Nobody's Fool Y'all

7

 Bill greeted the day just before the sun slipped above the horizon.

He'd been summoned to Bowey Hill for the autopsy of the unidentified body. Efforts had gone on through the night to determine the identity of the woman, but, so far, the first few hours of the investigation had turned up little.

With the first light of the sun, evidence teams would start scouring the woods and nearby areas. Missing person reports would be searched. Evidence would be studied. 

Bill hoped this woman would turn up somewhere in the system. It would make identifying her much easier, not to mention speed up the notification to her family. The sheriff could always hope for a quick resolution, but he wasn't optimistic.

This case had all the indications of being a body dump. He knew from experience that these were the hardest kind to solve. Without the actual crime scene to study and process, a mountain of evidence was lost. On top of that, the water would have washed away whatever precious few clues might remain on the body. He felt like he was batting double zero.

As a law enforcement officer, he liked to go on evidence not gut judgments. But already, this case was giving him a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. She could be a suicide, but he just didn't think so.

No suicide note. That didn't mean anything. Lots of folks bade a final farewell without leaving a note. No automobile had been discovered. No clothes had been left at the scene. Nobody wandered miles through the woods naked unless they were crazy. It didn't make sense. He could barely walk to the mailbox in his bare feet.

Bill had investigated several suicides where the person had chosen drowning as the way to end life. But there were always clues left behind. Subtle ones, and ones that hit you squarely between the eyes like a wrecking ball.

In this instance, there was hardly anything to go on. Footprints were nonexistent. The rain and the rocks saw to that. Bill hoped identification of the body would open up more avenues of investigation. 

They needed a break on this case. Maybe they'd get lucky, and somebody would call in a missing person. Once they had a name to go on, they could search the house where she lived. Leads were known to turn up in the strangest places. But as of this minute, they had a whole lot of nothing to go on.

Bill picked at a piece of skin on his cuticle. He had a meeting with the new mayor later today. That creep made it perfectly clear he wanted a progress report with a capital P. 

Bill shook his head.

As sheriff, he was going to have to find a way to make a whole lot of zero seem like a vast lot of something. Why had Percy Loveless taken such an interest in the case? Must be a slow day at the mayor's office.

***

There really wasn't anything Bill could put his finger on, but for some reason, the new mayor had decided this case warranted his personal attention. A case like this was worth good face time on TV, Bill reasoned. Perry was just the type to milk a tragedy for all it was worth if it got his ugly mug in front of the cameras.

Bill longed for the days when Asa Harold was mayor. Back then, Asa left the sheriff's department alone. Investigations were Bill's domain. Asa handled the real duties of the mayor's office – hobnobbing with tourists and local politicians, playing Santa in the Christmas parades, and officially hosting the county fair every year.

How Bill missed Asa. Too bad the old guy had fallen ill, and a special election was held to replace him. Percy Loveless had been elected to take Asa's place. It wasn't as if Percy had to fight a hard campaign for the office. Only one other person had come forth to put his name on the ballot.