We travel about another twenty paces, and I stop. I swivel. I inhale. I head to the right, cutting through thick brush. Then I spot something in the undergrowth. Something raw and bloody, peeking from under the snow. I crouch and brush off a layer of snow to see a skull with half its face torn off, eye missing, teeth clenched in a death’s-head grin.
Cypher chuckles. “Well, now, seems you hired your detective for her pretty face. Can’t say I blame you, though. That’s a mighty fine rabbit you found there, girl. Dig up the rest. Maybe you can detect what killed it.”
“What’s your weapon of choice?” I ask. “Besides your hands?”
“You gonna challenge me to a duel?”
“Snare and knife,” Dalton says. “Ty likes to get up close and personal with his prey.”
“Then you missed this one.” I brush back more snow to reveal the snare on its half-eaten leg. “You left it for the scavengers.” I peer around. “Have you been hunting on Silas’s property? Was that the source of the dispute? Or did you kill him and then settle in?”
“I said I never killed him. True fact, ma’am. That’s my snare, ’cause I was bunking down with Silas for the winter. Paid in advance for the privilege, which is why I figure I can keep living here during his unforeseen absence.”
I eye him. I don’t buy the I-never-lie bullshit. To pull that off, all you need to do is establish a reputation for honesty while saving your falsehoods for when you really need them.
I rise and say, “Shouldn’t waste your food.”
“Waste? I was feeding the local wildlife. Act of charity.”
“You tortured this local wildlife. Maybe someone should snare and leave you, see if you like it. Or drop you in a pit, leave you to rot.”
I carefully watch his reaction, but he only says, “Silas was the one who liked trapping with pits. Which is fucking stupid with the permafrost. I always said he should switch to snares.”
“Pits can be deep enough if you find the right terrain. Plenty of deep chutes in these mountain caves.”
“What would you trap in them? Wood rats? Big critters don’t roam the caves. They just use the entrances for shelter.” He looks at Dalton. “You really do keep her around for ornamental value, don’t you?”
“This isn’t what I smelled,” I say, nodding at the rabbit as I continue on. “It’s buried under snow. The scent suggests something bigger. Which could just mean a deer or caribou or wolf or bear. If it was, I think I’d pick up the musk, too, but down south, I was in homicide, not animal control.”
“Homicide? Seriously? Minority hiring at work, huh? How old are you? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Huh. That’s not so bad. Still young, but I knew a chick in homicide, around your age. Came closer to catching me than anyone else. Always figured it was ’cause she had to be better than the boys to get the job.”
When he’d started grumbling about minority hiring, I’d been ready for the usual intimation that I only got my job because I fill both the gender and visible minority quotas—two-for-one special! I can’t shove Tyrone Cypher squarely into the asshole box he seems to fit, and that’s never comfortable.
Cypher is, well, a cipher. Which makes me suspect he had a say in his new surname.
I keep walking and sniffing. The smell of decomposing flesh gets stronger, and I’m focusing on that and then …
And then the smell vanishes. I stop. I turn around, but I still can’t smell it, and even when I retreat a few paces, the scent eludes me.
“Want a clue?” Cypher says. “Just ask nicely.”
“It’s the wind,” Dalton says.
“Hey, don’t be stealing my thunder.”
I ignore him. I see what Dalton means. Facing north, the light breeze blows straight at me. When I turn around, I lose that, which means I’ve gone too far. I’ve passed my goal.
I back up and catch it again, but faint, meaning I’m still upwind. I keep going and … I get a face full of the breeze and a nose full of the stink of decomposing flesh.
I survey the landscape. Then I walk step by step until the smell just begins to fade.
I turn. I look. I see nothing.
“Red hot,” Cypher says. “You sure you don’t want that clue? I’ll trade you for—”
Cypher takes a step toward me, and Dalton’s foot shoots out, kicking Cypher in the back of the knees. The big man goes down, then scrambles to flip over, stopping when Dalton presses the gun to his shoulder.
“That’s some seriously bad aim, boy,” Cypher says. “Guess that’s what happens when you don’t go to a proper school. Your sense of anatomy gets all fucked up.”
“My sense of anatomy is just fine.”
“Why—” Cypher stops and chortles. “Wait. I know this one.” He glances at me. “When I was sheriff, I’d grab a guy and twist his index finger. He’d wonder why I did that, instead of twisting his arm.”
“Because you might hesitate to break his arm,” I say, “but you’re not going to mind snapping his finger. It isn’t an empty threat.”
“Good girl. Seems your boss picked up a few of my tricks. Too bad he also learned from his daddy, with his over-re-li-ance on firearms. A real man would put that gun down and take me on properly.”
“Then I guess your idea of a real man is a functional idiot,” Dalton says.