They always put me on grave watch because they know I'll always find something and with the missing persons rate around this area, they need all the help they can get. You'd think that with such a small population it'd be hard for anyone to just up and vanish but that's a damned lie if ever I heard one.
Folk disappear all the time here and they're rarely found alive. Might be a serial killer with no set style other than burying their victims in shallow graves out in the desert. Might be that there's something in the air that's been driving people of all sorts to bury themselves and wait for death or coyotes to take them. Usually the coyotes come first judging by the blood and fur that's often caught underneath their nails.
Every patrol I've ever been on has resulted in at least three bodies found. They used to think I was behind it until the commissioner shadowed a few of my shifts and saw all the signs I kept my eyes out for that the untrained eye would skip completely.
It wasn't just down to vultures gathering (though that was the easiest to look for), it was the faint metallic tang on the breeze, paw prints gradually changing colour from dusty brown to deep red, tattered cloth or skin clinging to a cactus and of course, the one everybody ignores - the dunes.
A normal dune sits at a drunken angle and is always in the process of moving. If a dune hasn't move all day then it'll be heavier dirt dug up and piled on top of something or someone. Turf that doesn't move is often damp from the pitiful amounts of sub-surface moisture that the arid air and sparse rainfall provide.
The only downside to finding one of these man-made dunes is that the bodies beneath them rot much faster than if a wild animal buries them. See, a human wants the body to go quicker and have all evidence of their crimes turn to bone fragments and dirt while animals want to save a little something for later, just in case.
It's all well and good talking about this but it doesn't stop people from disappearing, doesn't stop me from finding them days or weeks later and doesn't stop me from wondering where they go before they wind up dead and half buried out in the middle of nowhere.
More of them appear each week but the missing rate is still a steady 3 per month. I only put two-and-two together when I found my neighbour's body. The same neighbour who I'd greeted that morning and who was now a corpse, roughly eight weeks into rot.
Most people think you can't talk to the dead but if you don't know they're dead then they look just like us.
Folk disappear all the time here and they're rarely found alive. Might be a serial killer with no set style other than burying their victims in shallow graves out in the desert. Might be that there's something in the air that's been driving people of all sorts to bury themselves and wait for death or coyotes to take them. Usually the coyotes come first judging by the blood and fur that's often caught underneath their nails.
Every patrol I've ever been on has resulted in at least three bodies found. They used to think I was behind it until the commissioner shadowed a few of my shifts and saw all the signs I kept my eyes out for that the untrained eye would skip completely.
It wasn't just down to vultures gathering (though that was the easiest to look for), it was the faint metallic tang on the breeze, paw prints gradually changing colour from dusty brown to deep red, tattered cloth or skin clinging to a cactus and of course, the one everybody ignores - the dunes.
A normal dune sits at a drunken angle and is always in the process of moving. If a dune hasn't move all day then it'll be heavier dirt dug up and piled on top of something or someone. Turf that doesn't move is often damp from the pitiful amounts of sub-surface moisture that the arid air and sparse rainfall provide.
The only downside to finding one of these man-made dunes is that the bodies beneath them rot much faster than if a wild animal buries them. See, a human wants the body to go quicker and have all evidence of their crimes turn to bone fragments and dirt while animals want to save a little something for later, just in case.
It's all well and good talking about this but it doesn't stop people from disappearing, doesn't stop me from finding them days or weeks later and doesn't stop me from wondering where they go before they wind up dead and half buried out in the middle of nowhere.
More of them appear each week but the missing rate is still a steady 3 per month. I only put two-and-two together when I found my neighbour's body. The same neighbour who I'd greeted that morning and who was now a corpse, roughly eight weeks into rot.
Most people think you can't talk to the dead but if you don't know they're dead then they look just like us.
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