by J N Duncan
The blanket of leaves and limbs pushed and swatted at Jackie until she found herself standing in near darkness, thin shafts of light shining down on a boy seated neatly against the trunk of the tree. A couple members of the crew were already milling around in the shadows.
“That you, Jack? Glad you could join us.”
Jackie’s mouth creased into a frown. Pernetti. He would be the one detailing the victim. As if her headache didn’t already feel like someone cranking screws down into her skull. “Don’t even start with me, Pernetti. I’m not in the mood.”
“Boy, did you get laid or something? You’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning.”
For a moment, Jackie thought he might have actually noticed, but then common sense took over. Pernetti was not capable of noticing anything like that. “Kiss my ass. Just tell me what we’ve got here.”
He knelt down next to the body. “Archibold Lane, age twelve. Some sicko sucked the boy dry. There’s ligature marks on the wrists and ankles. Funky marks, though. It looks like zip ties. Other than the hole in the arm, there’s nothing else visible on him. Scene so far is weirdly spotless.”
Twelve. What was wrong with people? “Spotless? That’s doubtful.” These days, everyone left something to track. Unless of course you knew how to clean up after yourself, and knew how forensics worked, but even then, it was unlikely.
“Clean so far, Jack.” He shrugged, pointing at marks on the boy’s wrists. “Other than the marks and the hole, he’s got a couple bumps and scrapes that anyone might get when they’ve been out and about for a couple days.”
“Two? He hasn’t been dead that long.”
Pernetti stood back up, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “Runaway, according to the sheriff. Fled from Mom and Dad beating each other up and not seen until this morning.”
She doubted very much that Mom was doing any beating up on Dad. It hit her then, a brief flash of a twelve-year-old running away from a “domestic dispute” nearly twenty years prior. Mommy certainly had not been doing any of the beating. Jackie took a deep breath. The smell of death was doing little to wash the residue of memory away. “Anything else?”
“Nope. Area still being gone over. Bowers and Prescott are out canvassing, but it’s looking a lot like that Wisconsin woman we brought in a couple months back.”
Jackie shrugged and pulled out a pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket. “Maybe. Okay, move, Pernetti. I want a look.” She didn’t want one, really. There was almost nothing she would see here, she could tell already. The perp had been clean and careful. Even the ground around the body looked undisturbed. Still, she would end up lead on the case, and, if anything, she needed to verify Pernetti’s own observations.
“Think we should track down those parents and see what they have to say. Let them know their son is dead because they can’t bitch at each other like other civilized folks.”
She did not bother glancing up at him. “Go away, Pernetti. You’re distracting me.”
Thankfully left in silence, Jackie gave Archie a quick look over and found nothing out of the ordinary. He seemed almost peaceful, if one could ignore that fact that he looked like a pasty, deflated version of his former self. The thought sent a shiver down Jackie’s spine, and she decided she had seen enough for the moment. Putting her sunglasses back on, she stepped back out from under the tree to find Laurel seated on the hood of her car smoking a cigarette. That was the first sign of trouble right there. A healthy girl by nature, Jackie knew if you hit the stress button hard enough, Laurel would be reaching for that security blanket in the bottom of her purse.
Jackie knew any shot at the day getting better was vanishing with each puff of smoke.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2012 by Jim N. Duncan
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7771-8
