by Joe Hart
“I know what the damn law states, Gray, what I’m saying is—”
“Joseph and I will be over no later than noon. It’s hotter than the devil’s ass out here and we need some shade.”
Gray walked to the driver’s side door, nodding at Ruthers once before climbing inside. When their doors clicked shut, Gray watched Enson walk away, his heavy body laboring in the heat.
“I don’t think he liked that, Sheriff,” Ruthers said, still looking after Enson’s awkward shape.
“Joseph, you could fit into a raindrop how much I care about what Sheriff Enson likes, but that would be a waste of good water.” Gray looked at the younger man. “Can you hold down food?”
Ruthers considered it. “I think so.”
Gray started the cruiser and flipped it into gear. “Then let’s get something to eat before we go and hear all the details about what happened inside that house.”
~
They ate in the cruiser, their food steaming in recycled containers on their laps.
“Coffee still tastes like shit,” Ruthers said, lowering his cup.
“Joseph, I don’t know why you order it over and over then. Repetition of an asinine act doesn’t speak well of the repeater.”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff, I guess it’s convenience.”
“We can stop anywhere else you’d like, as long as you quit complaining about coffee.”
“Yes sir.” Ruthers ate another bite of his mashed potatoes, bits of gravy and meat falling from his fork, before squinting at his container. “So could I ask you what you think?”
“About what, Joseph? Life in general or something more particular?”
“Well, what happened at the house, your theory?”
“Theory is a dangerous thing, Joseph. Theory can wreck a man if he begins to believe too closely in the way he thinks things are. Things are never the way a person thinks they are.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the only thing you need to remember about law enforcement is what our real job is.”
Gray took several bites of his sandwich and chewed, glancing across the street they were parked on. Ruthers nodded, drinking some more of his coffee before holding up a finger.
“And what is that?”
“Our real job?”
“Yes.”
Gray looked at the deputy and then away. “The truth, Joseph, we find the truth. The truth can be hidden, disguised as something else, but never dissolved. It’s always there, you just have to know where and how to look.”
Ruthers frowned and licked his lips.
“Is that why you left the city? The truth was too hard to find?”
Gray paused, his water halfway to his mouth. “No, I found too much of it.”
Ruthers took in the blank look behind the sheriff’s eyes and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds.”
“You didn’t at all, I know what you meant.” He was quiet for a time and then said, more to himself than anything, “Maybe the wolves aren’t all gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Let’s finish up, shall we? Death awaits us.”
“Sir?”
“I guess I should rephrase, death’s reports await us.” Gray slid the cruiser into drive and pulled away from the curb. Ruthers nodded once and finished the last swallow of his coffee, grimacing at the taste.
Chapter 4
Wheaton Medical stood without conscience amidst two adjoining cornfields.
Its front was solid glass with metal interspersions crisscrossing the shining surfaces. Two wings, one to either side, sat like shoulders beneath its overbearing head. Brick lined its outer edges and a constantly revolving door turned at a steady pace below the shining façade.
When they stepped from the cruiser, Gray eyed the building, adjusting his sunglasses to cut the glare that blazed from its mirrored front. The air was so hot, it felt ready to ignite, and he imagined it doing just that. Waves of fire flowing above him. The corn stalks danced, swaying in a timeless rhythm the wind played with abandon. When he began walking, the coolness of the cruiser stayed with him for two steps and then fell away like cheap armor under the heat of the morning.
They entered the facility and stopped only to check in at the front desk, donning visitor’s badges after Gray flipped the receptionist his own. Patients waited in the lobby before doors labeled under large letters, A through E. Gray led the way past these with Ruthers close behind. They reached the end of the lobby and walked through a door that fell away into stairs, turned once, and then opened into a featureless hallway lit by overhead fluorescents, the buzz of which began to grate on Gray as soon as they walked beneath them.
“They can send a manned ship to Mars, colonize the place, and bring back a new industrial power source, but they can’t make a light bulb that doesn’t sound like a hornet,” Gray said, walking past a few closed doors on their right.
“Maybe that’s where the money went.”
Gray huffed a laugh. “To the space program?”
“Yes sir.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Gray stopped outside a final door on the left at the very end of the hallway. He rapped on the steel once and entered, not waiting for a response.
The room spread out before them, longer than wide, with walls the color of brain matter where the stainless steel didn’t grow. The floor was pocked with drains, some large, others small, their dark, gapped eyes staring up. Shining tables the color of water beneath a storm sat in a row. Gray counted ten in all, three occupied at the moment. A woman in a white smock wearing green gloves was bent over the last table, its contents still mercifully indistinct. Her face hid behind a white mask but her eyes flashed once as the door shut behind them and Gray saw a smile that the material covering her mouth couldn’t hide.
“Wondered when I’d see you again, Mr. Gray.”
“Stop it, you make me sound like I’m a character from Clue.”
“What’s that?”
“Board game? Whodunnit? Little pieces shaped like a candlestick, rope, et cetera? No? Nothing?”
Tilly Swenson’s eyes narrowed a little and she straightened, wiping the red-smeared palms of her gloves together. “You’re a strange one, Mac.”
“So I’m told,” Gray said, moving across the room toward her. “This is my deputy, Joseph Ruthers, you may have met him before.”
“I may have but I don’t recall.”
“He’s not as memorable as I am, are you Joseph?”
Ruthers smiled as he shook his head. “It’s a pleasure, doctor.”
“Well he’s got manners you don’t, Mac. He addressed me by my title.”
“Titles are for sports, not people,” Gray said, stopping short of the dissection table. He didn’t let his eyes wander down, though he could see it was a mess. “Wait until she takes off her gloves to shake her hand, Joseph.”
“Yes sir.”
“So what brings you two to my humble domain?” Tilly asked, turning her attention back to the mass on the table.
“Well, these people were from our county, but I’m sure you knew that already. Mitchel didn’t want us to bother with coming down here ourselves but we decided that it wasn’t such a long drive after all.”
“I’m not surprised the sheriff didn’t want you here.”
“Nothing surprises me anymore.”
Tilly straightened again and reached for a pointed instrument twice the length of a pencil and half as narrow. “Well, if you can’t tell the difference, here lies Mr. Jacobs, his wife is on the table behind you gentlemen and their daughter Devi is in the one after that.”
Gray finally looked down, taking in the colors, textures, and shape that lay on the table. The man that had helped him fix a flat tire on his cruiser one day nearly three months ago, was unrecognizable. Stanley Jacobs now looked like a high-speed crash victim. His arms and legs were severed at the knee and elbow joints, white bone glared under the wash of lights. The
man’s head faced the wall as if ashamed of something, his mouth half open, bruised eyelids closed. A Y incision ran from his upper sternum down in a clean cut until it reached his lower stomach, everything below it was a grisly mass of flesh and yellowed fat. Several deep gouges ringed the corpse’s thighs and sides, their serrated marks flicking an internal switch in Gray’s head.
“My Lord,” Gray said.
Ruthers’s swallowing was very loud in the quiet room.
“Yes, it’s really something,” Tilly said.
“We didn’t get the full affect at the crime scene this morning, too much blood obstructing everything.”
Tilly nodded. “Yes, and I won’t actually know anything for sure until I’ve completely finished.”
Gray moved around the end of the table. “What can you tell us so far?”
“Like I said, until I’ve finished—”
“Dr.? Please.”
Tilly sighed and regarded Gray for a moment before shrugging. “Severe trauma, most likely incurred by an edged weapon to all the victims.” Tilly pointed to the gaping wound in Stanley’s body. “This is by far the most drastic. Basically the man was eviscerated after receiving these.” She touched the gouges on the corpse’s thighs and sides with the pointer.
“He was still alive when those happened?” Gray asked.
“Yes. It looks like a minor gash was made across his chest initially, but the cut wasn’t very deep.”
“A warning.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Gray worked his jaw up and down several times, wishing he’d brought a pack of gum. “How about the other two?”
Tilly rounded the table and approached the next in line holding Teri Jacobs’s body. “Mrs. Jacobs died of severe trauma to the brachial tube. It’s been severed in half a dozen places causing her to drown in her own blood. Here you can see the same gouges on her thighs and there are more on her back.”
“Tilly, what do those wounds look like to you?” Gray asked, lifting his head from the carnage. The smell in the room was getting to him, death mixed with formaldehyde, a cocktail that churned his stomach.
“Why don’t you tell me, Sheriff? It appears you have an idea.”
“They look like bite marks.”
Tilly nodded. “They are.”
“From what?”
“I’m not sure yet, something large, a big dog maybe? The depth of the wounds indicate a wide snout, Rottweiler or Great Dane perhaps. We’ll know for sure after a swabbing to determine saliva type. On the other hand the amount of flesh removed is too much for a single bite, which is what we’re looking at here.”
Gray paused, taking in the words. “One bite for each wound?”
“That’s right.”
“Is all the removed tissue accounted for?”
Something flashed across the medical examiner’s eyes, there and gone, a shadow of disgust. “No.”
The room fell silent again until Ruthers shuffled closer, still not within touching distance of any of the tables. “Are you saying that the animal that did this, ate parts of them?”
Silence fell again until the door to the room swung open, jerking them all from their thoughts. A petite brunette woman wearing a smart pair of dress slacks and yellow blouse that hugged her pregnant stomach entered the room. She carried a batch of files under one arm. Her hazel eyes scanned them all and found Ruthers last. A smile. Ruthers returned it, his eyes crinkling.
“Well hello, Siri, how’re you feeling?” Gray said.
“Hi, Sheriff Gray. Good, and big, but good. Hi, Joe.”
“Hi, Siri,” Ruthers said, stepping out of her way. Siri smiled again and made her way toward Tilly. Gray watched Ruthers watch Siri pass, the younger man’s eyes those of a puppy beneath his hat. When Ruthers saw Gray looking at him, he bit his lower lip and began to examine the blank wall beside him.
“I brought the initial ballistic reports along with the crime scene photos,” Siri said, setting the files down on a desk.
“Thank you, Siri, I appreciate it,” Tilly said, stripping off her wet gloves.
“While you’re here, Siri, do you mind answering a few questions for us?” Gray asked.
“Sure, Sheriff. Um, did you okay it with Sheriff Enson already?”
“My questions? Oh, Mitchel knows I like to ask questions. I’ve even tried to get him interested in doing the same but it hasn’t taken yet.”
Siri smiled and Tilly raised her eyebrows once.
“Do we know the succession of events last night?”
“We’re pretty sure that they came in through the back door,” Siri said, her eyes shooting to the tables and then away. “There was no sign of forced entry and the front door was still locked. We think there was two, possibly three assailants. After that it’s a little sketchy. Do you want my opinion?”
“Please.”
“It looks like to me that one went upstairs and the other went directly to Devi’s room, and maybe Dr. Swenson can reinforce this, but from looking at the scene it appears that they tortured Mr. Jacobs first and made his wife watch.” Siri turned her head toward Tilly.
Tilly nodded. “That concurs with what I’ve found so far along with times of death.”
“Sick bastards,” Ruthers said under his breath.
“And what about Devi?” Gray asked, his eyes flitting to the table that held what remained of the pretty girl he’d seen picking beans with her mother in their garden from time to time.
“No signs of rape or semen, but she was definitely killed last. There’s no bite marks on her body, but the amount of lacerations are innumerable,” Tilly said.
“Any guess at how many?” Gray asked.
Tilly sighed, glancing at the sundered flesh of a girl that should’ve graduated the next year. “A hundred, maybe more.”
Gray nodded, rubbing his fingers across his forehead, smoothing the wrinkles that were trying to embed themselves there. A faint promise of a headache began to pulse in the back of his skull. “Tilly, you did the autopsies on the Olsons last month, right?”
“Yes, why?”
“Was there anything unusual about the bodies?”
“Like this? Mac, those two poor people burned at more than eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. There were barely bones left to look at. Besides, the two couldn’t be related, not with the state of these bodies.”
“Yeah,” Gray said.
“Mac, what are you trying to do here?”
Gray took a deep breath in and then let it filter out between his teeth. “My job.”
“Look, whoever did this is deeply disturbed, I’ll give you that, but it must’ve been a one time, fluke thing. A couple people, maybe drifters, decided to rob the Jacobses and they got carried away. Maybe the Jacobses resisted and they retaliated.”
“And they brought a bloodthirsty dog along just in case?” Gray said, tipping his head a little to one side.
Tilly’s face hardened. “All I’m saying is there’s no evidence that the two are connected except for the fire, and if they are then it was a crime of passion, anger and rage.”
Gray glanced at the door, checking the digital clock above it. “Yeah, definitely.”
“Gray,” Tilly lowered her voice as though to keep Siri and Ruthers from hearing even though they were only steps away. “You’re going down a dead end road. We need to find whoever did this before they skip town.”
Gray nodded once. “Thank you, doctor. Siri.” Gray tapped the bill of his cap and turned on his heel.
“I’ll send over the full report when I’m through,” Tilly called after them as they moved toward the door. Ruthers looked back and nodded, smiling tightly. He gave a little wave at Siri and followed Gray out of the room.
Chapter 5
Gray urged the cruiser down the road splitting two fields of golden wheat.
The sun glowed within the tipping crops, illuminating them beyond anything natural. Ruthers shifted in his seat, the squeak of his duty belt loud in the quie
t confines.
“Hotter’n shit,” Ruthers finally said.
“That it is.”
“Think it’ll rain?”
“Yep, late tonight. Might stave off the fire that’s been waiting to start.”
“Think so?”
“Nope.”
A bit of static came across the radio and then fell silent again. The wheat rolled like a tide under the breeze.
“Sir, what—”
“Have you ever had real vegetables, Joseph?”
“Sir?”
“I mean not from the store, but from a garden?”
“Sure, my mom used to grow her own beets and potatoes.”
“But you got those seeds from the store, right?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Gray nodded. “You’re off at five tonight and Thueson’s on alone until nine, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Then you’ll have dinner with me tonight, Joseph, if it’s okay with you.”
Ruthers just stared at the side of Gray’s face for a while, not moving, then found his voice. “Okay, sir. I thought all of us would be on tonight, working on the case.”
“Thueson and Monty will be able to handle things and I know what you’re thinking, but if I’m wrong, the people that did that to the Jacobses are long gone, miles outside of our county right now.”
“And if you’re right?”
“If I’m right, well, I don’t really want to think about that.”
“Okay. Should I bring anything?”
“Just yourself, and those questions you’ve been trying to ask me all day.” Gray gave him a half smile.
The radio barked to life, their dispatcher and office manager, Mary Jo’s voice filling up the car.
“Sheriff?”
“Go ahead, Mary Jo.” The display of the radio recognizing his voice pattern before sending back his response.
“There’s a bit of an issue down at Harrington’s.”
