Free Fire and Ice by J. A. Jance

She pointed at Dave. “He’s my crime scene investigator. That’s why we’re trying to preserve the crime scene—so we can examine it for clues.”
    “You’re saying Lester’s been murdered?” Margie repeated the words as if she couldn’t quite believe them.
    “We think murder is a distinct possibility,” Joanna answered. “As to whether or not the victim is your brother…”
    Margie squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Show him to me,” she said. “Let me see for myself. I’m not going to faint or anything. I’m a hell of a lot tougher than that.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “All right, then,” Joanna said. “Follow me. If you don’t mind, please stay on the pathway.”
    Margie nodded. “I will,” she said.
    With Joanna leading the way, they started off across the intervening sand by following the plastic-grid path Dave Hollicker had laid down. A full ten yards from the half-buried body, Margie came to an abrupt stop. Ernie, following behind, almost ran into her.
    “It’s him,” Margie said. “That’s my brother.”
    Joanna stopped, too. From where she stood, all that was visible of the body was the back of the man’s head and neck, as well as the top of his shirt collar. What looked like an ugly bruise covered the back of his neck from the top of his shirt to the bottom of his hairline.
    Joanna was surprised by the certainty in Margie’s voice. “Are you sure?” Joanna asked. “You can identify him from all the way back here?”
    “It’s the birthmark,” Margie said. “The one on the back of his neck.”
    Joanna looked again at what she had assumed to be a recent injury. “That’s a birthmark instead of a bruise?” she asked.
    Margie nodded. “The whole time we were growing up I was forever having to beat the crap out of asshole kids who teased him about it. They’d torment him and tell him the discoloration on his neck was really the mark of the devil. By the time I finished blackening their eyes, they knew all about the mark of the devil.”
    She paused and gave a small snort. “When I was younger, I used to have a pretty mean left hook. I busted out Tommy Leroy’s right front tooth when I was sixteen, and it wasn’t no baby tooth, either. He was only fourteen, but he was also a good five inchestaller than me. I thought his mother was gonna kill me when she found out about it, but then someone told her what he’d been doing—that Tommy and some friends of his had been picking on Lester—she changed her mind. She lit into Tommy herself and gave him a whuppin’, too. Not that any of that ever helped poor Les,” she added sadly.
    For a long moment, she stood staring across the expanse of sand toward her brother’s still form. “It’s like the guy never had a chance at a decent life,” she said finally. “The cards were so stacked against him from the start that you could hardly blame him for drowning his sorrows in booze.”
    With that, she turned and walked back the way they had come, deftly slipping past Ernie without once venturing off Dave Hollicker’s plastic-grid trail. By the time Margie reached the side of her jeep, she sank down on her knees next to it, buried her face in her hands, and wept. Joanna realized then that Margie Savage had put on a good front of being tough, but it was only that—a front. Joanna caught up with her in time to hear her sob, “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
    “None of this is your fault,” Joanna said consolingly, “unless you did this. Did you?”
    Margie shook her head. “But I promised our mama that I’d look after him, that I’d keep him safe. Once he sobered up, I helped him get this caretaker’s job so’s I could keep an eye on him. Now he’s dead.”
    She pulled a red hankie out of the pocket of her jeans and blew her nose into it. Then she straightened her shoulders and looked back at the ATV. “They ran him down, didn’t they?” she said.
    “That’s what it