J Duncan: Deadworld

“Oh.” The comforting warmth of the inside of the car beckoned. It felt so good against his wet, shivering skin. “Don’t you have to be dead to be a ghost?”

The gloved hand gently pushed Archie in the back, easing him into the black cave of the car. “But worry not, Mr. Lane. I shall take care of that.”

The door slammed shut, and a moment later the Rolls eased back into the street.

Beneath the serene, protective canopy of maple leaves, a boy reclined against the trunk, withered and bloodless, his skin two sizes too big for his depleted body. It was death in all the wrong ways.

Jackie Rutledge squinted at the chaos from the parking lot, frowning at the milling gawkers. A gaggle of reporters and cameramen huddled around their cluster of vans waiting to pounce on the nearest unwary law-enforcement officer. She absently rubbed at her throbbing temple. There should have been laws against committing crimes on Mondays.

The drifting scatter of clouds taunted her by blocking the late September sun only to laugh at her seconds later. Her sunglasses provided little relief from the pain induced from last night’s bottle of tequila, and Jackie hoped that luck would bring a thunderstorm and send the crowd running. There was no luck to be found in this park however. Death had sucked it all away.

The enormous maple, its branches drooping nearly to the ground, was completely encircled with crime-scene tape. Some of the crew were walking around, combing through the grass. The local police looked to have been put in charge of crowd control.

Jackie walked over to her partner, Laurel’s, car and accepted the triple-shot latte and four Tylenol. “Thanks for the wake-up. Why can’t killers keep better hours?”

“Off shifts pay better,” Laurel said and reached up to brush off some lingering sand from the dangling ruffle of auburn hair on Jackie’s forehead. “How was the lifeguard?”

“My thighs still hurt, so I’m guessing it was good.” Tequila shots blurred out everything beyond last night’s walk on the lake. The guy was long gone when Laurel had pierced Jackie’s skull with the seven AM wake-up. Plopping the pills into her mouth, Jackie swallowed them with the lukewarm coffee.

She took the FBI jacket offered by Laurel, who was now scanning the crowd past the pair of television vans parked at the curb of the parking lot, her blue eyes narrowed in concentration. Her voice was distant. “Wish my thighs hurt.”

“So is this the same MO as the Wisconsin woman?”

Laurel did not answer. Her eyes were closed, and Jackie knew better than to keep talking. Laurel had her psychic radar on, checking for anything out of the ordinary. If this was related to the Wisconsin victim, odds were there would be something. Even with the length of time that she had been dead, there had been a “taint.” For Jackie, some demented prick had drained the woman of her blood. Period.

She finished off the last of her latte and waited for Laurel. She was ready to get moving, more so to avoid the media that looked to be wandering in their direction.

“Something is off here,” Laurel said, her voice barely a whisper.

Jackie cringed. Of course there was. “Not off in a ‘spiked your morning coffee’ sort of way, I hope?”

“There’s some bourbon in the trunk.” Laurel didn’t smile at the humor. She was too intent on something out in the crowd.

“Great. Off to a fabulous start already,” Jackie said, but Laurel was shuffling across the grass to the other side of the parking lot where the crowd had gathered. Something had tweaked that little psychic nerve of hers, and Jackie knew when to leave well enough alone. She waved. “Go find your bogeyman, Laur.” Turning around, she made her way toward the overhanging tree before any media might notice she was standing by herself.

The blanket of leaves and limbs pushed and swatted at Jackie until she found herself standing in near darkness, thin shafts of light shining down on a boy seated neatly against the trunk of the tree. A couple members of the crew were already milling around in the shadows.

“That you, Jack? Glad you could join us.”

Jackie’s mouth creased into a frown. Pernetti. He would be the one detailing the victim. As if her headache didn’t already feel like someone cranking screws down into her skull. “Don’t even start with me, Pernetti. I’m not in the mood.”

“Boy, did you get laid or something? You’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning.”

For a moment, Jackie thought he might have actually noticed, but then common sense took over. Pernetti was not capable of noticing anything like that. “Kiss my ass. Just tell me what we’ve got here.”

He knelt down next to the body. “Archibold Lane, age twelve. Some sicko sucked the boy dry. There’s ligature marks on the wrists and ankles. Funky marks, though. It looks like zip ties. Other than the hole in the arm, there’s nothing else visible on him. Scene so far is weirdly spotless.”

Twelve. What was wrong with people? “Spotless? That’s doubtful.” These days, everyone left something to track. Unless of course you knew how to clean up after yourself, and knew how forensics worked, but even then, it was unlikely.

“Clean so far, Jack.” He shrugged, pointing at marks on the boy’s wrists. “Other than the marks and the hole, he’s got a couple bumps and scrapes that anyone might get when they’ve been out and about for a couple days.”

“Two? He hasn’t been dead that long.”

Pernetti stood back up, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “Runaway, according to the sheriff. Fled from Mom and Dad beating each other up and not seen until this morning.”

She doubted very much that Mom was doing any beating up on Dad. It hit her then, a brief flash of a twelve-year-old running away from a “domestic dispute” nearly twenty years prior. Mommy certainly had not been doing any of the beating. Jackie took a deep breath. The smell of death was doing little to wash the residue of memory away. “Anything else?”

“Nope. Area still being gone over. Bowers and Prescott are out canvassing, but it’s looking a lot like that Wisconsin woman we brought in a couple months back.”

Jackie shrugged and pulled out a pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket. “Maybe. Okay, move, Pernetti. I want a look.” She didn’t want one, really. There was almost nothing she would see here, she could tell already. The perp had been clean and careful. Even the ground around the body looked undisturbed. Still, she would end up lead on the case, and, if anything, she needed to verify Pernetti’s own observations.

“Think we should track down those parents and see what they have to say. Let them know their son is dead because they can’t bitch at each other like other civilized folks.”

She did not bother glancing up at him. “Go away, Pernetti. You’re distracting me.”

Thankfully left in silence, Jackie gave Archie a quick look over and found nothing out of the ordinary. He seemed almost peaceful, if one could ignore that fact that he looked like a pasty, deflated version of his former self. The thought sent a shiver down Jackie’s spine, and she decided she had seen enough for the moment. Putting her sunglasses back on, she stepped back out from under the tree to find Laurel seated on the hood of her car smoking a cigarette. That was the first sign of trouble right there. A healthy girl by nature, Jackie knew if you hit the stress button hard enough, Laurel would be reaching for that security blanket in the bottom of her purse.

Jackie knew any shot at the day getting better was vanishing with each puff of smoke.

One hundred forty-four years was a long time to be a failure at something. Nick Anderson felt every last year of it as he looked over the heads of the crowd at the towering maple, wondering how long it had taken to find someone who looked like his son. The boy sitting under the tree was not an exact likeness, but the similarities were obvious. Cornelius was back, and this time Nick knew it was for keeps. The game was on for one final round, and if he didn’t catch the bastard, Nick would be dead.