effort in the flood of the high beams. That gave it away. They were real cops alright, sticking to procedure—if it’s nighttime, you use a flashlight, regardless—only a real cop, and a young one at that, would do something so pointless.
The sheriff looked to be around fifty—fit and tan—he stood far enough away to be out of Hank’s reach, but close enough to seem friendly. His posture was relaxed, but his right hand rested on his hip, just above his gun, the holster of which he’d unsnapped before he got out of the Suburban. Hank thought it was a pretty good act, and it told him the sheriff was an old pro. But the young guy just looked nervous. The beam of his silly flashlight wavered a little and gave him away. He was the kind of skittish young cop who would jump at the wrong thing, with the wrong guy, and turn a simple situation into something ugly, maybe even get himself killed someday.
Hank knew he needed to talk to the sheriff before the eager beaver found the leg in the car on his own. He said, “Man, I sure am glad you guys came along. I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do.”
“You lose a tire?” the sheriff asked.
“No, no, the car was fine. I was coming down the road about sundown and this damned coyote just ran right out in front of me. I hit it and it came through the windshield and, well, you can see how it turned out. I gotta tell you though, it’s the damnedest thing. The coyote, uh …” Hank gave it a pause. “Well, you should just see for yourself. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to disturb it. It seemed like a crime scene or something.” Hank shrugged and shook his head, giving them his best well-I’ll-be-a-fucked-monkey grin.
The sheriff said, “Billy, go have a look in the car.” The deputy darted off behind Hank and the sheriff asked, “What are you doing out here anyway?”
Hank barely had time to say “I’m a surveyor” before Billy started hollering in the background.
“Ah, goddamn! Chief! Chief! Jesus Christ, you gotta see this.”
The sheriff held his eyes on Hank for a long second, watching him, looking for signs of nervousness and not finding any. He saw Hank’s hiking boots, his rumpled slacks, and the thin mesh vest with all the pockets and zippers hanging loose over a T-shirt with a mountain printed on the pocket. The sheriff supposed the guy looked enough like a surveyor. But the way Billy was carrying on in the background, there was definitely something wrong.
“Well let’s go have us a look.” The sheriff motioned for Hank to go first. When they got to the car, Billy hung back, keeping an eye on Hank. The sheriff took the flashlight from the deputy and leaned in through the driver’s side window. “Jesus H,” he muttered, and tried without success to open the car door.
“Goddamn, Chief,” Billy said from behind them. “What do you think?”
The sheriff turned to face Hank, disregarding his deputy’s question, and looked him over one more time. Then, without explanation, the sheriff handed the flashlight back to the deputy and walked off into the darkness, out into the road, following the trail of skid marks, switching on his own flashlight as he went. The night seemed to swallow him, so that all Hank could see was the crisp circle of light bouncing in the darkness as the sheriff traced the tracks of the accident. Some forty yards behind the suburban, the flashlight stopped and settled on a single spot.
The sheriff crouched down in the road at a place where the skid marks had already started. There was a spatter of dried black liquid between the two tire tracks. He turned around slowly, bringing the flashlight in a wide circle back toward the Suburban and the stranger and the wrecked car. He paused again. Fifteen feet further he could see the sparkle of bits of broken glass. He stood and walked to them. There were only a few, but they were the small, oddly geometrical pieces left behind when safety glass shatters from a high impact. Something had been hit in the road and gone through the windshield of a car. The skid marks told the rest of the story. The evidence would be too hard to fake, and why would someone fake it anyway? So the real questions were: whose leg was in the car,