Spin Out Read Free Page B

portion. “When I worked Smokey Mountain in Tennessee, back in the late nineties, I took the opportunity to go take the four day Outdoor Body Recovery Course they give for law enforcement out at the U of T’s Body Farm.”
    While he’d talked I’d managed to get my other boot off and foot into the waders. “Jess Garts of my department and I went down to Arizona and took a three day course. The other two are State Troopers.” Then I fought with pulling the darn things up my legs.
    “One of them would be Doug Dougherty, he’s on his way over.” Suited up, Fred dove back into the bins and bags on the back of the cat. “Caught him on the phone as I was out the door.” When he came back up, Fred checked his tongue at Nadia. She looked up in time to catch the roll of crime scene tape rather than get hit in the chest by it.
    “So, yeah,” I caught the roll of twine Fred tossed at me with one hand, “We’re what we got out here.”
    Kabe’d parked himself in Fred’s vacated seat in the cat’s cab. “You do this a lot?”
    As he pulled out more gear, a couple of thin pipes with T handles and a bundle of wooden stakes, Fred chuckled. “Define a lot .”
    “Yeah, we do a fair share of body recoveries…more than some jurisdictions.” There were some law enforcement agencies that saw a body, maybe, every ten years. Up here we weren’t so lucky. “Most of them are what they call death by misadventure.” Not a lot of population, but a lot of darn stupid people and space where no one could find you.
    “Good bit of the time it’s skeletal remains out in the woods. Hikers who fall, folks who drove off the wrong road and die of exposure, poacher who had a heart attack.” Fred used the pipe probes to aim his next words at Nadia. “You ain’t been here long enough, but we get more than our share of suicides.” Then he swung them up onto his shoulder for toting over to the body. “Every time I get a call out for one of these, I think ‘don’t let it be another dead Mormon boy swinging from a tree.’” Almost like an afterthought he added, “Sad.”
    Nadia huffed and coated the air in front of her with sparkles. “I thought religion was supposed to give you solace.”
    “It’s a tough row to hoe,” I shrugged, “if you’re a bit different and don’t quite fit the ideals you’re supposed to strive for.” Lord knows I spent thirty odd years trying to fit myself into that mold. Since I weren’t really up to a discussion about theology and my former church, I switched the subject. “We ought to get started. I’d like not to be here past dark thirty.”
    “Not waiting for the coroner, again?” Nadia’s question played on our own local little joke. The current man who held the job spent more time avoiding his work than he would have spent doing it.
    I took a pack of stakes from Fred when he walked over to me. “Where the heck did he take off to this time, Fred?”
    “Cabo.” Fred grinned. “I think, maybe Mazatlan.”
    Kabe jumped into the teasing. “I thought Joe mumbled something about Sao Paulo while we waited for you guys to show up.”
    “I think we all agree he ain’t anywhere near here.” Not all the folks who held the position were this lazy. All of us at the station/jail complex had a pool going about how long it might take before the county supervisors got sick enough of his ducking the job and booted him. Figured we’d wasted enough sunlight, time to get to our gruesome task. “Okay, you know where we’re at. You can follow the tracks back here.” I jerked my chin at the snow-cat. “Nadia, why don’t you take Kabe and head back towards the road so you can ferry the others back here?”
    “Alright.” She patted Kabe on the back. “You and I can swap stories about San Francisco.” They’d both lived there at one time; Kabe until he wound up here on probation, and Nadia back when she worked Alcatraz Island for the Park Service—her, and her lady friend.
    “We’ll start the