“See what?”
“Use your imagination,” she replied.
* * *
IT WAS RAINING and the sun was shining when I got there. Wildflowers were blooming in a field across the road. The crime scene tape was up; an ambulance and two cruisers were parked by Penny’s trailer. A tall woman with jet-black hair, wearing dark slacks and a short-sleeve denim shirt and western boots, the kind with rounded steel tips, stood with an umbrella by the motorcycle shed. She bent over and picked up a Styrofoam fast-food container and put it into an evidence bag. Three cops in uniform lounged in the cruisers, smoking, tipping the ashes outside the windows.
I parked my cruiser outside the tape and put on my rain hat and walked to the shed. She looked at her watch. “Good timing. The coroner will be here earlier than he thought.”
“This had better be worth it, Detective,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Giving parts of information over the phone.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Because I worry about Kevin Penny’s child,” I said.
She looked away and then back at me, as though making a reevaluation. She had pale skin and lean features, like an Indian’s, and a mole by the side of her mouth. “Get your latex on and be careful where you step. One of the uniforms puked on the porch.”
The body was on the floor, dressed only in sweatpants, the naked stomach white and mottled and bloated like a frog’s, the wrists pulled taut above the head and fastened to the floor with toggle bolts. There were pools of black blood under both knees and elbows. The left ear was clogged with blood and brain matter. In the corner was an electric drill matted with spray, the extension cord still plugged in the socket.
“Ever see anything like this?” Picard said.
“Overseas.”
“Vietnam?”
I shook off her question. “Who found him?”
“One of Penny’s chippies. He was supposed to take her shopping today.”
“Why’d you want me over here, Detective?”
“You and Penny go back.”
“Not a good choice of words,” I said.
“He and Clete Purcel go back.”
“Clete tried to help Penny’s kid.”
“Who would you make for this?” she said.
“For a vic like this, half the planet.”
“Let’s go outside,” she said.
The rain had quit. The swaths of flowers in the field looked like twisted rainbows surrounded by green grass. I wanted to walk among them and keep walking, over the edge of the earth. “Why were you picking up trash by the shed?”
“Somebody was eating fried chicken there and throwing
the bones on the ground. I don’t think it was Penny.”
“Penny was a slob.”
“The pond is full of trash, but there’s none out here. The chrome and paint on the motorcycle are clean.”