Blackwater Bay Campground
South of Bagdad, Florida

Deputy Sheriff Wendall Galt pulled his cruiser off to the side of the road. A dozen Boy Scouts stood crowded on a mound of grass in the ditch. The barbed-wire fence kept them confined to the ditch. On the other side of the fence the trees and scrub weeds were thick. Two men waved him over. They were obviously the troop leaders although one looked like a slightly overgrown boy at best.

“I thought it was a pile of rags at first,” the small guy said, coming up to Wendall so close he almost bumped into him. “We’ve been keeping the boys right here. No need for them to see something like that. My God! It was horrible. Just horrible.”

Wendall didn’t say anything. Instead, he pushed up his sunglasses. He took a step back from the guy and looked over at the boys, slapping at their legs and arms, bored, but none of them wanting to leave. Despite their Scout leaders’ insistence to protect them, they were anxious to see a dead body. Although Wendall doubted that’s what had been found. Not that it wasn’t possible. But guys like this—and Wendall looked the guy over, noticing his designer khaki shorts and polo shirt with the teeny polo player embroidered on the pocket and leather loafers when some good hiking boots would be smarter—guys like this would fill their pants if they stumbled on a half-eaten deer carcass.

“I can’t believe they sent only one of you,” the guy rattled on.

“Ethan, enough already,” the other one said, but it didn’t matter.

“No, I can’t believe it. There should be officers to seal off the area. And a crime scene mobile lab. The coroner. For Christ’s sake, there’s a dead guy in the swamp. He didn’t crawl off on his own to die there.”

“You never know in these parts,” Wendall said, exaggerating his drawl for effect and enjoying the guy’s response, a slightly dropped jaw. People watched too damn much TV. “What makes you so sure it was a body?”

The guy slapped a hand to his forehead to avoid the setting sun in his eyes. “Are you kidding? I think I’d know a dead body when I see one.”

Wendall wanted to say, “Right, sure you do,” but he was already in trouble with Sheriff Poole for what was called a “disrespectful attitude.” In short, he seemed to piss off people too easily.

“Let me take a look for myself,” he said instead. “Where is it?” Almost on cue they all pointed toward the trees on the other side of the barbed-wire fence.

Wendall shook his head. Hell, there wasn’t even a path. A little bit of scrub weed trampled down a bit. He took his time, pretending to examine the area before he attempted to climb over the fence. Two boys volunteered to lead the way and he was just about to tell them he didn’t need them when the small guy with the big mouth yelled at the boys to stay put. Wendall told the boys to come on with him, and the look on the guy’s face made the impulsive decision worth it. Turned out, it paid off. The two boys, Corey and Kevin, were the ones who had actually stumbled on the pile.

“I’ve never seen a dead person before today,” Kevin was telling him, keeping close to Wendall’s side and letting Corey lead the way. “Do you think somebody brought him out here and killed him? No way they could drag him in here after he was dead, right?”

Wendall didn’t answer. He didn’t want to stimulate the kid’s imagination anymore than it already was.

“It smells really bad,” Corey said over his shoulder. “Pretty soon—” and he started sniffing the air like a bloodhound “—you’ll smell it. I thought it was garbage or something like that.”

Wendall still believed the boys just had active imaginations. One thing you learned quickly was that if something died in the July heat in these wetlands, it didn’t take long for it to stink to high heaven, whether it was a bird or a fox or an armadillo.

He followed them anyway, not paying much attention except to the no-see-ums attacking his arms and the back of his neck. Even after you slapped them, their carcasses stuck to your sweat. He hated the humidity this time of year, with his shirt constantly stuck to his back. He was thinking how good it’d feel when he returned to his cruiser and blasted the A/C. The sudden stink of rotted meat stopped him in his tracks.

“Right there,” Corey told him, pointing to what looked to Wendall like a pile of dirty old rags.

He was still skeptical, thrusting a hand out for the boys to stay put while he stepped closer.

“What the hell?” He pulled off his sunglasses and squatted over the mess. Then he jumped up and back when the realization hit him. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled. His surprise turned briefly to embarrassment when he remembered the boys. He made himself squat again.

The flies were still buzzing around, but they were few compared to the maggots that swarmed so thick it was difficult to make out what was underneath. Wendall found a branch and poked at the writhing mass, knocking enough of them off to discover a face and a neck and a…that was weird. He prodded an area around the neck, clearing it until he was certain of what he was seeing.

He could be mistaken, but Wendall thought it looked like the corpse was wearing a white collar around his neck. A collar like a priest would wear.