Known Dead_ A Novel - Donald Harstad [25]
‘‘Okay,’’ I said. Trying to be a math major. ‘‘That’s eight people, three meals a day. Or one person for eight days. Or . . .’’
‘‘Right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘I’ll go for four people for two days myself.’’
That was one combination I hadn’t thought of. Among many, I admit.
‘‘Or maybe I’d prefer two people for four days,’’ she said, grinning.
Eddie, who was known for allowing his concentration to overwhelm his sense of humor, got more to the point. ‘‘There aren’t any breakfasts here,’’ he said. We were silent for a moment, clearing the threes out, and doing twos. Pointless. There were twenty-four bags. That’s what we knew. It told us they, however many, had stayed for a while, for however long. But if they were related to the crime, and it sure looked like they could be, then they didn’t pull their people out at sunset like we did. That meant, at least as a possibility, that they had watched our people enter and leave the area. Spooky.
The sun was finally starting to burn the fog off as we finished collecting and labeling the evidence. It started getting hot, and the humidity was already unbelievable. I suggested we go back to the crime scene and walk a much wider area. And I suggested that we should proceed to the scene from where we were standing. Just like ‘‘they’’ would have.
It turned out that to get there we had to go up and over a large steep, slippery hill that was covered with damp fallen leaves, and hotter than hell. The trees were thick, and the area between them was covered with thorny brambles and thick, reedy weeds. Took us about two hours. I hate it when people take my suggestions. I was pretty well shot when we got to the top of the hill, and called a halt.
‘‘Hey,’’ I managed to get out, ‘‘let’s stop and catch our breath.’’
Hester, whose hair looked like she had just gotten out of a shower, said, ‘‘Why?’’ and promptly sat down. Eddie looked like he could keep going the rest of the week, but squatted down beside us just to be polite.
Eddie, looking energetically about him, asked, ‘‘How we gonna tell if they’re related, sir?’’
Not unlike Hester when she’s called ‘‘ma’am,’’ I get a bit put off by ‘‘sir.’’ ‘‘Oh,’’ I said, still breathing hard, ‘‘we’ll try for prints. From the shell casings.’’ I took a breath. ‘‘You have to touch ’em when you load ’em.’’ Another breath. ‘‘Then dust the boxes and the MREs.’’ I wiped my forehead, scratching myself with a bramble as I did so. ‘‘Shit. Then see if the same prints are on more than one item.’’
‘‘Oh, sure,’’ said Eddie. ‘‘Okay, then what?’’
Hester, bless her, took up the lesson. ‘‘We run every print through APHIS.’’ APHIS is a computerized fingerprint searching system. Very fast. ‘‘And we talk to whoever belongs to the prints.’’
He thought about that for a second. ‘‘But what if there aren’t any good prints, ma’am?’’
Hester looked at him evenly. ‘‘Then we send you out to piss again.’’
I paused for a second just before we went over the crest of the hill, and looked back. I’d been wondering if we would find a trail left by the perps. We hadn’t. But, looking back, I couldn’t see where we’d just been either. I pointed this out to Hester. She thought she could see a faint area of disturbed leaves, but agreed that in twenty-four hours there’d be nothing left to mark our passage either. Not good.
We got lucky for the last time on the way down toward the patch. We discovered what was obviously a man-made barrier, sort of a long, shallow hole with three or four fallen branches piled up around it. Rifle pit.
‘‘Just like the Army,’’ said Eddie.
‘‘Yep.’’
From the area of the pit, you could see part of the track we had followed up to the scene the day before, and part of the scene itself, with some lab people just starting their day. Thick trees and brush obscured the rest