Dead of Night

JT keyed his shoulder mike. “Dispatch, Unit Four. Hold the air and stand by.”



“Copy.”



“I’m on point,” said Dez. “You, me, left, right.”



Dez put the toe of her shoe against the door, mouth-counted from three and pushed. The door swung inward on silent hinges. Dez and JT faded back for a moment, and then went in fast; she cut left with him covering her, and then he was inside, checking behind the door and clearing the corners. Guns were up and out in two-handed grips, eyes tracking together with the light.



They were in a large utility room, a shed that had long ago been built onto the house. There were cabinets and an industrial washing machine on one wall, shelves with cleaning supplies on the other. The far wall had another door and this also stood ajar.



“I’ve got blood,” barked JT.



“I see it.”



It was impossible to miss. A handprint, small, a woman’s, pressed flat on the wall by the door. Blood trails had run all the way to the floor. That hand would have to have been soaked with blood to leave trails that long. Dez felt a familiar shift inside her head, as if a switch had been thrown. It was something she first experienced midway through her first tour, and it happened all the way through her two tours in Afghanistan. When she tried to describe the feeling to a sergeant over a bottle of Beam in a tent in northeast Afghanistan, the scarred vet said that it was part of the warrior mind. “It’s the caveman mind, the survivor mind,” he’d told her. “It’s when you realize on a deep level that you just stepped out of the ordinary world and are walking point through the valley of the shadow.”



Dez had tried to explain this to JT once, and though he understood on an intellectual level, the bottom line was that he’d never been in the military, he hadn’t walked the Big Sand. And in thirty years on the job, he had never fired his service weapon and had never taken fire. That made a difference, even if neither of them ever said so aloud. He was smart and did everything by the book, but on some level he was a civilian and Dez could never claim that exemption ever again.



The mind shift changed her body language; weight easing onto the balls of her feet, knees bending for attack or flight, eyes blinking less often, hand readjusting on the grip of the Glock. She was aware of it on a detached level.



JT peered at the blood and then leaned back. He gave his lips a nervous lick. “I do not like this, Dez.”



“Liking it’s not part of the job, Hoss.”



Dez used two fingers to turn the knob, and this time JT kicked the door—hard. Then they were moving fast, rushing into the main preparation room, checking corners, watching each other, tracking everything … and stopping dead in their tracks. The interior lights were on, fluorescents gleaming from stainless steel tables and dozens of medical instruments.



There was no movement in the room, but everything was wrong.



A gurney lay on its side by the open cold-room door, sheets and straps were tangled and askew. Beakers and bottles had been smashed. The delicate instruments of the mortician’s trade were scattered like pickup sticks. Everything—walls, floor, debris—was covered with blood.



It was a charnel house.



“Jesus H. Christ,” breathed JT, and for a moment his professional calm drained away, leaving in its place a shocked spectator. The air was thick with disinfectant, old meat, and the sheared-copper stink of fresh blood.



“Clear the fucking room, Hoss,” snapped Dez, her voice as hard as a slap.



JT immediately shook off his shock and moved around to the far side of the room, kicking open closet doors, checking the cold room, making sure that the prep room was as empty as it looked.



Except it wasn’t.



“I got a body,” he called, and Dez cut a look his way. “Ah, geez … It’s Doc.”



Fuck.



“Gunshot?” Dez barked.



“No … Christ … I don’t know. Knives maybe … This is bad. He’s all messed up.”



Dez was not looking at the dead mortician, however. She clicked her tongue, and when JT looked up she ticked her chin toward a door on the far side that led into the mortuary offices.



“Blood trail,” she said. JT forced his emotions down and locked the cop focus back into place. He hurried to her side. He had his gun ready and his eyes open, but Dez could see fear sweat popping out all over his face.



There were two sets of footprints. Bare feet and shoes. The bare feet were male and large, easily size twelve; the other set was smaller, though still large for what was obviously a woman’s work shoe.



The marks were scuffed and swirled as if the two figures were dancing as they exited. Violent struggles make the same patterns.



“Fuck,” growled Dez and kicked open the door.



They rushed into the office, shouting at the tops of their voices.



“Police! Put your hands on your head! Police!”



Their shouts bounced off the walls and died in the still air.



As with the prep room there was only one person in there, and as with the other room the person was already dead.



JT stopped in his tracks and stared at the body. “God…”



Dez crossed to the only other exit, a front door. The barefoot blood trail went outside and vanished into the grass lawn, beyond which was a stretch of dense forest called the Grove.



“We got someone on foot.” She backed away from the door and called it in. “Dispatch, Unit Two, we have multiple victims. Suspect at large and possibly on foot in vicinity. Roll all available units and crime scene.”



Then she closed the door, flicked on the overhead lights, and crossed to where JT stood staring at the victim. The dead woman sat slumped backward in a wheeled leather desk chair that was parked in a lake of blood.



She was dressed in a blue cleaning smock that buttoned up the front. She had gray support hose and sponge-soled shoes. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun; reading glasses hung around her neck on a cheap junk jewelry chain. Her name tag read OLGA ELTSINA.



Dez guessed that Olga was probably fifty. Russian. At least five foot nine, easily two hundred pounds. Arms like a shot-putter, tree-trunk legs, bowling-ball breasts. Not pretty by any standard, with thick lips and a bulbous nose.



What had been done to her was unspeakable. There was no point in checking for a pulse. There wasn’t enough left of her throat to bother. The skin below her jaw was a ragged ruin. Strips of flesh hung from her cheeks, her arms, the tops of her breasts. There were pieces of shapeless meat on the floor and stuck to her drab uniform.



Dez slid her flashlight into its belt holster, bent, and peered at the wounds. They were strange. Not one clean cut. No puckered bullet holes. No gouges like you’d see from a claw hammer. The skin looked shredded.



Dez heard a faint gagging sound and half turned to JT.



“If you’re going to hurl, do it outside.”



He looked gray but shook his head.



“Take a breath, Hoss,” Dez advised, and he did. Slow and ragged.



“God,” he gasped and mopped sweat off his face with his sleeve. “I’ve seen every kind of traffic accident. I’ve seen decapitations and … all that. But, Christ, Dez, I think those are bites.”



“I know,” said Dez softly. “Doc, too?”



JT nodded. “The door was ajar … You think a bear got in here?”



She studied his face for a moment. “C’mon, JT … this wasn’t any fucking bear. There’d be slash marks with a bear.”



“Coyote?” He sounded more hopeful than speculative.



Over the last decade several packs of coyotes had repopulated rural Pennsylvania. They were vicious, violent creatures, and they’d taken a serious toll on the house pet population. However, attacks on humans were extremely rare, and their bites looked like dog bites. Dez leaned as close as possible without stepping into the pool of blood.



“No,” she said as she straightened. “Wasn’t a bear, a coyote, or a fucking Bigfoot, and you know it.”



JT was panting like a runner. “Dez … you don’t think these are human bites, do you?”



It was clear to both of them—to anyone who’d ever seen the blunt bite signature of human teeth—what kind of bites these were. Dez kept a poker face. “Forensics will take castings,” she said.



Dez stepped back and walked into the other room to take a look at Doc Hartnup. He lay in a rag-doll twist on the bloody tile floor. JT drifted up behind her.



It hurt Dez’s heart to see him like that. Doc was one of the good guys.



“JT, look at this,” she said, pointing to the bulge in the left rear hip of Hartnup’s trousers. “Looks like his wallet’s still there.”



“Car keys are on a peg by the door,” JT said. “Perp left in his own car.”



“He was barefoot when he went outside. If those are the perp’s footprints.” Dez shook her head. “We need forensics and detectives on this. This isn’t falling together for me. There’s a lot of valuable stuff in here, and there’s a flat-screen and Blu-ray in the office. Why not take them?”



“Maybe he didn’t have time. We might have spooked him and he went out into the Grove.”



Dez nodded. That was an ugly possibility. The Grove connected to the state forest half a mile from there.



“Tell you what, Hoss,” she said, “It’s going to be a circus here soon. We have to start a log on this and I don’t want to screw anything up. Go get your camera from the cruiser.”



JT gave a distracted nod but didn’t move.



Dez straightened and snapped her fingers under JT’s face, startling him.



“Yo! You in there? If you need to bug out, then bug out. Go sit in the car, whatever; but don’t lose your shit in here.”



JT gave her a five-count stare.



“You cool?” Dez asked, her tone quiet but not soft, her blue eyes hard as metal.



He drew in a long breath through his nostrils and gave a curt nod. “Yeah. I’m cool.”



Dez grinned. “Okay—then put on your big girl panties and let’s be cops.”