I’ve seen many bodies at the spot where they died or had been dumped. I’ve seen a few bodies that were clearly moved short distances in an attempt to conceal them, or to make a murder look like an accident or suicide. But once I had arrived at the scene and had seen a body, it never moved. And it certainly never disappeared. Until this morning. I was beginning to wonder what my horoscope had been for today.
I wasn’t hallucinating. There had been a body. As ridiculous as it felt, I confirmed that by viewing the pictures I’d taken of the corpse with my cell phone camera. The guy was there, in this very spot. The small pool of dried blood was still visible on the ground. I mentally ticked off my other observations after first finding the body. There was the putrid odor. His eyes were open and unblinking. He was being attacked by flies and a buzzard. When I grasped the wrist, I had not felt a pulse. He was clearly dead. So he did not get up and walk away.
The hour I had been gone on my climb up the slope seemed like a narrow window of time for the body to be removed. Yet it was clearly gone. He could have been carried or dragged away. By an animal? Adult mountain lions are large enough to drag a body away, and I had read they roam all over Montana. Or taken by the guy with the rifle? Either way, being unarmed, I was not in a position of strength.
Despite being unarmed, I stepped forward anyway because I saw something. There were two parallel scuffmarks in the dirt leading away from me, as if the body was dragged with its toes leaving a trail. After a few yards, the scuff marks ended and were replaced by clearly defined imprints in the soft earth continuing in the same direction. Not a mountain lion. Human footprints. Someone, not something, took the body. These prints weren’t left by the worn soles of the dead guy’s shoes. They looked more like boot prints with a clear pattern of ridges.
I ran to overtake the body snatcher. He couldn’t be too far ahead of me. After all, he was carrying the dead weight of another person. The track of prints and crumpled vegetation went straight away from the cliff face and toward a small rise ahead. The track did not waver, even over this uneven ground, suggesting the weight of the body was not much of a burden for the snatcher. A strong guy. Clearing the rise, there was a drop-off of several feet. I jumped down the embankment and saw that the boot prints continued down there. Then they ended abruptly. They were replaced by parallel widely spaced tire impressions that wound off into the scrub. I couldn’t see or hear any vehicle. Whoever had been here was already gone.
I prepared to follow, but knew better. I couldn’t run to catch up with a vehicle. And I couldn’t just wander away, even if it was in pursuit of a possible suspect. The Deputy had my name and phone number. He expected to find me here. And he also expected to find a body. What a screw up this had turned into.
I sullenly walked back toward the cliff. A nice day turned to crap. I had called to report a body. I didn’t stay put as ordered. Instead, I wandered away from the body and up the hill. Now the body was gone. I broke a basic rule by not securing the possible crime scene because I had assumed that there was no harm in it, and that there really was no crime anyway. After all, it was a case of a guy just falling off a cliff, wasn’t it? Maybe I had been gone from the police force too long. This was not my problem, but I stuck my nose in anyway. Now it was my problem for sure.