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and translucent, causing the powder blush on her cheeks to stand
     out sharply. Her fingernails and toenails, which had only a clear lacquer on them, had lost their pinkish color. Her face
     was unbruised, unscratched, and without lacerations or bite marks, and so were the parts of her body that I could see. Aside
     from the obscene position of her body, there were no outward signs of rape, no semen around the genitals, thighs, or in the
     pubic hair, no signs of struggle in the surrounding area, no grass or soil marks on her skin, no blood, dirt, or skin under
     her nails, and her hair was mostly in place.
    I leaned over and touched her face and neck, where rigor mortis usually sets in first. There was no rigor, and I felt her
     underarms, which were still warm. There was some livor mortis, or lividity, that had settled into her thighs and buttocks,
     and the lividity was a deep purple color, which would be consistent with asphyxia, which in turn was consistent with the rope
     around her neck. I pressed my finger against the purplish skin above where her buttocks met the ground, and the depressed
     spot blanched. When I took my finger away, the livid color returned, and I was reasonably certain that death had occurred
     within the last four hours.
    One thing I learned a long time ago was that you never take a witness’s statement as gospel truth. But so far, Sergeant St.
     John’s chronology seemed to hold up.
    I bent over further and looked into Ann Campbell’s large blue eyes, which stared unblinking into the sun. The corneas were
     not yet cloudy, reinforcing my estimate of a recent death. I pulled at one of her eyelids and saw in the linings around the
     eye, small spotty hemorrhages, which is presumptive evidence of death by asphyxia. So far, what Kent had told me, and the
     scene that presented itself, seemed to comport with what I was discovering.
    I loosened the rope around Ann Campbell’s neck and examined the panties beneath the rope. The panties were not torn and were
     not soiled by the body or by any foreign substance. There were no dog tags under the panties, so these, too, were missing.
     Where the ligature, the rope, had circled the neck there was only a faint line of bruising, barely discernible if you weren’t
     looking for it. Yet, death had come by strangulation, and the panties lessened the damage the rope would normally have done
     to the throat and neck.
    I stood and walked around the body, noting that the soles of her feet were stained with grass and soil, meaning she had walked
     barefoot for at least a few steps. I leaned down and examined the bottom of her feet, discovering on her right foot a small
     tar or blacktop stain on the soft fleshy spot below her big toe. It would appear that she had actually been barefoot back
     on the road, which might mean she had taken off her clothes, or at least her boots and socks, near the humvee and was made
     to walk here, fifty meters away, barefoot or perhaps naked, though her bra and panties were near the body. I examined her
     bra and saw that the front clasp was intact, not bent or broken, and there were no signs of dirt or stress on the fabric.
    All this time no one said a word, and you could hear the morning birds in the trees, and the sun had risen above the line
     of white pines beyond the berm, and long morning shadows spread across the firing ranges.
    I addressed Colonel Kent. “Who was the first MP on the scene?”
    Kent called over the female MP nearby, a young PFC, and said to her, “Give your report to this man.”
    The MP, whose name tag said Casey, looked at me and reported, “I received a radio call at 0452 hours advising me that a female
     body had been found at rifle range six, approximately fifty meters west of a humvee parked on the road. I was in the vicinity
     and I proceeded to this location and reached the scene at 0501 hours and saw the humvee. I parked and secured my vehicle,
     took my M-16, and proceeded onto the rifle range,