Deep South by Nevada Barr

Sandals." The shoes were so like those worn by Heather Barnes, Anna's fragmented mind flashed on innumerable phone calls she and Sylvia bad exchanged in high school. What are you going to wear? Heaven forbid one should be so unique as to cause untoward comment. The teenage struggle to fit in yet be special at the same time. Maybe Heather and Daniel] e-Dann 1-had had like conversations. Times changed. People didn't.
    Legs were exposed to the thigh. A border of black showed below the sheet. Probably Danielle-if this was Danielle-wore a micro mini dress like the one Heather had on when she drank herself insensible. Above the blackness was the creepiest part, if the murder of a child could be broken down into degrees of creepiness: a white sheet, with holes cut out where the eyes might be, had been draped over the corpse's head. The eyeholes, askew, showed only a nose and the flesh of one cheek. The sheet fell to Just below the girl's crotch and the hem of her numdress.
    Minidress, Anna thought, relevant of nothing. Did kids call them that anymore? "Focus, Taco," she admonished the unoffending hound. "Okay. A noose tied around the neck on the outside of the sheet. Heavy yellow line, nylon or plastic, like the kind used to moor boats." It was as if the killer had intended to bang the girl but had been interrupted in the process. Who had added the sheet? In the South-in all of Americaa sheet with eye holes was the symbol of the Ku Klux Klan. Had the girl been wearing it and thus was killed? Or had the killer put it on to make a point? The frail-looking legs, not broken but sprawled in the ungraceful attitude of death, belonged to a white girl, a Caucasian.
    Did the Klan bang its own? Was there still an active Klan in Mississippi?
    Anna wished someone would come. Sheriff Paul Davidson, even the wretched Thigpen, would be a relief. Davidson would know she'd found a body. Once he arrived, the machinery of investigation would follow: deputies, coroners, photographers. At least she assumed that's how it would go.
    She'd never worked with Mississippi law enforcement. Sheriffs were elected, not necessarily brought up through the ranks. Good, bad or indifferent, though, people would show up. Probably great heavy-footed sods. She'd called Thigpen herself. District Ranger Stilwell was on his way, and Chief Ranger Brown. Soon the place would be a zoo.
    With a sense of duty and with time running out, Anna shook off her self-pity and stood, careful to keep her feet in one place lest she prove to be a heavy-footed sod herself.
    Mississippi was good at covering her sins-and her scars. The weave of plant and insect life didn't provide a surface where the casual detective would easily find a clue, be it a button or a burned-out match. But given the crude violence of the girl's attack, perhaps Anna was not dealing with a murderer of great subtlety and stealth.
    Focusing eyes and mind, she studied the miniature glade. It was slightly sunken, as if a giant had pressed his thumb into the earth. The sheet-covered girl lay in the middle of the depression.
    Her legs sprawled to the east and her head-Anna dearly hoped there was a head inside the noose-tied sheet-to the west. Weeds and vines gave nothing up. To the eastern edge of the sunken area, maybe a yard from the patent leather shod feet, was a thigb-high fallen log, covered with plate-sized mushrooms that jutted out from the sides.
    A swath cut through them where someone had scraped a boot or dragged something over the log.
    Staying to the edge of the scene and studying each step before she took it, Anna worked her way around to the far side of the rotting timber.
    Bark on the log's top, soft from decay, had been crushed.
    Either the child had been found here or chased here and murdered, or she'd been carried here and dumped after she was dead. The sheet she was wearing, the noose tight around her neck, suggested an aborted hanging.
    Without more information, it was impossible to tell if the girl had