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

said.
    â€œNo,” Jarrett said, “he could have had an orange vest and the bear ran off with it before we arrived. Or ate it. We’ve known that to happen.”
    â€œWhat, bears fancy orange?” Martha looked skeptical.
    â€œâ€™Member the mountain lion attacked that mushroom picker up at Hungry Horse Reservoir?” Walt said. “He pounced on the fella, ripped off his backpack, and took off with it like he was toting a bowling trophy. Guy didn’t have a scratch.”
    â€œThere’s another possibility,” Stranahan said. “He was bowhunting. You don’t have to wear orange in archery season, but you do wear camo.”
    â€œI ran that by Doc,” Martha said. “Bow season closes early October. He thought there would be more decomposition if the body had two months to age before the ground got cold.” She squatted down, her elbows on her knees. She made a steeple with her fingers and scratched her chin.
    â€œKatie, you haven’t said a word.”
    Katie Sparrow was sitting with her back to a tree, dwarfed by the shepherd that sprawled across her lap. She looked up, shrugged, and kissed Lothar playfully on the nose.
    She said, “I empty my head when I run dogs. Most handlers try to get inside someone’s mind. What’s this guy thinking, where is he going? But lost people, they’re lost in the first place because they aren’t thinking logically, and then when the panic sets in, they’re running wherever their feet take them. The panic is predictable, but where the panic leads them is unpredictable. But the dog doesn’t care what a guy’s thinking. All he cares about is the scent. The scent tells the truth. So when I’m up here, I try to be like a dog, stick to the grid, just work out the tracks. Me and Lothar, we let you guys do all the figuring.”
    â€œWell, thank you for that insight,” Martha said. “That’s more sentences strung together out of your mouth than I think I’ve heard before.”
    â€œGlad to be of help.” The woman smiled, wrinkling the corners of her eyes. She bit the ear off a dog biscuit.
    â€œBut if you had to guess?” Martha persisted. The sheriff had worked a dozen missing hunter/missing hiker SARs with Sparrow and knew the petite handler possessed a keen mind. She seldom offered an opinion, but what little she did say was carefully weighed and logically presented.
    Sparrow sucked at the water hose of her Camelback backpack. “I think you’re looking at murder. Either that”—she capped the hose intake—“or it was a hunting accident. Someone fired at movement, took the fella for an elk. Then panicked and buried the body. The other possibility is a bear. Bears will bury a carcass. But I don’t think so.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause I’ve been around bears all my life and haven’t known one yet to bury a carcass and not come back for the rest of it. Not if undisturbed. And if this bear killed him late fall, early winter, he’s trying to fatten up for hibernation. He’d have eaten him up, bones and all.”
    â€œWarren?” The sheriff’s sergeant was the most practical person Martha had ever met.
    â€œI agree with Katie. If a bear buried this man, he’d have been recycled through its gut system eight months ago. I think we ought to be careful exhuming the rest of the body. I think we should bring in the roots from a radius around it. If somebody cut clean through them with a shovel, then we get Harold back on his feet and he might be able to confirm it from the scarring.”
    â€œThat’s a good point.”
    â€œWhat about me? You didn’t ask my opinion.” It was Walt, an injured note in his drawl. The former Chicago policeman had affected western speech patterns and mannerisms since moving to Bridger five years previously. It was his cowboy boot, a crocodile Tony Lama, that had made