“Pretty good sample. Ten minutes,” Clancy said. He put the sampler in his case and snapped the case. “I’ll go back to the car and do it.”
“Ten minutes?” The sheriff’s eyebrows were up. “How reliable?”
“With a good sample, ninety percent,” Clancy said. “I’ve got a digital DNA record in my laptop.”
“How come that doesn’t get down to us?” the sheriff asked. “On-scene DNA could be handy.”
Clancy shrugged. “You could have it if you wanted it—but the machine costs seventy grand, and it’s about two grand per test, counting amortization on the equipment. Regular’s what, a hundred and fifty bucks, for a two-day wait?”
“No head,” Jake said, as Clancy disappeared back down the track. “No blood? Any sign of a struggle, any . . .”
“What you see is what we got, other than the ID,” Winsome said. “We’ve already bagged the ID. We could do some soil tests, but we wouldn’t learn much. The autopsy ought to tell us if he was alive.”
Jake looked at Novatny: “Christ, I hope it’s not him.”
Parker said, “Chuck, it’s him. You know it, I know it. The media is gonna go exactly berserk. This is gonna be worse than a Hollywood murder. This is gonna be worse than anything we’ve ever seen.”
They all looked glumly at the body for another ten seconds, and Novatny said, “Well, at least we’re not gonna be bored.”
“Don’t usually smell the gas afterward,” Jake commented.
“What?” The sheriff looked at him.
“The gas usually burns up and the smell of the fire cloaks whatever is left. This smells like they either spilled some that didn’t burn, or they deliberately sprinkled it around where it wouldn’t burn.”
“Why?”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just telling you that you usually can’t smell gas afterwards. At least, you can’t smell jellied gas—napalm. Not the day afterwards.”
“Well . . .” The sheriff looked for a moment at Jake, then turned to the state investigator and said, “Make a note, I guess.”
Jake said, “When the Klan was big, a hundred years ago, they’d lynch black guys they thought had raped or killed or smart-assed a white woman.” He nodded at the body. “Sometimes they’d use barbed wire and wire the victims to trees, or light posts, and set them on fire. They often castrated them. I never heard about them taking a head, though.”
“Is that right?” the sheriff asked.
“That’s right,” Jake said. “The barbed wire was kind of a
The sheriff said, “Huh.”
Jake said, “So it’s possible that they poured the gas on him and got more fire than they expected. But why didn’t they just bury him? They could have put him two feet down, two guys working hard, in the time it took to pile up that wood. If they’d done that, he might not have been found for years. Was the fire really meant to burn him up? Or was it an advertisement? This whole scene looks to me like it was designed to get the media to freak out.”
The sheriff looked at him closely, starting from his shoes, then asked, “What exactly do you
Novatny said, “You know, if that’s what it is . . . Jake, fifty people are going to look at our reports, the crime- scene stuff. It’s gonna leak.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Jake said.
The smell of the body had become intolerable, and there wasn’t much to do other than look at it. They were walking out of the woods and met Clancy halfway, coming in.
He nodded. “It’s him.”
Evening was coming on, and with it, the mos-quitoes. Jake walked down the road, kicking up little puffs of gravel dust, working his cell phone; Novatny walked the other way, working his.
Danzig said to Jake, “Jesus Christ. Hang on, Jake, Jesus Christ . . .”
Jake heard him, apparently on another phone: “It’s him. Yeah, ninety percent, they did DNA on him. Naw, naw, it’s him.” Talking to the president.
Then he was back: “Does that leave you anywhere to go?”
“Ah . . . maybe.”
“Do I want to know about it?”
“No. It’s not necessary—yet. And I’m on a cell phone here.”
“Okay. Tell me when it’s necessary to tell me. Has the FBI detailed anyone to talk to Madison Bowe?”
