Page 71 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
“There are signs of predation, though not as much as I’d expect, given the amount of blood. That could be the location, which is heavily wooded.”
I reach down and move the man’s outstretched arm. “The body is mostly in rigor. Early putrefaction means it’s coming out of rigor, not going in. That suggests death took place last night. Multiple stab wounds to the back, legs, and arms suggest a frenzied attack. I’ll get a closer look once I remove clothing.” I pause. “I’m going to conduct a full on-site examination, as I suspect I will not be taking this body back to town for autopsy.”
I pause again. I have a theory about this man, and I want to pursue it, but I need to proceed in an orderly fashion here. Whether I’m right or wrong, that theory won’t impact the process.
Dalton returns as I’m rising to my feet. “No sign of blood out there. No sign that the body was dragged either. There’s just the one partial boot print. Looks like a possible match to what he’s wearing but…” He shrugs. “It’s also a match for mine. Not enough definition to be sure.”
I nod. “I’ll need to do a full examination, but that will risk messing up my scene. So the scene comes first.”
“I definitely see blood here.”
He’s right. With the gloom of early evening, I hadn’t noticed it, but a sweep of his flashlight shows blood spatter on leaves and trees. Less than one might expect, given the degree of damage, which means a lack of arterial spray. The man is stabbed. He goes down quickly and continues to be stabbed. There’s blood everywhere around him, supporting that story.
“Stabbed in the back?” Dalton says.
“Seems likely, but I won’t know that until we turn him over and see his chest.”
Before the sun sets further, I record observations of the scene. We find a few footprints, but they’re all smudged, as if captured in motion. I still take pictures of them, in addition to the boot print and the scene in general. Then I snap more photos of the body under the glow of Dalton’s flashlight.
I record additional observations before putting away my phone. “I’m going to check his rear pockets before turning him over.”
There are a lot of pockets to check. Most of them are empty. I do find a chocolate-bar wrapper, which I set aside. Then a half-finished pack of chewing gum, some kind of multi-tool, and a small pocketknife. The last one has Dalton snorting.
“Would have done him more good if it wasn’t in a buttoned-up pocket halfway down his leg.”
“Agreed.” I hunker down and then shine my light at the pocket that had held the knife. “There isn’t even a smear of blood on the pocket. Either he forgot he had the knife or the attack happened so fast he never even had time to fumble for it. Same as the multi-tool. That was closer to hand, but again, there’s no sign he went for it.”
I look at the other items. “Gum and a Hershey bar. Even more evidence we aren’t looking at our wild man of the woods.”
“American chocolate bar, too.”
I shrug. “Hershey is American, but it’s available here … Oh.” I smile over at him. “Good eye.”
“No French on the packaging. That means it’s American. The gum, too. You want me to flip him over now?”
“Please.”
I turn on my recorder and make notes of what we found in the pockets and the condition of the ones containing potential weapons. Then I continue, “Victim is now on his back. He appears to be in his mid-thirties. A short beard. Short medium-brown hair. No distinguishing marks immediately apparent.” I open one eyelid. “Brown eyes. No signs of trauma to his face.”
My gaze continues down the body. “No obvious trauma to the front of his body at all.”
I’d noted a lack of defensive wounds on the one hand I could see earlier. The second hand had been under his body. Now I examine it. “There are no defensive wounds on his left hand either. I don’t see anything to indicate a struggle. It is as if he was surprised by his attacker, who approached from the back, and he was incapacitated before he could fight. That would seem inconsistent with the number of wounds.”
I hesitate and think it through. “One possibility is that, while the victim did not fight back, he did attempt to flee, and so his killer continued to stab him until he went down, and then kept stabbing in a panicked state. Or, as mentioned earlier, the number of wounds could suggest a frenzied attack.”
I turn off the recording and look at Dalton. “Thoughts?”
“I’m leaning toward frenzy. If this guy did try to escape, he didn’t get far. The blood on the ground doesn’t go beyond this very small clearing.”
“So he was incapacitated quickly, and his killer just kept stabbing.”
We know Max saw what seems to be a wild man out here, who was also witnessed by a miner. We also know that wild man may have lured Max into the forest and kidnapped him, and nothing in the ruined shack contradicts that theory. Therefore, if this man was murdered by our bearskin-wearing wild man, signs of frenzied attack would only cast our preconceptions into stone, and we need to be careful about that.
There is a wild man out here, one who may be both unstable and dangerous, and he has kidnapped Max, possibly taken Lilith, and now horribly murdered this man.
That must remain a theory until evidence further supports it.
“I think this is one of the miners,” I say. “The clothing would support that.”
