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Chief Harry Cook had seen his share of bad shit since taking the top policing job in Lucknow seven years earlier. Seen a lot

even before that, too, when he was a regular cop and not the guy in charge.

Plenty of car accidents, of course. You had to have a strong stomach for those. First time he responded to one, he lost his

biscuits. A tractor trailer with a load of lawn tractors ran a red and broadsided a woman in a little Corolla who’d already

proceeded into the intersection. The impact sent the car flying a good hundred feet. When Harry looked into the Corolla and

saw what was left of the woman, his stomach rolled over like an empty trash can in a windstorm. He ran over to the ditch to

throw up, and, while he had his hands on his knees, had a very brief conversation with himself.

You are either going to be able to do this job, or you’re not. Make up your mind .

He stood, took a couple of deep breaths, and resumed his investigation of the accident, which involved administering a Breathalyzer

test to the truck driver, who blew so high he was basically a walking brewery.

There’d been plenty more stomach-churning scenes since then. A bar fight where a bouncer took the jagged end of a broken beer bottle in the neck. Nothing short of a miracle that he survived. Less fortunate was the fellow who worked in the service department of Lucknow Ford whose wife took a baseball bat to the side of his head while he was eating a bowl of Cream of Wheat at breakfast. That guy never woke up, and based on what Harry had learned from the dead man’s bruised and psychologically damaged wife, he had it coming.

And then there was that house fire on the north side of town.

Single mother with three kids under the age of five. No smoke detectors. Fire started in the middle of the night. Some kind

of electrical fault. By the time the smoke woke the woman from a deep sleep, the flames had already overtaken much of the

house.

No one made it out.

That had been the worst thing Harry’d ever seen in his career. Until last night.

Some six hours before he’d shown up at the diner and had that restorative cup of coffee, the cell phone on his nightstand

started buzzing, only two feet from the pillow where he laid his head. He’d been to bed late, having had a meeting with all

six of his staff to discuss whether there were any other possible leads they might pursue when it came to those two missing

men. And as if that weren’t enough, Dell Peterson, who had a dairy farm on the road heading south out of town but also had

a few animals that were not cows, had called around ten to say his pet goat was gone.

This was not, in the overall scheme of things, a high priority for Harry. But he told Dell he would get back to him the next

day, take a run out to his place. Maybe the goat had managed to get free, had gone exploring, and by morning he (she?) would

be back.

Picking up his cell in the dark, Harry said quietly, “Yeah.”

“Sorry to call at this hour, Chief. It’s Stick.”

His real name was Ben Bloodworth, but he was a skinny dude and topped out at six-foot-six, hence the nickname. One of Harry’s brighter officers, who was more valuable dayside handling weightier responsibilities, but everyone had to take a turn working overnights, responding to the odd burglar alarm or car accident. Someone having too much to drink and rolling their pickup into the ditch was a weekly occurrence. Harry was not one to pine for a return to Prohibition—he liked a tumbler of scotch at the end of the day as much as anybody—but, honest to God, the list of mishaps that could be traced to alcohol was too long to compile.

“What’s up, Stick?”

“Out on Miller’s Road? Before you get to the cutoff? Guy coming home thought he saw a coyote in the ditch that had gotten

into something?”

Harry said, “Yeah?”

The pause at the other end of the line was long enough for Harry to think the call had dropped out.

Finally, Stick said, “Looks like it might have been a person at some point.”

Harry let that sink in for a second. “Be there soon.”

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 creaks so 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. The coyote 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?”

“Heading home.” He pointed in the direction of Lucknow. “Work a late shift in Bennington. Like, restocking shelves at the

Price Chopper.”

Harry thought he recognized him. “You ever eat at the diner?”

“Lucknow Diner? Yeah, breakfast sometimes. I got a second job at Jermyn’s Lumber, start there at like ten this morning, so

I’d really like to get home.”

“So what’d you see?”

“I’m driving, and, like, I can see the butt end of this coyote pulling on something, and I didn’t think much of it, like,

maybe he found some roadkill and was having a midnight snack, like, you know, no big deal, what do I care, right?”

Harry nodded.

“But then he lifts up something that looks like an arm. And I’m like, holy shit, is that what I think it is? I was just about

even with it at this point, so I stopped and turned to, like, shine the lights on it, which was when the coyote ran.”

“You got out?”

Bill nodded. “I walked over and saw what was there and was like, fuck me, that looks like a naked dead guy, so that’s when

I called you. Well, not you, but, like, the police.” He showed a Motorola flip phone that had been in his palm all this time.

“Why would a guy be running around naked out here in the middle of the night? You think, like, a car hit him? Because he looked

all smushed, you know?”

“You see any other vehicles as you were coming this way? Someone taking off in a hurry?”

“Nothing.”

“You mind if I take a look in the back of your truck?”

Bill Tracy blinked. “What?”

“You could say no, and demand that I get a warrant, and we could hang around here for a couple of hours till we get one.”

“You thinking I dumped that there?”

“I’m not thinking anything, Mr. Tracy. I just want to have a look in the back of your truck.”

The man sighed, then waved his arms in a be-my-guest gesture. Harry turned the Maglite back on and shined it into the uncovered

pickup truck bed. There wasn’t much in there beyond some dead leaves. Nothing that looked like blood. Then he walked around

to the front of the truck, shining the light into the grille, across the bumper. Finally, he opened the driver’s door and

had a good look inside. A couple of Big Mac containers, some candy wrappers, a torn condom wrapper.

“Okay, thank you, sir, for your cooperation,” Harry said, backing out and closing the door. He fished out of his pocket a

card. “You think of anything, you give us a call.”

“I can go?”

“You can go. And if you wouldn’t mind keeping what you’ve seen out here under your hat for the time being, I’d be most grateful.” Harry didn’t have high hopes here.

“Gotcha. Can I ask you something?”

Harry waited.

“You guys find lost pets?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Okay.”

Bill Tracy was heading for the driver’s door when Harry said, “Why?”

“Uh, well, my girlfriend’s cat, like, went missing about a week ago, but she does let it wander around the neighborhood, but

the guy who lives next to her, his dog’s gone, too, and he always keeps him tied up.”

Which made Harry think about Dell Peterson’s pet goat.