The Tempest by James Lilliefors Page A

she may have caught on the way down.”
    â€œJust one sandal?”
    â€œSo far.”
    â€œHow’d you ID her?”
    â€œDriver’s license, credit card in her shorts. Along with a house key.”
    â€œPurse, or phone?”
    â€œNot down here. They’re processing up above.”
    Hunter thanked him and moved away.
    Every unattended death should be handled as a homicide until it is determined that no crime has occurred. That was basic law enforcement procedure, and also common sense. But Hunter could tell that the coroner and some of the police investigators had already made an assumption about this one.
    She saw Gerry Tanner’s long, stubborn face as she came around the tape, his eyes fastening on hers.
    â€œSight her family won’t want to see,” he said.
    â€œNo,” Hunter said, “they won’t.”
    â€œAnything?”
    â€œNot yet. I doubt if we’ll know much tonight. Any idea where the husband is?”
    â€œThey’re with him now, apparently. He’d been out of town since yesterday. Just returned.”
    That could be an interesting detail, Hunter thought, noticing that the sheriff, Clay Calvert, was moving their way, with his halting shuffle, upset no doubt that Hunter had been allowed so close.
    â€œStrong smell of alcohol on her person,” Calvert said in his throaty voice, stopping on the other side of Tanner, making sure that Hunter heard. Physically, they could’ve passed for a vaudeville duo, the sheriff thick and squat, Tanner tall and lean. “I’ve been saying for months we ought to have railings up there. God forbid, but it takes something like this.” He turned his head and spat in the sand for emphasis. “Don’t know that you ­people need to be here,” he added, squinting at Hunter.
    Hunter said nothing. This was SOP for the sheriff: decide what happened, then look for evidence to support it. Hunter slipped off into the shadows, putting some distance between her and the police and emergency responders.
    The air felt warmer in the damp sand along the cliff side, shielded from the wind. It had been just before high tide, probably, when Susan had fallen. The tide was going out now and there were several feet of beach that hadn’t been visible then.
    Walking south, she spotted a few things in the sand, but nothing of consequence: small odd-­shaped pieces of driftwood, a circle of metal that seemed to be the rusted top of a crushed soda can, a smooth-­edged piece of glass. Then the nearly full moon caught an angled coin as the surf receded, a quarter, faceup. And a few yards beyond it, she saw another glitter in the sand, just past where the tech had been walking his metal detector. Hunter reached down and pinched it between her fingers. A long cable chain from a necklace emerged out of the wet sand, what appeared to be a broken eighteen-­inch gold chain.
    Hunter looked up again at the bluff, figuring the trajectory of Susan’s fall. Three possibilities.
    She walked back to tell John Dunn, and to have another look at Susan Champlain’s neck. Dunn sent a tech with her to photograph and mark what she’d found. Number 13 was the quarter. The necklace, Number 14.
    â€œHas anyone gotten pictures of the crowd?” Hunter asked the tech as they returned. He was a young, pale-­skinned man.
    â€œI don’t think so. Why?”
    Hunter shrugged. “Sometimes a perpetrator returns to the scene to watch.”
    He stopped, his brow furrowing as if her suggestion were absurd, then grudgingly took several quick crowd shots. There were twenty or twenty-­five ­people gathered now, staring silently at Susan Champlain. It was a sight that struck Hunter as more grotesque in its way than the contortion of her body.
    â€œI’m going to have a look up top,” Hunter said to the tech.
    â€œWhat?”
    She drove back around, up the dark shoulder-­less road to the bluff,