Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian 1)

“You got it. Where y’at now?”

“I’m out and about, but if you email it to me, I’ll forward it to my ‘peeps,’ as you put it.”

“I’m not near a computer. But I’m ten minutes away from the office.”

“I’ll be looking for it in eleven.”

I shut the phone and stuffed it into my pocket, then let myself out the same way I’d come in, tucking the key back under the statue.

As I walked back out to my car, Ms. Dailey was standing at the end of the driveway, dressed this time in a bright fuchsia velour sweat suit. I wondered briefly if her entire wardrobe consisted of velour sweat suits of varying obnoxious hues.

“Young lady,” she said with a stern expression on her face. “May I ask just what you were doing in there?” Her tone was accusatory, as if she thought I was looting the place for valuables.

What, now the woman was concerned about her neighbor? I closed the distance to Ms. Dailey, getting close enough that she was forced to take a step back.

“It’s Detective Gillian,” I said through bared teeth, yanking my badge off my belt and thrusting it into the woman’s face. “I am here on official police business for the purposes of investigating a series of murders. But for you, Ms. Dailey, I have just one thing to advise.”

Ms. Dailey’s eyes widened.

“From now on, why don’t you try minding your own fucking business?”

I turned and marched back to my car, leaving the woman behind me gaping and speechless. And, for the first time, I felt like the warrior woman in that picture.

Chapter 24

My good mood didn’t last long. My pager shrilled before I could make it back to the station, and I had to read it twice before the meaning of the message got through to me. It wasn’t another body. It was six of them.

A local man who’d taken a sick day to go fishing found the bodies piled in an ugly heap about fifty feet from the shore in a rarely traveled or fished area of the lake. Trouble with the engine on his flatboat had caused him to drift into a small cove, where he discovered, to his delight, where all the fish had been hiding from him for the past twenty years. He’d reached his limit after an hour of fishing and then decided to investigate the source of the odor that had drifted to him when the wind shifted.

I had a feeling his sick day was justified now.

It might have been fairly simple to get to the scene by boat, but going by car was another matter entirely—several miles of rutted dirt roads, followed by a ten-minute hike on foot down a narrow deer trail. Fortunately, by the time I made it to where all the other vehicles were parked, some of the good ol’ boys had busted out their ATVs and were shuttling people back and forth through the woods.

I climbed off the back of the four-wheeler with a mumbled thanks to the driver, well aware that he had gone over a few extra bumps in order to get the full effect of my tits pressed up against his back as I hung on for dear life. I would be walking back, thank you very much.

To my surprise, there was already a cluster of local and not-so-local media in a small clearing on the low ridge above where the bodies had been discovered. A murdered homeless drug addict could be a decent mention on the evening news, but a mass dump of six bodies in various states of decomposition couldn’t be passed over. No, this one would probably make national news.

I saw Dr. Lanza on the ridge, standing next to a slender, leggy woman with blond hair and a lovely face. The woman wore jeans that were low-cut and form-fitting without looking painted on and a black T-shirt that showed her obvious dedication to her workouts. There was no layer of pudge above the jeans on this woman, and I found myself standing straighter and pulling my stomach in. Damn doughnuts.

Dr. Lanza caught my eye and motioned me over. “Detective Kara Gillian, this is Dr. Susan Vaughn,” Doc said when I reached him. “Dr. Vaughn is a forensic entomologist.”

I shook the woman’s hand, but there must have been something resembling a blank expression on my face. “I do bugs,” Dr. Vaughn added with a smile.

“Oh! Right.” I shrugged sheepishly. “I was either going to go for that or foot doctor, and the latter didn’t make much sense.”

“Susie … um … happened to be in town when I got the call,” Doc said, “and I’m hoping she’ll be able to help us determine how old these corpses are.”

It’s Susie? And she just happened to be in town? Doc, you dog!

Doc must have picked up something in my expression, because his lips twitched into a smug smile. Then he glanced down the ridge and all trace of humor slipped away. “Let’s get started,” he said tersely, and started making his way down the small slope, with the two of us following. I grimaced as the nauseating odor grew stronger, but even if I hadn’t smelled it, the sound of the flies would have warned me that something ugly was nearby. The buzz was constant, and any motion sent clouds of the insects swarming up, only to settle back on the flesh as soon as they could. Now I understood the need for someone who knew their bugs.

I took in the surrounding area. Under any other circumstances, it would be an idyllic setting, lightly wooded with a scattering of spring wildflowers and a beautiful view of the lake—perfect for camping or trysting. The location definitely offered privacy, and it occurred to me that these bodies could have easily gone undiscovered for years if not for the fisherman’s engine trouble. The demon had to have dumped these bodies, too, I realized. The pile wasn’t far from the water, but there was enough of a climb from the shore to make it difficult for someone carrying a body, much less six. And it was definitely a significant distance from the road. I just couldn’t see someone loading bodies onto the back of an ATV to trek them all the way back here to dump.

They were all nude, piled haphazardly and limbs splayed, swollen and black with decomposition, and rippling with a patchy gray-yellow carpet of maggots. It was difficult to tell what kind of injuries had been inflicted, due to the maggots and the state of decomposition, but there was enough evidence to tell me that these were uncomfortably similar to my other Symbol Man cases.

Dr. Vaughn stepped closer cautiously as she pulled on latex gloves, her heavy fall of blond hair swinging forward as she peered at the maggots and flies. I couldn’t help but think that she looked a lot more like a member of the Swedish Bikini Team than a bug expert. “A lot of injuries here,” she said, utterly unperturbed. “Maggots tend to cluster around orifices”—she gestured at the maggot-filled nose and mouth of one body—“and also any break in the skin.” Her gaze traveled over the nearly unbroken mass of maggots. “This is unbelievable.”

“Can you tell how long they’ve been dead?” I asked.