Chapter 4

It took poor old Barney a good half an hour to make it out of the woods and down the hill and then another ten minutes before he came to the O'Rourke farm. He was out of breath and panicked by the time he knocked on the door and then rang the bell.

The housekeeper Mrs. Cline answered on the third hurried knock. "I'm coming, I'm coming, keep your shorts on." Her heavy New England accent came through the thick wood of the door as her footsteps clipped along the marble floor.

She flung the door open to see poor Barney looking as though he was about to keel over. "Why Barney Doss, whatever is the matter with you? Come in, come in." She stepped back to let him enter and he held his hand up to stop her.

"Call the police Eileen, there's a body in the woods. I think someone's been murdered." Her mouth fell open in surprise as she tried to make sense of his words.

"A murder? But there hasn't been a murder here in over fifty years." She felt the way any middle-aged woman without family would at the thought of death. A death so close.

Barney stood in the doorway lacking the strength to lift his foot over the threshold to go inside as Eileen headed for the nearest phone. "Uh police, this is Eileen Cline over at the O'Rourke farm, I have Barney Doss here, he says there's been a murder."

On the other end of the line the surprised desk sergeant asked for more details, which poor Ms. Cline did not have. "Hold on a minute, I'll let him tell you himself." She walked back to the door where Barney was leaning and trying valiantly to catch his breath, and passed him the handheld phone.

"Yes, this is Barney Doss, I was out on one of my morning walks in the woods, looking for birds you see"

"Yes, yes, but what is this about a murder? Did you see a body?"

"Well yes, I was just about to tell you..."

He was cut off by the sergeant once again who asked for the location of the body. It was obvious from the sergeant's tone that he didn't believe it, but he took down the information and went in search of the town's only lead detective.

"Detective Sparks, there's been a call." He passed the paper with the notes he'd taken down to the young woman, who read the note over twice with disbelief.

"Who did you say called this in?"

"Eileen Cline down at the old O'Rourke farm, she says Barney Doss turned up on her doorstep almost half to death and blurted it out to her."

Detective Celia Sparks got up from her chair and grabbed the jacket she'd thrown over the back of it when she came in to work earlier that morning. "Come on Pete we've got a live one." She called out to her junior partner before heading for the door.

"Call the O'Rourke farm, tell Barney Doss not to leave until I've spoken to him. And call the crime scene unit, tell them to meet us there." The situation was so foreign to her that she was sure that she was forgetting something.

Outside she looked up at the sun in the sky and made note of what a perfectly bright and sunny day it was. Certainly not the kind of day one would associate with murder.

She climbed into the driver's seat while her partner officer Bailey got in next to her and strapped in. She gave him a quick rundown and they both looked at each other skeptically neither of them believing for a second that a murder had taken place in heir picturesque little town.

"Are you sure? You know old man Doss is about a hundred if he's a day. Maybe he saw a fallen deer in the distance, or someone taking a nap under a tree or something."

"No one goes there anymore, not since they fixed up the park on the other side of town and I'm sure as old as he is he can tell the difference between a deer and a human."

"Still, murder? Could it be a drunk passed out or something?"

"We'll know when we get there I guess, I'm as flummoxed as you are at the idea."

Detective Sparks didn't say anything more as the car made its way through the center of town and out onto the back roads that would take them to where they were going.

It was a trek getting to the top of the hill and into the woods where they'd been directed but once there, there was no mistaking that it was indeed a murder. Either that or a very unfortunate accident.

"Can you tell who it is?" Officer Bailey asked as he covered his nose from the stench. He'd always admired his superior but had to admit that that admiration went up a notch when she knelt next to the grotesque sight, nose bare and no sign of distaste on her exceptionally beautiful face.

Detective Sparks pulled on her work gloves and tried rifling through the pockets of the deceased but there was no wallet, nothing to give away the identity of the person who now laid at her feet without a face.

"We didn't see a car at the bottom of the hill did we Pete?"

"No, but they could've come in from the other side, why don't I go check?"

"You do that, I'll wait here for the crime scene unit."

Boy were they in for a surprise. There wasn't much that she could do until they got here, and she didn't want to disturb anything more than she already had by rifling through pockets so she stepped back making sure to avoid the bloody liquid that she could see from the fumes still rising from it held some kind of caustic agent.