Page 36 of Whistle

He ended the call. From the other side of the bed, his wife, Janice, stirred.

“Duty calls?” she asked, her mouth pressed into the pillow, the words muffled.

“Stick’s found something.”

“Hope it’s my Ray-Bans,” Janice mumbled.

Even in the middle of the night, half-asleep, she could make a joke about a pair of expensive sunglasses she’d lost days earlier.

“I’ve got everybody on that,” Harry said, as he leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

He made a pit stop in the bathroom, then threw on his clothes. He crept down the hallway and down the stairs, avoiding the creaksso as not to wake his nine-year-old son, Dylan, whose bedroom was only a few steps from his and Janice’s. A minute later, he was in the car and on his way.

And seven more minutes later he was on Miller’s Road, the flashing lights of Stick’s car visible in the distance. There was a second vehicle there, a dark-colored Ford pickup, with a man leaning up against the back fender, baseball hat pulled low, arms crossed. Harry figured this was the guy who had spotted whatever had attracted the coyote’s interest.

Stick had aimed his cruiser at the scene, headlights on. Harry parked behind Stick’s car and, figuring he might need more than just high beams, grabbed a Maglite from the glove compartment.

Stick met him as he was getting out from behind the wheel.

“Janice says hi.” Stick looked pleased. “Lead the way.”

When they were two yards away, Stick stopped and pointed. Harry used the Maglite.

It was a body. And a naked one, at that. At a glance, male, about six feet, but it was in such a state that it was difficult to know much more. One thing that did stand out: this dead guy had no hair. And that didn’t fit with the description of either of the two missing men.

As Harry moved closer, panning the Maglite’s beam from one end of the body to the other, something unusual became evident. The legs, the arms, the torso itself, had the look of being deflated. Like a blow-up doll that had sprung a leak. No, not that, Harry thought. More like boneless chicken.

“Kinda weird, right?” Stick said.

Harry didn’t want to contaminate the scene, but he had to get a better look. He took two tentative steps closer, knelt. The body had been sliced up everywhere, but not in the fashion of some fevered attack. The cuts were long and straight and precise, like slits, down the arms and legs and into the chest.

As best Harry could see, there were no bones in those limbs. And the way the chest was collapsed, he was betting much of the rib cage was missing, too.

The dead man’s head was turned toward Harry, the mouth open an inch. Harry cast the light into the opening. The man had no teeth. Judging by the ragged state of his gums, the teeth had been removed recently, and not by a skilled dentist. But a coroner would be able to tell him more.

Before stepping back, he shined the light on the man’s head. Harry had initially thought this man was bald, but there were some clumps of hair. The corpse appeared to be, among other things, the victim of a bad haircut. Harry was guessing the head had been badly shaved—by the man himself while still alive or someone else. There were three cuts in the scalp where the razor had nicked him.

Stick, standing behind him, said, “You think it’s Tanner or Hillman?”

“Hard to say,” Harry said.

Harry had been careful not to touch anything. Lucknow didn’t have a crime scene investigation unit, so the state police would have to be brought in to assist. The coroner from the county seat would do the autopsy. Harry had calls to make right now. Once those were done, he’d see what else he could learn from the scene, and if he had to leave, he’d have Stick stand watch.

Harry tried to think it through. Most times, you found a body at the side of the road, it had been struck and thrown by a vehicle. But a body that had suffered that kind of trauma would have looked very different. Pulverized, yes, but not carefully sliced open down the limbs. Not even a Mack truck hitting you at a hundred miles an hour could knock bones right out of you.

In all likelihood, this person had not died in this location. Someone had dumped him here, and Harry was betting recently. Thecoyote hadn’t made much of a meal of the corpse yet, and whoever’d left it here certainly wouldn’t have wanted to do it in broad daylight and be spotted by a passing motorist.

Stick said, “That’s the guy what called it in.”

He pointed to the pickup. Harry nodded and made his way over. There was some spillover from the cruiser headlights, and as Harry got closer he could tell this was a young guy, mid-twenties, lean. He uncrossed his arms and took his weight off the truck.

“I’d really like to go home,” he said.

“Appreciate you hanging in,” Harry said. “What’s your name?”

“Tracy. Bill Tracy. I gave the other guy my name and phone number and license and shit.”

“And you were coming along this stretch why?”

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