The tow truck pulled the car over the lip of the canal with a loud thump. Inside the car, the body, bloated by putrefaction, had become wedged over the front seat back, the legs splayed up against the front window, the upper torso sliding into the backseat.
Norris, now stripped to the waist, was at the driver’s-side door.
“Shall I do the honors?”
Jenner nodded, and Norris reached through the window and gingerly felt for the handle. There was a soft clunk, then Norris jumped back as the door swung open, water gushing from the foot well.
The four of them stood by the open door and peered inside.
The smell of decay was overpowering. From the patrol car, Nash got a yellow emergency blanket, used for covering car crash victims on the highway. Jenner laid it out carefully by the driver’s-side door, then stripped off his T-shirt, wrapped his cell phone and iPod in the T-shirt, then tossed it onto the gravel at the shoulder of the road. For a second, he felt self-conscious about his pallor, then realized they were looking at the livid purple scar slashed across his left arm.
He pulled on the gloves Nash handed him, then turned and said, “So, who’s going to help me?”
There was a momentary silence, then Norris grinned and muttered, “Well, I hope neoprene rinses out okay…What do I do, doc?”
“I’ll drag him forward, back onto the driver’s seat as much as I can, then we’ll pull him out the side together. Stand to my left: if he starts to come out too fast, just grab him and help me support him so we can ease him down.”
Deb Putnam asked, “Anything I can do?”
Norris shook his head. “We got it, Deb.”
Jenner said, “Can you keep an eye on the water that comes out with him—we don’t want to lose any possible evidence.”
“Got it.”
Norris zipped up the wetsuit top and called over to his partner, now lolling against their patrol car, “Nash, you owe me, buddy. You owe me big time…”
Nash shrugged. “Eh…You were born for this kind of work, Swamp Boy.”
Jenner leaned into the compartment. The body was swollen, the arms spread wide as if reaching to embrace a lover. Jenner grabbed the left wrist, but lost his grip as the rotted skin slipped off beneath his fingers.
He grasped the forearm a little higher with his other hand and tugged it forward. The body jerked toward him, then slid quickly onto the front seat.
Jenner straightened, breathed fresh air into his lungs, and reached into the compartment again. He held the left upper arm, then leaned backward, putting his weight into it. The body started to slide toward him. Norris supported the torso as it cleared the door well. The body slithered out and down onto the shroud.
Norris peered down at the body. He pointed to a series of vertical gashes in the skin of the chest and said, “Looks like the fish were feeding on him, right, doc?”
Jenner squatted next to him and looked at the body. He was silent for a second, then shook his head slowly. “Call Crime Scene. These are knife wounds.”