As Dalton
expected, the body was ghostly pale. It had the look of all dead bodies except
for the wooden shaft sticking out of its chest.
When he had
encountered his first corpse in the line of work, a real corpse and not a
carefully prepared cadaver in a coffin at a funeral home, Dalton had learned
something about death that he never forgot. Confronted with mortality, he
realized that dead bodies look very different. They do not simply appear like
living people that are not moving. In a dead person, all nerve and muscle
function has ceased. Tissues lose their tension, give way to gravity. The face
changes as the jaw slackens and the mouth hangs open awkwardly.
This body
was no different. It was a lump of muscle and other tissues. The man himself
had leaked out with his blood and dissipated forever.
“What’s so
special?” the detective asked.
“Look here.”
Springer brought two fingers to within an inch of the wooden shaft. He moved
them along its length, glancing back and forth from the evidence to Dalton. The
detective saw that there were small black letters and symbols carved into the
wood. There were no words that he recognized. The symbols looked vaguely
familiar.
