“Yes, sir. I called them right after I got here—right after I called you.”
Dane smiled as the kid worked the brush lightly over the cracked and peeling paint. Ellis shrugged. “What can I say? He says he wants to be federal someday.” The sheriff leaned in and spoke even more softly than they already were. “You know, he pulled out all that crime-scene stuff right after I told him I’d called you out here. I think he’s trying to impress you. You are kind of a legend around here.”
Dane smiled a little wider and shook his head. “Well, I like him already.” He shifted focus. “They find the body?” Dane motioned over at the hunters, who were now gathered around a spray-painted matte black ATV. He thought about the tracks he’d seen in the woods—same pattern on the tires.
“Yeah, they called it in on a sat phone. They said they found him just like that.”
“What brought them out this way?”
“They said they heard a couple of shots from a handgun that spooked a buck they were walking down, and they made their way over here to see who fired.”
“They said they knew it was a handgun? Not a rifle or shotgun?”
“Yep. Even called the caliber. These guys live for that kind of thing.”
“And you believe them?”
“Yep. Well, I mean, they’ve been drinking a little, but hell, you know how it is out here, everyone in these woods normally is. I’d be surprised if they weren’t drinking.”
Dane’s smile turned to one of pride. The young man is catching on.
“That being said, sir, I don’t think they know much more than they’re letting on. They all seemed genuinely upset that this old fella was dead. People up here liked this old coot.”
“Yeah.” Dane’s smile vanished. “They did.”
Dane let the sheriff’s opinion be the final word on the hunters and gave his attention to the dead body at his feet. “Well, I’m not sure what I can do to help, but let’s have a look at what you got.” He kneeled down slowly and pulled back the sheet that covered the old man. The body lay facedown on the porch, flat on his belly, but it was Tom Clifford, all right. The skin that showed on the back of his neck was as old and leathery as dried jerky. Out of habit, Dane felt the old man’s neck for a pulse—nothing, just hard, dry leather. The body was rigid and cold to the touch, but he certainly didn’t look like a victim of any violence. On the contrary, he actually looked pretty peaceful. Other than a bit of dried blood on the porch next to the old man’s head and the awkward position in which his face was pressed into the wooden slats, he looked like he had just fallen asleep there. He lay lengthwise over the five feet of porch with his boots just over the threshold of the doorway, as if he had tripped and fallen and just decided to stay there. Dane felt a twinge of doubt, or maybe hope, and pressed two fingers down hard on the old man’s carotid artery again.
“He’s dead, sir,” Ellis said. “Two in the back.”
Dane pulled the sheet back farther to see twin bullet holes in the man’s puffy orange vest. Two perfect little circles in the fabric surrounded by loose down feathers. He pulled the vest up to see the wounds more clearly. “Yup, I suppose that would do it.” Dane reached across the body to roll him over. “Give me a hand with him, Sheriff.”
Ellis hesitated. “This isn’t really what I—”
“Just give me a hand, Darby. I’m not going to compromise your scene. I just want to take a look at him.”
The sheriff didn’t argue. He was still green to this kind of work and this was Dane’s old territory, so he grabbed Tom’s shoulder and helped roll him onto his side. The body stayed in the same flattened position, stiff from rigor, with strings of congealed blood connecting bits of the old man’s clothing to the wooden slats of the porch. They turned him over enough for Dane to see the not-so-perfect exit wounds in Tom’s chest. There was nothing peaceful looking about that. Dane could finally see Tom’s face and leaned in to get a closer look. He sighed. Death was always hard to look at up close. It lingered in the eyes as a cloudy reminder of how easily life could be stolen from a man. Dane and the sheriff eased Tom’s stiff body back down onto its belly the way it had been before, and Dane stood up. “Well, Sheriff. It looks like you caught yourself a real whodunit right here.”
The sheriff looked pensive and sagged a little in the shoulders. For the first time Dane felt like Ellis had been holding something back. In fact, the Sheriff had seemed unsettled ever since Dane asked him to help roll Tom’s body over. Dane kept his tone gentle. “If I’m out of line, here, Sheriff, I promise you, I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
Ellis chewed his lip as if he was making an attempt to swallow his reply. “That ain’t it, sir.”
Dane was genuinely confused. He didn’t just stumble upon this mess. He was called into it, so he pushed. “Listen, Sheriff, maybe a sweep of the cabin will turn up an answer or two as to what happened out here, but it’d be best to wait on them boys from Rabun before you try to start unraveling this little mystery.”
Ellis still seemed uneasy. He removed his hat and pushed his thick blond hair back in a sweaty wave over his head. He kept chewing his bottom lip. Dane thought he might just chew it off.
“Are you okay, Darby? Is there something you’re not telling me here?”
Sheriff Ellis pushed himself up from the porch with one hand and stood. It was the first time Dane took notice of just how tall and fit Darby Ellis was. He stood well over six feet—almost a full head taller than Dane. His broad, V-shaped shoulders were wide enough to put a strain on his uniform shirt. When he put his hat back on, Dane actually felt a bit intimidated. Sheriff Ellis hooked his thumbs into the sides of his patent-leather gun belt. “We’ll sweep the cabin, sir, as part of my investigation, but truthfully, that isn’t why I called you out here. I mean, I appreciate the help and all, but there is no mystery to solve.”
Dane was confused by the sheriff’s shift in demeanor. “Okay, Sheriff. If this corpse isn’t the reason you called me, then what exactly am I doing out here?”
The Sheriff looked down at the body at his feet and let out a long, slow exhale. “Professional courtesy, I suppose.”
Now Dane was really confused. “I don’t understand.”
Sheriff Ellis looked up and caught Dane’s eyes. “I delayed the coroner by a few minutes because the perp said he was a friend of yours.”
“What perp? Who is a friend of mine?” Dane watched the sheriff stroke at his clean-shaven chin.
Deputy Squire supplied the answer. “I think the Sheriff is trying to find an easy way to tell you that we wouldn’t have bothered you at all with this ugliness, Agent Kirby—the murder part, anyway—if you didn’t already know the man who shot him.”
Dane swiveled his head from Ellis to the young deputy. “I do?”
“According to the shooter, you do—sir.”
“Well, would somebody mind telling me who that is?”
“Him.” Darby pointed across a clearing to the left side of the cabin, opposite the hunters and the ATV. At the tree line, where the dirt and saw grass turned to woods, a man Dane could barely make out sat propped up against a cluster of sweet-gum trees about twenty-five yards away. The man was far enough from the scene that Dane hadn’t noticed him sitting there until that very moment. The man hadn’t made a sound or done anything else to bring attention to himself since Dane had arrived. He sat with his back against the trees in a T-shirt, covered from the waist down with a sheet identical to the one that covered Clifford’s dead body, but this man’s sheet was covered with leaves and dirt from the forest floor and no longer had the pristine white glow that Clifford’s had. Dane wondered at first how he could’ve missed him, but the truth was he hadn’t been looking. He’d stopped to examine some useless ATV tracks, but missed a half-naked man against a tree within shouting distance from where he was now standing. That fact only reinforced his belief that he no longer had any business being out in the woods playing big shot. He took off his ball cap and scratched at his head with the brim of it before taking a step off the porch and straining his eyes to get a better look at the mystery man. Then recognition set in. “You have got to be kidding me,” Dane said. He sounded winded when he spoke. The sheriff took the single step down off the porch to stand next to Dane.