The Timer Game. Susan Smith Arnout

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СКАЧАТЬ had scattered from a weapon that was moving. Or maybe it had been an earthquake and the wall had been moving. Something had moved, and whatever it was, it meant work on her end, and a lot of it.

      ‘Lovely.’ She’d never see Katie again.

      Grace stood up. Already her arms inside the Tyvek were damp as boiled hot dogs. The suit sealed her like a deli chicken. Too bad she hadn’t wrapped herself first in secret herbs and cellophane; she could lose six inches in an hour. She wondered if women losing inches in a spa wrap suddenly exploded like a hot sausage the instant they drank a glass of water. She had to stop thinking about food.

      ‘Any ideas?’ Lewin stood at her elbow.

      ‘Yeah, Vince, somebody bleeding was in here once.’

      ‘Ha-ha, very funny.’

      She turned her attention to the rest of the living room. The floor was littered with asthma inhalers, so thick it looked like an army of oversized, hard-shelled insects. Bedding lay tangled across a stained mattress. A child’s dump truck climbed a hill of fertilizer. A meth pipe tilted out the toy cab of the truck. Matchbook strips, ripped down to the red phosphorus, were scattered across a table, along with boxes of diet pills and stiffened coffee filters. Red, as if they’d been dipped in blood.

      ‘What do you think?’ Lewin looked at Chip. His voice was tinny in the mask.

      ‘Nazi method,’ Chip said, thinking it was the same cooking the efficient Germans had used during the war, to keep the troops awake and ready.

      Lewin made a buzzer sound. ‘Wrong.’ He looked at Grace.

      ‘Red phosphorus reduction method,’ Grace said. She turned to Chip, shrugging it off. ‘Nazi method’s lithium and ammonia gas; it’s white powder.’

      Lewin looked disappointed that she’d gotten it right. He turned toward the kitchen, motioning them to follow. Under his mask, Chip’s face was a pasty gray and dots of sweat sprouted on his upper lip.

      ‘You okay?’ She stopped walking. ‘Chip?’

      ‘Claustrophobic. Always have been. Even when I was a kid.’ Chip’s voice was muffled in the mask. He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘Don’t tell Sergeant Lewin.’

      She nodded. She could tell by the way his hand kept going to it that Chip carried a gun. Most criminalists opted against it; it was bulky and unnecessary. Police controlled the scene and afforded protection, but occasionally Grace ran across a wannabe cop. They always carried.

      Her bootees made a snicking sound on the filthy floor. Pyrex pans littered the stove, and a jug of what looked like denatured alcohol lay on the grimy table. The cabinets were empty except for lighter fluid, Drano, duct tape, and a half-opened box of Froot Loops.

      Chip was swallowing, his face shiny with sweat. ‘Okay to take off my mask?’

      Lewin’s head shot up from inspecting residue in a pan. ‘You mean safe? Yeah, but –’

      The rest of the sentence died as Chip tore off his mask and screamed. His eyes bulged and he shoved Lewin out of the way and raced for the paint-blistered kitchen door, yanking it open and pelting down the steps into the backyard. They could hear him taking great shuddering gasps.

      ‘Stupid kid,’ Vince said.

      Grace shrugged, looking around. ‘He’ll learn. They don’t call it cat for nothing.’

      Methamphetamine cooking smelled like cat urine, if the cat were as big as a town car and the box hadn’t been changed in months.

      Outside, Chip uttered a sharp strangled cry that cut off abruptly into silence.

      ‘I’ll check out the other rooms. Leave the sheets up. I’m going to document the blood spatter.’

      ‘Have at it.’ Lewin put down the search warrant, along with the hazardous-waste forms. ‘I gotta go babysit.’

      ‘Hey, Vince – he’s a chickie. Go easy on him.’

      Lewin grimaced through his mask and stepped out the kitchen door. Grace looked around. It was going to cost the state a bundle getting it cleaned up.

      Something large slapped against the house and slid to the ground. It was a sound like a piece of rotten fruit hitting clumsily and hard. She straightened, listening. Silence. A thin, reedy whistling grew in the silence, followed by a muffled moan.

      She swallowed. ‘Vince?’

      The whistling escalated, the sound wickering through the air like a broken electrical circuit, and the hair on the back of her neck pricked. She moved silently to the kitchen door and down the stairs, yanking off the breathing mask, her head light without the weight.

      It was a small yard with rusted cars up on blocks, obscuring the alley. She stared blankly. There was supposed to be a uniform out back protecting them, just like there was out front, but if he was there, she couldn’t see him.

      From deep in the yard came a bubbling sound. She’d only heard that rattle in ER and it didn’t sound any better now. She eased around the hulk of a car. Chip Page lay clutching his throat, his fingers slick with surging blood. He stared up at her mutely, his eyes wide and terrified, his glasses askew.

      She could see into the alley now. A uniformed officer lay facedown in a pool of blood, his legs at odd angles. Blocking the alley was the taco van, its motor running.

      Her throat closed and she dropped to her knees. Chip’s windpipe had been sliced. His mouth opened soundlessly. Establish an airway. Make sure the victim is breathing. His eyes flicked to a spot behind her and she looked over her shoulder.

      Pain exploded across her jaw as she was broadsided by a fist and yanked to her feet. It was so unexpected all she felt was a dazed terror and blinding pain behind her eyes and a shooting fire down her arm.

      ‘You lose.’

      He was taller than he’d looked in the taco van, pulsing as if he’d been hot-wired. His breath smelled minty fresh. In his other hand, he held a butcher knife.

      He jerked her higher, dragging her backward toward the house, his arm gripping her throat, closing off her airway. Her lungs roared and pricks of light exploded in her eyes. He stumbled, cursing, and she stepped down hard on something mushy.

      It was the partially severed head of Detective Sergeant Vince Lewin. The mask had cracked off and lay to the side. His lips were gray, eyes wide, startled. The butcher knife had cut through his Adam’s apple and it lay, like a small oyster, in a bed of blood.

      On the ground, Chip feebly pointed his finger like a gun. His eyes had started to film. A gun. Dying rookie Chip Page was trying to remind her that he carried a gun. She banged her elbow hard up into her attacker’s throat and slammed her boot back into his shin, and for an instant, he loosened his grip and she wrenched free and stumbled over to Chip, ripping open his Tyvek suit and scrabbling his gun free. It was a Glock 30, slippery with Chip’s sweat and blood, unbelievably heavy. She lunged to her feet, bringing the gun up as she chambered a round and pointed it in a blur of motion fueled by terror and a primitive rage.

      ‘Freeze, asshole. If you think I won’t squeeze it, you’re wrong.’

      He СКАЧАТЬ