Site Unseen

FROM THE AUTHOR

"For most of my adult life, I have camped often with two of my best friends. One day, my friend said I should write a story that takes place at a campground because so many people love to camp. We spent a lot of time hiking to the many waterfalls and parks in Ithaca. I thought it would be fun to have a thriller that involved the gorges and camping. The title just came to me one day while I was taking my dogs for a walk, and it’s one of my favorites. From there, the story developed as I wrote it, and it was a lot of fun to write."

—Nance Newman

Prologue

The state of the body lying at the bottom of the gorge was not a surprise. I mean, anyone who fell from that height onto solid rock two hundred feet below would not land in a normal position. Definitely not on all fours like a cat and then walk away, or even two legs, for that matter.

The force of the fall would shatter the leg bones into hundreds of pieces if someone tried to land on their feet. But no human would try that. Even the thought of it would be sheer stupidity. A fall like that would force the body to hit in a supine position face up or face down, most likely shattering every bone in the body and crushing the skull. And that’s what it looked like as I surveyed the battered body lying in blood diluted with the water running from Upper Taughannock Falls.

I think the shock upon seeing the mangled body made me wonder why anyone would get close enough to topple over the edge. Topple. What a strange word to describe a fall from such a height in a place where most people would not even contemplate the thought of trying such a daredevil feat. No, a daredevil would string a wire across from one side of the gorge to the other and try traversing it. Even so, no one could survive a fall like that.

Therefore, my logical mind deduced it had to be a suicide or a murder. Or an accident. I think the shock upon seeing the mangled woman’s body on my first day as a rookie policewoman in the city of Ithaca made these crazy thoughts go through my head. It was a horrible way to die.

The forensics team had already determined it was a female, a young female—late teenager or young adult. And that news made me feel faint. And it made me want to quit my job. Why then, you ask, was I there? I had recently graduated from the Ithaca Police Academy, and it was just my luck as a rookie policewoman, that this was my first deceased-person case.

The thought that ran through my head as I took in the scene was it might also be my last. The violence of this woman’s death enraged me and sent the deepest sorrow coursing through my veins. As a cop, I knew it could have been a suicide, but that didn’t lessen my anger. I had a hard time understanding why someone would end their life, and in that way. How could someone want their loved ones to see them in that condition, knowing they would die inside themselves?

I stood in the back, behind the throng of Ithaca police personnel. I didn’t want to see the body. It repulsed me and since I was a rookie under Officer Mac Taylor, it was better if I stayed out of the way, in the background.

So, as I looked everywhere but at the body, my question was: did this person…strike that…did this woman want to end her life? Or did someone end it for her? Or was she careless and jumped the barrier chain-link fence that was supposed to keep people from getting too close to the edge and got…too close to the edge. So maybe an accident. It happened.

Taughannock Upper Falls Park was closed while we gathered clues in the gorge as well as from above. They found footprints to match the woman’s sneakers, suggesting the spot where she went over the ledge. Once the medical examiner finished inspecting the body, the female was carefully placed into a black postmortem bag. I cringed as I watched because this poor woman’s body was so mangled and broken, I had a hard time looking at her remains. They struggled to get her parts into the body bag and then onto a backboard. The bag looked more like a regular kitchen trash bag with a normal week’s buildup of garbage from a family of four.

The whole process of moving her body into the postmortem bag and fixing the backboard underneath, reminded me of cracking an egg into a frying pan and after it’s cooked, tipping the pan and letting it slide onto a plate. To this day, that particular image still made me want to vomit whenever it entered my mind. It was a long time before I ate fried eggs again. My eyes focused on the cadaver pouch as the ME zipped it up. The sound of the zipper threads seemed louder than it really was as each metallic tooth of the zipper connected with its counterpart like a hammer hitting an anvil. I turned away quickly, hoping to stop the noise by putting my hands over my ears or at least hide myself from others at the possible upchuck of my breakfast. Neither would have looked good for a rookie, even if it was her first actual death scene, so I stood stoically.

Without looking, I knew when they were placing the body on a gurney. I heard the body bag rustle and the plopping sound of the backboard landing on the plastic-covered mattress. When I heard wheels running over the stone bed of the creek with the sound of the rushing water, I looked up. The gurney opened a path in the water like Poseidon opening a path in the ocean.

Would I be able to do this job?

I heard whispers amongst my uniformed colleagues and the detectives as they speculated on the cause of death. If it was a suicide, they feared this could be the start of another rash of people taking their own life by jumping into a gorge. The rate of suicides among college students had increased, starting in the 1970s. For whatever reason, students from the Ithaca’s two universities decided the only way that they could solve their problems was to toss themselves into one of the famous gorges off of one of several bridges on the college campuses. Between 1990 and 2010, twenty-seven people had suicided that way. There had also been deaths from jumps or falls in different places in the Upper Taughannock State Park, but they were either accidental or from recreational jumps into the deeper pools of water below. But this young woman’s death was the first of its kind in that part of the state park, speculating that it may not have been a suicide.

Suicide. Murder. Accident. It didn’t matter to me. Although they taught you about these things in the Academy, it didn’t become real until you stood at the bottom of a gorge looking at a young female body. I wondered when the faint red color—the mixing of her blood with the creek water—would reach the top of the falls spilling into the water below. It was no surprise when I heard a policeman say they would close lower Taughannock Falls for that very reason and it would remain closed for a day or two until the water was clear again.

“Moore, let’s go.”

I turned to see Officer Mac Taylor, my mentor, waiting impatiently for me. I could tell he wasn’t happy having a woman as his first rookie. Or maybe he just didn’t like me. Or maybe he saw the beads of sweat on my forehead, and the green tint to my skin as I fought to keep the bile down while I contemplated whether I was going to cut it as a cop or become a waitress. I knew after my first day with him when I overheard him tell another cop that women weren’t good enough to be cops that the next six months with this man would be brutal in more ways than one.

I took one last look around, and just as I turned to leave with him, I noticed something caught in a clump of weeds in the water. I walked over to a thin gold, chained bracelet tangled in strands of wet grass and mud. A small charm dangled from the chain, swaying back and forth with the downward flow of the water in the current. I began to sway with it.

“Come on, Moore, get your ass in gear,” I heard him shout to me. “What is it now?” he yelled in total exasperation when I didn’t move.

“I found something, sir,” I said, struggling to speak.

I heard him call for the forensics team, telling them he found something. He. Found something. That was yet another clue among so many that had stared me in the face since I began working with him. I should have quit then and there.

The other officers approached, standing focused on the piece of jewelry sparkling in the rays of sunshine. Even though my commanding officer and the forensic team crowded me out of the way, I managed to make out the shape of the charm, a tiny image of Tinkerbell. I fought to keep the tears back as I watched the item be photographed, picked up with tweezers and placed in a clear-plastic evidence bag.

I was so close to losing the contents of my stomach.

The condition of the body, the smashed head and face, would make it impossible to identify the body without forensic testing. I wasn’t even sure dental records would be helpful as her teeth appeared to be shattered, but now I knew. There was no need for me to tell them who I knew it was. It would only open a door I did not want, and I could not open.

Tinkerbell. I fought harder to keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks by wiping them with my sleeve. My head pounded, and I bounced back and forth between feeling faint, and wanting to vomit, but I couldn’t do either. I was a cop. Cops weren’t supposed to faint or vomit at a crime/suicide scene.

The Tinkerbell charm told me who she was. It said, at the very least, she was young at heart, a believer in magic—not the fantasy kind of magic, but the magic of life and love, and she was so full of life and love. Yet, the one thing she needed, represented by this bangle, was hope. Hope for dreams to come true, for the wonderful life she had planned, for luck and love. She had had it. Once. But she had lost hope in the few moments before her body took the plunge.

I thought my heart would explode through my chest like in the movie Alien when I realized that either she thought she had no hope and that was why she jumped, or she realized seconds before someone pushed her over the edge that hope was gone.

I felt like I was lying on the gurney with her as my heart broke into a million pieces. I knew then there was nothing more devastating than to lose all hope. She had died without it.

Now, I would live without it.

Readers' Favorite
Site Unseen by Nancy Newman is a wonderfully taut thriller with plenty of action. The prologue alone leaves you wanting more, and that’s without reading the main story! This book has a unique plot with plenty of twists and turns. It is packed with action and excitement and is written in a compelling style that stops you from putting it down—be prepared because you’ll not want to stop reading once you start.

TheLesbianReview.com
The opening of the book was strong with a great bit of writing. The first person narration made it feel quite personal as we experienced Blakely’s thoughts and many insecurities.