Last to Die

would find the scrotum swollen with those same gases.

“Forty-eight to seventy-two hours,” said Dr. Owen. “You agree?”

Maura nodded. “Based on the relatively minor amount of damage by scavengers, I’d favor the lower end of that postmortem interval. The attacks are confined to the head and neck and …” Maura paused, glancing at the bony stump poking from the jacket sleeve. “… the hand. The wrist must have been exposed. That’s how they got at it.” She wondered if Bear had sampled a taste before bringing his putrid prize to Claire. A friendly lick won’t be so welcome after this.

Dr. Owen patted the victim’s jacket and cargo pants. “There’s something here,” she said, and withdrew a thin billfold from the cargo pocket. “And we have ID. Virginia driver’s license. Russell Remsen, six foot one, a hundred ninety pounds. Brown hair, blue eyes, thirty-seven years old.” She eyed the cadaver. “Could be. Let’s hope he has dental X-rays on file.”

Maura stared at the victim’s face, half of it gnawed away, the other half swollen and streaked with purge fluid. A postmortem bulla had ballooned the intact eyelid into a bulging sac. On the right side, scavengers had stripped the neck of skin and muscle; the damage extended all the way down to the neckline of his clothing, where sharp teeth had already punctured and frayed the fabric, trying to tear into the thoracic outlet. Evisceration would have been next, heart and lungs, liver and spleen dragged out and feasted on. Limbs would be ripped from joints, portable prizes to be carried off to dens and pups. The forest would do its part as well, vines twisting around ribs, insects delving, devouring. In a year, she thought, Russell Remsen would be little more than bone fragments, scattered among the trees.

“This guy wasn’t carrying your usual hunting rifle,” the state police detective said, examining the weapon perched on the boulder. With gloved hands, he brought it over to show Dr. Owen, turning it to reveal the manufacturer’s stamp on the lower receiver.

“What kind of rifle is that?” asked Maura.

“An M one ten. Knight’s Armament, semiautomatic with a bipod.” He looked at her, clearly impressed. “This one’s got excellent optics, twenty-round box magazine. Fires a three oh eight or a seven six two, NATO. Effective range of eight hundred meters.”

“Holy cow,” said Dr. Owen. “You could shoot a deer in the next county.”

“Wasn’t designed for hunting deer. It’s military issue. A very nice and very expensive sniper rifle.”

Maura frowned at the dead man. At the camouflage pants. “What was he doing up here with a sniper rifle?”

“Well, a deer hunter might use one of these. It’s a pretty handy weapon if you want to drop a deer at long range. But it’s kind of like using a Rolls-Royce to make a run to the grocery store.” He shook his head. “I guess this is what you’d call irony. Here he was, equipped with top-of-the-line gear, and he’s taken down by something as primitive as an arrow.” He glanced at Dr. Owen. “I take it that’s going to be the cause of death?”

“I know cause of death seems obvious, Ken, but let’s wait until the autopsy.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

Dr. Owen turned to Maura. “You’re welcome to join me in the morgue tomorrow.”

Maura thought of slicing into that belly, ripe with decay and foul gases. “I think I’ll pass on this autopsy,” she said and stood up. “I’m supposed to be on a holiday from Death. But He keeps finding me.”

Dr. Owen rose to her feet as well, and her thoughtful gaze made Maura uncomfortable. “What’s going on here, Dr. Isles?”

“I wish I knew.”

“First a suicide. Now this. And I can’t even tell you what this is. Accident? Homicide?”

Maura focused on the arrow protruding from the dead man’s eye. “This would take an expert marksman.”

“Not really,” said the state detective. “The bull’s-eye on an archery target is smaller than an eye socket. A decent archer could hit that from a hundred, two hundred feet, especially with a crossbow.” He paused. “Assuming he meant to hit this target.”

“You’re saying this might have been an accident,” said Dr. Owen.

“I’m just throwing out scenarios here,” said the cop. “Say two buddies come hunting on this land without permission. The guy with the bow spots a deer, gets excited, and lets an arrow fly. Oops, down goes his buddy. Guy with the bow freaks out and runs. Doesn’t tell anyone, ’cause he knows they were trespassing. Or he’s on probation. Or he just doesn’t want the trouble.” He shrugged. “I could see it happening.”

“Let’s hope that is the story,” said Maura. “Because I don’t like the alternative.”

“That there’s a homicidal archer running around these woods?” said Dr. Owen. “That is not a comforting thought, so close to a school.”

“And here’s another disturbing thought. If this man wasn’t hunting for deer, what was he doing up here with a sniper rifle?”

No one responded, but the answer seemed obvious when Maura gazed down at the valley below. If I were a sniper, she thought, this is where I would wait. Where I’d be camouflaged by this underbrush, with a clear view of the castle, the courtyard, the road.

But who was the target?

That question dogged her as she scrambled down the trail an hour later, across bare boulders, through sun and shade and sun again. She thought of a marksman poised on the hill above her. Imagined a target hatch mark trained on her back. A rifle with an eight-hundred-meter range. Half a mile. She would never realize anyone was watching her, aiming at her. Until she felt the bullet.

At last she stumbled out of a tangle of vines onto the school’s back lawn. As she stood brushing twigs and leaves from her clothes, she heard men’s voices, raised in argument. They came from the forester’s cottage at the edge of the woods. She approached the cottage, and through the open doorway she saw one of the detectives she’d met earlier up on the ridge. He was standing inside with Sansone and Mr. Roman. None of them acknowledged her as she stepped inside, where she saw an array of outdoorsmen’s tools. Axes and rope and snowshoes. And hanging on one wall were at least a dozen bows, as well as quivers filled with arrows.

“There’s nothing special about these arrows,” Roman said. “You can find ’em in any sporting goods store.”

“Who has access to all this equipment, Mr. Roman?”

“All the students do. It’s a school, or haven’t you noticed?”

“He’s been our archery instructor for decades,” said Sansone. “It’s a skill that teaches them discipline and focus. Valuable skills relevant to all their subjects.”

“And all the students take archery?”

“All those who choose to,” Roman said.

“If you’ve been teaching for decades, you must be pretty good with a bow,” the detective said to Roman.

The forester grunted. “Fair enough.”

“Meaning?”

“I hunt.”

“Deer? Squirrels?”

“Not enough meat on a squirrel to make ’em worth the trouble.”

“The point is, you could hit one?”

“I can also hit your eye at a hundred yards. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Whether I took down that fella up on the ridge.”

“You had a chance to examine the body, did you?”

“Dog took us straight to him. Didn’t have to examine the body. Clear as day what killed him.”

“That can’t be an easy shot to make, an arrow through the eye. Anyone else at this school able to do it?”

“Depends on the distance, doesn’t it?”

“A hundred yards,”