He’d driven his foot into his back and heard the spine snap. Then he’d kicked him in the right temple, where a major artery and nerve were located, to make sure the job was done. The smartest thing to do now, he decided, was to leave the body where it was. He knew if he brought it back to the car, and Katrina saw it, she’d never help him dispose of it properly. In fact, he was pretty sure she would go straight to the police. Besides, nobody was going to find it out here anyway, not in the forest alongside an unremarkable strip of highway. No hiking trails nearby. No Ski-Doo trails. The only thing that would find the man with the red hair was something with a good nose—a nose for blood. Likely a black bear or a coyote. And that was ideal. No medical examiner could comb over a body that was in the belly of a bear. There would be bones left, but that would be all. By next spring they would be buried beneath a new carpet of leaf litter and fresh ground vegetation. Jack searched the corpse for a wallet and keys, which he found.
