hair, fur, and a couple of melting hooves. Still, the stink was disproportionately strong given the amount of remaining soft tissue. And the stench grew stronger as they began to uncover more material.
Decker allowed them to keep going until the smell became downright toxic. He ordered everyone to stop, step back, and take a few breaths of fresh air. He called over his detectives. “Obviously, we hit a horse grave. It’s not unusual to bury a dead animal out here when you have so much land, but something’s off. There’s too much stink for the amount of remaining flesh. Any ideas?”
Oliver said, “It’s more than one horse.”
“About three horses, looking at all the bones,” Wynona added.
“That’s weird,” Oliver said. “Burying three horses at the same time. What’d they do? Put a couple in cold storage until they had enough to fill the hole?”
“You know what’s really weird?” Marge said. “If you bury a dead horse—just dump it in the ground—when you dig it up, it should look like a skeleton of a horse that you dumped. It should be in roughly the same position as when it was buried. But all these bones are strewn willy-nilly.”
Decker said, “What if the horse skeletons were disturbed by human interference, specifically by somebody wanting to bury something underneath the equine bones?”
Marge said, “Like the bodies of our missing guards?”
Decker said, “Suppose one of the murderers knew about the grave because he saw it originally being dug. What better place to dump the bodies of the missing guards?”
Oliver said, “Certainly smells like recent death down there.”
Decker said, “Let’s get everybody gloved up and wearing face masks. Who has a camera?”
“I do,” Marge said.
“Me, too,” Wynona added.
“Good. Before we remove any horse bones, I want photographs of before and after. Then we’ll start removing biological material, bone by bone. Each time we remove something, take a picture. If the smell gets worse, and I fear it will, we’ll have to stop and call the M.E.’s office. At that point, we’ll turn this over to professional exhumers.”
“Whoever put him in the ground did you a favor.” The field coroner was named Lance Yakamoto. In his thirties, he was around five feet nine inches, 140 pounds, with a long face and tawny-colored eyes that sloped upward. He was in his blue scrubs and a black jacket, the yellow lettering in back stating that he was from the Coroner’s Office. “If the body would have been dumped in the open, the decomposition would have been a lot quicker. With all the carrion-eating birds, we wouldn’t have much to work with.”
Decker said, “When I find and arrest the culprit, I’ll be sure to give my thanks for dumping him in the ground.”
Yakamoto said, “I’m just saying fact.”
“I know,” Decker answered. “Anything you want to tell me?”
“No rigor, some lividity, lots of insect activity. Once we get the body up, we’ll put the bugs in bags and hand them over to the entomologist. He can probably give you a better fix on how long it’s been in there. From what I saw, my guess is that he’s been there for a couple of days. That would square with your murders, right?”
“Right.” Decker looked at the brightly illuminated pit. The county had sent a quartet of techs in HAZMAT suits. They were at the bottom of the hole, figuring out the best way to slide the corpse into a body bag. Since it had been rotting for a few days, skin had begun to slough off. There was some residual bloat from the internal gasses, but most of that had settled down. Still, with careful handling, the detectives were able to make out the distinct features even though much of the face was black, distorted, and bug eaten. Both Marge and Oliver thought he might have resembled the pictures they had of Denny Orlando.
“Are we sure there’s only one body down there?” Decker asked Yakamoto.
“No, we’re not sure,” the assistant M.E. responded. “Not yet.”
Oliver said, “Smells ripe enough for two bodies.”
Decker said, “If Rondo Martin’s down there, my lead is shot.” He told the three detectives about his meeting with Brett Harriman, trying to remember the story as well as he could without notes.
Oliver asked, “You believe this guy? I mean it’s hard enough getting something substantial from eyewitnesses, Loo.”
“Just because he’s blind and couldn’t see them doesn’t mean he didn’t hear the conversation correctly,” Decker said. “That’s what he’s trained to do. To use his ears, Scott. Anyway, how would he know that Rondo Martin is involved?”
“He’s a missing guard,” Marge pointed out. “His name might have been in the papers.”
Wynona said, “How does he read the papers if he’s blind?”
“He has a voice-activated computer that tells him the news,” Decker told her. “I’ll concede that maybe he read or heard about Rondo Martin. But Joe Pine? Whom he kept referring to as José Pinon. How’d he pull that rabbit out of a hat?”
Oliver had no answer. Marge said, “Have you checked him out?”
“He came in this afternoon after the courts had closed. I’ll start calling people on Monday.”
“Do you even know if he’s really blind?” Oliver asked.
Decker grinned. “Are you asking me if I threw something at him to see if he would duck? No, Scott, I did not do that.”
“So I repeat. How do you know he’s really blind? You know how many crazies Wanda Bontemps has fielded on the tip lines, especially now that Grant Kaffey has offered a twenty-thousand-dollar reward?”
“That’s all?” Decker said.
“Looks like Guy wasn’t the only cheapskate.”
Decker said, “Harriman may be loony, but right now I’m taking him at his word. Willy Brubeck is looking into Rondo Martin with his sources in Ponceville. Joe Pine was on Brubeck’s guard list to check out, but so far he’s a no-show. Drew Messing is working on locating him. Enough about Martin. What’s happening inside the house?”
“Lots of evidence to process,” Marge said.
“Fingerprints?”
“A lot of smears, but CSI lifted a few that might be helpful,” Oliver said. “We still have to comb the auxiliary buildings. It’s going to take a while.”
Marge said, “Can we go back to Brett Harriman for a moment? He didn’t give you any name for el patrón?”
“Nope,” Decker said. “One of the men just said that he was worse than Martin—who was a very bad man.”
Shouts from inside the hole announced that the corpse was fully contained in the body bag. The trick now was how to hoist out the bag. The pit was around four-plus feet in depth. It was possible to scale in and out of the cavity by foot, but it was much harder to surface while holding a corpse.
Decker squatted at the edge of the hole. From this vantage point, the stench was considerably stronger. “If the three of you can get the bag above your heads, our people here can grab the bag and place it on the gurney.”
The HAZMAT crew considered the suggestion and deemed it possible. It took some careful maneuvering but when they finally managed to do it, the gang above was ready. Six men snatched the edges of the body bag and put it on the gurney. Yakamoto unzipped the sack. “What do you think?”
Marge stared at the discolored and disfigured face. Worms were crawling in and out of the apertures of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Some of the flesh had fallen off; some of it had been eaten. “It’s hard to say for sure, but with a little imagination it could