“Lester, you all right?” Marlin asked, carefully eyeing the wooded area around him. A man was down, and at this point Marlin didn’t know why. Common sense-and law enforcement savvy-told him to approach the situation with caution.
“I’m okay, John,” Lester said, standing up. “But this ol’ boy ain’t doing good at all. I woulda called for an ambulance or somethin’, but it’s too late for that. I started to wait for your call at the house, but I figured I’d better come on back down here, keep the buzzards away.”
Marlin looked for footprints in the area, didn’t see any, and carefully stepped up beside Lester. He gazed down at the dead man and saw a familiar face.
The man was on his back, his head tilted to one side, eyes open but unseeing. Marlin noticed lividity-pooled blood-in the cheek closest to the ground, while the other cheek was white as a newborn’s butt. No need to even take a pulse; the man was long gone. A rifle lay by his side and the center of his camouflage jacket was dark with blood. His hands, too, were covered with dried blood.
“Bert Gammel,” Lester said dryly. “One of my hunters. I figure it was a stray shot that got him. Either that, or he somehow managed to shoot hisself.”
Marlin didn’t reply, but eyed the apparent entry wound. Dead center in the chest. Very unlikely that it was self-inflicted, even accidentally. Keeping his feet in place, Marlin bent low over Gammel’s rifle, trying to catch a scent of cordite, but there was none. It didn’t mean the rifle hadn’t been fired, but Marlin’s intuition told him it hadn’t.
“Did you move the body?” Marlin asked.
“Naw, just felt for a pulse. Gave me the willies, to tell the truth.”
Marlin stood and said, “Lester, I want you to step over here with me for a minute and answer a few questions. If you can, try to walk back to your truck the same way you walked in.” Marlin knew that Lester, even as tough as he was, would think more clearly if he wasn’t staring at a corpse. Also, Marlin had to protect what might be a crime scene.
Before questioning Lester, Marlin radioed the dispatcher and asked for assistance. Before long, the area would be swarming with personnel, including the sheriff, deputies, and the medical examiner.
With help on the way, Marlin grabbed a pen and notepad and turned to Lester, but the ranch foreman didn’t have much to tell. Lester said that he kept a spiral notebook at his house; hunters were supposed to sign in and out when coming and going from the ranch. Lester said that Gammel had hunted yesterday afternoon but had never signed out. It happened all the time. Hunters simply forgot, or didn’t want to bother with stopping at the foreman’s quarters on the way out.
When Lester came down this morning to repair a hole in the southern fence, he saw Gammel’s vehicle. He scouted the area, found the body, and immediately called Marlin. “I didn’t want to call the sheriff’s office just yet, John. Small town, you know, and I didn’t want to start a bunch of rumors. I knew you’d handle it right.”
Gammel was an employee with the county Public Works Department, a well-known figure around town. If word got out that he was found dead, the entire population would know by the end of the day.
“Did you hear any shots yesterday afternoon?” Marlin asked.
“A couple.”
“Can you remember what time?”
“I think there was one at about four o’clock, another at around five or five-fifteen, and then one more right before dark.”
“A little after six?”
“Yeah, I guess. Thereabouts.”
“Did any of the shots sound like they came from this direction?”
“The last one did. I figured it was probably Gammel, but I checked the notebooks and they didn’t show that he had killed anything.” The foreman was required to keep a second notebook that listed the date and time when all deer were killed on the ranch. “That’s when I noticed that he hadn’t signed out. Figured he forgot.”
“What time did he sign in yesterday afternoon?”
“Three o’clock.”
“Did you see him come in?”
“Yeah, he waved at me over at the barn. I was feeding the horses.” The ranch owners, the Hawleys, kept several quarter-horses on the property, coming out occasionally on weekends to ride. But they rarely showed during deer season.
“Was there anybody with him?”
“Nope.”
“Were any of the other hunters out here yesterday?”
“Jack Corey was here. Signed in at three-twenty; out at six-thirty. Didn’t shoot nothin’. But I never saw him, just what it says in the notebooks.”
Marlin gestured toward the neighboring property across the fenceline. “That’s the Bar T. They doing any hunting over there nowadays?”
“Not that I’ve heard of. Hasn’t been hunted in ten years.”
“You haven’t heard any shots from over there, or seen any hunters?”
“Not a one. I see the foreman on occasion. Sometimes we shoot the breeze over the fence for a while. Saw him a week or ten days ago. He didn’t say nothin’ about opening it to hunters this year. And if they had, I’m sure me or you woulda heard about it.”
Marlin paused for a moment and scribbled a few notes. Then he asked another question, trying to keep his tone casual: “Lester, have you ever heard or seen any kind of disagreement between Gammel and any of the other hunters? You know how a deer lease can get-guys get kind of possessive of their favorite hunting spots, or they don’t want anybody shooting does, things like that. Ever have any problems out here?”
Lester removed his Stetson and rubbed the back of his free hand across his brow. “I’ve had a few of them come to me over the years and ask me about a couple of things, wanting me to settle a disagreement or something. But nothin’ that would lead to somethin’ like this.”
Marlin nodded.
“Let me back up for a minute,” Lester said. “I should say that I’m in charge of the lease and everything. I collect the money, lay down the rules, and get the hunters’ signatures on the leases. But as far as how they divvy up the ranch or whose blind goes where, I leave that all up to them. So there coulda been some disagreements I ain’t never heard about. But there is one thing that seems to have caused some trouble over the years. Mind you, when I say trouble, it really hasn’t been that big of a deal.”
Marlin waited patiently.
“It’s been about spikes,” Lester continued, referring to bucks who have two nonforking antlers, rather than the multipointed antlers most deer carry. Many hunters consider spikes to be inferior deer, and insist they should be culled from the herd to prevent them from passing along their genes. “Can we talk off the record for a second, John?”
Marlin knew he was about to hear about some hunting violations-minor considerations when investigating a hunter’s death-so he told Lester to tell him anything he needed to.
Lester glanced over at the body. “Bert was big on shooting any spike that came along. He’d just shoot it and throw it in the ravine. Probably shot three or four every year. He wasn’t being an asshole or anything, just thought it was the right thing to do.”
Marlin nodded. Each time Gammel had done this, he was committing two game violations: one for failing to tag the deer, and the second for wasting the meat.
“And some of the other hunters wanted him to ease off?” Marlin asked.
“Yeah, there was a couple. The one time I saw it come to a head, Gammel almost got in a fight up at the barn where they butcher their deer.”
“With who?”
“Jack Corey.”
“What happened?”
“I arrived in the middle of it all, but I guess they had a few words and Gammel popped Jack in the jaw. Ol’
