They walked up the road to where the tow car, with its back wheels blocked, was straining at the weight on the other end of the steel line.
The sun beat down from a cloudless sky. The air in the canyon was dry, hot and still. A growth of scrub oak covered the slope which stretched down for a hundred feet below the roadbed to terminate abruptly in a fifty-foot drop. The tow car had raised the wreck above this drop and was now inching it up the slope. From time to time, branches of the scrub oak cracked explosively. Little spurts of powdery dust puffed upward from the trees.
Mason said to the man in charge of operations, “We’re investigators,” and moved over to the white canvas which had been spread beneath the shade of a big oak tree.
Picking up a corner of the canvas, he moved it back. Flies buzzed in angry circles. Mason dropped the canvas back into place and said, “Not much help there.”
Drake dropped to his knees, brought out a small inked pad from his pocket and said, “I can get something from the finger-tips, Perry.”
Mason once more turned a corner of the canvas back. The traffic officer continued to stand where he could warn traffic coming around the blind curve from below. The men in charge of raising the wreck from the canyon were completely occupied with the problems which confronted them. Someone shouted from down below. The winches ceased to turn, and the sounds of an ax, chopping away at a bush, could be heard from the thicket.
Drake transferred prints of the dead man’s fingers to a white piece of paper, produced a magnifying glass and another set of prints from his pocket. Sitting on his heels beside the mangled form of the dead man, Drake made his comparison.
“Don’t try to reduce it to a mathematical certainty,” Mason said. “All I want is a working hypothesis.”
“Well, you’ve got it,” Drake told him. “This is the guy.”
“Jason Braun?”