[[ Woven threads.
There was a problem with being without your regular coworkers: you didn’t have all the resources you normally had or the comfort of familiarity. Kentucky was not her home turf, and neither were these officers someone she was overly comfortable with.
She knew next to little about the area, and even less about what was going on here. It wasn’t the number of murders per se that drew this level of investigation but the manner in which they were done.
If it didn’t look like someone got put through a blender, they looked like the aftermath of a dog with a rag doll. She had seen her share of grotesque crimes; some were quite artistic. This string wasn’t like those. It was just plain ugly, and furthermore it was proving exceedingly difficult to pinpoint what the motive or pattern was. Apart from the fact people were being brutally massacred.
She took a picture of the broken phone on the ground. Smashed to pieces and punctured in the middle like someone had stabbed it with a sharp stick. Not far away were a couple straps of cloth; they looked like they once belonged to a jacket. She took a picture of that too.
Someone had been here, but they weren’t in the area anymore. It didn’t look like they were dead. Judging from the smudged blood and foot print -- it looked like a boot -- this person was still functioning. Now, whether this person was a perpetrator or a victim, they didn’t know yet.
Crouching down, she carefully parted a couple branches of underbrush. More blood. This hadn’t been blotted out, so it probably went unnoticed. She marked it down and snapped a picture. If this person was alive, and regardless if they were a victim or not, they had to find them.
Pushing back up to her feet, she moved on.
