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he’d kept the sheriff’s department busy from time to time.
    Curt Boyd, the rancher’s youngest son, had attended his share of rodeos and county fairs as a tyke, sporting the little cowboy boots and oversized hat that scrunched down on top of his ears, so cute, cameras clicked when he scampered by. Years later, I had watched the track meet when the Posadas Jaguars took state, and it had been Curt Boyd who had hammered the pole vault, anchored the mile relay, and set a state record in the 440. He’d dominated the 4-H livestock classes at the county fair as a teenager, but with all of his big fish in a small pond success, Curt had never taken to the ranching life, hadn’t beaten himself lame like his daddy with a life of livestock, barbed wire, post-hole diggers, and recalcitrant windmills.
    The last I’d heard, he had settled in as a social studies teacher in Las Cruces, coaching track on the side. I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen him, but this poor battered corpse bore enough resemblance to the living Curt Boyd that I had no doubts it was him.
    Dr. Perrone muttered something, scrunched down and manipulated the victim’s head and neck. “Is Linda here yet?” He looked up at Estelle, whose own camera had shot dozens of images while she waited for the department’s photographer, Linda Real, who should have been working for the FBI, but instead had married one of the deputies and stayed home and happy.
    â€œShe’s on the way.”
    â€œYou’re going to want to document this pretty thoroughly,” Perrone said. “His neck is broken right at the first cervical. Damage right on down to the fourth. There’s no sign of exterior trauma from the rear, though.” He let out a long breath. “That’s just about the most massive whiplash injury I’ve ever seen.”
    â€œHe wasn’t hit from behind, then.”
    â€œNo. From this.” He traced a line along the victim’s jaw, mangled and bruised. It didn’t take a physician to see that the jaw bone was smashed, with teeth splintered as if some gargantuan boxer had caught him with an uppercut to end all haymakers. Perrone probed delicately with a gloved hand, holding his flashlight close. He fished a small plastic bag from his kit and deftly snapped it open. From a spot just under the jaw line he withdrew a splinter of dark wood. “Somebody clubbed him a good one under the chin.”
    â€œSomebody or something,” I said. The memory cards were beginning their long, lazy turns around the rusty spindle of my brain’s Rolodex.
    â€œSir?” Estelle prompted.
    I glanced at the undersheriff. “All this brings back memories. You remember Morris Ferguson?” No, she didn’t remember. Morris Ferguson was well before her time. But twenty-five or so years before, old Morris had won the job as Posadas’ mayor. He never had the chance to lift the gavel.
    â€œMorris went up to spend a weekend with his brother in Truchas,” I said. “They went out wood cutting, and a two-foot thick aspen tree they were felling got tangled and kicked back off the stump.” I looked up at the severed electric pole high above our heads, held suspended by the tangle of wires and the stout juniper fence post that acted as its fulcrum. Its marching partner, with the remains of the twisted transformer supports, lay flat in the dust. “Same thing. The aspen kicked back and caught him in the head.” I touched my temple.
    Estelle favored me with a bemused grimace, her dark olive skin and movie star teeth spectacular in all the surrounding lights. I shrugged. “Once in a while I remember something useful.” I reached up, but stretched as tall as I could manage, the butt of the pole was still three feet out of reach, a spear of uncut wood projecting a sword’s length where the pole had been jerked off its stump before the saw cut finished the job. “That