Dance of the Bones

If he was packing an arrowhead around as a good luck charm, Brandon mused to himself, it sure as hell didn’t work.

Brandon’s careful search unearthed a few other artifacts. He located a scattered circle of blackened rocks that had most likely once surrounded a campfire. On a long piece of desiccated bone that had once been a forearm, he found an intact watch—-a Timex. The hands, still visible behind the dirt--crusted lens, read 2:35.

A few feet away Brandon found a dented canteen, empty but still covered with ragged bits of canvas. Near that he saw bits of tattered material that might have been a bedroll and what looked like the remains of a leather jacket. Not far from the jacket was another long bone, a rib this time. It had been gnawed along the edges, but through the bone itself was a small, perfectly semicircular hole. You didn’t need to be a medical examiner to read the signs. This was the mark from a small--caliber weapon, but Brandon knew that at close range and with the right placement, a shot from a .22 can be every bit as deadly as a .45. Even years after the fact and with no additional evidence, he got the picture. Whoever this poor guy was, he hadn’t died of natural causes. Somebody, mad as hell, had nailed him with one shot and maybe more. This was a homicide.

Brandon was combing the ground in a hopeless search for spent bullets when Suzanne called him. “Hey,” she said, “over here.”

After snapping one last photo of the rib bone, Brandon hurried over to where Suzanne stood. Knowing this was a crime scene, he had donned a pair of gloves and had prevailed upon her to do the same. Looking where she was pointing, Brandon saw a second piece of bone, this one a long leg bone lying near the remains of what had once been a sturdy hiking boot. The boot was marred by grooves from the teeth of gnawing scavengers who had evidently felt protected enough in that grove of trees to dine in place rather than hauling their prizes off to a den.

“Coyotes?” Suzanne asked.

Taken aback that the woman didn’t appear to be the least bit squeamish, Brandon nodded before putting down another evidence marker and snapping the next photo. “Probably,” he said. “I’m guessing all we’ll find are the larger bones. Vultures will have carried off the smaller bits.”

“What’s going to happen now?” Suzanne asked.

“Once the M.E. does his autopsy and verifies how the victim died, we’ll need to find out who did this. Then,” Brandon added as the camera shutter clicked one last time, “we’re going to put the killer away.”

Suzanne said nothing, but Brandon looked up just in time to see her nod. At the same moment, a sharp crack of lightning and a roll of thunder announced the arrival of the long--delayed storm. Struggling against torrential and almost blinding rain, they headed back to the cars. Long before they reached the vehicles, they were soaked through, and the M.E. van was nowhere in sight. A call to Dispatch told them that the M.E. had been forced to turn back on the far side of Redington Pass.

For the time being, there was nothing to do but wait. Then, in a move no one expected, the storm proceeded to stall directly over Redington Pass. Eventually the water in the washes to the south of them receded, while the ones to the north roared bank to bank. That night, the only way back home to Gates Pass was on I--10 via Pomerene and Benson.