conscious when the first axe blow fell, how the killer
must have used the trunk of Harris’s car to strew the
body parts along Ward Dairy Road.
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HARD ROW
I mulled over the chronology and tried not to visu-
alize what he had described. “Nobody saw him after
that Sunday, the divorce was final on Monday, his legs
weren’t found till Friday and the ME’s setting the time
of death as when?”
“Originally between Saturday and Thursday, but
that’s been narrowed down to Sunday as the earliest
possible day.”
“Because Flame talked to him then?”
“And because his farm manager saw him on Sunday
around noon. If the body was in that unheated shed
from the time of death till the night they were found,
then Sunday’s more likely. If somebody held him pris-
oner for a few days first though, it could be as late as
Thursday. Denning’s taking extra pains with the insect
evidence in the blood.”
Read maggots.
“Is that going to be much use? Cold as it was all that
week, would there have been blowflies?”
“Remember the foxes?”
I smiled and lifted his hand to my lips. Of course I
remembered.
It had been a chilly Sunday morning back in early
January. The temperature could not have been much
over freezing, but the sun was shining and when he asked
if I’d like to take a walk, I had immediately reached for
a scarf and jacket. Hand in hand, we had rambled down
along the far side of the pond, going nowhere and in no
hurry to get there, enjoying the morning and sharing a
contentment that had needed few words. On the right
side of the rutted lane lay the lake-size expanse of dark
169
MARGARET MARON
water; on the left, a tangle of bushes, trash trees, and
vines edged a field that had lain fallow since early sum-
mer. Some farmers hate to see messy underbrush and
are out with weed killers at the first hint of unwanted
woody plants, but we’ve always left wide swaths for the
birds and small mammals that share the farm with us.
That morning, sparrows and thrashers fluttered in
and out of the hedgerow ahead of us as we approached
and our footsteps flushed huge grasshoppers that had
emerged from their winter hiding to bask in the warm
