Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 03 - THE SPRING -- a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving

set out downhill into the forest of shadows. High in the cloudy sky above her a pair of dark red eagles rode the thermals. They had been known to hunt mountain goats and deer. Eagles, like the snow, were not always friendly.
    From off to the left, Bimbo barked. Queenie yelled, “I’m coming, girl! Stay, Bimbo! You hear me?”
    She reached the dog at a clearing on the edge of a meadow where a mound of snow about eight feet in diameter rose above the angle of the slope. Much of the snow had been torn away.
    Not by Bimbo, Queenie realized. As soon as she was close she smelled something sickly sweet. Bimbo wheeled, whining, and dug with her small claws into a patch of exposed brown dirt. The wind moaned through the clearing.
    Queenie hauled her avalanche shovel from her backpack. She began to dig. In a few minutes a stronger smell befouled the cold forest air. A bit of dark cloth showed. Queenie kept digging.
    By the time Larsen reached her, she had scraped away a pack of dirt from dark blue nylon cloth. Chewed-on flesh appeared. Teeth gaped in what had been a mouth.
    Larsen gasped, “You found it. I apologize to your mutt.”
    “No, I didn’t find it,” Queenie said.
    Larsen looked puzzled. “I can see it.”
    Queenie said, “You’re not seeing an it. Not a dog. Two mouths. And the teeth in one of them have gold fillings.”
    Above them stretched a lifeless zone of rocks and cold silence. Light sleet began to fall. Queenie said, “I’m declaring this a crime scene. Nothing to be touched within a distance of fifty yards. Not even a tree trunk. Got it?”
    She was operating under what was called the Federal Incident Command System. She knew only that there were two human bodies in a stage of decomposition. Until it was proved otherwise, under the guidelines of the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office all unattended and unclassified death was considered homicide. In a black leather holster on her belt, besides a Smith & Wesson .357, a speed loader, and a pair of handcuffs, Queenie carried a two-way radio with fourteen channels. Her first signal on the emergency channel bounced off a repeater site downvalley and from there to the day-shift dispatcher in the Sheriff’s Office in the Aspen courthouse.
    “Josh there?” Queenie asked.
    In less than twenty seconds she had the sheriff on the radiophone. “Where are you, boss?”
    “Men’s Club luncheon at the Little Nell. Between the burritos and the chocolate mousse, with fifty citizens of the Aspen business community hanging on my every golden word.” She heard a ripple of laughter in the background. “What’s up, Deputy?”
    “I’m about three miles from Pearl Pass,” Queenie said, “and I have what appears to be two dead human bodies buried at a depth of four feet. The grave seems to have been disturbed by animals, and the bodies look to have been chewed up. Hard to say how long ago.”
    The sheriff grunted. “How’s the weather?”
    “Getting colder by the minute. I don’t recall any reports of missing people last summer, or even last winter.”
    “Neither do I. Anyone was missing, we found ‘em. Who’s with you?”
    She told him.
    “Queenie, I’m appointing you incident commander. I’ll go set up a management page from the courthouse. What do you need up there?”
    “Food, the coroner, and a couple of insulated tents.”
    “Can a chopper get in to you?”
    “Negative. I think we’ll need CBI. And the IAI people.”
    CBI was the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, headquartered in Denver. IAI was the International Association for Identification. A Rocky Mountain division had been formed in 1976 after the Big Thompson Flood.
    “Any ID on the bodies?”
    “None visible.”
    “In about ten minutes,” the sheriff said, “I’m going to get hold of all the available snowmobiles in the county, and send the coroner, and a deputy coroner, and pretty damn near all the people in our office that I can haul out of their beds and comas. Six of ‘em will spend