But there wasn’t that much blood, all things considered. Conservation Officer Meglizabeth Vesco had gotten a call from the dispatcher and been first on the scene. The vic looked to be in his forties, sort of small, though it was impossible to judge with the two parts about three feet apart. Oddest of all, there was a smile on his face, not a smirk but a full shit-eating grin, a Joker-size smile. Vesco had been a conservation officer for eleven years and seen death in all its forms: suicides, vehicular accidents (the snowmobiles tended to be the worst—many beheadings), death by violence (guns and knives, even fists, one with a broomstick carved and fire-hardened into a spear). Mostly the rictus of death left a shocked look on the faces of the dead, never a smile or a grin. Not like this. The accident took place near Menominee, about a mile from any main intersection, and by the time Vesco got down the tracks in her patrol truck, she found a crowd of about thirty gawkers, all intent on seeing the body.
