Gray Ghost Murders (9781101606070) Read Online Free PDF Page A

we’re going to do. Warren, Walt, take down the pack and put those bones back exactly where we found them. Here’s the surface scatter sketch we made yesterday.” She fished in her breast pocket for the paper drawing and handed it over, along with a half dozen prints developed from the scene photos she’d taken with her digital. “Then we stand back, eat our lunch, and let Sean work the bench.”
    She looked at Stranahan, one eye lifted as if appraising a plug horse with rain rot scabbing its coat. “Though what you think you’re going to find this long after that man went into the ground is beyond me. But I’m going to humor Harold and let you have your shot. That tape marks the boundary of our involvement yesterday. The chopper landed in the meadow I pointed out to you down at the trail junction; they took Harold down to it in a game cart with a motorcycle tire—you can see the tread mark from here.”
    Stranahan nodded.
    Martha went on: “Beyond the tape, anything farther up the mountain, anything to north or south, none of us went there. Once you’ve cleared the area inside the tape, we’re going to go in with the gas probe to outline the position of the body before the bear dug it up, grid it off and collect any evidence still buried. Between you, me, and the walls of this mountain, I think if we learn anything at all it’s going to be at a forensic level. Still, let’s treat it as a crime scene with the blood still wet. Okay, any questions?”
    â€œHow far afield should I conduct a search?” Stranahan said.
    â€œGo from here to Canada if you want to.”
    Walter Hess pinched his Adam’s apple. “Jeez, Marth, that’s like two hundred miles, give or take.”
    â€œOh come on, Walt. It’s called hyperbole.”
    â€œJust saying it’s a far distance, that’s all.”
    Martha looked at him—he had to be kidding, right? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
    â€œI’ll try not to get lost,” Sean said.
    While the bones were repositioned, the atmosphere on the mountainside changed. A cloud had been hanging on the peak when the team left the trailhead, the temperature dropping during their climb, producing an upslope fog as the air cooled to the surface dew point. One minute it was crisp, clear, cold where the sweat had dried on Stranahan’s shirt; the next minute he was enveloped in mist. The boulder where the bear had dug up the body shone dully, like a tombstone. Sean glanced at the skull, encrusted with dirt, a few strands of gray hair over one eye socket. A chill flushed through his veins, sifting the hairs on his forearms.
    â€œGive a fella the willies,” he heard Hess say behind him.
    Sean tapped the ground with a stick, emulating Harold Little Feather, who claimed that isolating a track by tapping next to it helped focus the concentration. The soil, still damp from early summer snowmelt, offered a yielding surface for tread impressions, and Sean easily isolated several distinct patterns. The heavy impressions of the bear, where they had not been tramped over by the recovery team and later the EMTs, were unmistakably grizzly, the front claw indentations a full three inches beyond the toe pads. The ground, a tone darker where Little Feather’s blood had seeped into the soil, smelled of sheared copper. He noted Lothar’s paw impressions and suspected the corduroy ribbing pattern beside a rending in the earth was where the tracking dog had lain down, marking the position of the body before the bear had unearthed it.
    Stranahan focused the camera that had been in Little Feather’s effects when he was admitted to the hospital.
    â€œWhat do you think you’re doing?” It was Ettinger, standing impatiently at the edge of the bench, a half-eaten elk meatloaf sandwich in her hand.
    â€œBeing thorough.”
    â€œBe thorough faster.”
    Sean ignored her and