Anna Cross was a beautiful young woman, but if you looked at her long enough, her countenance soured, tainted by the pathos that only a wide-eyed dead girl could possess.

I started to stand, but found it difficult to remove my gaze. It was hard to imagine the young girl alive, before the crimson letter A adorned her otherwise unblemished forehead. The cuts covering her chest, arms, and legs were deep and nearly perfectly straight, but my eyes kept tracking back to her slender face and the obscene letter Asmeared across her forehead-the tip of the A poised perfectly beneath her blonde widow's peak.

I noticed, too, that her left hand clutched outward conspicuously in cadaveric spasm, as though she'd prepared to scratch a chalkboard in the moment before she died.

The headlights of a lone car on Highway 49 shimmered through a distant line of pine trees in the gray dusk, and the delayed Doppler of its high-pitched engine eventually droned behind. I remained in a crouched position beside the body, not yet willing to leave.

"So what do you make of it, Agent Madden?"

I shifted my weight slightly toward the sheriff's voice behind me. The young girl's body had been discarded fewer than two hundred yards from the highway. She was still clothed in a blue-jeaned skirt and short, black tank top but propped in a sexually suggestive pose nonetheless, leaned carefully against an ancient oak stump in a small clearing in the woods. Her forearms rested on her parted knees and her head was cocked slightly to the left, as though she were a careless, sultry model adorning the cover of the latest men's magazine.

"Pratt," I asked, instead of answering, without looking in his direction. "The fingers of her left hand look like she was holding something but there's nothing there. Did your guys find anything I haven't seen yet?"

In the gathering twilight the sheriff walked in a half circle into my line of view and stood there like an older Elvis in silhouette, his jelly-doughnut belly hanging over a thick utility belt. He adjusted the brim of his hat and managed to laugh and cough at the same time. "Well, now that you say it, before you got here one of the boys picked up an apple a few feet away from the body."

I breathed in a short breath.

The sheriff's voice went up a notch and he held out his hands in placating fashion. "Don't worry, though. I had him bag it right away, all nice and proper. He signed and dated the Baggie, just like he's supposed to. We can get it for you, if you want to see it." His voice tapered off as he recognized that he'd just offered to make evidence from the crime scene available to me.

I was the criminal profile coordinator for the FBI's New Orleans field office, normally lending my profiling skills to murder cases out of New Orleans and surrounding parishes. The recent retirement of the coordinator in the Jackson field office meant that I'd be pulling double duty in Mississippi for a while. Based on the circumstances of the present crime scene I wasn't sure I was needed for this case, but I still wanted to cover all the bases.

I let a few more awkward seconds pass. "Yeah," I finally whispered, holding back my anger with a calmness that I'd always found far more effective than shouting or spewing profanities. "That might be a good idea."

His two deputies paced the perimeter of the taped-off crime scene, eavesdropping and casting sideways glances every few seconds to see my reaction. I assumed it was the one on the right who had picked up the apple, since he seemed more invested in the outcome of our discussion. He was looking over about twice as frequently as the other one.

I pursed my lips and finally smiled up in Pratt's direction. "Why don't you come with me for a second, Sheriff, so we can discuss this further in private," I said. I walked over and lightly clapped him on the shoulder.

We left the crime scene and walked toward the edge of the woods. The leather of Pratt's ancient belt and unused gun holster creaked as he followed along. "What's on your mind, Agent Madden?" he asked when we stopped.

I kept my voice low, but now let my exasperation seethe through every word. "You know good and fucking well what's on my mind."

"I-"

I flipped open my pocket notebook and took out a pen. "First. Did that deputy mishandle the apple? Did he pick it up bare-handed?"

Pratt held up his hands again and shook them downward in the negative, eager to defend himself and his crew. "Hell, no. I teach my men better than that. He had on gloves, and the apple's in an evidence bag, all signed and dated, everything's in order."

"Okay, that's good. Anything else removed from the crime scene? Anything?"

Again the placating hands. "No. As soon as I found out he removed that apple, I had them shut it down immediately. Nothing else was disturbed."

I let out a barely audible sigh of relief. I needed only one more answer. "Okay, last question. Did your deputy get pictures of the crime scene before he picked up that apple?"

The beat before Pratt cleared his throat told me the answer before he even spoke.

"Oh, for shit's sake." I held up my finger to emphasize my next statement. "If that apple has the perp's fingerprints or saliva on it, and we're not able to use it in court because of some sort of evidence loophole..." I stared at him a moment longer and let the empty threat sit in the air, then left him without another word.

The two deputies leaped to attention as I reentered the clearing.

"Which one of you found the apple?"

The one I'd guessed, a blond kid in his midtwenties with a splotchy mustache, stepped forward. "I did, sir."

"Show me exactly where you found it."

"It was right here." The deputy stepped a few feet away to the right of the body and pointed. I pulled out my pad and jotted down the approximate location of the apple next to the body. At that moment Pratt glumly reappeared.

I spoke without looking at him. "Go get me that apple, Pratt. I want to see it tonight, before it's transferred to the forensics lab."

He stopped midstride and, without another word, turned ninety degrees and walked back through the woods toward the police vans.

I was still angry, but as I watched him walk away I thought of something my chiropractor once told me, that anger only clouded the mind because it knotted the body. I fully endorsed that statement, as an expert in knotted body management. I used my hands to turn my head in either direction, attempting to release the tension in my neck. Anger never got me anywhere. Suppressed anger was even worse, and I'd had to employ it maximally to this point.

Later, I'd have to figure out a way to smooth things over with the local sheriff.

"Who do you think did it?" the young deputy beside me asked.

I flipped the pad closed. "Honestly? I think we're looking for a guy who thought it imperative to smear a bloody letter A onto his girlfriend's forehead. I thought of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter when I first saw it. Maybe that's what the killer wanted. Or maybe A for apple? Or A for Anna? Who knows? Whatever the meaning, it seems like a 'Find the boyfriend, find the killer' sort of case to me."

"You think her boyfriend did it?"

"Boyfriend, husband, significant other. You just don't see that kind of overkill every day. It's usually associated with the victim and assailant having known each other. Lot of hate and anger, usually."

The young officer shook his head. "I guess so," he said, still staring at the body.

"So," I said loudly, "we'll assume boyfriend unless we find other evidence that tells us differently. Let's get back over to the sheriff and wrap this up, okay?"

He nodded with that same blank stare, but then his face lit up. "You know, there was one other thing about that apple I forgot to mention."

"What was that?"

"It had a slit in it, about two inches long. I didn't look close because Sheriff Pratt yelled at me to bag it and take it to the van."

"I'm sorry, did you say a slit?"

"Yes, sir."

After a few moments I realized the deputy was still staring at me, waiting for a pronouncement or some sort of response. And I wasn't about to reveal my thoughts.

"Okay, duly noted. Let's head back," I said, offering a forced smile that fell away as the younger man turned and made his way through the forest ahead of me.

I shook my head imperceptibly. I didn't want an apple in this case. I'd initially hoped the apple might harbor a careless perpetrator's DNA.

I had to fly back to Quantico in a couple days to give my yearly lecture at the FBI Academy. I didn't need this complication in my life, not now. Full of self-pity, I looked back at Anna Cross. Her decomposing eyes stared through me until I looked away, ashamed.

In the distance I saw the shadowy form of the sheriff stomping toward me in the dusk, the apple in the plastic evidence bag swinging in time with his angry steps.

In less than ninety seconds my profile had been turned upside down-something sinister waited inside the apple left in that young girl's dying grasp. An apple containing a thin, rectangular slit in its peel? I knew what lay inside.

I just didn't know why.



Copyright © 2015 by Michael Ransom