Chuck turned his face to the clear, blue sky. He’d seen enough blood the last two days. He had no desire to expend any more mental energy on the stuff.
But what was a dried drop of blood doing way up here? He sighed and crouched over his discovery.
The blood was splattered around the edges and dried to a sheen. He scraped at it with his fingernail. Aside from the fact that the drop of blood had to have fallen here sometime since the last of the winter snow had melted out of the couloir in May, it was impossible to tell its age.
He scanned the couloir below. A larger splotch of dried blood coated a rock ten feet farther down the narrow ravine. More dried droplets were sprayed across a scattering of rocks a few feet below that.
Had a bighorn sheep nicked its leg on a shard of rock while passing through the couloir? No. The amount of blood on the lower rocks was too voluminous to fit that notion. In fact, only one explanation accounted for the amount of blood splattered on the rocks below: something had been shot here in the couloir, sometime since May—despite the fact that all hunting in the park was illegal.
Chuck climbed down to the dried spray of blood and checked out the ravine farther down. A single thunderstorm anytime since the shooting would have washed away all evidence of the kill. Instead, starting thirty feet below where he now stood, scrapes marked the edges of rocks where an animal had been dragged to the base of the couloir after the creature’s death.
He centered his cap low over his eyes. What had been dragged off the mountain?
He climbed down the couloir, following the slide marks of the animal. Whoever had killed the creature had made no attempt to hide the trail—not that the killer had any reason to do so; there was no logical reason for anyone to be here on the steep, remote north side of the mountain.
From the base of the couloir, the drag trail followed the broad drainage downhill as the steepness of the mountain’s north face lessened. The trail of dark rubbings on rock wended its way around boulders and bypassed low cliffs until, nearing tree level, it headed straight for a narrow opening where the drainage entered the forest.
As he neared the trees, Chuck spotted a second drag trail descending from the mountain’s northwest ridge. He studied the ridge and saw yet another drag trail leading off the mountainside.
The two additional trails joined the first just above tree line. In the forest, he followed the conjoined trail over logs and across moss-covered rocks. He eyed the ground as he walked, but the forest duff was too thick to show any telltale boot prints.
The weather-beaten firs grew close together along both sides of the drainage, their intertwined branches cutting out much of the morning light. The gloom of the shadowed forest and the drag trail of the slaughtered animals—not to mention Nicoleta’s murder hours earlier—filled Chuck with foreboding. He stilled his breathing and crept through the forest in silence, following the trail until the odor of rotting flesh, carried by an upslope breeze, swept through the trees.
The stench slammed him full in the face. He came to a stop, unexpectedly overcome by a wavering vision of Nicoleta’s body, arms out-flung, neck slashed.
The breeze picked up, carrying more of the awful smell with it. He bent forward. His knees nearly buckled. He never should have left the students and Clarence and Kirina on their own at the mine. In fact, he never should have come to the mountains with the students this morning in the first place.
What was to be gained by following the drag trail to its source? He had bigger problems to deal with. He should turn around, return to the mine, and head back to town with the students this very instant.
But what had happened here on the mountain?
The breeze let up and the odor subsided.
Chuck held his breath and descended another thirty feet through the trees to a fen no more than fifty feet across. The small, open area wasn’t wet enough this summer to constitute a true bog, though it was damp enough in non-drought years to preclude the growth of trees. This rainless summer, the fen was a compact meadow of tall grass already turned, weeks early, from early-spring green to late-autumn brown.
Still holding his breath at the edge of the fen, Chuck spotted several clouds of black flies buzzing above the grass. Beneath each swarm of insects lay a pile of rotting flesh.