Back of Beyond

“Okay then,” he said, leaning forward and grasping the black stalk and pulling it free. He held the bottle by the neck. “Here’s our answer. Judging by the shape of it, I’d guess Wild Turkey. One hundred proof.”

Cody concurred. He knew the bottle, even though the fire had puckered in the sides of it.

Said Larry, “No way to tell if it was empty, half full, or full. If there was any left when the fire burned this hot it would have boiled anything inside into vapor, which is a sad loss of pretty good bourbon. But it appears there wasn’t a cap on it. Does Wild Turkey have a metal screw cap?”

“Nope,” Cody said. “It has a cork plug kind of thing.”

“Hmmm, then we’ll have to get it analyzed to see if there’s any cork or plastic residue inside the neck of the bottle. But I’d guess our victim opened this baby up and didn’t cap it. Which means serious drinking to me. I mean, when a guy doesn’t bother to put the cap back on between drinks, he’s on a good toot. Right, Cody?”

Cody grunted with recognition.

“So the way I see it,” Larry said, moving the flashlight to the blackened arm and hand sticking out from the couch and debris, “is our victim was feeding the fire and getting pounded at the same time. Except maybe toward the end of the toot he didn’t latch the handle on the stove completely. He staggered back to the couch with his bottle of Wild Turkey and had another drink and likely fell asleep. When the logs in the stove shifted they pushed open the door.

“Of course,” Larry said, raising his flashlight to illuminate his face so Cody could see Larry’s index finger posing pensively alongside his cheek, “first impressions can be wrong, especially in these conditions, and I’m never one to jump to conclusions no matter how much I want to will them to be what I want them to be. For starters, this isn’t an optimal crime scene. In fact, it’s a fucking horrible crime scene, which is why I don’t want it to be anything other than a suicide. The rain changes everything, as we know. There’s both bad and good aspects of this scene because of this goddamned weather.”

Cody could tell Larry was at his best and wanted to be prompted.

“Like what?” Cody said.

“Well, the bad aspects are legion. It’s been two or three days since the fire occurred, for one, so the scene isn’t fresh. Rainwater has contaminated it if we try and look for trace evidence of any kind. Animals have been in here.”

“They have?” Cody said, genuinely surprised he’d missed it.

Larry squatted and trained his beam so it shone from a lower angle into the tangle of debris around the body, illuminating a swatch of dark red striped with white. Bone white: ribs.

“Yeah,” Larry said. “A badger or something got in here and fed through the meat to the bone. So that’s just gross.”

He stood, and said, “Continuing, the slop of ash and water within this foundation is wet enough not to retain any prints or tracks. So we can’t tell if anyone besides us and the hikers were in here. Not that it makes that much difference, since dead is dead. But if there was someone else here with the victim we have no evidence of that. No empty glasses, or cigarette butts, or anything like that. If there were tire tracks out in the parking area or footprints in the dirt they’re gone. We’ve only got what we’ve got. And if anything was left in this part of the cabin before the place burned down it’s literally in the soup now.

“If an accelerant was used as part of a suicide I doubt there would be any trace of it left. Of course, hundred-proof whiskey might have had the same effect.”

Cody nodded.

“But there’s some good things,” Larry said.

“Which are?”

Larry shined his light on the unburned half of the cabin. “The rain put the fire out before it took the whole place down. We might find something in there. That’s where the kitchen and dining room are, and a bedroom. There’s a lot of smoke damage, but who knows? We might find something.

“And the rain and cold might work a little in our favor,” he said. “If the rain hadn’t come no doubt the body would have been subject to the wick effect, because our victim was big and had plenty of fuel.”

The wick effect was when fat smoldered-sometimes for days-and rendered the carcass a mass of black gelatinous goo.

“So because we have a great deal of the body left, the autopsy boys might be able to determine cause of death.”

Cody centered his light on the frame of a metal desk and the black melted hulk on top of it. “We might even be able to recover something from the hard drive of the computer, I just don’t know. I don’t know if data on a hard drive can survive that kind of heat and this damned rain. But we might be able to recover something, if it’s even worth trying.”

Larry said, “And there you have it, folks,” bowing and sweeping his hand toward the body like a performer done with his act, “an accidental death in a remote mountain cabin.”

Cody said nothing. The rain drummed.

“What?” Larry asked, finally. “Are you thinking something else?”