“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.
“Maybe it’s an accident of some kind,” Tibbs said. “Or a suicide.”
Joe didn’t respond.
Tibbs craned around to look into the bed of the Ranger.
“I just wanted to make sure I brought the evidence bag,” he said. “I’m kind of out of practice, you know. You’d think after the number of bodies we found a while back up in the mountains, I’d be more on my game. Do you leave a pile of dead men everywhere you go?”
“I do not,” Joe said defensively.
“Could have fooled me,” Tibbs said.
Joe wheeled through the opening in the willows and braked to a stop in the place he’d parked before. The body was still where he’d spotted it and it appeared to be in the same position. The biggest difference was that two bald eagles had scared away the ravens from the torso and they looked up and stared at the arrival of Joe and the sheriff with cool disdain in their unblinking eyes.
Tibbs swung out and fired his service handgun twice into the air.
“Now git, you birds!” he shouted.
The eagles rose with ungainly flaps of their huge wings and they struggled above the height of the willows. One of them had a long red strip of flesh in its hooked beak. The other issued a piercing Skree.
* * *
—
The sheriff’s radio squawked to life and Deputy Steck’s voice came through clearly. “Boss, is everything all right out there? We heard the shots.”
“Everything’s fine,” Tibbs reported back. “I was just chasing off some birds.” Then Tibbs reconsidered. He said, “No, it’s not all fine. We’ve got a situation.”
Tibbs holstered his weapon while shaking his head. “Good thing you didn’t find it tomorrow,” he told Joe. “There wouldn’t be much of a body left.”
Joe agreed, although he was still unsettled by the possibility—however remote—that the person could have still been breathing when he’d left.
“Can we get across that swamp?” Tibbs asked.
“We can try.”
The sheriff started to lumber back to the four-wheeler, but stopped short and stared down at something near his feet.
“There’s something strange here in the grass,” he said. “Like chunks of food.”
Joe flushed. “That’s where I threw up.”
“Oh.”
* * *
—
“Hold on,” Joe said as he clicked the four-wheel-drive toggle on the dashboard and jammed his boot on the accelerator. The ATV jerked forward and plumes of muddy water shot up from the tires on both sides. Tibbs clutched the handhold over his head on the frame of the Ranger and turned toward Joe so he wouldn’t get splashed in the face.