“Had Zeke a long time, since he was a kid. He was more than just a goat. He was a member of the family. Had the run of the house like he was a dog or a cat, he’d just come in, watch us eating dinner, hoping for a snack. I’d never known him to wander off before. Gonna break Donny and Brian’s hearts.”

“Your boys?” Harry asked.

“Yeah. They loved this dumb goat.” Judging from Dell’s expression, Harry was thinking he’d loved him, too.

Dell said, “I was thinking if not a bear, a coyote, although a coyote might be small to have taken on Zeke. But could have been a bobcat or a lynx. I know we got them in Vermont. They make themselves scarce, you don’t see ’em much, but we got ’em.”

Harry was nodding. “We do.”

“But whatever it was, doesn’t make any sense to me. Taking out most of the bones and leaving the meat.”

Harry said nothing.

“You ever see anything like this before?” Dell asked.

Harry thought carefully before answering. “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything like this happen to an animal, Dell.”

Dell shook his head. “Damnedest thing. You figure an animal, it eats the meat and guts and leaves the bones, not the other way around.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, kneeling beside Zeke for one more look. He took from his jacket pocket a small camera, focused on the dead animal, fired off a few shots.

“What kind of camera’s that?” Dell asked.

“Digital,” Harry said. “Take the little chip out, put it in the computer, print out the snaps.”

“I’ll be damned.”

Harry looked off into the distance and stood. “We’re not far from the road here.”

“Beyond that tree line,” Dell said.

Harry said, “Thanks, Dell, I’m just gonna look around a bit.”

“Yeah, sure, knock yourself out. If I was you, I’d maybe give the other farms around here a heads-up, you know?”

“Good advice.”

He slowly paced the edge of the creek, then steered toward the tree line, looking to see whether anyone or anything had parted the tall grasses along the way. There hadn’t been much rain this week, but there’d been a couple of overnight showers, so it was possible there might be some tracks left behind where the grasses gave way to open ground.

Harry stepped gingerly, not wanting to miss, or mar, anything. But as he moved slowly to the trees, he didn’t see much that caught his eye. No impressions left by shoes. He did spot a short trail of some kind of animal footprint, and not one he recognized. It was nearly a foot long, and didn’t look like a print from a lynx or a bobcat or a bear, either. He took a couple of pictures and continued on.