Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(3)

He stopped the ATV at the swamp edge and dug his binoculars out of his gear bag. Although the idling engine made his field of vision tremble, he zoomed in on the form and sharpened the focus.

The first thing he noticed made him draw a sharp intake of breath.

The body was black and charred and curled up beneath the overhang. Two rows of white teeth, human teeth, appeared bright and almost electrified from the lower part of the skull. The lips were either burned away or eaten off by the ravens.

An arm stuck out from the body as if reaching out for help that didn’t come. Three of the five fingers had already been cleaned of flesh to the bone by the ravens. A fire-blackened silver wristwatch hung loosely from the carpal joints.

Joe felt his stomach clench and his body go cold.

It wasn’t a moose that Lorne Trumley had found on the edge of his property.





CHAPTER TWO


    Joe and the Body


“What do you mean, burned?” Sheriff Scott Tibbs asked Joe as they drove Trumley’s Ranger from the ranch house on the same ATV tracks Joe had used earlier.

“I mean burned,” Joe said over the sound of the engine. In order to hear each other, each man had to lean toward the other.

“Like he stepped in that thermal water?” Tibbs asked. “I heard there were hot springs out here.”

“There are,” Joe said. “But no, like he caught on fire.”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Tibbs said, reaching up to clamp his hat tight on his head. “This I got to see.”



* * *



—

It was an hour after Joe had discovered the body and called Tibbs directly on his cell phone. Tibbs had driven his own Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department SUV to the Trumley ranch, followed by Deputy Ryan Steck and rookie officer Tom Bass. Joe had left Steck and Bass to mill around in the ranch yard with Trumley because the Ranger was the only vehicle they could use to access the crime scene. Forensics tech Gary Norwood was also on his way from town, as well as another deputy, who’d been ordered to tow a trailer with two additional ATVs chained on its bed.

Tibbs had been the sheriff for only a few months, after being talked out of retirement in Buffalo by the local county commissioners. He was portly and folksy with a thick white mustache, and jowls that trembled with the vibration of the Ranger. He still wasn’t settled into his new job, and since he had started, events had come at him like water from a fire hose. First the mayhem in the Bighorn Mountains, and now this. Joe felt sorry for him, because there was no way Tibbs had had the time yet to get his bearings in the new county. Locals were already starting to question his competence and ability.

Joe was also well aware that most of the trouble Tibbs had encountered involved . . . Joe. He guessed that Tibbs had probably cringed when he saw who was calling, and Joe couldn’t really blame him.

“Do you know who the victim is?” Tibbs asked. “Is he local? You know a hell of a lot more people around here than I do.”

“I don’t even know if it’s a he,” Joe replied. “I didn’t get close enough to identify him or her.”

“You didn’t touch the body or tramp around the location, did you?”

“I didn’t even cross the swamp. I called you as soon as I found it.”

“That was the right decision,” Tibbs said. “I know you have a reputation for inserting yourself into sheriff’s department business where a game warden doesn’t belong.”

“Who told you that?” Joe asked.

“It’s well known.”

Joe didn’t think it was the right time and occasion to defend himself, so he bit his tongue. Since he’d been assigned to the Saddlestring District nearly twenty years before, there had been exactly one good sheriff who’d done his job well: Mike Reed. He’d also been Joe’s friend. All the other county sheriffs had been corrupt, incompetent, or both. The last one, Brendan Kapelow, had falsified his résumé and vanished when the lie was discovered. So of course Joe had involved himself in investigations even though he often wasn’t wanted.

Tibbs shouted, “You described the body as ‘still smoldering’ when you found it.”

“Yup.”

“How long has it been there, do you think?”

“I don’t know, but I’d guess just a few hours. The birds were just getting started.”

“Are you sure he’s deceased?” Tibbs asked.

“Has to be,” Joe said. “There was absolutely no movement.”

Despite his answer, though, the question felt like a knife thrust into his belly. He hadn’t even considered that the person could still be alive. The body was burned beyond recognition, being fed on by predator birds, but still, the thought of him leaving a suffering human being was sickening. He wished he had checked on the victim before calling Tibbs, even though Tibbs would have chided him for contaminating the scene.

“I remember reading an article about how some people spontaneously combust,” Tibbs said. “Do you believe something like that can actually happen? You’re walking along minding your own business and then poof, you realize you’re on fire?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said. He was still reeling from the fact that Tibbs had even assumed Joe was the kind of man to leave a victim to die. He prayed he hadn’t screwed up like that.