On the other side of the fence they continued walking through the knee-high prairie grass. The sun had started to slip below the horizon, turning the sky a gorgeous purple-pink that seeped into the twilight’s deep blue. Out here in the open field, Maggie wanted to stop and watch the kaleidoscope effect.
She caught herself tucking away details to share later with Benjamin Platt, only she’d relate them in cinematic terms. “Think of John Wayne in
She stumbled over the uneven ground and realized the grass was getting thicker and taller. She struggled to keep up with Donny.
He was a giant of a man, wide neck and barrel chest. Maggie thought he looked like he was wearing a Kevlar vest under his button-down shirt, only there was no vest, just solid, lean muscle. He had to be at least six feet five inches tall, maybe more because he seemed to bend forward slightly at the waist, shoulders slumped as if walking against a wind, or perhaps he was uncomfortable with his height.
Maggie found herself taking two steps to his one, sweating despite the sudden chill. The sinking sun was quickly stealing all the warmth of the day and she wished she hadn’t left her jacket back in Donny’s pickup. The impending nightfall seemed only to increase Donny’s long gait.
At least she had worn comfortable flat shoes. She’d been to Nebraska before so she thought she had come prepared, but her other visits had been to the far eastern side near Omaha, the state’s only metropolitan city, which sprawled over a river valley. Here, within a hundred miles of the Colorado border, the terrain was nothing like she expected. On the drive from Scottsbluff there had been few trees and even fewer towns. Those villages they did drive through took barely a few minutes and a slight decrease of acceleration to enter and exit.
Earlier Donny had told her that cattle outnumbered people and at first she thought he was joking.
“You’ve never been to these parts before,” he had said rather than asked. His tone had been polite, not defensive when he noticed her skepticism.
“I’ve been to Omaha several times,” she had answered, knowing immediately from his smile that it was a bit like saying she had been to the Smithsonian when asked if she had seen Little Bighorn.
“Nebraska takes nine hours to cross from border to border,” he told her. “It has 1.7 million people. About a million of them live in a fifty-mile radius of Omaha.”
Again, Donny’s voice reminded Maggie of a cowboy poet’s and she didn’t mind the geography lesson.
“Let me put it in a perspective you can relate to, no disrespect intended.” And he had paused, glancing at her to give her a chance to protest. “Cherry County, a bit to the northwest of us, is the largest county in Nebraska. It’s about the size of Connecticut. There are less than six thousand people in nearly six thousand square miles. That’s about one person per square mile.”
“And cattle?” she had asked with a smile, allowing him his original point.
“Almost ten per square mile.”
She had found herself mesmerized by the rolling sandhills and suddenly wondering what to expect if she needed to go to the bathroom. What was worse, Donny’s geography lesson only validated Maggie’s theory, that this assignment—like several before it—was yet another one of her boss’s punishments.
A couple of months ago Assistant Director Raymond Kunze had sent her down to the Florida Panhandle, smack-dab in the path of a category-5 hurricane. In less than a year since he officially took the position, Kunze had made it a habit of sending her on wild-goose chases. Okay, so perhaps he was easing up on her, replacing danger with mind-numbing madness.
This time he had sent her to Denver to teach at a weekend law enforcement conference. The road trip to the Sandhills of Nebraska was supposed to be a minor detour. Maggie specialized in criminal behavior and profiling. She had advanced degrees in behavioral psychology and forensic science. Yet it had been so long since Kunze allowed her to work a real crime scene she wondered if she would remember basic procedure. Even this scene didn’t really count as a crime, except perhaps for the cows.
Now as they continued walking, Maggie tried to focus on something besides the chill and the impending dark. She thought, again, about the fact that there was no blood.
“What about rain?”
Almost instinctively she glanced over her shoulder. Backlit by the purple horizon, the bulging gray clouds looked more ominous. They threatened to block out any remaining light. At the mention of rain, Donny picked up his pace. Anything more and Maggie would need to jog to keep up.
“It hasn’t rained since last weekend,” he told her. “That’s why I thought it was important for you to take a look before those thunderheads roll in.”
They had left Donny’s pickup on a dirt trail off the main highway, next to a deserted dusty black pickup. Donny had mentioned he asked the rancher to meet them but there was no sign of him or of any other living being. Not even, she couldn’t help but notice, any cattle.
The rise and fall of sand dunes blocked any sign of the road. Maggie climbed behind him, the incline steep enough she caught herself using fingertips to keep her balance. Donny came to an abrupt stop, waiting at the top. Even before she came up beside him she noticed the smell.
He pointed down below at a sandy dugout area about the size of a backyard swimming pool. Earlier he had referred to something similar as a blowout, explaining that these areas were where wind and rain had washed away grass. They’d continue to erode, getting bigger and bigger if ranchers didn’t control them.
The stench of death wafted up. Lying in the middle of the sand was the mutilated cow, four stiff legs poking up toward the sky. The animal, however, didn’t resemble anything Maggie had ever seen.
THREE
At first glance, Maggie thought the scene looked like an archaeological dig revealing some prehistoric creature.
The cow’s face had been sliced away leaving a permanent macabre grin, jawbone and teeth minus flesh. The left ear was missing while the right remained intact. The eyeballs had been plucked clean, down to the bone, wide sockets staring up at the sky. Though the carcass lay half on its side, half on its back, stiff legs straight out, its neck was twisted, leaving the head pointing nose-up. Maggie couldn’t help thinking the animal had been trying one last time to get a look at who had done this to her.
Maggie guessed at the gender. Anything that would identify the cow as male or female had been cut away and was gone. And again, there was no blood. Not a speck or a splatter. What had been done was precise, calculated, and brutal. Still, she needed to ask.
“Forgive the obvious question,” she said carefully, treating this like any other crime scene, “but why are you absolutely certain predators did not do this?”
“Because bobcats and coyotes don’t use scalpels,” a new voice said from behind her. “Not the last time I checked.”
This was obviously the rancher they were meeting. The man came down the hill letting his cowboy boots slide in the sand, picking up his feet over tufts of grass then sliding down some more. Even in the fading light, he maneuvered the terrain without needing to look. He wore jeans, a baseball cap, and a lightweight jacket—the latter something Maggie was starting to covet.
“This is Nolan Comstock,” Donny said. “He’s been grazing his cattle on this parcel—how long has it been, Nolan?”
“Near forty years for me. And I’ve never lost a cow that looks like this one. So I hope you aren’t gonna waste my time and yours just to tell me a fucking coyote did this.”
“Nolan!” Donny’s usually calm, smooth voice now snapped. Maggie saw his neck go red; then, correcting himself, he changed his tone and said, “This is Maggie O’Dell from the FBI.”
Nolan raised a bushy eyebrow and tipped back his cap. “Didn’t mean any disrespect, ma’am.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t use that term.”
“What? The FBI doesn’t swear these days?”
