He's coming express," and I step back. He lowers the body as best he can and then lets Cox fall.
The corpse hits the snow face-first. Resisting the urge to turn him over, I assess his back. He's wearing a parka. Boots, too. One at least. The other is gone, along with the leg that once occupied it. I brush snow away from the severed leg. It's been pulled off, not cut. The flesh is mangled and decomposed enough to tell me Cox has been in that tree for about a week. Which means he's not our man.
Dalton hops down as I move to checking the only other obvious area of injury I see from the rear--Cox's neck. It's been bitten from the back, with perfect puncture wounds on either side of his spine. Bitten and broken, his head at an impossible angle. Dalton confirms the neck was like that before he moved the body.
When I give the sign, he flips Cox over. Here's where I see the real damage, his parka ripped open, chest ripped open, the two mingling in a mess of feathers and fabric and shredded flesh.
"Eaten," I say. "Something stored him in that tree for later. The only tree-climbing beast out here with the power to do that would be a cougar. Which is consistent with the bite marks. That's how they attack, right? Like a cat. Pin and bite the neck, rather than rip out the throat like a canine would."
"Yep," Dalton says.
"And the caching? Is that normal?"
"It is. They'll use deadfall sometimes, but a tree will do the trick, too. Any place to hide their prey."
"So unless I can shape-shift into a big cat, this ain't my fault," Cypher says as he rises to his feet. "Agreed?"
"You knew what happened to him," I say. "You knew where he was. But you had to toy with us."
"Out here, you take your amusement where you find it. And you two were so cute. Hot on the trail of the killer cougar. You gonna go arrest her?"
"You gonna tell us where we can find her?" Dalton says. "This is at least the second person she's killed in the last few years. She's learned we're easy prey, which is no joking matter."
"Nope, it's not," Cypher says. "Which is why you don't need to worry about this particular she-bitch. I've been out here every day, watching for her to come back."
"How long exactly?" I ask.
He eyes me. "That important?"
"It might be."
"I was out checking my traps six days ago when I heard Silas scream. By the time I got here, she was hauling him up that tree."
THIRTY-EIGHT
I'm preparing to leave when Cypher steps into my path and says, "You do realize I used to be sheriff in Rockton, right? Whatever this boy's daddy thought of my methods, I kept the law in that town. I know a few things about police work. Had a lot of experience circumventing it in my former life, if you know what I mean."
I have no intention of walking away without questioning him. But I can't let him know I want something, or it'll be another invitation to a game.
"Well," I say, "if you know police investigations, you know there's a limit to what I can tell you. Short version is that we're looking for a man who held a Rockton woman captive in a cave for over a year. And she may not have been the first he put there--just the first who survived the ordeal."
He looks at Dalton. "She serious?"
"Does either of us seem like the type who'd joke about that?"
"Keeping a woman in a cave? That's fucked up. And you say there've been others?"
"Possibly two."
"Stretching back how far?"
"The first one disappeared from Rockton about five years ago."
"After my time." He nods in satisfaction. "Knew your daddy wasn't up to the job."
"Yeah, well, half as many people disappeared into the forest under his watch."
"Mine didn't disappear. They took off 'cause I scared them away. Weeding out the bad apples." He looks at me. "So if we're talking five years, that must cut your in-town suspects down to about zero. That why you're rooting around out here?"