The Chimera Secret by Dean Crawford

died elsewhere and was moved,’ Ethan said. ‘Any further clues here?’
    ‘None,’ Earl shook his head. ‘Whoever hanged him there was careful enough to sweep the floor, which covered their tracks but I guess also proves they were there.’
    ‘Exactly,’ Lopez said. ‘That was my next point: they cleaned up after themselves, which means premeditated homicide.’
    ‘I’d better call ahead to Grangeville,’ Earl said, and reached for the patrol car’s radio. ‘Inform them of what you guys have figured out.’
    ‘Can you think of any likely suspects?’ Ethan asked Earl.
    ‘Only Randy’s ma, Sally, who found him,’ Earl said. ‘But I don’t think she’s on the cards for this. She had three sons and loved them all. Besides,
there’s no clear motive. Randy had no life insurance and no savings. The mother’s penniless and all three of her sons contributed to the upkeep of their household from their own pay
checks, all of which were from menial jobs in town.’
    Ethan mentally scratched a financial motive to the killing from his list.
    ‘So it’s a homicide disguised as a suicide, and done badly,’ Lopez said. ‘That suggests somebody inexperienced, maybe a local person who doesn’t know much about
crime.’
    Earl Carpenter chuckled bitterly.
    ‘Sure does, which means most all folk in Riggins. Our population work in local business or make the run over to McCall and Grangeville for work. Anybody wantin’ bigger cahoots in
life gets out of the county altogether.’
    ‘Anything from forensics or the coroner’s office?’ Ethan asked.
    ‘Nothing much,’ Earl replied. ‘Randy died of asphyxiation by the same rope that was found around his neck, that much is for sure. So whoever did this, they had a vehicle to
transport him and there was probably more than one of them. Hard to carry and hoist a body on your own.’
    Ethan struggled to get his head around it.
    ‘So they’re dumb enough to botch the apparent suicide, yet smart enough to leave no trace of their presence at the scene or on the body? Were there any tire marks or
tracks?’
    ‘None but my own vehicle when I arrived,’ Earl replied. ‘Which means they cleared their own trail out of there.’
    ‘We were told that the ranger’s body had been recovered,’ Lopez informed him. ‘Anything you guys have learned there?’
    ‘Oh yeah,’ Earl replied. ‘We’ll head up past Riggins to Grangeville first. I’ll let the doctors fill you in about that, because I don’t even like talking
about it.’

11
IDAHO COUNTY CORONER, GRANGEVILLE, IDAHO
    Ethan stood in the clinical surroundings of the autopsy room and looked down at the corpse before him. The body was that of a young, athletic male, probably no more than thirty
years old. Broad chest. Narrow waist. Long, strong legs and muscular arms. Only one thing was missing.
    ‘Where’s his head?’ Lopez asked, her normally olive skin pale and her eyes wide with horror.
    The body of Gavin Coltz ended abruptly at his neck. A bloodied stump of bone protruded from the flesh, the remains of where his spinal column and vertebrae had been snapped off with unimaginable
violence.
    The consulting pathologist, Dr. Jenny Shriver, gestured to a nearby box concealed beneath a sheet of blue plastic.
    ‘It was found fifty feet below where he died, in the bed of a shallow creek. It’s not in good shape.’
    Jenny Shriver was a middle-aged woman whose features might once have been considered attractive but had been creased by years of seeing human bodies tragically mutilated or decayed to the point
of being unrecognizable. Ethan guessed that no matter how detached a person might become to death, it still left its somber imprint on their faces.
    ‘Did the water accelerate the rate of decay?’ Lopez asked.
    ‘No,’ Shriver replied. ‘The impact shattered the skull like a bag of chips under a car tire. The jaw was broken in fifteen places and both of the eyeballs had been blasted from
their sockets.