A Real Detective

by Joseph Kuttler

About the Author: Joseph Kuttler has worked and written throughout the United States in sprawling metropolises, small towns and remote rural outposts, working with houseboats, on regenerative farms and building timber-frame houses.

Excerpt

Blood was everywhere, and I couldn’t make sense of it. The sun had passed over the Grand Canyon’s walls, casting long shadows over the scene. Running down the sandy, rocky beach into the creek, the blood appeared thick and black. The man held tightly onto his pistol, his index finger still upon the trigger. The pistol’s barrel pointed at a dead bighorn sheep lying fifty feet away on the dusty ground.

The man looked strong despite his girth, like he could’ve slung the sheep over his shoulder and carried it out of the canyon by himself. Flies buzzed around his mountaineer beard and soared up and down his wide frame. I looked back down at his body, which was as lifeless as the sheep’s.

The sheep should’ve had a small hole through its skull where the bullet entered. If it was a cold-blooded poaching, blood would’ve dripped from between the curved horns, staining the sand and rocks beneath it red. But the sheep lay in a winding, overflowing river of blood. And its head was clean, free of wounds and scratches. Its belly, on the other hand, was torn open, its intestines spilling out wantonly.

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