Profile Durango

Thick gray clouds hung low in the sky and spat an occasional flurry of snowflakes. The gray of the day fit perfectly with Tom’s mood.

To say that things had been tense the evening before with Callie would be a vast understatement. After an uncomfortable dinner he’d sat on the sofa while she’d sat in the chair nearby. She’d grabbed a forensic science tome from the bookshelf and had handed him the television remote control.

She’d read while he’d channel surfed and the tension between them had been palpable. He’d expected this assignment to be somewhat difficult because of the emotional baggage that existed between them. But he hadn’t expected her to be so closed off, so unwilling to engage with him on any level.

There was a darkness in her, one that occasionally flashed in her eyes, one that hadn’t been there before when he’d known her. It made him wonder just what her life had held over the last three years.

He was relatively certain there wasn’t anyone important in her life. The phone had remained silent throughout the evening and she’d made no outgoing calls. Surely if there was a man in her life he would have wanted to talk to her or she would have wanted to check in with him.

She’d finally gone to her bedroom around nine, with scarcely a word exchanged between the two. This morning had been no different. She’d gotten up just in time to take off for work.

While she’d been at the lab throughout the morning, Tom had used the hours studying the map that had been mailed to him, but he was no closer now to figuring out what it depicted than he’d been the day before.

He and Callie were now on their way to the scene where she’d told him a young Ute woman had supposedly been attacked by a bear.

They had entered Ute territory a few miles back. The terrain was rough, the location remote. At least Tom didn’t have to worry about being followed. Theirs was the only vehicle on the road.

“I’m surprised you’re still doing field work considering your administrative position at the lab,” he said. He shot a quick glance at her. Even after all this time the mere sight of her nearly took his breath away.

“I don’t do as much as I’d like anymore, but when a particular case catches my interest, I like to get out in the field. Besides, the lab is a small operation and sometimes I’m the only one available to show up at a crime scene.”

“What’s so interesting about this particular case? A bear attack doesn’t sound like something the crime lab would be involved with.”

“Normally we wouldn’t. The coroner ruled it as an attack, but Patrick had a bad feeling about it and brought us some of the evidence to look at and when I examined the photos and such, more questions than answers jumped into my head. There are some troubling inconsistencies.”

Apparently, the secret to getting Callie to talk was to ask about her work, he thought. “So, what kind of inconsistencies?” At the moment the tension between them was gone and he wanted to keep the easy conversation going.

She frowned, the gesture unable to take away from her beauty. “There’s no question that the wounds on the victim were made by bear claws. Turn right up here,” she said and pointed to a narrow dirt trail, then continued. “Those wounds were lethal in that she bled to death from them.”

“Then why the questions?”

“No bear scat or tracks found in the area. While the wound patterns themselves were consistent with claws, the amount of pressure used to inflict those wounds was not. Also, there were no bite marks. When did you ever hear about a bear attack where the bear didn’t bite?”

“Never,” he replied. “What about DNA analysis. Wouldn’t that show you if it was bear?”