Chapter 2
The Deputy said about an hour before he would arrive. A long time to wait. While I swore not to disturb the body, I really hadn’t meant it. And he had already hung up, so he didn’t hear that anyway. Besides, I had been a cop. I’m naturally nosey.
I also began to feel some excitement, a feeling that I had not sensed for a long time. I also felt a bit guilty that it took this man’s death to get my juices flowing, but I couldn’t help it. After so long, I was finally involved in something.
I had seen bodies before. When I was on the force in Cincinnati, there were over 70 deaths each year from murder alone. That provided a lot of experience. Getting pictures seemed like a good place to start. I opened my phone and snapped several, then stuffed the device back into my shirt pocket.
In my days as a cop, I would be taking notes of my observations. But for the first time in many years, I had nothing on me to write with. No paper. No pen. And I wanted to become a writer? Well, I could at least take mental notes.
The hatless body lay on its stomach, arms outstretched. His hands were open with palms down on the ground, like he had tried to use them to break his fall. The left cheek was pressed against some rocks. A small pool of dried blood lay on the ground around the head. No open wound was visible, so the blood must have leaked from somewhere on the left side of the face. The exposed right eye was open and unblinking. The exposed right ear was jaggedly torn and crusted with blood. Perhaps the vulture had just started in on him there. Black dusty hair crowned a dirt-streaked, dark-skinned, unshaven face with a thin ragged beard. He appeared to be under 40. Perhaps Hispanic.
He was short, probably only a few inches taller than five feet, and wore a plain coat, grimy baggy pants, and worn shoes. The coat was torn, with jagged tears and slices, some that were deep enough to draw trickles of blood. It reminded me of the wounds from a knife fight.
The body had certainly been here for less than a day. Any longer than a day in this summer heat would have led to much greater decay and a stronger putrid odor. And the vulture would have had more time to do some serious damage. I’m no expert on body decomposition. That was the job of the medical examiner, the ME, to tell the cops what he learned from his examination.
I did know that insects are among the best allies of an ME. From controlled studies with decaying bodies at defined temperatures, scientists determined that insects invade corpses in a predictable sequence. Insects are drawn by the putrid scent of decomposition. The first to arrive are shiny blue-green blowflies. There were plenty of them on this corpse. They are followed by dark-colored flesh flies. I was certain there were a few of them here also. The next to join are beetles, which can eventually strip flesh right down to the bone. Even common houseflies are lured by the feast on flesh. As all these species reproduce, predatory and parasitic insects feed on the offspring. And in the end, hide beetles and clothes moths consume what’s left.
Based on the insect species present, their stages of development in their life cycles, and the environmental conditions, a forensic expert can determine when the insects first invaded the body. Since the insects usually find the corpse within minutes of death, the time of death can be calculated fairly accurately. Even without that kind of detailed analysis, I was still betting on much less than 24 hours, probably less than 12 hours.
“Leave it alone,” I murmured to myself, but knew I couldn’t. I had been a cop. Being nosey was in my blood. Even though the guy was dead, I had to be more thorough. I grasped the right wrist and felt for a pulse. Nothing. I continued by lifting it further, and then did the same with the left. Both hands were empty, but all the creases of the fingers and palms were filled with deeply embedded dirt. The palms were heavily callused, and dark dirt filled the spaces under the fingernails. These hands had done hard labor. If he was a migrant worker, hard labor might be expected. The life of such migrants involved using one’s hands and arms and backs in manual labor, whether it was landscaping, construction, or harvesting crops.
On the ground where his right hand had been lay a crinkled piece of brown paper. Next to it was a length of jaggedly torn plant stem with a few attached leaves. These were fresh, not old, dried out, and darkened like one would expect from something that has been lying around for a long time. While I could reasonably guess how long the Hispanic’s body had been lying here, I didn’t know plants. How quickly do they dry out and wither once they are detached from the living plant? I had no clue. I could, though, see they were not from any of the bushes or grasses in the immediate vicinity. Different stuff.
But there were also pieces of all sorts of other plants covering this guy. Burrs, leaves, twigs. To examine any of it further, I would have to disturb them. Probably it had nothing to do with the body. Just more trail litter. Rather than disturb it, I snapped some pictures with my cell phone, then placed the hands of the body back in their original positions. The paper was probably nothing. Most materials collected in the field turn out to be nothing of importance. But police collect it all, sift it, and pull out the useful pieces.
There were no back pockets on the baggy pants, but there was one on the exposed right side of the loose fitting coat. Some green plant material stuck out of the pocket. I often end up with parts of plants in my clothes after a hike. Most likely he had been off the cleared and marked trails to have picked up so much vegetation.
I looked around the body at the loose soil for several feet in each direction and only saw my own footprints leading in a straight line to this spot. It was clear there were no other impressions in the ground, and certainly nothing to match his badly worn footwear. There was also nothing lying on the ground in the area, not a backpack, not even a water container. Being this far in the backcountry without water in this hot weather seemed unusual. But then, many people die from being unprepared for what they consider a simple hike.
So if there are no footprints leading to this spot, how did he get here? I had already concluded he must have come from the overhanging cliff above, but that was probably 20 feet behind him. To be this far from the cliff, he must have been running and soared off into open space, landing out here. He didn’t look like a runner and wasn’t outfitted like one. Regardless, he must have been running. But running from where or from what?
There are large predators in Montana: bears and mountain lions. Maybe he was running from one of them. There are, of course, more sinister possibilities, which is where my time as a cop so often led me. Maybe he was running to the cliff on purpose, for suicide. Or did someone help launch him off that cliff? Or even toss him out of an aircraft?
I wanted to study the body further, but I reminded myself this was not my investigation. This was also not my turf. What had been my turf, before I was let go, was 1500 miles to the east. I didn’t need to rile the local law. But then I had already done that with that pinhead Deputy Powell. His attitude had pushed the wrong buttons in me. So, what the hell? At least I could check around the area for clues to the mystery of this man’s death. I still had plenty of time before the Deputy arrived.
I turned around and looked up. The cliff was probably 100 feet high with no chance of scaling it at this point. So I went in reverse on the trail where I entered the ravine for perhaps an eighth of a mile to reach a steep but navigable slope. It looked like a long hot climb, but upward I went. Maybe the dead guy had dropped something on top of the cliff, something that might help identify him.
As I climbed upward, the sun was directly in front of me, causing me to squint even from behind the protective darkness of my sunglasses. The slope was sparsely covered with bushes, which I waded through to make the climb. Small loose rocks covered the surface, and I skidded backward often as I climbed higher. Several times I came down on my knees, skinning my shins in the process. I was glad I’d chosen to wear long pants rather than shorts for my hike.
Nearing the top of the climb, I stopped to ca
tch my breath. Looking upward to determine how much further it was to the crest of the hill, I froze. Silhouetted on the top of the next ridge in the glare of the sun were the head and shoulders of a man facing my direction. And he had a rifle aimed at me.