A body is found along a lakeshore.
An unsolved murder from forty years ago.
A hiker with a mysterious past.
A yellow finch.
Four pieces of a puzzle that should never fit together. Yet somehow, they do.
Kendall hasn't had a murder in forty years — until now.
While out for her morning run, Detective Melody Freeman discovers the body of twenty-year-old Brenda Stepp along the shoreline of Jasmine Lake.
Brenda's death is Kendall's first murder since the still-unsolved killing of Police Chief Bert Schofield's mother forty years earlier.
As Melody and Bert begin their investigation, a young hiker arrives in town. His timing draws suspicion, yet he has an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time.
Before leaving Kendall, the hiker tells Melody that a yellow finch may hold the answers she and Bert are searching for. Then, after his departure, the bird appears.
What connects Brenda's murder, the mysterious hiker, and the yellow finch? To uncover the truth, Melody and Bert must trust their instincts, ignore the obstacles — and face the fact that some secrets don't stay buried forever.
Brenda Stepp is twenty, bright, and well loved — the girl who was reading at a first-grade level in kindergarten, who minded the church nursery at ten and ran day camps at fifteen. When her body is found along the shoreline of Jasmine Lake, Kendall cannot imagine who would do such a thing.
Tanya Wilcox is twenty-one and has been Brenda's best friend since kindergarten. She lost her mother at eight and her father at eighteen, and learned to depend on no one but herself — except for Brenda, the one person she never imagined losing.
Melody Freeman is forty, a veteran of the upper end of the case spectrum, and awake before her alarm every morning. The lake path is hers at that hour — until the morning it isn't.
Bert Schofield has thirty years with the Kendall police, twenty of them as chief, and one case he has never closed. He was twelve when his mother was found dead behind the wheel of her car.
The hiker arrives with the investigation and leaves with a warning about a bird. No one can say where he came from, only that he is always where he needs to be.
Chapter One
The alarm sounded promptly at 5:00 a.m. on Friday, August 3, 2018. Melody Freeman was already awake, as her internal alarm clock had been pre-programmed to wake her at this hour every morning, regardless of when she went to bed the previous night. One day, when she could really trust her internal clock, she would dispense with setting the electric one.
She rose and walked to the bedroom window to check the weather. Sometimes the weather would prevent her daily jog around Jasmine Lake, but, excluding snow, those days were few, even in winter.
Yesterday was one of those days when it rained all day, tapering off around six to light showers before stopping altogether around nine. Her morning jog was her way of energizing herself for whatever case she would be assigned later that morning.
She had concluded the case of the missing newlywed who had disappeared suddenly overnight. It seemed she wasn't ready for the wedding night activity, got scared, and ran away. It was a fairly lame case in Melody's mind, but fortunately, it fell at the low end of her case spectrum. At forty, she was a veteran detective, especially when it came to cases at the upper end—murder.
Melody sported dark, shoulder-length hair with subtle hints of her natural blonde scattered throughout. She parted it on the right with her bangs waving lightly above her left eye. Her dark eyes accentuated her light skin tone. When she was dressed to the hilt, she could catch anyone's eye.
By all accounts, she was a beautiful woman with several willing suitors over the years, but for reasons she kept to herself, she did not seek a relationship. Maybe it was because her parents divorced when she was eight, and it was a very messy divorce at that.
She later decided that remaining single was her best option, much to the chagrin of her mother, who wanted so much for Melody to find a good man and settle down. Her mother believed that even if her own marriage had gone belly up, it didn't mean all marriages ended that way. But being a detective was rarely conducive to a happy and lasting marriage. Besides, she liked the single life and not having to adjust her way of thinking or living to a partner's. And while she loved children, she tolerated them best when they belonged to someone else. It didn't help that the one relationship she had ended tragically.
“You're going to regret never getting married and having a family when you're old and wishing you had someone to share those golden years with,” her mother would always tell her.
Her morning jog also prepared her for the twenty-five-mile commute into Beaker City. She never had to deal with much traffic, but over time, the drive had become monotonous. One would think that a daily morning jog around Jasmine Lake would be equally monotonous, but nature had a way of showing her something new every day—something the view from behind the wheel of her car seldom presented.
She stared out the window. It was foggy, with a light mist in the air. It had the air of one of those old 1940s Universal monster movies that, for some reason, she enjoyed watching.
She knew the fog would burn off in a few hours, and the mist would give way to sunshine, high temperatures, and humidity—typical August weather for south-central Pennsylvania.
She turned and walked to her dresser, pulled out a sports bra and tank top, then slid them over her bare top, as she only slept in panties no matter what the season. She then pulled on spandex running pants, low-cut sports socks, and Nike running shoes.
Melody's house was near Jasmine Lake. A short jaunt down Beehive Drive and a right onto Jasmine Lake Road, where she began her very light jog to get her blood flowing to the proper rate, took her to the walking path where the serious part of her jog began.
She shoved her cell phone and iPod into her pants pocket, pushed the earbuds into her ears, and headed out the front door toward the lake.
Melody believed in living in the now and not structuring life for happiness when you're too old to really enjoy it. But unlike most law enforcement people she knew—Kendall Police Chief Bert Schofield among them—she didn't smoke or drink coffee. “Like those Monster Energy drinks are any better?” Bert would tease her.
He probably had a point, but as Melody liked to say whenever she pondered questions whose answers weren't always clear, “It is what it is.”
Melody reached the turnoff from Beehive Drive and headed down Jasmine Lake Road just as Jim Adkins began the opening line of “The Middle,” Melody's favorite Jimmy Eat World song. Her playlist was as diverse as anything you could imagine, ranging from what was playing now to Carrie Underwood, the Rolling Stones, and Lindsey Stirling's violin dance music.
A few minutes down Jasmine Lake Road, Melody veered to her left onto the dirt path that circled Jasmine Lake. Even with the music playing softly in her ears, she took in her surroundings, reveling in the idea that most everyone was still in bed, and for that brief time, she owned the lake and all that surrounded it.
She saw a deer and a fawn in the distance, grazing on morning vegetation. Birds flew here and there, and she even saw a fish leap out of the water as if trying to snare some random insect. This hour of the day was, in her opinion, the best.
Ten minutes into her jog and halfway through R.E.M.'s “Walk Unafraid,” she noticed something ahead along the shoreline. It looked like a person lying partly in the water and partly out. She reached into her pocket, turned off her iPod, removed the earbuds, and draped them around her neck. Then she double-timed it to where the person was lying.
It was a girl lying face down along the shoreline, most of her body on the sandy ground. Part of her head rested in the shallows, where small ripples washed through her hair and over part of her face. Her hair fell just above her shoulders, wet strands obscuring her face.
Melody knelt beside her.
“Can you hear me?”
When the girl didn't respond, Melody checked for breathing and a carotid pulse. There was neither. Recognizing that this could be a crime scene, she touched nothing else.
The girl wore a short-sleeved shirt, and tattooed on her exposed right arm was the word “Riley.” She knew of only one person who sported that tattoo, and that was twenty-year-old Brenda Stepp. Riley was her dog who passed away a year ago, and in his honor, she had his name tattooed on her arm.
Enough of her face was exposed for Melody to see blood beneath it. She also noticed more blood on Brenda's head and what appeared to be a serious gash. The extent of the injuries suggested that she had been struck repeatedly with a hard object. Someone had beaten this poor girl to death.
She stood, pulled her cell phone from her pocket, and called 911. After reporting the body and her location, she called Kendall Police Chief Bert Schofield directly. This morning's jog would be cut short.
Melody and Bert worked together occasionally, and Bert trusted her enough to bounce ideas off her. She had both his home and office numbers in her phone contacts and, knowing he probably wasn't up yet, called his home phone. After a few rings, a groggy Bertrand Schofield answered.
“Yeah, Schofield here.”
“Bert, Melody here. We have a problem.”
Bert sat up on the edge of the bed, the mere mention of a problem replacing his grogginess with alertness.
“What kind of problem, Mel?”
“I was on my morning run around Jasmine Lake, and I came across a body along the shoreline. It's Brenda Stepp. Near as I can tell, she may have been murdered.”
Bert didn't initially say anything. He knew it was bound to happen; he just didn't want it to be on his watch. In his thirty years with the Kendall police, Bert had never investigated a murder—until today. He had spent the last twenty of those years as chief.
“Are you sure? Maybe she fell and hit her head on a rock and knocked herself out,” Bert replied, knowing full well that when Melody Freeman suspected murder, she usually had good reason.
“If that were the case, she would have been breathing and had a pulse. No, I'm sure she was beaten to death by someone.”
Bert rubbed his eyes, then slid his hand over his face. “Damn.” He sighed. “Stay with her. I'll call the state police and be right there. Whereabouts are you?”
“Just off Jasmine Lake Road, about an eighth of a mile down the lake path.”
“Okay. Hang tight. I'll be right there.”
Chief Bertrand Schofield decided at the age of twelve that he wanted to devote his life to law enforcement. His mother's murder had never been solved. Investigators believed it was a random killing committed by a hitchhiker she had apparently picked up. She was found dead behind the wheel of her car on a quiet country road. In his own mind, Bert had never closed the case, and he still hoped to stumble across some overlooked clue. After forty years, the optimist in him still wanted to believe, though the overarching pessimist knew better.
At fifty-two, Bert Schofield looked closer to forty, due largely to working out and eating about as well as a law-enforcement officer keeping crazy hours could. He wore his hair short, not quite a crew cut, but close, and for his age, had near-perfect vision, which thrilled him to no end because he wanted nothing to do with glasses or contacts. He was trim with just a slight hint of a belly, which was probably caused more by age than anything else. His only real vices were coffee and cigarettes. Melody nagged him about both, and he knew she was right. But what did the Doobie Brothers call it? What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. Then he'd throw Melody's oft-used line back at her: “It is what it is.” And like Melody, he had never married.
But in Kendall, Chief Bertrand Schofield ran a tight ship, ruled by the book, took very few excuses, and earned the respect of the people of Kendall. They believed it was his no-nonsense approach that kept Kendall safe and happy.
Now, that all got pushed aside with the supposed murder of Brenda Stepp. People can be fickle, and he wondered what this incident would do to people's confidence that Kendall was a safe little town.
He walked to his closet, retrieved his uniform, put it on, then put on his shoes and checked his appearance in his full-length mirror in the corner. Even at this hour of the morning, he wanted to look sharp and in control.
“First murder in forty years. What the hell is going on here?” he said to himself. He grabbed his hat, keys, wallet, phone, and camera and left the house. He rarely had reason to draw his gun, but today he was acutely aware of its weight on his hip.
On his way to Melody, he notified the State Police of a probable homicide and contacted the county coroner.
He pulled off Jasmine Lake Road and stopped well short of where Melody was standing. Following the route she had taken, he approached on foot. Melody greeted him and said, “I suppose saying good morning wouldn't be in order right now.”
“It would appear not,” Bert replied as he walked toward where Brenda Stepp's body lay.
He pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves and crouched beside Brenda, careful not to touch her. He heaved a huge sigh and said, “Sweet Mother of Mary. Who the hell could have done this to this poor girl and why?”
Before anyone else approached, Bert and Melody secured a wide perimeter with crime-scene tape and established a single route into the area. Melody began a log of everyone who entered while Bert took initial photographs of the scene without disturbing it.
The ambulance pulled up behind Bert's car. Mandy Kulp and Bryan Eshenaur approached along the designated route, confirmed that Brenda showed no signs of life, and then stepped back outside the immediate scene. The area would remain secured until the coroner had viewed Brenda and a full daylight search could be completed.
About fifteen minutes after notifying the State Police, Trooper Blake Maxwell arrived at the scene. Bert introduced Blake to Melody.
“Pleased to meet you, Detective Freeman. So what do you have so far?” Blake asked.
“The victim appears to be Brenda Stepp, twenty years old. Melody found her during her run. We haven't moved her. Her injuries make this look like a homicide. I want State Police assistance processing the scene and following any leads that take us outside Kendall. Melody will assist here if her department approves.”
To Bert, this was personal. Brenda had been murdered on his watch, and he knew her and her parents. He welcomed the State Police assistance, but he and Melody were damned well going to help find whoever had done this—especially if the killer was still in Kendall.
Blake contacted the barracks and relayed Bert's request for assistance. Kendall police would remain involved in the investigation, with the State Police providing crime-scene and investigative support. The two agencies would maintain contact and share whatever information as it developed.
“Have you contacted the coroner?” Blake asked.
“Yes. Wendell's out of town, but one of his deputies is on the way. I asked the deputy to let me notify Brenda's parents before her name is released.”
While the deputy coroner worked, Melody accompanied Blake to his cruiser, where he took her formal statement about finding Brenda's body.
After the deputy coroner examined Brenda where she lay and photographed her body and the surrounding area, he authorized her removal. Mandy and Bryan returned with the stretcher and body bag. Following the designated route, they placed Brenda in the bag where she lay, then carried her to level ground and secured the bag to the stretcher. At the coroner's direction, she was transported to the funeral home in Kendall.
Mandy came back to Bert. “Has anyone notified her parents?”
“Not yet. I'm going there as soon as we're finished here. Please keep her name to yourselves until I've spoken to them.”
“I understand.” She stepped closer, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said, “I don't envy you having to break the news about this to her parents.”
Bert placed his hand over hers and replied, “Neither do I, Mandy. Neither do I.” She squeezed his shoulder lightly, then turned and walked to the ambulance.
After the ambulance drove off, Bert looked over at Melody, but didn't have to say anything, as she knew what he wanted to ask.
“Don't worry, Bert. I'm sure Michael will approve assigning me to assist Kendall with the investigation. I'll talk to him as soon as I get to the office.”
Bert nodded. “Who could have done this, Mel?”
“I have no idea, but whoever did this was in a rage, judging by the number of blows.”
“You suppose they used a rock?”
“I'm guessing so, but now it's probably at the bottom of the lake somewhere.”
Bert scanned the large lake, thirty feet at its deepest, heaved a big sigh, and whispered, “Shit.”
“I'll touch base with you later this morning. We're going to find this person, Bert.”
Bert's thoughts retreated immediately to his mother's cold case before he said, “I hope so, Mel. I truly hope so. You need a ride home?”
Melody squeezed his hand and said, “No. I think the run will help clear my head.”
By then, Officer John Claxton had arrived to maintain the perimeter until the State Police crime-scene team arrived and completed the daylight search.
Bert got into his car and drove off, wondering how he would go about breaking the news to Brenda's parents.
Melody, keeping her iPod off, decided to finish her run around the lake, but it wouldn't be a run but rather an all-out sprint, pausing only for a few seconds between bursts.
The anger inside her started to percolate, as she wondered who could have done such a thing and what could have driven someone to such rage.
She returned home twenty minutes later.