Jordan's Stormy Banks (Body Farm 7.5)

A selection of rakes and hoes hung on the wall a few feet away, and Satterfield walked toward them, the lopper in one hand, swaying beside his right leg. The handles of the rakes were about an inch in diameter: about the thickness of his thumb, he noticed when he held up a hand to compare. Taking a step backward, he spread the handles of the lopper wide and fitted the jaws around the wooden shaft of a rake. He closed the handles slowly, feeling for resistance—just as he’d done earlier, with the hole punch—as the concave jaw hugged the wood and the sharp edge began to bite into the layers of grain. Once the edges were well seated, he gave a smooth squeeze. The rake’s handle snapped with a dry pop, the amputated portion clattering to the floor as a razor-thin smile etched Satterfield’s face.

He took a step to his right. The hoes had heavier-duty handles: hickory, by the look of it, and nearly twice as thick as the rake handles. Satterfield opened the handles wide and worked the jaws around one of the handles. The blade cut easily at first, but the going got tougher fast, the steel handles of the lopper bending under the strain as he bore down. Just as Satterfield feared the handles might buckle, the hoe’s shaft snapped. It clattered on the concrete floor with a resonant, musical note, like the ring of a baseball bat colliding with a fastball. Satterfield bent and picked up the severed piece, studying the cross section closely. The cut was clean, but when he held the wood so that the ceiling lights raked across the cross section at a low angle, he could discern the cut marks, a myriad of ridges and valleys etched in the wood as the jaws had bitten through it. The marks were steeply curved, approximating the arc of a circle 3.5 inches in diameter.

Pocketing the piece of wood, Satterfield headed for the front of the store to check out. On the way home, he’d stop at Kroger, whose meat department sold big beef bones for soup, or for dogs. More tests were needed, but so far he had a good feeling about the bypass lopper.

He found a checkout lane with no line, and slid the tool across the stainless-steel counter. The young man working the register said, “Is that it for you today?”

“Only thing I need,” said Satterfield, but then he added, “Whoa, wait, I take that back. One more thing.” He backtracked two steps, to the end cap at the entrance to the checkout lane, and snagged a fat, striated roll of shrink-wrapped silver-gray tape. He stood it on edge and rolled it toward the scanner as if it were a thick slice from a bowling ball. With a broad smile and a worldly wink, Satterfield said, “A man can never have too much duct tape, can he, now?”