Fifteen years on the force, ten as the county sheriff, I thought I’ve seen the grisly worst. Mostly ranch accidents. Hooves and horns through skulls, barbed wire through most everything, I got a stomach lined with steel, a gag reflex that doesn’t gag. And here I am, bent over, OJ, eggs, biscuits and gravy on their way out.
Sarah, my deputy, she’s hurling, too. Side by side, buckled over, we’re retching, flinging spittle and digested food from the griddle off our hands. Looking like newbs is what we are, as if we’ve never seen death days after. But this gruesome display defies physics and my iron constitution.
This ain’t no accident.
The victim is a woman, blonde, in her twenties or thirties. She’s wearing urban-camouflaged fatigues, smattered with blood and her insides. Her face unrecognizable. Her body size and type indeterminable. She’s an amoeba of contorted body, crushed from a fall. From where? That’s what Sarah and I got to figure out.
Standing, I block the sweltering sun with my hand and look around. Not a building nor high ground in sight. Brown prairie grass and big Montana sky stretch to the horizons.
“Someone could have dumped her here, George.” Sarah swats at a magpie with her cowboy hat, her long black hair blowing in the wind. The magpie chatters and flutters a few feet away. The flies, too many to do anything about, feast.
“Naw.” I scan the ranch land, inhaling whiffs of fetid air. “No tire marks anywhere.”
“Could have done it by horse.”
“Could have, and a cumbersome transport that’d have been, but heck, look at that.” I point to where the woman’s parts lie scattered. “There’s a crater the size of a buffalo wallow, mostly dirt and such. She fell right here. I’m sure of that…only that.” I crane my neck up at the endless blue above, not a wisp of white anywhere. “An angel in God’s Country.”
Sarah packs a can of Copenhagen and pops a pinch in her mouth, never letting that badge or her condo fool anyone. She’s cowgirl, through and through. Raised on a ranch, her adopted ma and pa still live on that ranch. And get her on that ranch? She outrides, out-ropes, out-wrangles damn anybody. Fine deputy, too.
She spits black juice on the ground. “What’s an angel doing without wings?”
“Dying is what.” I shake my head. “Awful way to go. Tossed from a plane or helicopter, I reckon. Only thing makes sense.”
“You recognize them fatigues?” Sarah creeps to the body.
I follow, careful not to step where blood has sprayed. Grass crunches under each step. My nose is now used to the smell of decay, and I catch hints of the prairie with the wind, a dry, sweet smell, like coriander. The flute-like call of a western meadowlark warbles nearby. I crouch for a closer look, feeling all my forty years, and ignore the tickle of flies on my nose, then ear, then cheek, their buzz a grating constant of my job. “They’re for urban warfare. Anyone with a credit card can order them online. But look here.” I point to a small green flag with six yellow stars sewn onto her breast pocket. “You recognize that flag?”
“New to me,” Sarah says with a smirk I can’t place. I’m about to ask why the grin, then it vanishes as if it never before existed, like a rainbow after the air dries out. Her eyes are misty, a thousand yards away. It’s the look she gets when admiring a newborn foal.
“You all right there?” I snap a picture of the flag with my phone.
She sniffles and wipes her eyes. “Sometimes this job just gets to me. It burrows under my skin. Makes me want to shed it.” She swallows, gutting tobacco spit.
Her answer doesn’t sit right. It tastes off because of that subtle smile seconds before her tears swell.
“I know the feeling.” I look toward the heavens from where the woman fell. “You know where to next.”
Sarah stands and walks to our two ATVs, which we rode in on from an overgrown dirt road that’s not worthy of a name or map. “Airport.”