As Fred began examining the wounds on the body of Jim Hoffman, Skip carefully removed the paper bags from the victim’s hands. Using a clean, small-bladed knife, he scraped along the inside of each fingernail. The scrapings were deposited in a small white envelope to be sent to the lab in St. Louis.
Finished with the hands, he started going over the dead man’s clothing, paying particular attention to his shirt collar, pants cuffs and pockets. But a couple of bagger-lice and some pocket lint was all he found.
“You ready to get him undressed?” Fred asked.
Skip nodded.
Undressing the dead man proved to be quite a task. Besides being on the healthy side, the body was stiffening up, making the work that much more difficult. As each item of clothing was removed--shoes, socks, shirt, pants, underwear--it was carefully wrapped in clean white paper, labeled and placed in the first trash receptacle. Once the body was undressed Fred went back to examining the wounds, while Skip took elimination finger and palm prints.
“Take a look at this,” Fred said, pointing at two symmetrical cuts on the left side of the victim’s neck, each about a half-inch in length. The first cut was just below the left ear; the second was on the throat, just above the Adam’s apple. The victim’s face disappeared just above the cuts.
“Looks like they were made by a weapon of some kind,” Skip commented, not sure what Fred expected him to see.
“Could be,” Fred nodded. “The damage to the skull indicates the jaw was torn away in a left-to-right movement.”
“Torn away?”
“Yeah. I’ve got some damage indicators on the right side. Stretched muscles, torn ligaments, bruised flesh... that sort of thing.”
Skip pulled out a notebook and wrote down what Fred said. “Cross out chain saw. Crowbar, perhaps?”
“It’s a thought, but not likely.” Fred pointed again to the two cuts. “The weapon that took this man’s face off had two distinct points set approximately five inches apart. But it was probably curved like a crowbar, because instead of slicing through the back of the neck it hooked under the lower jaw.”
Fred turned the dismembered lower jaw over. “The marks are more pronounced here. Notice the scratches on the jaw bone and the tears along the gum line, just aft of the lower incisors. See how several of the incisors are pushed forward? This would indicate that the points, or prongs, of the weapon were at least three inches long, perhaps longer.
“The base of the tongue is also shredded badly and has been torn free from where it attaches to the lower jaw. I’d say the weapon entered through the left side of the victim’s face, at an area parallel to and a little below the jawline, passed through the mylohyloid, which forms the undersurface of the chin, and out through the mouth.”
Turning his attention back to the body, Fred paused to allow Skip time to catch up with the notes he was taking.
“Another thing, both the external carotid artery and the superior thyroid artery were severed, which would account for the actual death of the victim. As much blood as those arteries pump, he was probably dead before he hit the ground.”
Fred crossed the room. Reaching a counter near the wall, well away from the body, he lit up a cigarette. Skip jotted down what he said, closed his notebook, and joined him. Both men knew that it was going to be a long morning; there was still another body to do. It had already been a long morning for the sheriff.
The undressing and initial inspection of the second body--the teenager--was carried out like the first, with Skip checking for trace elements and taking notes. No wallet or I.D. was found on the deceased, but the sheriff’s office had received a missing persons report with a description matching the victim’s. Still, he couldn’t be completely certain if it was the same person until someone identified the body.
As they removed the last of the clothing Skip’s attention was drawn to a tattoo on the kid’s left shoulder. It was a black 74, about an inch in height and two inches across.
“What’s that?” Fred inquired.
“Biker tattoo. It stands for seventy-four cubic inches, the size of the old Harley engines.”
“Harley Davidson? This kid don’t look like a biker to me.”
“He doesn’t look like one to me either,” Skip agreed. “He’s too young...too clean-cut. Maybe he’s a wanna-be.”
Fred’s eyebrows knitted. “Say again.”
“A wanna-be. That’s what you call someone who likes to dress like a biker, act like a biker but doesn’t have the balls to get on a bike. Who knows, maybe he’s got a subscription to Easy Riders magazine.”
“Maybe,” Fred nodded.
Either way, the tattoo could prove useful for putting a name with the body. Skip would give a call back on the missing persons report and see if the youth missing had such a tattoo. He hoped not, because he hated breaking bad news to local citizens. What could he possibly say to soften the blow? Good news, we’ve found your son--he’s at the morgue.
The teenager’s chest cavity was a gaping red chasm under the harsh fluorescent lights. Blood stained the kid’s skin from his navel to his knees, with a good portion of it settling around his groin. There was no blood on his face, which meant he’d been killed prior to being hung upside-down in the tree.
“Look here,” Fred said, breaking Skip’s train of thought.
The coroner pointed to three cuts just above where the kid’s collarbones should have been, but were no longer. They traveled downward for an inch before reaching the missing section of body. The marks were identical to those found on the other body. Skip opened his notebook as Fred started in with an oral description.
“Once again we have encountered marks, cuts, if you will, made by an unknown instrument with a pointed or pronged cutting surface. The cuts travel downward before disappearing, indicating the killing blow was administered in a downward motion. We lose track of the cuts just above the clavicle, and I believe it is here that the weapon sank deep into the flesh, because the clavicle failed to either deflect or stop the stroke. The fact that the clavicles are no longer present would also indicate that the weight of the weapon, and or the force of the blow, must have been considerable.”
Fred paused long enough to allow him to catch up. “The rib cage also seems to have had no noticeable effect on the blow. A strip six inches wide is missing from the clavicle to two inches above the navel. Most of the ribs have been torn free from where they connect to the thoracic vertebrae, and the sternum is missing completely.”
“So you’re saying...” Skip interrupted. Fred was starting to sound a little too technical. Once the old man got started, he could talk for hours without stopping.
Fred looked across the table and smiled. “Sorry, I guess I was starting to get carried away. It’s just...I’ve never come across anything quite like this before.”
Skip looked down at the body and sighed. “One thing’s for sure, when word gets out about this I’m going to have half the bloody town down on my back. Can you give me anything preliminary to go on...anything at all?”
Fred removed his glasses and wiped them on a handkerchief. “This is just an educated guess, mind you, but I think your killer is at least six feet four inches tall and built like a gorilla. Had to be tall to make the cuts at the angle they are, and had to be stronger than hell to do this kind of damage. After seeing this kid, I can tell you that the weapon used is at least six inches wide, with curved prongs a half-inch wide and from three to six inches long.”
“Sounds like a potato rake,” Skip commented.
“Exactly,” Fred nodded. “Only picture a potato rake that’s been welded to a heavy metal bar, something to give it enough momentum to do a lot of damage.”
“Sounds pretty frightening,” he said.
“Not nearly as frightening as the psycho wielding it. You said you found him in a tree?”
Skip nodded. “About fifteen feet off the ground.”
“Damn.” Fred shook his head. “Why would anyone want to do something like t
hat?”
“It’s hard to say. Maybe he was involved in drugs.”
Fred cocked an eyebrow. “You want me to run a chemical analysis on him?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” the sheriff replied. “Go ahead and run one on both of them.”
“Your wish is my command,” Fred grinned. He turned and looked at the remaining plastic bag. “I guess we’d better have a look through this boy’s insides while we’re at it.”
Skip shuddered. There was no way he was going to probe through the ghastly contents of the last bag. “I think I’m going to have to pass on that one, Fred,” he said.
“Oh?” The coroner sounded disappointed. “Well, I guess you do have enough to keep you busy writing reports for the next couple of hours.”
“More like the next couple of days.”
Fred nodded. “If I find anything else of value, I’ll give you a call.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Skip said.
Fred pushed his glasses up higher on his nose. “Do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Nail the son of a bitch that did this.”
“I’m gonna try, Fred. Believe me, I’m gonna try.”
Chapter 4
The deer couldn’t have been dead for very long--four, maybe five hours at the most. It probably died sometime during the night. If he guessed right, it had been killed between midnight and sunup.
An eight pointer. Nice rack.
Kneeling next to the deer’s hind legs, Jay Little Hawk examined the ragged cut running lengthwise down its underbody. Whoever did the slicing was either in a hurry or didn’t know what they were doing. He suspected the latter, seeing how the scent glands weren’t removed. Just as well the poacher dumped the carcass, because the meat wouldn’t have been fit to eat. Sloppy job. Damn sloppy, if you asked him. Such a waste.
Grabbing the legs, Hawk flipped the deer over. He liked to retrieve the bullet whenever possible. Sometimes it made the difference between a poacher going free or going to jail. Odd, he could find no sign of a gunshot wound on the right side either. Maybe he’d overlooked it.
Running his hand slowly along the sleek hide, he felt for a knot, bump or small patch of dried blood. Just because the wound wasn’t visible didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Sometimes a piece of tallow becomes dislodged, plugging the hole like a cork in a wine bottle. The animal still dies, but all the bleeding is internal. But even with his fingers, he could not locate the bullet hole.
That was strange. There had to be a wound somewhere. Deer just don’t stand still and let you field-dress them. Flipping the animal back over, he rechecked its other side but found nothing. He even examined the deer’s anal passageway, thinking somebody might have made a one-in-a-million shot. A trace of greenish dung was all he found for his troubles.
He just couldn’t figure it out. Unless whoever brought the buck down had been directly underneath it when they fired--which wasn’t likely--there was no evidence the deer had been shot at all. Surely somebody hadn’t just stumbled across the buck after it was already dead and decided to field-dress it. No one was that stupid, were they?
The more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. In his ten years as a game warden he’d seen his share of poachings, but what he saw today just didn’t sit right with him. There was something odd about the whole thing, something he couldn’t put his finger on.
Why had the deer been cleaned, then abandoned? Was it just a botched operation? Did the person or persons involved get scared and dump it at the last minute? The ground beneath the buck was soaked with blood, so it was obviously gutted where it lay. If that was true, then where were the internal organs? Like the bullet wound, they were nowhere to be found. He’d never heard of someone keeping the innards and discarding the body, but from the looks of things that’s exactly what they’d done.
Wiping off his hands with dried leaves, Little Hawk walked over to a fallen log and sat down. He pulled a pipe from the pocket of his flannel shirt, filled it with tobacco and lit it with a kitchen match. A cloud of cherry-scented smoke rose above him. He watched the cloud, pondering the mystery before him.
His discovery of the deer was accidental. Hawk wasn’t looking for poachers; it was his day off. Even on his days off, he liked to spend as much time in the woods as possible, enjoying the sights and sounds of Mother Nature. He’d acquired his love of the forest early in life, as a boy living on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina. The Great Smoky Mountains had been his playground, the animals and birds his playmates.
On the eve of Hawk’s twelfth birthday, his parents were killed in an automobile accident. With no other relatives in North Carolina, he’d been sent to stay with his grandfather, who lived on the reservation of the Western Cherokee near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. His grandfather, though strict, was caring and wise. He was also a tribal shaman, and it wasn’t long before he began teaching his skills and knowledge to Hawk.
The knowledge hadn’t come easy. Hawk spent years learning tribal history, customs, ceremonies and medicine. He endured the stifling heat of the sweat lodge, the numbing hunger of fasts and the loneliness of the vision quest. But it was all worth it. Not only did he learn how to walk in balance, but the Great Spirit blessed him with the ability to cure certain illnesses, to see things others couldn’t and to walk upon a spiritual plateau unknown to the white man.
Hawk left the reservation at the age of nineteen--two months after the death of his grandfather--to enlist in the army. It wasn’t an easy choice, but he had to do what his inner voice told him. With a promise that he would one day return, he boarded a dust-covered Greyhound bus for Tulsa.
The army was good to him despite sending him to Vietnam straight out of boot camp. Truthfully, he didn’t mind going to Vietnam. His tour “in country” proved to be an excellent opportunity to sharpen the survival skills taught to him by his grandfather. Those skills paid off on two different occasions, saving his platoon from walking into VC ambushes. Each time he’d been alerted to the enemy’s presence by a tiny warning signal going off deep inside his head, an uncanny sixth sense that saved him and his buddies from certain death.
While Hawk sat and silently reflected on his past, a fluffy white cloud drifted lazily across the Missouri sky, momentarily passing in front of the sun. As it did, the shadows in the tiny clearing shifted slightly, causing him to notice something he’d overlooked earlier, something he never would have suspected.
Curious, he got up and walked back over to the deer. Running his hand over the body confirmed what the shadows pointed out. The animal’s neck was broken.
What the hell?
Along the banks of Lost Creek, where the water is shadowed deep blue by the hills on each side, grow tiny patches of wild ginseng. Some know about the fabled plant and search for its twisted roots amidst clumps of wild blackberries, poison ivy and flowering sumac. In the town of Truesdale there is a place where you can get twenty dollars for a pound of the dried root. The root is resold to a commercial health food store in St. Louis, where it is falsely labeled as “Korean ginseng” and sold to skinny, pallid-faced customers looking for the easy way to fitness and health. Even at twenty dollars a pound, few search for the plant; for it takes many roots to make a pound and it just isn’t worth braving the mosquitos, yellow flies and water moccasins to get to it.
Hawk also gathered the tiny roots of the wild ginseng plant--known as “Little Man” to Cherokee medicine men--but he didn’t do so to sell it. He made more than enough money as a game warden to suffice his every need. Instead he boiled the roots with other wild plants to create a herbal tea helpful in relieving the agony of rheumatic joints. Not that he suffered, but there were others who did. He also gathered the black mud from along the creek bed, and the green moss from the larger rocks, to make a compress better for healing open wounds than anything a doctor could prescribe.
Placing a freshly dug root into the cloth sack he carried, Hawk whispered a few words of thanks and dropped a
glass bead into the hole as payment to the plant’s spirit. He then washed his hands in the icy cold water of the creek. The water was crystal clear, with a faint taste of minerals to it. Both the coldness and the peculiar taste were the result of the creek running underground for several miles. About two miles farther south of where he stood the creek would again disappear from sight, traveling through one of the area's many subterranean caverns. Where it eventually ended up was anybody’s guess, hence the name “Lost Creek.”
Thinking about caverns and subterranean passageways reminded him that he ought to check on the Devil’s Boot while he was in the area. The “Boot,” named for its unusual shape, was one of Hobbs County’s better-known caves. In fact, it was the only one anybody had ever bothered to name.
Located halfway up the side of a steep hill, in the center of a limestone and granite bluff, the cave’s entrance was a modest hole about seven feet high and fifteen feet wide. The opening was protected by an overhang of grayish rock and partially blocked by a rubble of fairly large boulders. The first chamber was about twenty feet wide and nearly the same height, its floors covered with a layer of sand and fine gravel.
A tunnel at the back of the chamber led into the hillside thirty feet or so. There it connected to a larger chamber whose floor happened to be twenty feet straight down. The second chamber was shaped like the bottom of a man’s boot, giving the cave its name.
Over the years, the cave became a very popular attraction with the local teenage population, so much so that its floors were constantly littered with empty beer cans, wine bottles and discarded condoms. Some energetic individual even constructed a wooden ladder from the tunnel down into the second chamber. With the difficulty of reaching the second chamber made easier, Devil’s Boot became the place to hang out for the Budweiser-and-marijuana crowd. All that ended a little over two years ago when an eleven-year-old boy slipped on one of the ladder’s rungs and fell to the rocky floor below. He died en route to the hospital.
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