flashlight. In the process of doing it, he blinded Cody again.
Cody powered down the window, and said, “Would you
“Oh, sorry.” The patrol officer, newer to the department than Cody, was blond and baby-faced with a trimmed bristly mustache that said,
“What happened to your front end?” Dougherty asked.
“Hit an elk,” Cody said.
“On the way up?”
“Yeah.”
“Bull or cow?”
Cody hesitated. “Cow.”
Cody knew what Dougherty would say next. “Got a cow permit?” he said, grinning.
“Ha ha,” Cody said, deadpan.
“I bet you’ll be hearing that one a lot.”
“I bet I will,” Cody said, nodding toward the patrol vehicle. “Those two the hikers who found the cabin?”
“Yeah. I met them at the York Bar and they showed me the way up here. Here, I got their names…” Dougherty dug inside his raincoat for the notebook in his breast pocket. He was in uniform: brown shirt, tan pockets, and epaulets. The reason the dopers called them “L &C County Fascists.”
“I don’t need their names,” Cody said. “Unless you think they did it.”
“Oh, no. Not at all.”
“Did they tromp all over the crime scene?”
“Just a little,” Dougherty said. “It’s hard to tell what they touched.”
Cody said, “Why don’t you ask them?”
“I can do that.”
“Good. Put one of them in this vehicle and interview them separately. Walk them through their movements when they first saw the cabin. Find out which direction they came down, and what they did inside. Find out what they touched and if they took anything. It’s amazing how many times citizens take souvenirs from a crime scene. If something sounds wrong or their stories don’t match, come get me.”
“Yes, sir,” Dougherty said. The flush was gone from his cheeks. Cody could tell he was beating himself up for taking their story at face value.
“I’m gonna go take a look,” Cody said.
“It’s wetter than hell,” Dougherty said. “The ash from the fire makes it all… soupy.”
Cody glared at him. “Have
Dougherty looked away for a second, and when he turned his head back he said, “A little.”
Cody’s voice was ice. “How fucking little?”
“Enough to confirm there’s a body. A big fat one.”
Cody took a deep breath of wet air.
“You aren’t gonna write me up, are you?” Dougherty asked. “I was thinking, Jesus, what if the person is still alive?”
“Don’t lie.” He repeated a sheriff’s department bromide: “You lie, you die, Dougherty. You wanted to see a burned-up dead body. Everybody wants to see a dead body until they see one. Have you had your fill?”
“Christ, yes,” Dougherty said, shaking his head. “I’ll be seeing that
“Step aside so I can get my rain gear,” Cody said.
It began to rain harder.
His foul weather gear was in a heavy plastic box in the back of his SUV and there was no way to reach it from the inside, so he grabbed his Colorado Rockies baseball cap, jammed it on, and opened the door. The cold rain stung when it hit his bare face and hands. He could remember only one other time when he got his rain gear out, the previous spring when he was called to a ranch because the foreman thought he saw Middle Eastern terrorists photographing a missile silo. Turned out the photographers were farmers from India on an agricultural mission sponsored by the State of Montana and their interest was wheat, not missile silos. But it rained so rarely in Montana, Cody thought, that packing rain gear was almost silly. He didn’t know a single person who owned an umbrella, for instance.
He leaned into the back of the Expedition while he wrestled with the box. It was jammed against the backseat and he had to pull it over the top of the rest of his gear-his long-gun case, large evidence box, canvas duffel packed with two armored vests, a survival crate the sheriff insisted they carry with them filled with a sleeping bag, candles, food, and water. While he threw the boxes around and got the one with his crime-scene clothing, he could feel the rain soaking through the back of his shirt and jeans. His boots were already wet from the puddle in the parking lot.
Even though it was getting more pointless by the second, he pulled on rain pants and slipped Tyvek booties over his wet boots. Instead of a raincoat he pulled on a full-length Australian oilcloth duster. Rain immediately beaded on the fabric.
His cell phone burred and he dug it out and saw the call was from his son Justin. Justin was an anomaly to Cody-miraculously, the only genuinely good person he knew. Justin was kind, selfless, and admirable. Plus he was tall and nice-looking and had a sweet temperament. Cody had no idea how he could have spawned such a child, given his own foibles and his long lineage of white-trash relatives. Every time Cody saw his son he looked for signs of his own obsessions and bad traits and had yet to see them. Justin was a fucking miracle at seventeen years old, Cody thought.
“Hey,” Cody said. “This is bad timing and my signal’s weak.”
“Hi, Dad. Sorry, but I wanted to ask you something.”
“I’m on a crime scene,” Cody said. “Can I call you back later?”
“Yeah, but do it quick. I’m gonna be gone for a while.”
“Gone where?”
“Didn’t Mom tell you?”
“I haven’t talked to her.”
“Oh.”
“Look, Justin, this is a really bad time.”
“You said that,” his son said, not masking his disappointment well. “I wanted to ask you if I could borrow-”
“You can borrow anything you want of mine,” Cody said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got to go. Later.”
He snapped the phone shut and crammed it in his pocket, feeling guilty and angry at himself for cutting off Justin.
Cody grabbed his digital camera and light setup and his favorite flashlight, a Maglite with an extension that held six batteries and could be swung like a heavy lead pipe-with the same results. It was better than that twenty-eight-inch maple bat. The long flashlights had been banned from most police departments, which Cody saw as a further sign of official wimpification. He turned toward the burned-up cabin.
As Dougherty escorted the female hiker into Cody’s SUV, he said, “Look at you. You look like a gunfighter in that coat. I need to get me one of those.
Cody sighed.
