Walking in the woods

The ground was frozen solid, the first real freeze of the fall. She made her way to the grove in the Wood, feeling that solemnity of the forest and of this annual pilgrimage. She always waited for the first frost to come, the frozen ground didn’t give way or leave prints, and soon the snow would blanket the woods and she wouldn’t be able to visit again until spring without leaving signs of her presence. Even then; the melting and the mud would make it almost impossible.

She had begun visiting a decade ago, though really it seemed much less. Sometimes when she looked down at her hands she didn’t recognize them anymore, they were her mothers hands. Somewhere in the woods a lonely chickadee called, and she was tempted to join in the song just for some company, “chickadee-dee dee, chickadee-dee dee.” The trees were clearing gradually and she could see young pines that hadn’t been here when she’d first started coming beginning to choke out the birch. Ahead was the boulder, it had seemed bigger on her first visit- and habit took her over to lay her mittened palm on the freezing stone. When she first started coming she would sit on this boulder for hours, preparing herself, trying to purify her soul for this pilgrimage. Today she swung on through the brush after only a minute. She didn’t feel the ceremony the way she used to. She was coming now because it was What Was Done, not because of any sense of true emotion. The ground slopped gently away and there was the creek before her, water trickling and dripping down mossy stone. Something was wrong. Piles of dirt on the bank where there had once been smooth ground and leaves. A gaping hole. The grave was open.

Inspector Graves hated watching incompetent people work. Not that her team was incompetent, but often she found herself having to hold her tongue and watch them come to conclusions that had seemed obvious to her since the first. This was the price of leadership she supposed, watching other people muddle through until they eventually came to her conclusions on their own. Today was not a good day. It had started with the instant coffee machine breaking, a gift from her ex that she hadn’t had to heart to get rid of, but didn’t want to keep in the house. It was only a year old but it had been hard used in the break room of the station.  So, no coffee for her.  Then the news about Kathy, the station's receptionist engagement.  She had been all smiles and showing off the ring-way too large on a fireman's budget in Grave's opinion, and there had been a lot of oohing and aahing over the way he asked.  Graves didn't like Kathy's boyfriend, his jokes about making Kathy stay home to make his sandwiches and fetch his beer seemed a little too close to the truth.  But then, no one asked her, so she stood there and smiled foolishly all the while thinking that she must be the only black souled person in the whole damn station.

And now a body.  Or, a possible body.  There wasn't much of it left, it had clearly been in situ for years, maybe even a decade.  And she had been standing in the conference room waiting for the decision to be made about who's body it was.  It had been found just over the line into the national forest, another few feet and it would have been on private property and the sheriff's office would have had jurisdiction.  It was state land though, which meant that she would get the body.  Eventually.