Decker was staring out over the spot where Cramer’s body had been found. In the distance one could see the humps of the Badlands. The sky was the clearest it had been since they had arrived. To the north was Saskatchewan, to the west the vast footprint of Montana.
Decker was interested in neither. His sole focus was this little patch of North Dakota soil where someone had dumped Irene Cramer’s body. As he gazed around, his mind was analyzing a million different factors. Only one of them might hold any importance for the investigation, but you had to go through all of them to get there. It seemed both a likely and an unlikely place to find a dead body. Likely in that it was isolated and remote, and that was good for getting rid of unwanted dead bodies without being seen. But unlikely in that such wide-open spaces allowed no cover for anyone disposing of said dead bodies. One could literally see for miles. But at night, it would have been a different story.
“What’s near here?” he asked Kelly, who was leaning next to the SUV. Jamison was hovering to the right of Decker and staring at the spot where Cramer had been found.
“Hugh Dawson’s cattle ranch is that way.” Kelly pointed west. “About two miles. It’s a big place. He has a lot of land. But we have an abundance of that around here.”
“Dawson said they found the wolf. Where?”
“About three hundred yards from here. With Parker’s round still in it, like Hugh said. Dang thing was pretty big. If Hal had arrived much later, that critter would have torn up Cramer’s remains. We lucked out there.”
“Did he say why he was hunting in this particular area?” asked Jamison, who was now kneeling down and more closely examining the ground where the body had lain.
“He told me he’d been tracking it the last three nights. He drew up a range of places to check, based on the animal’s hunting pattern. I hunt too, but not like Hal. He’s a real pro. Can track anything anywhere. He said this quadrant was a likely spot to pick the wolf up based on that analysis. He’d been at it about two hours before he caught sight of the thing and took his kill shot.”
“Are we sure it was the same wolf that had attacked the cattle?”
“Yeah, they found some of the remains of the animals in its belly.”
“Were there any tracks around Cramer’s body? Foot or car tire or anything like that?”
“We did check for that but the problem was a heavy rain had started up right when Hal found the body. If there were any tracks, they got washed away when that happened.”
“And Parker didn’t mention seeing any before the rain hit?” asked Decker.
“No. And that’s the other reason I don’t think there were any. The guy’s a seasoned hunter and tracker. If there had been any, he would have spotted them and told us.”
“So the fact that the body was untouched by animals could be because it was dumped here shortly before Parker found it, like you suggested previously, Decker,” said Jamison. “So we might have lucked out there.”
“And the wolf might have been in this areabecauseit caught the scent of the dead body,” added Kelly. “But that doesn’t explain the insect infestation.”
Decker said, “She could have beenkeptsomewhere else, where flies and insects could have gotten to her but animals couldn’t have.”
“But why would the killer bother doing that?” asked Kelly.
“He might want to screw with the timing of death, which would make our job harder. And if there was something inside her that he wanted to get, that would have taken time and he couldn’t cut her open while she was alive. At least I hope he didn’t.”
Jamison said, “Was anyone else around to see or hear anything?”
Kelly shook his head. “No, just Hal. Doubt there was another living person anywhere near here at that time of night.”
“How far away does Parker live?” asked Decker.
“About forty-five minutes from here.”
“Well, let’s go hear his story.”
THE ROAD WAS LONG, dusty, and wide open to the waves of heat shimmering under a sun that seemed closer to the earth than it should have been.
In the distance they could see oil rigs pumping and a sea of gas flares burning off straight into the atmosphere. They passed one tanker truck that had gone off the road and was driving through what looked like farmland.
“What the hell is he doing?” asked Jamison, who was driving the SUV.
“Dumping his saltwater waste,” Kelly replied, looking angry. “Some of what comes back up the pipe after it goes down it to fracture the shale. What that trucker is doing is against the law. He’ll ruin that land for farming forever because the salt permanently burns the soil to nothing. They pull that shit all the time just to save themselves time and trouble. We fine the crap out of them and they still keep doing it.”
“How much farther?” asked Decker.
“It’s right up ahead, on the left.”