What I come up with, this morning, is chicken gizzard, cyanosis and bruise. The man we're looking for is old and in poor health, already missing two nights. The sheriff briefed us on his radio code for deceased. That doesn't quite spoil the morning, but shades it with unexpected colors. Now my dog sniffs at the edge of a rutty path, still muddy from last week's rain.
Dogwood overhangs the passage.
I sidestep to study it from the best angle, against the sun. Clues tell the story, since someone or something left this trace. It's such a fragmentary bit of evidence, might be the curved indentation of a heel. Or a deer's cloven hoof. My dog gazes into the woods with brown-eyed longing but doesn't offer to lead me that way.