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“No, Mister Picky, I only have water.”
Raymond drank a third of the water and handed it to Hunter. “Drain it; we don’t need any extra weight on our backs at this stage.”
Hunter did, and looked across the hardpan flat as she slipped on the empty Camelbak. Mirages danced and shimmered around them for miles in every direction. She said, “What do you think?”
“I say we give it one more hour, then head back. I don’t think I have any more than that in me.”
“Okay. Only because I’m thinking of your well being.”
“You could go longer, I assume.”
“Oh sure. I figure I could go two, three minutes longer than that. Not easy, but I could do it, being so youthful. You understand.”
“Wow.” Raymond nudged her with his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s see if this guy is ever gonna stop.” They stayed on the trail, such as it was. The soil was so hard and barren that there were no footprints. Only an occasional overturned pea-sized pebble with the shiny desert varnish side overturned to show the disturbance, or a postage stamp-sized scuff on a dirt surface as hard as plaster where the toe of a shoe or huarache drug across the ground.
Hunter scouted ahead a hundred yards and cut across Raymond’s direction of travel. She found a scuff beside a football-sized rock the color of an eggplant. She signaled Raymond with her hand, not bothering to use the handie-talkie, and stayed on the trail as Raymond passed her. He cut across a hundred yards in front of her and picked up the sign again. They leapfrogged like that for the next hour and were ready to quit when Raymond said, “You see that?” He pointed at a darker shade of earth at the lip of a small arroyo thirty yards ahead. “That’s fresh.”
They entered the arroyo and saw the tire-tread huarache tracks of one man. They knew it was a man by the imprint. Large, a size twelve, maybe a thirteen. Raymond pointed at the wall of the arroyo, “Look here, he used a stick to pull down some more dirt.”
Hunter found the stick lying nearby. Dirt still caked one end. She picked it up and began scraping the fresh mound. “Let’s see what he covered up.”
Hunter uncovered the edge of a shoe. She stopped, “Oh, crap.”
Raymond looked at her and rubbed his jaw as he thought. He said, “We don’t have any radio or phone contact from here.”
“So, keep digging, see what we have?”
“Yeah. We need to know what to report.” Hunter nodded and went to work again with the stick. She uncovered both shoes and the lower legs enough so that the ankles showed.
Raymond checked the bottoms of the shoes for their pattern, then said, “Keep going.”
Hunter uncovered the legs, pelvis, the upper torso, and finally his head, which caused Raymond to suck in breath, “Oh man.” Hunter continued, and uncovered the briefcase and the separated hand. “What the heck?” Raymond said.
“I know,” Hunter said as she snapped photos of the scene with her phone, “This guy left no tracks anywhere down here, and none on top either. How did he get here, and who killed him? Maybe our other guy?”
“I don’t think so, or we would have had signs showing a struggle.”
“He’s got no ID, not even a wallet or change in his pockets.” Hunter wiped the sweaty grime from her forehead and said, “I think Captain Kirk had Scotty beamed him down from the Enterprise. I’m going with that.”
Raymond studied the earthen walls and the dark, blade-shaped rock above him. “He fell from the sky.”
Hunter nodded, “From an airplane. Had to be.”
Raymond pointed, “Hit the rock there and sheared off his hand. Knocked a lot of dirt down with the impact, too.”
“So he was alive until he hit.”
“Yep. No parachute anywhere, so I’m thinking he either jumped or somebody pushed him.”
Hunter said, “The briefcase is closed. Should we open it?”
Raymond cupped his hand and ran the thumb and forefingers down his Zapata moustache. “No. Leave it for the Sheriff. It’ll be their case, when we can finally contact them about it.”
They studied the scene for several minutes, and then Hunter nudged the briefcase and hand back to its original position beside the man’s head.
“You don’t want to take the hand?” Raymond grinned.
“No sir, I do not. We can cover everything up to keep the coyotes off it, and then call the Sheriff’s office to report the body.”
