teeth marks on the gum trees”.
Richard stepped to the side of the body and tree and slid off the two sheets. The man was lying on his back with his arms down by his side. The tree was half again as big around as the poor man was and lay across his body from just above his knees to just below his chest. He had on boots, jeans and a plaid shirt. A piece of a tree limb lay across and into the middle-aged man’s chest. He was about ten or twelve feet from the water and about twenty feet from the mass of roots that lost their grip in the soft ground. He had clean cut dark hair and didn’t appear to have any tattoos or piercings. He might have been anyone you met in Wal-Mart or Ace Hardware on a Saturday morning in Perry.
There were several sets of footprints leading to the site and others leading out. People visiting Rozar Park would sometimes circle their way all the way around the lake and back to the parking lot and others might just turn around at different points and go back the way they came. A look at them closely showed a more recent few. There were several small webbed animal tracks in the soft dirt and mud up and down the path and all around the body. “Wouldn’t be a beaver” I said as I squatted down to look closely.
“How do you figure that?’ Richard asked.
“I have spent time in the woods but I am not what you call an expert but those paw prints have four toes and a beaver has five I think. Maybe an otter?”
“Couldn’t be an otter”, Chris added as I stood back up.
Richard turned his head in Chris’ direction, apparently trying to figure out which one of us was the zookeeper and which one shoveled the cages.
“Otters have the five toes, too. Plus, there’s no tail.”
We looked again at the prints. There were clearly four toes at the top of each pad and no noticeable tail being drug between the feet.
“May I have a closer look at him?” Chris asked, a little boldly I thought. Richard looked over at the tech standing nearby and got a nod then nodded to Chris. He walked over to the tree and rested a hand on it and leaned over to get a very close look, moving his hair out of his eyes as he did. He looked at the man’s pants and back down the path we’d walked up. He slowly lifted the man’s right shoulder and arm up and looked at the smooth ground underneath. He made his way to the other side of the tree on the man’s left and looked down at his hand and arm on that side. He stepped to the man’s feet and turned the boots to look at the mud on the bottoms. He appeared to squeeze the feet before setting them down. Satisfied, he hopped back over the tree and came back to us.
“What was on the paper the guy had in his pocket?” Chris asked.
Richard answered before he realized he didn’t understand how Chris knew he had a folded piece of paper in his left shirt pocket. “Just one print out from a Craigslist advertisement. It was a ridiculous deal, too. How would anyone expect somebody to buy a jitterbug for $623?”
“What’s a jitterbug?” Chris asked, “And what makes $623 too much to pay for one?”
Three
I answered him. “A jitterbug is an old dance but you don’t buy those. Another jitterbug is a fishing lure that has been made for years, a top water crankbait. You can get one anywhere but for six dollars not six hundred. I don’t think there’s a big antique jitterbug market.”
Richard handed me the folded paper. It was a printed Craigslist posting from the Jewelry section with the title “Jitterbug - $623”. In the comments section it read “fishing lure” but no number to call. There wasn’t a picture either.
“That doesn’t make any sense” Richard said, “a jitterbug isn’t jewelry and I can’t see how anyone would expect to sell a fishing lure from 2011 or from 1911 for six hundred dollars”.
Chris jumped in, “Sometimes it’s what you can’t see that’s the whole point. Like what’s missing from under the body over there that tells us this man did not die from this tree”.
“What do you mean, what’s missing? Our techs haven’t bagged anything from this crime scene”, Richard barked back, his arms flying around more than usual. “And what do you mean he died somewhere else”?
Chris looked over to me, “It’s like the hog you shot this morning. Where’s the blood? Being crushed by the tree very well could have caused a pool of blood but there is none. When I looked under the body there was nothing but smooth dirt”.
Richard almost flapped his arms and started flying. “I didn’t even notice that there wasn’t any blood”!
“There’s something else missing, too, Chief”.
“What’s that?” Now his hands were really going.
“There are no tracks or paw prints under the body”.
“So the body was on the ground before the tracks were and before the tree fell on it. Did it rain up here at all last night, Chief?”
“Not a drop but there was a heck of a lot of wind. Who’d you say your name was?”
“Chris Calhoun”, I replied, genuinely impressed with his observations. Richard walked over and shook hands with Chris.
“Good eyes, Calhoun. You sure picked up on what wasn’t there. Where do you work out of?” Richard asked.
“He’s with us, Chief” I half-lied. Chris was still looking over the lake and down the path. He walked down several steps while looking over into the walking path. He took out his phone and took a picture of the ground, looked at it, then put the camera back in his pocket. I walked over to him and picked out the set of shoe prints leading back down the path, along with web-footed whatever prints.
“Do you see or not see anything else?” I asked.
“Nope.” he replied.
“Who found him?” Chris asked.
“A man named, “he flipped through his notes, ‘Fernando Lugo’. He was South American, I think. Anyway, he was out walking this morning and walked up on all this”.
“Did he really say ‘Fernando Lugo’?” Chris asked.
“Yes, that is what I have. The man had an iPhone,” Richard added,” we’ve sent it to the lab to be checked out. We ought to hear a little something back this afternoon.”
“Let me know what they find out” I said. “Why don’t I call one of the vets from Fort Valley to come over here and look at these paw prints?”
“Suits me fine” Richard said, not really buying that it might mean something.
I picked up my cell and dialed a Fort Valley State University Veterinary professor named Vivek Shivpuri, or Viv for short. I fumbled over pronouncing his name so many times I just gave up and went with Viv. Brad and I took the Lab puppy I got him several years ago to Viv after I ran over the poor thing and broke her hip.
A little more than a half-hour later, Viv walked excitedly along the side of the path. He looked like Christmas morning right before letting the kids around the corner into the den where all the presents were waiting.
“I am very happy you called me, Mark! I don’t know of anybody who has ever been called me into an investigation before! What are you investigating?”
I turned so he could see past me and at the body and the tree. At that moment, a chainsaw fired and the police tech holding it leaned in toward the body. All the color went out of Viv’s face and his jaw dropped.
“No, Viv, he’s cutting the tree, not the body.”
“Oh I am happy you told me that” he said exhaling.
“Tell me what you think about these tracks down here,” I asked, “I am pretty sure they aren’t a beaver and Chris doesn’t think they’re an otter, either. So what are they?”
Viv leaned in over the police tape and turned his head this way and that, following the angle of the paw print in the soft dirt and mud. He asked for a tape measure and one of the techs brought one to him. He measured not just the distance between the steps made by the paw prints but the distance from right paw to left. He finally stood with his head down resting on the back of his hand. He shuffled around as he was thinking and genuinely seemed confused.
“You are right it is not a beaver. You are
also right it is not an otter.” He finally said, thoughtfully. “It really looks canine.”
Four
“A dog? But it has webbed feet?” I asked.
“Lots of dogs have webbed feet, “Chris added, “Labradors and Weimerranners”.
Viv agreed and added, “But what is puzzling here is the spacing between the shoulders and from the front to back. It appears to be long and short but not like a Daschund. The anterior to posterior paw marks measures about fourteen inches and the space between paws is only five inches. This suggests a shape more like a weasel or an otter but the pads are canine and there is not a track of a tail being drug. The weight of this animal would be around ten or twelve pounds up to about seventeen or eighteen”.
Chris added, “so a long and squat-looking dog? Like a basset hound”?
“Smaller,” Viv responded, “and not as heavy but again, it has webbed feet”.
“So are we assuming this isn’t just an otter without a tail?” I asked. The looks I got back suggested that wasn’t a very good question.
“I’ll go back to the college and look up a few things. I have something in mind but that would be an animal I doubt very seriously lived around Rozar Park and one I have never heard of anyone owning around here” Viv suggested as we shook hands on the way out.
Richard walked out with us and we talked as we crossed the bridge. “I guess the guy was killed somewhere else, and dumped here by somebody who owns a dog with webbed feet that looks like a weasel?” he