Sheriff Connor parked the squad car in the middle-school parking lot. He walked slowly so that Dr. Davis could keep up with him. They soon reached the spot where Deputy Hood waited near the headless body.

“Jepson Curtis was taking a walk through the woods when he found the body,” explained Deputy Hood. “I told him he could go home, and if we had any questions we could find him there.”

“That’s fine,” said the sheriff. “Dr. Davis, would you like to examine the body before we move it?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The body is over --” began Deputy Hood.

“Don’t tell me!” interrupted Dr. Davis. “I want to use my sharpened senses. We don’t get many mysteries like this in such a small county, so I want to take full advantage of the situation in order to hone my skills.”

Deputy Hood looked over at Sheriff Connor for confirmation. Sheriff Connor raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

Dr. Davis sniffed the air, then tapped around with his white cane. He encountered a log. He tapped it again to try and determine what it was by the sound of the tap. He reached down to touch it.

“That’s not it,” said Dr. Davis.

Sheriff Connor said, “You’re getting --”

“Ahht! Don't tell me.”

Sheriff Connor and Deputy Hood looked at each other again. This time Deputy Hood shrugged, and Sheriff Connor shook his head in mild disapproval.

Dr. Davis sniffed the air again and resumed tapping. He tapped on ferns, vines, and a small sapling before he found the body. He tapped it on its ribs. “Aha!”

He set down his medical bag and his white cane. Kneeling beside the body, he put his hand on an area torn apart by scavengers. He jerked his hand back, surprised. “Ewww! Why didn't you tell me it was ripped open!”

“You told us to be quiet,” Sheriff Connor explained.

“I told you not to tell me where the body was! But you could clearly see I was about to touch the torn flesh without any gloves on! I could have compromised the evidence!”

“You’re the medical examiner,” said the sheriff. “You can’t blame us for your mistakes.”

The doctor sighed, getting his emotions under control. “You’re right. I should have put my gloves on first. I just got excited and forgot myself.”

“So you're sure it's a murder?” asked Deputy Hood.

“Quite sure,” responded the doctor. “People do accidentally die in the woods, but they don't accidentally mail their heads to someone's house.”

“Is this definitely the body that belonged to the head Mrs. Harken got in the mail?” asked the sheriff.

“I'm 99% sure,” said Dr. Davis, “but let me double check.”

Dr. Davis put on his latex gloves. He felt the chest area, checking for breasts. He poked the crotch with his finger.

“The head was from a male. The body is male.”

Dr. Davis reached out and touched the feet with one hand, then touched the neck area with his other hand, which gave him an approximate height. He then checked the dimensions of the corpse from shoulder to shoulder.
“The body size is proportional with the head.”

Dr. Davis smelled all around the corpse, then felt it. He paid special attention to the ground around the neck. He pulled a plastic dropcloth from his medical bag. He spread the plastic out on the other side of the body, tucking the drop cloth under the body.

“Will someone please help me turn him over?”

Sheriff Connor gestured for Deputy Hood to help the doctor. Deputy Hood walked over to the corpse.

“Shouldn’t we take pictures first?” asked the deputy.

“Oh, good idea,” agreed Dr. Davis. “Go ahead and take them yourself with your cell phone. My wife tells me that I take terrible pictures.”

Deputy Hood took several snapshots with his cell phone, then he helped the doctor flip the body onto the drop cloth. Deputy Hood took a couple more pictures before returning to where he had been standing earlier.

Dr. Davis smelled the ground next to where the corpse’s neck had been. He then examined the back of the body and the legs. He smelled it from the neck down, recoiling from the smell near the anus.

“The sphincter released,” the doctor informed them.

“Is that important?” asked Deputy Hood.

“It is if you get too close.”

Dr. Davis finished smelling the body all the way down to the toes.

“The same soap was used on the body and the face. Also, it smells like the same person. This is definitely the body from which the head was severed.”

Deputy Hood cleared his throat. “Do you still think decapitation was the cause of death?” he asked.

Dr. Davis thought for a second before he responded. He said, “The amount of blood on the ground near the neck indicates that the heart was still beating when the head was removed. My preliminary examination also didn't reveal any other wounds, but it's possible there was an injury in the flesh that the scavengers removed, either on the neck or on the belly.”

“What about time of death?” Sheriff Connor asked.

Dr. Davis rolled the body onto its back again, but still on the plastic.

Scavengers had ripped the clothing over the corpse’s belly and had fed on the body. Dr. Davis touched a gloved finger there, removing a drop of blood. He touched the blood to his tongue.

Deputy Hood turned around and vomited. Sheriff Connor looked on in surprise.

Dr. Davis concentrated for a moment, then wiped the blood from his tongue. He put a drop of hand sanitizer on the end of his tongue, then wiped his tongue again. For good measure, he turned away from the corpse, and he spit. He turned back toward the sheriff.

“Between two and three days, I'd say.”

Hood turned back around, then faced away again to vomit one more time.

Sheriff Connor cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Uh, that looks unsafe, Dr. Davis.”

“Nonsense, Sheriff Connor. I know exactly what I'm doing.”

Deputy Hood, wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve, turned back to face Dr. Davis. “Uh, earlier I called the volunteer rescue squad to bring the ambulance. They should be here any time now.”

“We’ll turn this case over to the state police,” the sheriff said. “We really don't have the resources to track a murderer.”

“Are you serious?” asked Dr. Davis. “That would be like admitting that we can't do our jobs. I think we should do our best first, and then if we can't catch who did this, we'll turn it over to the state police. However, if we can figure this out, it will be a major triumph for us. It would be disgraceful to admit defeat before we've even tried.”

“If we screw this up, we could all lose our jobs.”

“Not me,” said Deputy Hood. “I'm just going to do what I'm told.”

Sheriff Connor looked disapprovingly at Deputy Hood.

Dr. Davis stood up. “If the killer isn't from here, he's probably already gone. If the killer is from here, he'll probably think we can't figure it out, and he'll be overconfident. This is our chance to shine, Sheriff Connor. This is a test of our abilities. It's a challenge that we have to accept. To do anything else would be downright cowardly, and I know you're not a coward, Sheriff Connor.”

Sheriff Connor looked uncomfortable.

“Just give us two days,” urged Dr. Davis. “If we haven't figured it out by then, you can turn it over to the state police. All right?”

“You keep saying we. You're the medical examiner. What else do you expect to do that you haven't already done?”

“Sheriff, this body hasn't told us all that it has to say yet. We need to take it to the lab and examine it further.”

“But we don't have a lab,” said the sheriff.

“Sure we do. At the high school. Miss Lancombe can run the tests.”

“The science teacher?”

“That's right. She won every science fair from elementary school through high school, and she graduated at the top of her class at the community college. She'll help us get more information from the body.”

“We'll have to call first,” stated Sheriff Connor.

“Sheriff, as the medical examiner I accept full responsibility for the handling of the body. Leave that up to me.”

“We should still call first.”

“If we call we might interrupt her class, and the principal would certainly say no. If you're there with me and with the body, the principal won't say anything to our faces. Miss Lancombe is my wife's best friend. I'm sure she won't mind if we just show up with the body.”

Sheriff Connor sighed. “All right, Dr. Davis. But if this goes wrong we're all going to be sorry.”

“Not me,” said Deputy Hood. “I'm just doing what I'm told.”

Sheriff Connor shook his head and walked off.