Murder in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Excerpt from Murder in the Blue Ridge Mountains (The Lynleys of Law Enforcement Book 3)
Law Enforcement Ranger Madison Lynley drove her Chevrolet Tahoe Special Service Vehicle along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Pisgah Ranger District of Pisgah National Forest, where she was stationed in North Carolina. It was a gorgeous span of nearly five hundred miles of scenery that ran though the Blue Ridge Mountains.
She had been employed as a law enforcement ranger with the National Park Service for the past eight years, or since she’d been twenty-seven, after completing four months of basic training. Along with receiving her bachelor’s degree in natural resource ecology and management and a master’s degree in environmental science from Oklahoma State University. In the process, she had chosen to go in a different direction than her brothers, Scott and Russell, who were both FBI special agents, as well as their adopted younger sister, Annette, who was a sheriff’s department detective. All of them had followed in the footsteps of their parents, Taylor and Caroline Lynley, with long careers in law enforcement. Their father had been a chief of police with the Oklahoma City Police Department, while her mother had once been an Oklahoma County District Court criminal judge.
The fact that both were now deceased pained Madison, as they’d been the rocks of the family, leaving it to their children to carry on without them. All seemed more than committed to doing just that, remaining fairly close, in spite of each going their separate ways in adulthood as they navigated their lives, careers and other interests.
In full uniform on a slender five-eight frame, Madison continued to drive. She admired the forest—rich in chestnut oak, birch and buckeye trees—on this late summer day. As one of only a relatively small number of rangers patrolling the more than eighty thousand acres of land along the parkway, she never tired of this, loving the freedom and appreciation of nature and wildlife the job provided. Beyond patrolling the park in her vehicle, she had also ridden on bicycles, snowmobiles, ATVs, boats and even horses in the course of the job. She had participated in search-and-rescue missions, dealt with car accidents, wildfires and dangerous or wounded animals, you name it.
Then there was the criminal activity, such as illicit drug use, drug dealing and occasional crimes of violence that forced Madison into the law enforcement part of being a ranger. She was equipped with a Sig Sauer P320 semiautomatic pistol in her duty holster, should she need it when having to deal with hostile and dangerous park visitors.
Thank goodness I’ve never had to shoot anyone yet, she thought, while knowing there was always a first time for everything.
Madison’s mind turned to her love life. Or lack thereof. She was now thirty-five years old, nearly thirty-six, and still very much single. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had gone out on a real date. Actually, she could. It was two years ago when she’d been dating Garrett Sneed, a handsome Cherokee special agent with the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch. For a few months there, they’d been hot and heavy and had appeared headed for bigger and better things. And then, just like that, it had been over, as though it had never begun.
She couldn’t really put a finger on why they’d broken up. Only that neither had seemed ready to make a real commitment to each other and the opportunity to fix things that had gone unsaid or undone had slipped through the cracks. Before she could even think about trying to get back together, Garrett had gotten a transfer to another region, as though he couldn’t leave soon enough. They’d lost touch from that point on, leaving Madison to wonder about what might have been if they had tried harder.
When she got a call over the radio, Madison snapped out of the reverie and responded. It was her boss, Tom Hutchison.
“Hey,” he spoke in a tense voice, “we just got a report of a dead woman discovered by a hiker along the Blue Ridge Parkway.”
“Hmm…not a great way to start the day,” Madison muttered, never wanting to hear that a life had been lost, whatever the circumstances. “Are we talking about an accident, suicide, animal attack or…?”
“Could be any of the above.” Hutchison was vague. “Check it out and make your own assessment. We’ll go from there.”
“I’m on my way,” she said tersely, after being given the location.
As was the case any time she had to deal with a death, all types of things went through Madison’s head. Who was the victim, and why had the person been at the park? Was this something that could have been prevented, such as the taking of one’s own life? Or was it the result of actions beyond the control of the deceased, such as an encounter with a black bear? Or a human predator.