Dead of Night (Dead of Night 1)

“Yes, yes, yes. Now where’s the fucking aunt li—”

“Stebbins. ”

Trout missed a beat, then said, “What?”

“Stebbins. The aunt … She lives in Stebbins. ”

“But … I live in…”

“Yeah,” said Schlunke, “the old broad lives in your town. ”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HARTNUP’S TRANSITION ESTATE

“Find him!” bellowed Chief Goss. “Doc Hartnup’s injured and probably in shock. ”

“Going to rain soon,” said one of the officers.

“Then hustle your ass. If he’s hurt then he can’t have gotten far. ”

“He’s not injured, Chief, he’s fucking dead. Somebody stole his body,” Dez said, but her voice was small. JT looked at her and gave a small shake of his head.

Officers ran in all directions, plunging into the woods, banging open doors on the outbuildings, shining lights into corners and under parked cars. Goss called the news in for the officers already combing the woods for the killer. They were working the far side of the mortuary.

“Here!” yelled an officer from Nesbitt who had been working his way across the lawn toward the woods. Dez ran toward him. For a fat man, Goss could move fast, and he was only a step behind JT. The Nesbitt officer—a black-haired kid named Diviny who was one year out of the academy—knelt on the grass on the forest side of the property. He pointed at a scuff of blood on the pea gravel and the streaks of red on bent blades of grass. “Looks like he went into the woods. ”

JT bent and peered at the blood trail and then began following it, keeping to one side to protect the evidence. Dez flanked him on the other side of the trail. The smears of blood faded from bright wetness to faint touches to nothing forty yards from the wall of trees.

“Lost it,” said Diviny, who was dogging JT and, Dez thought, clearly avoiding her. All of the cops were giving her strange looks.

Fuck ’em, she thought. Her nerves were still jangling and the skepticism of Goss and the other officers was doing nothing to take her blood pressure off the burner. If this had been a UFO sighting or if she’d seen Bigfoot poking through her garbage can, then maybe she’d give some weight to JT’s unspoken assumption that her perceptions were still being filtered through a mix of Jack Daniels and Yuengling lager. But what happened back in the mortuary office was no visual hallucination, and it wasn’t pink fucking elephants. The woman had been dead. And then she had gotten up and gone apeshit. That was fact. Dez could still feel the slack weight of the woman bearing her down to the ground and her cold fingers trying to grab Dez’s hair.

She hunkered down and peered at the grass. “No … look at the grass. ”

Diviny and JT bent low and looked where she was pointing. The grass was short and springy, resistant to footfall impressions, but as the law of forensics goes, every contact leaves a trace. Some of the grass, though unbroken, was pushed down and was still in the process of standing up.

“Nice catch,” said Goss, but there was a strong reserve in his voice. “Diviny, see if you can find this asshole. If you spot him, don’t engage—call for backup. ” Goss gestured to an officer from Nesbitt. “Natalie—go with him, okay? No heroes. ”

They nodded and moved off toward the trees.

“Where do you want JT and me?” ask Dez.

Goss sucked his teeth for a moment. “I want you to go sit in your unit and write me up a report I can live with. No, don’t look at me like that, it’s not a request. ”

“Why?” asked JT. “This is an active crime scene and—”

“—and it appears that a victim of a violent attack got up and waltzed right out of your crime scene. ”

Dez cursed silently. She wanted to get away, go home.

“No way,” insisted JT. “Doc Hartnup did not get up and walk away. No sir. ”

“Then pitch me another scenario, Officer Hammond. ” Goss pointed to the trail they had followed from the mortuary. “We followed shoe prints coming out of the building. That trail starts right where you said Doc was killed. I’ll bet those shoe impressions are going to match those of the victim. Are you suggesting, officers, that someone entered the crime scene while you were engaged in your violent struggle with the cleaning woman, took the time to put the dead man’s shoes on his own feet, then picked up the body and carried it into the woods? Take your time; think it through before you answer. ”

JT clamped his jaw shut so firmly Dez thought his teeth were going to crack.

The chief’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. “We called in for a shitload of backup. If Diviny and Natalie come up dry, we’ll start a prop