lifeless now as they had been two months ago.
Not wanting to lose myself in my own wistful thoughts, I considered what Miguel had said about burning John Doe. And all I could picture were those frozen eyes thawing in the heat of the fire as the flames consumed them. Apparently, burning was the only way to keep the body from rising again, whatever the hell that meant. According to Miguel, the silver dagger was only a placeholder, of sorts.
“So he’s not really dead?”
“Oh, he’s dead. It’s just that...” Miguel had shrugged, and then went silent for a few seconds, as if he were considering how much to tell an outsider. I’d encouraged him to continue, and he’d added, “It’s just that we don’t take chances out here.”
Later, as I’d followed behind on my own snowmobile, the sheet flapped in the arctic wind and I’d occasionally caught sight of the man’s face and the shocked expression in his eyes. Yes, I was accustomed to seeing surprise in the eyes of the dead, but this one still struck me as different, even now, even while I was standing here beside Dr. Moody and staring down at the corpse before us. There was just something about his eyes, about the shock in their depths.
His eyes don’t look dead, I suddenly thought to myself as I glanced down at the body, which was spread out on the gurney before me.
I shook my head at the absurdity of my thoughts and nearly asked Dr. Moody what he thought of John Doe’s expression, but it wasn’t the good doctor’s job to determine a victim’s expression. It was his job to perform an autopsy, which he’d already confirmed he had.
“Any suspicious death requires one, Chief,” Dr. Moody said as he bobbed back and forth in his desk chair. Then he gave me a broad smile that said he liked calling me by my title. “Although we try to honor local Native American customs when possible,” he continued, “in this case, I would assume our mystery man was First Nations, but there’s no way of knowing which tribe. There were no identifying marks or tattoos on his body. No scarification, or traditional dress.” Then he shrugged and looked slightly embarrassed. “He wasn’t dressed at all, was he?”
I just shook my head.
He cocked his head to the side and then shrugged. “It’s a shame because we could have learned something had he been. Anyway, in this case, state law trumps cultural heritage, because he wasn’t found on tribal land.”
I nodded again. I knew all of this already. But this was the first dead body I’d come across in my position as police chief of Hope, and, as such, my first interaction with Dr. Moody in any official capacity. Unofficially, I’d found the man to be an incorrigible flirt even though his desk was cluttered with framed pictures of grandkids, dogs and a wife, though heavier on the grandkids and dogs.
“I determined the cause of death was a stab wound to the chest, although it just missed the heart,” the doctor continued as he drummed his fingers along the faux wood of his desk. “Hypothermia would have played a role, too. A naked man in the woods, in the depths of winter, would have lasted only a minute or less. Unless his clothing was removed later.”
I, too, had pondered the whole naked bit. Thought about it hard. John Doe’s clothing could have been removed, maybe by whoever stabbed him. Maybe the killer needed his clothing? But I hadn’t seen evidence of any clothing caught in the teeth of the blade. And there hadn’t been any indication that John Doe’s clothes had been cut away in the first place. For all intents and purposes, the man seemed to have been naked when stabbed. Naked in the woods, in the middle of one of our coldest winters on record.
“Whisperings are that he’s a shape-shifter,” I said with a shrug. It wasn’t that I believed any of it. It was all nonsense as far as I was concerned, but I wanted to see where the doctor stood on the subject. “I keep hearing things about werewolves.”
Dr. Moody chuckled and his laughter seemed to ripple through his belly. He reminded me of Santa Claus. He was just missing the white beard and red suit. “Yes, there are those who believe in that sort of thing.” He gave a quick nod. “But us educated folk know better.”
I nodded, but his comment rubbed me the wrong