Who was here?

Did they set the fire?

“I want to take some pictures before we tramp through here,” Frisco stated. “I don’t want our prints mixed up with those.”

She nodded.

Frisco took wide angles of the entire room and then closer focused shots. Gianna spotted her cell phone and purse near the far couch. Both were barely recognizable. All color was gone, and they were partially melted and buried under ash. There was nothing she wanted from either object. She didn’t get attached to physical things; in her mind everything was replaceable. “Do you think it’s safe to go in?” she asked.

“I think it’s okay. It doesn’t look like any parts of the ceiling have fallen since the fire went out. Let’s take a look and see if we can find what’s causing that smell and then get out.”

“It’s coming from the back of the room,” she stated. Where the footprints lead. The first floor of the cabin was a deep rectangle with the bathroom at the rear and the kitchen to her left. The main room had a fireplace and two comfy couches. From their viewpoint they could see everything except the interior of the bathroom, the loft, and the area behind the farthest couch.

Frisco took measured steps across the great room, carefully photographing his way in. Gianna glanced behind them, seeing their footprints added to the existing path in the ash. The ranger’s shoulders tensed as he stepped past the second ash-covered couch.

He looked down and crossed himself.

Gianna held her breath and stopped beside him. The figure on the floor behind the couch was in the traditional pugilist’s pose of a burn victim: arms and legs drawn close to the body from the heat contracting the muscles. Some of his clothing had melted; some had burned. It was clearly a male body—his frame, boots, and masculine skull stating his sex. His head was charred, his hair mostly gone, and the bone of his skull exposed.

“Know him?” Frisco asked.

“No . . . I don’t think so.” He was burned beyond recognition. How did the man sneak into our cabin? “I don’t understand . . .” Gianna couldn’t speak. Had the man been in the cabin as she lay passed out on the other couch? Or had he entered after Violet had dragged her out? She crouched to get a closer look, part of her itching to get him cleaned up and on a table. “Look there.” She pointed at the base of his skull. Mixed in with the burned hair, roasted flesh, and ashy bone, she could see two holes in his skull. Frisco took another step and bent down beside her.

“Well, hello there,” he said softly. He pointed his camera at the head and took several angles. “It looks like our boy had a confrontation with a couple of bullets.”

“A confrontation implies he saw it coming,” said Gianna. “I don’t think he saw it headed toward the back of his skull.” Her mind spun with more questions. Who shot him? When was he shot? Why is he in my rented cabin?

“I don’t think there’s much more we can do here,” Frisco stated as he stood. “Let’s get you back to the other cabin, and I’ll call the state police. This is above and beyond my job description.”

Gianna reluctantly straightened, unable to pull her gaze from the murdered man. Shock slowly built in her lungs. She’d seen a lot of violence in her career, but none that’d occurred this close to her and Violet. She veered away from her pathologist mind-set and let her mothering side take over. “Oh, my God. What if Violet had gotten hurt?” Her knees shook at the images that raced through her brain. “Why is he in here?”

Frisco shook his head. “You’d be the first person I’d ask.”

She whipped her face toward him. “I don’t know anything about this.”

“I know that,” he said, pointedly holding her gaze. “But if I was an investigator who’d just been handed this case, you’d be the first person I would question. You and your daughter. Are you ready for that?”

Dread touched her spine, but she kept her face neutral and remembered how she’d dealt with officers back in New York. “Of course. We don’t have any idea how this happened. It will be frustrating for the investigators, but we aren’t going to be much help.”

“It could be that your daughter saw something.”

“She didn’t see anything. She was totally surprised when Chris brought it up.”

“Maybe she doesn’t realize she saw or heard something important. She was clearly rattled by the whole experience. Once she’s calmer and can think back on what happened, she might recall something.”

Gianna nodded but inside she tried to calm down about how close the assault had been to her daughter. As traumatizing as that night had been, Gianna believed Violet would have noticed a man in the cabin.

“Let’s head back. I was about to ask if you wanted to grab anything, but it’s probably best not to touch anything. The investigators aren’t going to like that we entered.”

“Tough,” muttered Gianna. “I’ll tell them we did them a favor by making sure it was human and not calling them out to discover Smokey the Bear had died in here. I don’t need anything from inside.” She felt a bit naked without her driver’s license and credit cards, but she was due to get an Oregon license, and new cards could be ordered. She moved to the front door and stared at her Suburban as Frisco took photos of the footprints they’d left across the floor of the cabin. A clear record of where they’d been.