“Something like that,” Jane said.
Sloan had reached the corpse. He stopped, staring at it incredulously.
As Heidi had reported, the corpse was just about mummified. Brown leathery skin stretched so tightly over the skull and bones that it seemed like an eerie caricature. A dusty old hat sat on the corpse, which was propped up against a rock almost as if he’d sat down to take a nap—and never awakened. He was dressed in dust-covered pants, an old shirt and a vest; it appeared that he’d been buried beneath the sand for years and dug up to sit on the trail.
“See! And they wanted me to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! Gross! He’s—I mean, he’s real, right?”
Sloan hunkered down to study the corpse more closely. Jane knelt beside him, studying the dead man in silence.
“The clothing is certainly old. Handmade, I think,” Jane said. “I’m not an expert on this, but it does look like the cloth is incredibly fragile—almost disintegrating—and that this man has been dead for years....”
Right. He might well have died around the time Sage McCormick disappeared—only to appear again in Lily as a skull more than a hundred years later. What the hell was going on here? Another macabre joke? Or were these dead showing up for a different reason?
“Who would do this?” Heidi demanded. “Who would dig up this poor guy and put him here? It’s so creepy! I can’t believe I stayed here waiting for you. I thought...I was so afraid he’d move. I never could have stayed if it was night!”
Sloan took a pen from his pocket and gingerly touched a darkened spot on the shirt. It was difficult to see clearly, but it seemed that the corpse had taken a slug in the chest.
“Poor fellow was shot a hell of a long time ago,” Jane noted.
Sloan felt a vibration and heard the rumbling of the horse-drawn wagon as it arrived on the scene. Two emergency techs jumped out of the covered wagon that was kept at the stables for emergencies in the desert. They could also bring helicopters, but most often, the wagon made its way to the desert. He knew many of the county techs but not all, and he didn’t know these two.
Sloan stood. The men approached, both of them staring at the corpse.
“Well,” the older one said.
“I told you I couldn’t revive him!” Heidi said.
“This is a waste of time for us,” the younger man said. He looked at Sloan. “I’m sorry, I mean...well, this is unusual.”
“Why did no one believe me when I said dead, dead as a doornail?” Heidi asked.
“Heidi, sometimes people think they’ve found a dead person when people are unconscious or in a coma. We always try to hope for life first,” Sloan said. He introduced himself and Jane, and the med techs did the same.
“I don’t know what protocol is here,” the older man, who’d introduced himself as Gavin Bendle, said. “I get the feeling this guy’s been dug up as some kind of a joke. I almost feel as if...we should just rebury him here. No muss, no fuss.”
“I say bring him to the medical examiner’s office. They can make the call there,” Sloan said. “You’ve already got the wagon out. I’m sure historians and anthropologists will want to examine the corpse before...before he’s reburied, I guess.”
“This is Lily,” the younger man, Joe Rodriguez, murmured.
Sloan laughed. “Right. And the town has no morgue. Our dead go to the county.”
“Can I go back?” Heidi asked hopefully.
No one answered her. They were all staring at the corpse.
“I’m afraid to try to move it,” Joe admitted.
“Might break,” Gavin agreed.
“Maybe we should get some kind of scientist out here,” Joe said.
“Maybe I could go back?” Heidi asked again.
Sloan turned to Heidi. “Of course. I’ll get a formal statement from you later.”
“A formal statement?” Heidi repeated. “I took out a trail ride. I saw this corpse sitting here. I called it in. That’s my formal statement.”
“He’s pointing,” Jane said suddenly.
“What?” Sloan asked.
“See how his hand is lying there? It looks as if someone arranged him so his fingers are pointing...in that direction,” she said.
She rose, walking in the direction in which the fingers pointed.
Sloan followed her. He didn’t see anything at first. Neither did Jane. She seemed perplexed.
“He’s definitely pointing this way,” she said.
“The tepee,” Sloan suggested. The tepee that stood a few feet from him was real; it just hadn’t ever been lived in by an Apache. Sloan ducked down and entered. There were cold ashes where a central fire would have burned. Indian blankets were rolled against the sides, and old cooking utensils had been set up as if ready for use.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Then Sloan realized he was breathing in a scent he’d learned all too well over the years.
The scent of death.
He walked toward one of the blankets and tugged at it.