“Did you check the VIN?”
“Nope. We figured someone might claim it sooner or later, but nobody has.” He looked at her, “So I got to thinking last night it might be full of dope.”
Hunter stepped closer, put her nose carefully next to the trunk seam and smelled something odd. Not necessarily bad, but odd and she couldn’t place it.
Buddy said, “You got a whiff of that?”
“I smell something, but I’m not sure it’s marijuana. What makes you think it might be drugs?”
“By where the car came from, it had to cross down through the Rio Grande by the old smuggler’s route to get caught in the rise.”
“You didn’t check it right away?”
“It was reported the third day after the flood. Water was still circling around it, and half the roads were flooded. I sniffed the trunk back then, but there was nothing. Now the smell is more like a really bad swamp, right?”
“I’m not sure what it is. Can you pop the trunk?”
“I called a deputy to see about doing just that thing. They have the authority to order it and I won’t get my butt in trouble. Carlo Diaz is coming.”
Ten minutes later, Diaz arrived in a tan Brewster County Sheriff’s Suburban. Carlo, all bright white teeth in that handsome brown face said, “What have you got, Buddy?”
Buddy gave him a quick history of the car and said, “Can we open it?”
Carlo looked at Hunter, “What do you think?”
“We won’t know what’s in it until we do.”
“Buddy, you have some tools?”
“Sure,” he said, “Hunter, can you take me to the shop?”
“Climb in.”
They returned in less than ten minutes and Buddy carried several pry bars and other items to the Ford. Hunter remained a step behind the two men as they checked the trunk seam. Buddy searched it for a weak point, and decided on one corner that lifted slightly higher than the rest of the lid. When he had the bar in place and pried on it, the lid popped with a greasy, sucking sound, and the smell hit them.
Both men jerked their faces fast away as if flames shot out of the trunk, and the deputy vomited on the gravel at his feet. Hunter stepped closer and caught a whiff of the god-awful reek coming from the Ford. Like an abandoned slaughterhouse gone fetid and rotten in the summer heat. Buddy wiped his mouth and his watering eyes, “I’ll have to burn my clothes with this smell on them. Brandi won’t let me inside the house.”
“I didn’t notice that you got any on you.”
“Being that close will be enough. We opened that lid and a cloud of it rolled over us.” He spat on the ground, “I can still taste it.”
He stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees, retching. When he gained control, Buddy righted and said, “This is horrible. Take a look.”
Hunter held her breath. The trunk area was filled with a thick, rancid, greyish soup laced with string-like lines of what resembled fine red threads running through it. A finger-wide, crusty rime of dried material showed all around the trunk’s rim where the lid broke loose when Buddy pried it open. The mix in the bottom looked to be made of thick mucus, or something similar. Hunter turned away and exhaled the held breath and drew in fresh air. “What happened?”
Buddy said, “Like I said, it’s probably an illegal that got smuggled across and hid in the trunk. This Ford was found downriver at a crossing, half covered up in a debris pile of brush and stuff. A deputy said it washed in there during the flood. He spotted it because the trunk reflected the sun, but had a lot of mud on it that didn’t shine, and he got curious.”
“The car’s been here in the lot cooking in the sun for six months?”
“About what we figure,” Buddy said. “Once, over in Sanderson they had something similar and had to use liquid nitrogen to freeze it all, then break it out in chunks to get the evidence because it was like soup.”
Carlo turned away with his phone.
Buddy said, “Would be way better than scooping it out. Hoo-wee, this smell would gag a buzzard.” He glanced at the deputy with a hint of a smile, “Woul
dn’t it, Carlo?” Diaz shot him the finger and drank some water from a plastic bottle.
Hunter said, “I don’t know if you have a body in there, but you sure have a mess.”