A Long December by Donald Harstad

shape, at least the tops.”
    “Maybe another fragment of jaw?” asked Bob, pointing to a light grayish item that was speckled with blood.
    My turn. “Nope. That’s the plastic wadding from the shotgun shell,” I said. The plastic wadding holds the shot pellets and butterflies out as soon as it leaves the barrel. That was a good find, as it would enable us to nail down the exact caliber or gauge of the shotgun.
    Our luck held, as we found about half an eyeball, mostly the retina.
    “Looks like he had brown eyes,” said Bob.
    “Well, one, anyway,” I said. It was an attempt at a bit of humor, to ease the stress.
    We stepped back again and regarded the entirety of the scene.
    “Mostly bits and pieces,” I said. “That’s only good if you like puzzles.”
    “It’s not a lot,” said Hester, “but we at least have someplace to start.”
    She was right about it not being a lot. Just some hair, partial dentition, and hopefully an eye color. The only concrete ID materials we had were his fingerprints, and we could only hope they turned up something concrete. In the meantime, we’d have to circulate a pretty basic description and see if anybody resembling it turned up missing. I was sort of praying that he was local. If not, we could be looking at the remains of somebody from just about anywhere.
    Lamar and I pulled on some latex gloves and helped Henry turn the body over, so he could feel the abdomen and get a guess as to the core temperature of the deceased.
    The absence of a face was a lot more pronounced when he was rolled over. What bothers me the most in the recently dead is usually the face. No problem here.
    “Ugh,” said Henry. “What a mess.”
    I noticed that there was a gold chain around the dead man’s neck. Anything in the way of an identifier was good, although it looked like a perfectly ordinary chain from where I stood.
    “Still some warmth in there,” said Henry, mostly to himself. “Let me check his pockets to see if he has any ID.”
    “Watch for needles,” warned Hester.
    “Sure,” said Henry. He went through the jeans pockets, and came up with a quarter and two dimes.
    “That’s it,” he said. “No billfold, nothing else.” He smiled at Hester. “And no needles.”
    Henry, as county medical examiner, authorized the remains to be taken to Maitland Hospital, where they’d be examined by one of the state forensic pathologists as soon as one was available.
    “Are one of you,” he asked Hester and me, “going to want to attend the autopsy?”
    “Yes,” said Hester. “If you could let us know when it’s scheduled…”
    “Sure,” said Henry. “Shouldn’t think it’d be too very hard to determine the mechanism of death in this one.”
    “God,” said Hester, “I should hope.” She motioned to Lamar. “Could you have an officer meet the body at the hospital and stay with it until the pathologist gets there?”
    He could and would.
    “Great. Either I’ll be at the autopsy or Carl will,” said Hester. “Bob, be sure to get case prints as soon as you can. That means you have to be at the hospital, because we leave the wrists bound until the pathologist cuts the cuffs. Okay?”
    The senior lab technician agreed, a bit reluctantly. Case prints are “fingerprints” that encompass the entire hand, past the crease of the wrist. That way, even if the person being identified has just left a partial palm print on some surface, you can at least get a fair comparison. It was also for normal ID purposes, since our victim was without his face.
    “And AFIS as soon as possible,” she said. AFIS stands for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Its computerized database is composed of links to FBI, state, local, and independent databases. If a set of prints has been recorded, AFIS can retrieve it, identify the owner, automatically link with the Computerized Criminal History system, and get any criminal record from CCH within seconds. It was a great system. They also make a