“You can’t go up there!” Fiona called out as the ambulance driver put his foot on the ladder’s first rung.
“Excuse me?” the man said.
The man’s partner, the medic, approached from the far side of the ambulance. “Lady, we’ve got a shift change in forty-five minutes. We’ve been on twelve hours. We’ve been instructed to do a job here and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interfere.”
“To recover a body,” she said, an educated guess on her part. Walt had said his people were on their way. He’d warned her to stay put. But she had to know. Given the ambulance had arrived under no siren or lights, given that Walt had left the area immediately after coming out of the tree house-for she’d watched the whole thing-added up to the obvious.
“And you are?” the ambulance driver inquired.
The medic was new, or he’d have recognized her. “Me?” About to give her name, she revised her answer. “Crime scene photographer. You can’t go in there until I’m through, and I haven’t started.”
“You can identify yourself?”
“Wait here,” she said to the medic. “Don’t move,” she instructed the driver at the base of the ladder.
Stall, she thought. She returned with her camera bag and her wallet, displaying her sheriff’s office ID.
“You want to take some pictures, go ahead and take them. But you’ve got five minutes.”
“More like a half hour,” she said.
“I told you, we got a shift change in forty,” he said. “Listen, if this was a big deal the place would be lousy with deputies-am I right? It’s a body bagger, that’s all. We got the call, we do the job.”
“And I’ve got to do mine.”
“And I’m giving you five minutes. Four, now that we’ve used one jawing it to death. Hold up,” he called out to his buddy. The driver stepped away from the ladder.
Fiona slung the camera bag over her shoulder, walked to the ladder, and climbed.
With each rung she feared what she might find.