Dead Watch

by a senior citizen who clutched a hard plastic briefcase. A sheriff’s deputy got out of one of the cars and jogged toward Jake, who parked just inside the turnoff.
    “Sir, this is a restricted area.”
    “I’m with them,” Jake said, pointing at the chopper.
    Novatny and Parker were talking to another uniform, Novatny waving Jake over. He and the cop walked over and Novatny nodded at the senior citizen and said, “Jake, this is Clancy, he’s with our crime-scene unit, and this is Sheriff Bill Winsome, his people are working the scene right now.” Then Novatny asked, “What the heck did you do? You start talking to people and we get a burning body the next day.”
    Jake said, “Hey, I just put out the word.”
    Parker said, “Somebody sure as shit got it. We’ll want to know who you talked to.”
    All the cops looked at Jake for a beat, then Novatny turned back to Winsome. “You were saying . . .”
    “Somebody tried to burn the body with brush and gasoline. You can still smell a little gas,” Winsome said. He was an elderly man, with a round pink face and white hair growing out of his ears. He had the sad liquid eyes of a bloodhound. “The wood is still damp from all the rain and didn’t burn. They had it stacked around the body like one of them pyres.”
    “What about the head?” Parker asked.
    “Still no head,” the sheriff said.
    “What about the head?” Jake asked.
    “The head’s missing,” Winsome said. “It’s hard to tell what happened, exactly, because . . . well, if you’ve ever seen a burned body, they sorta melt. This one’s pretty bad, the hands are gone, most of the feet . . . but there should be a skull, or indications of a head, and there isn’t one. A head. Of course, we haven’t been all the way through the ashes, but I don’t think there’s gonna be anything there.”
    “Who found the body?” Jake asked.
    “Guy who lives down there—Glenn Anderson—saw a fire last night. Where there shouldn’t be one—”
    “He didn’t go over and check it?” Parker interrupted.
    “No, that happens from time to time, you get people out on them hiking trails. Anderson was out working in his shop, changing the oil in his brush cutter, and he heard this whoosh, and he looked, and here’s a fire as big as a house. It died down pretty quick, and wasn’t any threat because it’s been so wet. He figured some camper poured white gas on his campfire and got more than he bargained for. But then he got to talking to a neighbor this morning—they could smell something bad—and they went over for a look.”
    “Roast pig,” Novatny said.
    “Where’s the scene?” Jake asked.
    “Mile or so up the road, there’s a trail head, a hiking trail goes back into the woods,” the sheriff said. “It’s pretty narrow up there, lots of trees, thought it’d be better to put the chopper down here.”
    “Who knows about this?” Parker asked.
    “Nobody, except the people out here,” the sheriff said. “Won’t nobody find out about it until I say so, either, or somebody’ll wind up with their ass kicked up around their ears.”

    Jake drove, trailed by the two cop cars, Novatny, Parker, and the sheriff riding with him. Clancy rode in one of the sheriff’s cars. The sheriff, in the backseat, said, “I think maybe they got more of a fire than they expected, panicked, and ran. People think you sprinkle a gallon of gas on a bunch of wood and you get a campfire. What you get is more like an explosion. You can burn your ass off if you’re not careful.”
    The road was narrow, snaking through the woods, past a clear-cut the size of a couple of football fields, then over a hump and down a barely noticeable incline to the trailhead.
    A half dozen cop cars with LED racks, a couple of unmarked cars, and a van were pulled into the trailhead parking area. A farmhouse stood on the other side of the road, most of a half mile away, Jake guessed. Maybe a couple of city slickers thought they could get away with a fire, that far from anything. Maybe . . . But why didn’t they just bury the body?
    Two uniformed deputies and two men in civilian clothes were leaning on car fenders; when Jake pulled in, they straightened up and looked toward the newcomers. Jake got out with his cane, followed by Novatny, Parker, and Winsome. Clancy got out of the sheriff’s car and joined them. The odor of roast pig was thin, but definitely in the air. They all turned their noses toward it, looking