Jonathan Maberry - Dead of Night

JT bent and peered at the blood trail and then began following it, keeping to one side to protect the evidence. Dez flanked him on the other side of the trail. The smears of blood faded from bright wetness to faint touches to nothing forty yards from the wall of trees.

“Lost it,” said Diviny, who was dogging JT and, Dez thought, clearly avoiding her. All of the cops were giving her strange looks.

Fuck ’em , she thought. Her nerves were still jangling and the skepticism of Goss and the other officers was doing nothing to take her blood pressure off the burner. If this had been a UFO sighting or if she’d seen Bigfoot poking through her garbage can, then maybe she’d give some weight to JT’s unspoken assumption that her perceptions were still being filtered through a mix of Jack Daniels and Yuengling lager. But what happened back in the mortuary office was no visual hallucination, and it wasn’t pink fucking elephants. The woman had been dead. And then she had gotten up and gone apeshit. That was fact. Dez could still feel the slack weight of the woman bearing her down to the ground and her cold fingers trying to grab Dez’s hair.

She hunkered down and peered at the grass. “No … look at the grass.”

Diviny and JT bent low and looked where she was pointing. The grass was short and springy, resistant to footfall impressions, but as the law of forensics goes, every contact leaves a trace. Some of the grass, though unbroken, was pushed down and was still in the process of standing up.

“Nice catch,” said Goss, but there was a strong reserve in his voice. “Diviny, see if you can find this asshole. If you spot him, don’t engage — call for backup.” Goss gestured to an officer from Nesbitt. “Natalie — go with him, okay? No heroes.”

They nodded and moved off toward the trees.

“Where do you want JT and me?” ask Dez.

Goss sucked his teeth for a moment. “I want you to go sit in your unit and write me up a report I can live with. No, don’t look at me like that, it’s not a request.”

“Why?” asked JT. “This is an active crime scene and—”

“—and it appears that a victim of a violent attack got up and waltzed right out of your crime scene.”

Dez cursed silently. She wanted to get away, go home.

“No way,” insisted JT. “Doc Hartnup did not get up and walk away. No sir.”

“Then pitch me another scenario, Officer Hammond.” Goss pointed to the trail they had followed from the mortuary. “We followed shoe prints coming out of the building. That trail starts right where you said Doc was killed. I’ll bet those shoe impressions are going to match those of the victim. Are you suggesting, officers, that someone entered the crime scene while you were engaged in your violent struggle with the cleaning woman, took the time to put the dead man’s shoes on his own feet, then picked up the body and carried it into the woods? Take your time; think it through before you answer.”

JT clamped his jaw shut so firmly Dez thought his teeth were going to crack.

The chief’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. “We called in for a shitload of backup. If Diviny and Natalie come up dry, we’ll start a proper search of the woods, and our people are already checking the buildings.”

Dez pointed to the gables of a whitewashed Victorian barely visible beyond the Grove. “At least let us check Doc’s old house.”

“I thought it was empty,” said Goss.

“It’s up for sale, yes, but it’s not empty,” corrected Dez. “Doc’s sister, April, and her two little kids, Tommy and Gail, have been living there while her divorce is being finalized. Been there two weeks. We didn’t get a chance to check on them, so let us—”

“No,” Goss said firmly. “I’ll send someone else. You go work on that report. Give me something that doesn’t sound like science-fucking-fiction.”

Dez turned away to keep the hurt she was feeling from showing. JT sighed heavily. They watched officers Ken Gunther and Dana Howard vanish into a path that wound through the Grove to the old Hartnup house. Without turning, Dez said, “This was a righteous shooting, Chief.”

When the chief did not answer, Dez turned and locked eyes with him for several silent seconds. Gradually, the stern line of Goss’s mouth softened a little and he sighed. “Christ, I hope so, Dez.”

JT said, “Are we going to need a lawyer?”

Goss sighed. “Not with me. But the state’s going to come in on this, no question about it. Talk to the union rep, get their lawyers on standby.”

They turned suddenly as the forensic officer, Scott, came hurrying out of the mortuary, waving a clipboard at them. As he closed in on them he said, “JT, Dez … what happened to the third body?”

JT and Dez stared blankly at him.

“Which third body?” asked Goss.

“The dead one,” said Scott.

“You trying to be funny?” barked JT.

“No,” said Scott, “I mean the body from the morgue. The one that Doc Hartnup was here to work on. What happened to it?”

JT shook his head. “There were no bodies in the cold room or the prep room. Doc might have been here to do paperwork or—”

“No,” Scott cut in, “there was definitely a body.” He tapped the papers on the clipboard with a fingernail. “It was on the log. Came in a little over two hours ago. Doc signed for it himself.”

“There were footprints of a third person,” JT said slowly. “Somebody must have come in and moved the body.”

“Footprints I saw were bare feet,” said Scott. “That’s kind of weird.”

“Everything’s kind of weird today,” JT said under his breath. “Question is why someone — bare feet or not — would come in, kill Doc Hartnup, attack the cleaning lady, and then carry off a corpse.”

Scott sucked his teeth. “Maybe this was all about stealing the body. Someone breaks in to do that and didn’t know Doc was there. Might have been opportunistic.”

“Doc’s car’s parked right outside,” said Goss.

“Yeah, but Doc could have arrived after the perp was inside. Ditto for the cleaning lady.”

“Which brings us back to why someone would want to steal a corpse,” said JT. “And it might have been more than one person. Corpses are heavy as hell.”

“Yeah, dead weight,” joked Scott. No one laughed. He cleared his throat and said, “Seems like an obvious motive to me.”

“Not to me,” growled Goss.

“Are you kidding? Celebrity corpses are hot,” Scott said, gesturing with the clipboard, “especially one like this?”

The word “celebrity” hung in the air for a moment, and then Dez snatched the clipboard out of Scott’s hand. She scanned the form and gasped.

Goss and JT read over her shoulder. The top sheet was a standard mortuary receiving order for the transfer of a body from a prison to a local funeral home. However, it was attached to a signed and notarized confidentiality agreement from the warden of the State Correctional Institution at Rockview. It was couched in complex legalese that promised fines, loss of business license and criminal prosecution if Dr. Lee Hartnup broke the seal of secrecy to reveal the name of the deceased prisoner entrusted to his care.

Standing there under the harsh morning light, they read the name.

Dez was unable to speak. Goss just stared at the paper, mouthing the name silently.

JT whispered, “Holy mother of God…”

The name of the deceased was Homer Gibbon.

“This is Magic Marti at the mike with the latest on the storm. Despite heavy winds, the storm front is slowing down and looks like it’s going to park right on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, with Stebbins County taking the brunt of it. They’re calling for torrential rains and strong winds, along with severe flooding. And here’s a twist … even though this is a November storm, warm air masses from the south are bringing significant lightning, and so far there have been several serious strikes. Air traffic is being diverted around the storm. So, let’s settle back and listen to some appropriate tunes. First up we have Bob Dylan with ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.’”