Another Man's Moccasins

I had Den show me the exact route that he had taken, and then I retreated to the top of the culvert with my two deputies, where it was unlikely anybody had been. I squatted down in a hunter’s crouch and listened as Cox dismissed the Dunnigan brothers.

I turned to Chuck. “You know how to open a baler?”

The sandy Vandyke smiled back. “Born to it.”

“Go crack that one open and check the contents and then split the last two bales northbound. If she was walking or running from somebody, then she might’ve dropped her purse or something along the way.” Frymyer paused for a moment, and I looked at him. “You need help?”

He glanced back at the one-ton bales. “Yes.”

I looked at Double Tough, and he started off with Chuck.

There was still a lot of light—it was like that in the summer this far north—and you could plainly see where the young woman had played out the last moments of her life. She was provocatively dressed, inappropriate for the surroundings. She had on a short skirt, a pink halter top, and no shoes. Her long, dark hair was tangled with the grasses; it had been blown by the ever prevalent Wyoming wind, and you could see her delicate bone structure. The eyes were closed, and you might’ve thought she was asleep but for the blue coloring in her face and a swollen eye, and the fact that, from the angle, it was apparent that her neck had been broken.

I listened as Cox came up and squatted down beside me. "You losing weight? ”

“Yep, I’m in the gym with Cady every day.”

He nodded. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s good, Karl. Thank you for asking. Hey, speaking of Cady, could I get you to have Rosey call into our dispatch and ask them to tell her I won’t be coming home tonight?”

“You bet.” He tipped his campaign hat back. “DCI’s on the way. I think you got the wicked witch of the west herself.” I nodded. T. J. Sherwin was always looking for a reason to come up to the mountains in the summertime. The division lieutenant plucked a piece of the prairie and placed the harvested end in his mouth. “We checked all the way back to Casper, Walt, but no abandoned vehicles.” He glanced after my deputies. “Your guys gonna check the baler?”

“Yep.”

“Good. My guys wouldn’t know which end to look in.” He studied the body of the dead girl and then looked up at me. “I’ve got men checking all the Chinese restaurants in Sheridan, Casper, and Gillette to see if anybody’s missing....”

“Don’t bother.” I ran my hand over my face. “She’s Vietnamese. ”

2

“She wasn’t walking, not without shoes.” T. J. Sherwin watched as the technicians zipped up the black plastic bag and carefully placed the Asian woman’s body onto a gurney under the constant racket of the generators. The flat, yellow shine of the emergency lights made even the living look jaundiced.

I closed my eyes. “Fresh?”

It was getting late, and the warmth of the sun was long gone, replaced by the stars and the clear, cool air creeping down from the Bighorn Mountains. It hadn’t rained in more than a month.

She hugged herself. “Less than twelve hours.” I put my arm around her because I wanted to keep her warm and because I wanted to. She’d been the chief forensic pathologist for Wyoming’s Division of Criminal Investigation for half of my tenure in Absaroka County. She’d thought me antiquated, but in seventeen years I’d grown on her. “She wasn’t killed here. Preliminary says asphyxiation, manual strangulation by someone very powerful. Whoever it was, they started by strangling her and then broke her neck.”

“They didn’t do a very good job of hiding the body.”

I could feel her eyes on me. “No, they didn’t.”

I took a quick look ahead to the county road, toward the highway. “There’s an exit only a mile up.” I looked at the uncut grass on the other side of the culvert. “We’ll have to look for drag marks or footprints farther north. We’re going to need to check the roadside back to 249 and down to 246 at the south fork of the Powder.” She shivered and snuggled closer under my arm. “My guys about through with the bales?”

She snickered. “They’re gonna love you.”

“Yep.” I watched as the bag boys loaded the dead woman into the Suburban for transport to Cheyenne. “So, you’re not going to stick around?”

“Too much to do.” She left my protection and started back up the slope toward the emergency vehicles splaying their revolving blue, red, and yellow lights across the wildflowers that were blooming under the sage.

I started to follow but stopped, sighed to myself, and called after her. “Anybody check that thing yet?”

She turned back to me. “The tunnel? No, I think they were going to wait until daylight.”

“You wan’ company?” Double Tough gave me his Mag-Lite.

I took half an egg sandwich and shook my head. “Nope.” The food had just arrived, and I knew they were hungry; I figured I could prowl around on my own. “But I’ll take one of those cups of coffee.”