Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

He stood at the place on the trail where he and his brother had taken their trophy. The traps were gone now. The bones, too, had been cleared away. They had been taken to the state forensic lab for analysis. Without a head, and without any fingerprints, since all the flesh had been chewed off, there was no way of making an identification of who the remains belonged to.

The bones would be cremated and buried in a common, unmarked grave.

He took the photographs out of the Manila envelope he had brought with him, the photographs he had taken over the course of several months. He looked at each in turn, carefully, remembering how he had felt when he had originally taken them, and before that, when he had first found out.

It had been a gut-wrenching feeling. A feeling of emptiness, of almost utter despair.

Now there was no feeling. That was in a different lifetime.

He dug a small firepit in the moist spring earth. Spreading the photos in the depression, he poured enough lighter fluid on them to insure that they would burn easily. Then he lit the match to them.

The pictures burned slowly, the ends curling as the flame grew towards the center. The smoke drifted up into the sky.

When the photographs had burned completely, he covered the depression with dirt and smoothed it over with his boot. Then he walked away down the trail.

He had done his hunting here. He wouldn’t come to this place again.

11

She went to bed early. She tired easily now that she was pregnant.

He sat outside in the dark, on the edge of the back deck he’d added on two years ago. It was a warm evening. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. His feet were bare. He felt the grass under his feet when he stretched them out over the edge of the deck. It was a well-made deck. He’d done all the work himself, in his spare time.

He finished his beer and went inside. He tossed the bottle into the recycling bin in the kitchen and went through the mud room into the garage.

The open freezer gave off a dry-ice smell. He lifted the various packages, including those of the venison he had taken in deer season. This weekend he’d thaw one of the packages out and they’d have a barbecue. He’d make venison burgers.

Pushing some other packages aside, he reached down to the bottom of the large freezer and pulled out the Ziploc bag. The contents of the bag had formed an unclear opaqueness; you couldn’t see inside it from the outside.

He unzipped the bag and lifted out the contents.

He had been coming out to the freezer all winter and spring, at least once a week. Taking out his prize and looking at it, handling it, exposing it to the air. Too many times, that was obvious now.

The trophy head was going bad. Pretty soon he’d have to throw it away.

The Big Shuffle by Clark Howard

In his introduction to his new short story collection, Challenge the Widowmaker, Clark Howard talks of a common element to all Iris stories: “That characteristic is the quality of pride... manifesting itself in surprising ways at unexpected times, giving... desperate people the mind and muscle... to get through another day, and hopefully get another chance.”

* * *

Jack Nash had not even sat down at his desk on Monday morning when his boss, Sam Spear, the company’s Director of Claims, came briskly into his office with a file folder in his hand.

“Where the hell have you been for two days?” he asked gruffly. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you since noon Saturday.”

“I went down to Ensenada,” Nash replied undefensively. “Did a little albacore fishing. Laid on the beach. Drank tequila. It’s a primitive custom called enjoying the weekend.”

Spear was a beefy, overbearing man of sixty, with a widely held reputation throughout California All-Risk Liability Company of being able to frighten subordinates with a mere glance. Nash, his best claims investigator, was the one person who was never intimidated by him.

“I don’t suppose you’re up on the news,” Spear said. It was actually an accusation.

“The only news that interests me on weekends is the weather report, Sam.” Nash sat down at his desk while Spear dropped his heavy bulk into one of the chairs facing it and tossed the file folder over to him.

“Eureka Petroleum,” Spear said. “One of their company planes went down in a lake up in northern Nevada late Friday afternoon. Pilot survived, but one of their vice presidents, Richard Tenney, sank with the plane. We carry a blanket policy for a million on all the company officers.”

“With P, T, and A?” Nash asked, opening the folder.