Free Scavengers by Steven F. Havill Page A

a graveyard shift deputy sheriff instead of using her GI bill money to attend a university and pursue her art was a question only Jackie could answer—and so far she had kept her reasons to herself. But the large eleven-by-fourteen sketch pad that was the deputy’s habitual companion included detailed pencil or pastel drawings that often revealed more than the impersonal wink of a camera’s lens.
    “When the sun’s low, just when it starts up over the horizon,” Jackie said, holding her hand flat, palm down, “the way the light trips over things is really interesting.”
    “Deputy Picasso,” Pasquale said.
    Linda Real was standing within striking distance with her elbow, and did so. “She’s right, bozo.”
    “I know she’s right,” Pasquale said easily and with a touch of admiration. “I tried one of those matchbook art contests once. It was so bad that when I tried to mail it in, the Post Office refused to deliver it.”
    “What’s interesting is that this prairie is covered with rocks, all sizes and shapes, but uniformly covered, you know?” Jackie said. “If you want to sit down, you’re going to have to nudge a couple of rocks out of the way, no matter what. You look at Linda’s panoramic photos when she develops them, and you’ll see the grave, too. Whoever did it didn’t bother to take the time to kick the dirt smooth, so there wouldn’t be a hump. And they sure didn’t go back and duplicate the pattern of rocks.”
    “Did you do a sketch?” Estelle asked.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “I’d like to see it.” She pushed herself upright and waited, one shoulder leaning against the steel support while Jackie walked to the Bronco. She returned with the pad, opening it carefully so that the wind wouldn’t grab the pages. She extended it to Estelle, who shook her head. “My hands are dirty,” she said. Jackie held the pad while the undersheriff scrutinized the drawing.
    “There’s even a sort of windrow of rocks that got left after the construction crews went through, isn’t there,” she said. “Whoever dug the grave disturbed some of them.” She looked up at Jackie and smiled.
    “Yes, ma’am. And it looks like whoever dug this grave didn’t take much time with it. They didn’t go a millimeter deeper than they had to.”
    “So you saw this first? The grave?”
    “I saw the disturbance of the ground, and that kind of tickled my imagination. I mean, this is a big prairie. To have an out-of-place feature of any kind…I mean, we’re interested in the tracks that lead over this way from the MacInerny site, and so that’s what I was looking for. Any kind of mark on the ground, any kind of disturbance. But I didn’t make the connection at first. I mean that it might be a grave.” She shrugged. “I mean, it could have just been a spot where one of the line crews parked a Bobcat or something. They let the blade down and made a mark.”
    “A neat two by five,” Pasquale said.
    “Well…” Jackie shrugged again. “And then I saw the shovel. The sun caught the blade. At first I thought it was just a tin can or something, then I saw the handle.” She grinned and flipped the sketch pad closed. “The handle makes a nice, hard straight line that’s really out of place. My first thought was, ‘Ah-ha, I’ve got me a nice new garden shovel, free of charge.’ And as I was getting out of the unit, it felt like somebody came up behind me and whacked me upside the head with a billy club.” She tapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “I’m thinking, whoa! Over here’s what
looks
like a grave, and over there’s a shovel. And a mile or so due west, if we maybe follow a vague set of vehicular tracks, is a corpse that didn’t get buried at all…” She stopped and looked at Estelle. “It all hit me at once.”
    “He’d still be comfortable under the dirt if they’d picked up their tools when they were finished,” Pasquale observed.
    “Likely so,” Jackie said. “When Linda