It was such an incongruous thing. Daniel looked around at the brown, wilted, trampled remains of what had, probably very recently, been a beautiful kitchen garden. He could see a few odd sprouts where there had been a line of radishes or maybe turnips over to his right. To his left, the dried, broken stalks of corn must have been as high as the elephant’s eye spoken of in the song. At his feet were the ragged remains of cabbages. Directly in front of him, beyond the blackened, trampled cabbage leaves was the tape outline. Incongruous.
Last night it had been lit by the portable spotlights set up by the forensics team and accented with flashes from the patrol cars parked along the nearest side road. That had helped, frankly. With the lighting and the bustle of people, it simply looked like the crime scene that it was. In today’s quiet, hazy autumn sunlight, with all the trappings of police activity gone, however, well, it was just different and wrong.
Daniel moved carefully around the area, stepping over what remained of the furrowed rows and abandoned vegetables. Occasionally, he bent to examine some stick or leaf or footprint but he never touched anything. His hands remained in the pockets of his faded canvas jacket. He moved in ever tightening circles, scanning the ground at his feet, pausing for a closer look, brushing aside a leaf with the toe of his shoe to get a better look at something on…
