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.