Strawman's Hammock by Darryl Wimberley

blood, tissue, and fluids as quickly as possible. The accuracy of many tests related to levels of adrenaline and serotonin that might be accurate within a day or two of death degraded precipitously thereafter. Some toxins that might be detected within five days or a week would fail to register beyond that time.
    Forensic pathology was a time-sensitive art. Every man or woman in criminal investigation was drilled to gather fluids, tissue, and visual information as quickly as possible. The sheriff’s sensitivity for turf had delayed the gathering of crucial information a full twenty-four precious hours. What chafed Barrett, Cricket, and the other members of the team even more was that Lou seemed completely unconcerned about the effects of that delay.
    You did what you could. The area was secured, first, and gridded off into squares. Every scrap collected in a given square received a coordinate in the grid, a description, and an identifying number. The finding officer signed a receipt for each bagged item of evidence. Chain of custody went straight from the discovering team member to Sheriff Sessions. The work was as painstaking as archeology, and the stakes were a lot higher.
    A killer was loose. More than likely a sociopath. Certainly this was no ordinary crime of passion. Barrett and his team did not yet know (might never know, thanks to the sheriff) whether the woman was raped or had had sexual intercourse with her killer. That fact would greatly impact the profile made of Jane Doe’s assailant.
    The body, what was left of it, would be violated again, this time for forensic detail. Every hair on her body held a story. Every scrap of skin told a tale. A single fingernail or a sample of blood could point to her killer. Or cement a conviction. Barrett was certain that her killer was a he. And he would bet that this was not the perpetrator’s first homicide. The dog was what bothered him the most. It was Rolly Slade’s. That fact was verified by Rolly himself only that morning. Barrett was almost sure that whoever recruited the dog was a local resident. It was hard to imagine a serial killer drifting through the area who could capture or cajole the animal into captivity, then select a victim and construct the kind of horror show that was being uncovered grid by grid in this suffocating hammock. Whoever did this knew the dog, knew the land. Barrett would be surprised if he did not know the victim as well.
    Barrett turned to Cricket.
    â€œWhere’s Holloway?”
    Midge Holloway was the chief forensics investigator from Jacksonville. Midge had gone much more than the extra mile, leaving that East Coast city to drive all the way to the West Coast for this homicide. The chief did not usually come to the scene. Their work was done in the Jacksonville morgue. Midge’s responsibilities and authority were more fluid. When Barrett explained the elaborately staged scene, Midge had decided that she needed to have a clearer vision of the evidence than what could be gleaned from a grid map and plastic bags.
    â€œI’ll be there at first light,” she had told Barrett.
    â€œShe’s inside the shack,” Cricket told Bear.
    Midge was a short, slightly built woman. A premature onset of osteoporosis forced her to peer up at you from a nascent hunchback with eyes large and liquid as a lemur’s.
    Those eyes, Barrett thought. They don’t miss much.
    â€œMidge. You got any impressions?”
    â€œMost interesting thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
    â€œInteresting” was not the word Barrett would have chosen. But he understood that Midge’s vocabulary was shaped by the imperative need to remain objective. An emotional identification with the victim could be useful at some point in the process. But not here. Not now.
    â€œWe have a female. The pelvis, what I can find of it, shows no sign of childbirth. I’d be surprised if she was much older than