Free Steel Breeze by Douglas Wynne

I’ll be damned if I know where to start
looking for the rest of him.”
    “Let’s
have a look,” Pasco said.
    Following
the sheriff to the spot she had glimpsed from the road, Drelick felt like she
was fording a river against a strong current. A ribbon of yellow police tape
broke free of the barricade stakes that cordoned off the area, flashing past
Drelick’s wind-lashed hair and snagging in a tree where it trilled with a
staccato flapping sound. Dust as fine as flour filled her nostrils, and she
wished for a bandana to tie over her face like a bandit in a spaghetti Western.
    Knowles
gave a nod, and an officer rolled one of the boulders aside with his boot. The
canvas flew up on the wind, releasing a cloud of black flies and wrapped tight
around the torso of a park ranger who was caught off guard—holding his hat down
on the crown of his head while batting at the canvas with his free hand. For a
fleeting second he looked like a man fighting a ghost while he wrestled the
fabric into a bundle.
    A
severed human head stared up at Erin Drelick from the dusty ground, its skin
painted in the purple-gray palette of death. The eyes and nasal cavity had been
picked over by carrion birds, leaving ragged white necrotic tissue where the
eyelids and nostrils should have been. The red cut along the neckline, however,
was laser straight.
    “You
have that photo?” she asked Pasco.
    He
took a 2 x 3 from his pocket, a headshot of Geoffrey Lamprey, age 37. Pasco’s
thumbnail blanched white as he squeezed it to keep the wind from stealing it. Drelick
nodded and said, “It’s Lamprey. Confirm?”
    “Confirmed,”
Pasco said.
    “Thank
you, Sheriff. That’s our head. Have your men bag it. There’s a cooler full of
ice in our trunk.”
    Sheriff
Knowles worked his jaw through a couple of rotations like he was chewing on
something. “A cooler of ice? You’re just gonna put it in the trunk of your
car?”
    “You
think we should FedEx it to L.A.?” Pasco said. “Taxpayers already put the gas
in our car to come up here.”
    “Alrighty
then. Officer Cook, you heard the lady; evidence bag.”
    Drelick
turned to the park ranger in the straw hat and insulated vest. “Are you the one
who saw it drop?”
    He
nodded, still holding the bundled canvas to his chest.
    “Give
us the play-by-play,” Pasco said.
    “I
saw the birds from the road before I got to work this morning. They were
fighting over something up on top of the tower, but I couldn’t see what. I
drove right over there as soon as I was inside the park. Maybe seeing me coming
made the vulture decide to take off with the head. He flew right over me, and a
couple of the crows tried to dive-bomb him. That’s when he dropped it right
here.”
    To
the Sheriff, Drelick said, “Did you find anything on the tower?”
    “Just
a little blood on the top platform where the head must have been left. Nothing
in the guard booth. No prints, no fabric on the barbed wire. You can go up and
have a look if you’d like. But tell me, Agent: what makes this a federal case
if the rest of the victim was also found in sunny California? Believe me, I’m
glad it is, but I’m also curious.”
    Drelick
stepped closer to him and, speaking under the roaring wind so that only he
could hear her, said, “There’s a resemblance to a case in Arizona.”
    “Huh.”
    “You
have any leads on witnesses who may have seen a car parked near the tower last
night?” Pasco asked.
    “Not
yet, but I’m sure you noticed we are in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. We’ll
see if anyone comes forward when it hits the news. So far no reporters have
noticed we’ve closed the park, and I’m in no hurry to bring it to their
attention.”
    “Good,”
Drelick said, “Hold off until we’re gone.”
    The
ranger shifted on his feet, suddenly looking uneasy. “Who did you call?” Pasco
asked him.
    “Just
my wife.”
    “She
a gossiper?”
    The
ranger shook his head. Drelick read his brass nametag. “Mr. Abath, my