Blood Trail - C. J. Box [34]
Pope huffed and crossed his arms across his chest, chastened.
“So what about the escaped prisoner?” Joe asked.
“Butch and Sundance treed him near Colorado Springs.” Lothar sighed, as if the conclusion of the story was so boring and inevitable that it was a waste of his time. “And a guard killed him with an AR- 15. He fell out of the tree like a sack of potatoes.”
JOE BEGAN to admire Lothar’s skill as they crossed the saddle slope. It was like hunting or stalking in super-slo-mo, Joe thought. Lothar moved a foot or two, then squatted to study the ground in front of him for bent grass stalks, footprints, depressions, anything left behind. Robey had stayed back at the crime scene to call his office, and Pope was still there, once again working his cell phone. Wally Conway was with him. As Joe and Lothar distanced themselves from Robey and Pope, the quiet took over. Whether it was Lothar’s caution and study affecting him or the fact that just the day before a man had been hunted down and murdered at this very location, Joe’s senses seemed to tingle.
The afternoon was cooling down quickly as a long gray sheet of cloud cover was pulled across the sun. Joe felt the temperature drop into the midforties. It dropped quickly at this elevation, and he zipped his jacket up to his chin. A slight breeze kicked up, enough to make the tops of the trees sound like they were sighing. Whirls of wind touched down in the far-off meadows, making dead leaves dance in upward spirals.
He nearly stumbled into Lothar, who had dropped to his hands and knees and lowered his head to ground level until his jaw was nearly in the dirt, looking toward the opposite slope.
“All right,” Lothar said, “the story is starting to tell itself to us.”
“What story?”
“Come down here and see for yourself.”
Joe bent to his hands and knees, mimicking Lothar’s perspective.
“What am I looking at?” Joe asked.
“Get your head low,” Lothar said, “so low the grass touches your cheek, and look toward the mountainside over there.”
Despite feeling a little silly, Joe all but pressed his face against the ground. When he did, from his new angle, he could clearly see two lines, like dry-land ski tracks, through the grass on the far slope.
“Those are heel marks,” Lothar said, “where our shooter dragged Urman from where he shot him to where he hung him in the trees. They’re hard to see because the grass is so short and the sun is straight over our heads. But when you get down at grass-stop level, you can see where Urman’s boot heels or boot toes bent the top of the grass and made furrows.”
Joe grunted, impressed. He assumed Urman’s body had been moved to where it was hung up, but surprised it had been moved such a long way.
“It makes sense now when you think of it,” Joe said, standing up and brushing bits of grass and dirt from his clothing. “The shooter wanted to hang him from a tree like a deer or elk, and the nearest trees are back where we started. So he had to drag the body across here.”
“Which means,” Lothar said, “we have a good chance of finding a footprint. If the shooter was dragging the body, he was setting his feet hard into the ground to pull. Urman wasn’t a small man, so it would have been hard work. Even though the ground is hard and dry, he might have made a footprint we can find because he was stepping down with so much effort in order to drag the body along.”
Joe nodded.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Lothar said. “You mentioned that far hillside would be a good place to hunt because one can see so well from there.”
“Yup.”
“If it were you, where would you set up to look for elk? Where specifically?”
Joe studied the slope, fixing on the granite outcroppings. Several were too low down to provide a good field of vision into the valley. But there was one outcropping toward the top of the slope that not only offered a hunter enough cover to hide behind, but was high enough up the slope to see well into the valley below. Joe pointed