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.