The female victim wore nothing more than a tattered bathrobe and a thin blanket of snow. Last night’s squall was beginning to melt away, revealing the truth of the brutality. She must have sprinted through the woods to evade her killer but either ran out of steam or was just outpaced. He was probably faster and stronger. She was caught just forty yards from the road. Forty more yards might have saved her life. She would have been out in the open, near traffic and possible witnesses.

       Forty yards.

       She lay on the ground, outlined by a terrible rendition of a snow angel comprised of blood and mud, with raised edges from her thrashing and panic. She had put up a hell of a fight, but her strength failed to be enough. With her hands bound by paracord in front of her body, it was the only outcome anyone could expect.

     “Poor girl didn’t stand a chance,” the state trooper commented. He scribbled something on a notepad and didn’t bother looking at the sheriff as he spoke. “Running through the woods barefoot with her hands tied in front.” He waited for the sheriff’s response. The sheriff had just arrived at the scene and was stunned when he saw the victim. He was afraid this day would come and had been trying to prepare himself.

     He hadn’t prepared enough.

Sheriff Jeff Bourbon was clean-shaven, broad in the shoulders, and soft with his words. He knelt beside the corpse and removed his wide-brimmed hat that he only wore in the winter months. New York winters are brutal, especially in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. The hat kept the snow off his face and the wind away from his head. He wore that hat from dusk to dawn, removing it only when his shift was over or he ate a meal. But today, he took the hat and placed it over his heart to keep it from falling out of his chest. With his glistening eyes, he peered down at the beautiful woman who’d lost her life in such an ugly manner.

     “Willa,” he whispered. “My God, girl, what happened to you?” Staying on one knee, he resisted the urge to take her hand and fought a losing battle with his tears. His efforts to keep his emotions in check and stay strong were futile and exhausting. He had a job to do, a murderer to find, and a crime to solve.

The state trooper stepped forward—a freckle-faced giant of a man with round features and red sideburns, “Willa? Willa Savage, the woman who’s been missing for two days, Sheriff?”

     “Three,” Bourbon wheezed. He cleared his throat to achieve more volume. “Fifty-nine hours.”

     “You knew her?”

       Bourbon nodded, “She’s Annabel’s daughter.” He threw his hand to his mouth to keep himself composed. Admitting how he knew the victim was like swallowing gasoline. “She’s my girlfriend’s daughter.” He took his phone out of his pocket. Three missed calls from the victim’s mother in the last two hours. Calling her back would need to wait until he could muster the strength to hear her voice. He needed to be her rock—a comforting fire in a cold, dark nightmare. The news of Willa’s death would shatter her, and he would need to be there to collect the pieces.

     “Goddam, Sheriff, I’m sorry,” the trooper said in a tone constructed more from formality than sincerity. “So sorry for your loss.” The trooper stepped over Willa’s legs and noticed her left ring finger. “She’s married. I assume you know the husband, too?”

       Bourbon gave a nod.

     “Do we know his whereabouts? He could be our killer.”

     “Yeah…no…he’s probably at home waiting for a phone call. His name is Cody—Cody Savage. He’s going to be crushed.”

     “Savage? Jesus, his name even makes him sound guilty. Do you think he’s capable of this? She was stabbed in the back several times, then twice in the front. Stabbing is usually a crime of passion. Did they have a history of domestic altercations?”

Bourbon regained his feet and donned his wide-brimmed Stetson, “No. No, they were a perfect couple. They were great for each other. I’ve never seen two people more happily in love.”

     “Yeah, well, you know as well as I do that the husband’s always the first, and most likely, suspect.”

     “Cody’s not capable of this. No way he could ever hurt this girl. He put her on a pedestal—worshipped the ground she walked on.”

     “That’s what all the neighbors say just before we find evidence to lock the spouse away.” He scanned the trees as if he were looking for one adequate to piss behind. “My money’s on the hubby.”

       Bourbon refrained from debating with the young trooper. Willa needed his attention more than Cody needed a defender.

The state trooper wrote more words in the notebook, presumably Cody’s name, and then retrieved his buzzing cell phone from the left inside pocket of his light jacket. Excusing himself, the state trooper stepped away from the body and began speaking to whoever was on the other side of the conversation.

       Sheriff Bourbon stared at Willa’s feet. It was easier than gazing into her cloudy eyes, with the cold blue sky reflecting in her irises. Those unrecognizable feet could belong to any woman, so he pretended she was someone else.

       Frostbite had turned her toes black. Orange nail polish—left over from Halloween—cracked and peeled after a frantic run through the woods with no footwear. A late-autumn snow had covered most of her body, but not enough to keep her hidden until spring. Luckily, a local school bus driver was turning the big yellow vehicle around on an abandoned logging road when she saw the lilac-colored bathrobe Willa wore in her rear-view mirror. The bus driver parked with the engine idling and the heat on while she called her supervisor.

       Last night’s November rain stopped at 11 pm. The snow squall started around 3 am, dumping 1.5 inches of wet snow on the crime scene. There were no tracks in the snow to or from Willa’s body, which meant she’d been killed before the weather changed. The rain probably washed away any scent for the tracking dogs, but Sheriff Bourbon wanted them called in anyway.

       Without a scent or tracks, Bourbon would have to solve this horrible crime with hardcore evidence and science. He hated to depend on microscopic traces and invisible clues. He’d prefer a bloody knife with distinct fingerprints. But the murder weapon was nowhere to be found. With the early morning snow, it could have been three feet away. Hopefully, he’d find it under the snow near the scene, and the pathologist could pull the killer’s DNA from the handle.

       Bourbon’s thoughts jumped back and forth from evidence to the victim—a mess of strategy, grieving, and guilt. He shouldn’t have to break this news to Annabel and her son, Levi, who awaited his call. He took his phone out again, hesitated, and put it back in his pocket. He wasn’t ready to make the most harrowing call of his life.

       And Willa’s husband, Cody, would not take this well. Bourbon had seen Cody Savage angry in the past. He was a capable fighter with fast hands, strong legs, and a temper like a Roman candle. If he found out who murdered his wife, there would be severe retribution, possibly a bloodbath. Secretly, Bourbon hoped he’d be there to witness it.

       The snow muffled the sound of footsteps approaching from behind. Sheriff Bourbon didn’t have to turn around to recognize his deputy’s gate and cadence. The deputy followed the footsteps through the snow, slipped on the muddy bank of the ditch, cursed out loud, and joined Sheriff Bourbon at the crime scene. Deputy Charlie Archer stood shoulder to shoulder with his boss, staring at the unfortunate victim.

     “Damn. Fuck, Sheriff, I really thought we’d find her alive,” Deputy Archer said.

       Bourbon just nodded. His feet were frozen to the ground, and for the first time in his twenty-seven-year career, he didn’t know what to do next. He felt like a victim, cold and empty as if he were the motionless body that lay before him.

     “I don’t wanna fuck this up, Arch,” Bourbon said. “I want to make sure we find the sick bastard that did this.”

     “We will, boss.” Deputy Archer reassured the sheriff. “What do we have?” He knelt to take a closer look at Willa’s face. “Goddam, I’ve seen her picture a hundred times in the last few days; I knew she resembled my Charlotte, but holy shit, she’s just as beautiful.”

     “She was a true beauty, inside and out, just like her mother.” Bourbon reflected on the first time he’d met Willa. She was a spunky fifteen-year-old girl working on her mother’s small farm, throwing haybales to the horses and shoveling manure in the barn. Nothing seemed to faze her, and Annabel thought she’d never find a man who could match her wild spirit until she met Cody Savage.

     “Their eyes are a different color, but they—” Archer had to breathe as he thought about his wife, Charlotte. “They look like they could have been sisters.”

       Sheriff Bourbon thought about the deputy’s wife, Charlotte. He had to filter his memories to recall her features. He finally found the right image. He couldn’t deny it. There was a remarkable resemblance; the two women could have nearly passed as sisters—fraternal twins. And then he shuttered, thinking about poor Charlotte Archer’s death. Charlie Archer had only been a deputy with the Stoneville Sheriff’s Department for a month when he got the call that Charlotte had been hit and killed by a vehicle. Charlotte had been out on a morning run to Cain Lake.

       The accident occurred quite early, even before the sun rose in the east. There were no witnesses, and the vehicle's driver fled the scene, never identified. It was a brutal way for Deputy Archer to begin his life in Stoneville. He was the responding officer to the call that morning. When he arrived, he found his wife with a broken pelvis, back, and a fractured skull. She lay there lifeless, taken from him just two years into their marriage—practically newlyweds. Since that day, the memory of his dead wife chased Archer like a shadow. Bourbon knew that took strength. Archer worked long hours, taking extra shifts, and built a house on the lake to occupy his mind. The strength to endure was something to admire, even though it occasionally made Charlie Archer bitter. He’d been in therapy ever since.

       The sheriff of Stoneville knew that Deputy Archer couldn’t be a part of this investigation.

       Deputy Archer stepped over Willa’s body. The state trooper was still talking on his cell phone, getting instructions from his captain and describing the scene. Archer pulled the robe Willa was wearing down slightly to examine the wounds, exposing a left breast.

Bourbon turned away. He was still grappling with the notion that this was real and not some horrid nightmare he could soon exit. Seeing Willa as anything other than the spitfire beauty she was, rather than this empty corpse on the ground, still hadn’t entered his reality.

Willa stared back at Deputy Archer. Something cold occupied her eyes that couldn’t have been produced by the chilly Autumn morning. It was hatred and fear frozen in time, as if a clock had expired during her ordeal. Archer took her hand and inspected her fingernails. He checked the ropes around her wrists.

       Charlie Archer looked back into Willa’s eyes. “Her eyes are green. Charlotte’s eyes were blue. My God, the resemblance is uncanny.”           He sniffled and wiped an eye with his sleeve.

       Seeing Charlie Archer break nearly sent Sheriff Bourbon into a level of empathy he’d never experienced.

       Archer barked through tears, “How could he do this? How could Cody Savage viciously murder his own wife, Sheriff? I swear—”

     “Easy now, son,” Bourbon stepped closer. “We don’t know Cody is the murderer here. We can’t assume anything until we get more evidence. I’ve known Savage for—”

     “Sheriff!” the state trooper shouted from behind Archer. He began marching back to the scene, holding his phone against his chest so the person on the other end of the call wouldn’t hear him shout. He yelled in a whisper, an aggressive finger pointing at Deputy Archer.           “Sheriff, your man’s not wearing gloves. Get him the hell away from the body before he contaminates the scene.”

Archer covered the breast and jumped up, realizing his mistake. “Oh, gee, fuck. Boss, I’m sorry, I just got caught up—”

     “I know, son. I know. It’s okay, Arch. Go back to the station? I’ll take point on this. The coroner should be here any minute to process the body.” He put a hand on Charlie Archer’s shoulder. “I know this can’t be easy, so just go. I’ve got this.”

       Archer scuffled away like a kid who’d been scolded by a teacher. Bourbon watched him leave. He wasn’t surprised by Deputy Archer’s reaction and had hoped the young deputy would lead the investigation. But now it was on him to find Charlotte Archer’s hit-and-run driver and Willa’s killer. The weight on his shoulders had doubled.

       I’ve got this. I’ve got this.

       He dialed Annabel Thompson’s number to tell her they’d found her daughter in the woods, sparing her the details that Willa’s hands were tied, and she’d been stabbed to death.

       The call went horrible, as he knew it would.

       I’ve got this.

       The second call was to Willa’s husband, Cody Savage, who was now the only suspect in her murder.