Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

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СКАЧАТЬ the accelerant that was about to be dumped onto its dying body, but the face was curiously intact. The hair had been burned off, along with the eyebrows and ears, but in the shape of the brow and the slope of what was left of the nose, the face was still recognizably human.

      Especially in the shape of the mouth, open in a frozen scream. The scalp had been cut open in a coronal incision from ear to ear and closed with white stitches. White thick stitches also closed the Y chest incision. The torso was severely charred, the tissue blackened and peeled back in some places to expose red flesh and bone underneath. The chest cavity was collapsed and sunken around a blackened hole.

      The underside of the body was still intact. Shreds of what looked like khaki pants, a tweed jacket, and a beige shirt still were visible.

      “The clothing remnants weren’t removed?”

      “I took samples. They’re fused to the body.”

      His feet were unharmed, and seeing two pale feet rising above the blackened carnage of his torso made the damage even more real. This had been a man not long ago, and the doer was still out there somewhere.

      “Any genetic material found on the body?”

      “Not human. A dog hair. The lab’s got it. As you can see from the severe charring of the midsection, the perp dumped the accelerant directly onto the body in the chest area and then lit a match.”

      The smell was an overpowering mix of chemicals, residue from the fire and the decomposing body. Her mouth tasted of death and she blinked and stared across the room, her vision blurred. Salzer glanced at her and dropped his gaze to the clipboard. Grace appreciated that. She stared at the linoleum until the pattern came into focus.

      “Bartholomew had first been hit by a bolt from a crossbow, and from the distinctive cracking pattern in the ribs, the killer tried to extricate the bolt and failed.” Salzer pointed at a section of tissue. “Normally, a wound of this kind would have been tight. He used an expandable broadhead, a tip that explodes a barb on impact. The bolt would have plugged the wound and there wouldn’t have been profuse bleeding.”

      He lifted a clipboard off the wall and scanned it.

      “In this case, fifteen hundred ccs of blood were recovered from his chest cavity. Where you see the raw pink and red tissue and white rib bone, under the blackened, charred skin in the concave of this chest, is the area where the bolt had been. I removed it in the course of my examination.”

      “Who has it now?”

      “The Palm Springs police were first on scene, followed by the Riverside sheriff’s deputies. The area’s just close enough to the outskirts of town that sometimes they both show up, especially now with the convention. As for who has the bolt now…”

      He skimmed the clipboard, found it.

      “Police. The bolt had lacerated a lung and punctured the heart in the upper right quadrant of the left ventricle. Death would have been certain, and imminent, but this guy didn’t want to wait around. In essence, Bartholomew was bleeding out as he burned to death.”

      Salzer hung the clipboard back on the wall next to a grease board where four current autopsies were listed, amounts and weights itemized in neat columns.

      “What was the carbon monoxide saturation level?”

      “You mean in his airway?”

      She nodded. She was still thinking about what Bartholomew’s last moments must have been like, pinned to the ground by the bolt, in shock, still alive enough to know what was happening, yet incapable of preventing it.

      “Toxic saturation levels, but not lethal. His lungs were heavier by a couple hundred grams from fluid produced when the lungs were seared and his airway had narrowed to protect the lungs.”

      He covered the body again with the sheet and waited as she went through the door. He turned off the lights and locked up and they walked down the hall.

      “I worked the Esperanza fire,” he said quietly. “The burn-over on this one would have been just a few minutes.”

      “Burn-over.”

      “Fire literally can burn over the top of things. Here, there was a limited amount of fuel and the body was only partially cremated. Bodies cremate at between fifteen hundred and three thousand degrees.”

      They were back at the deputy bullpen. He pushed open the front door and the heat smacked her like a living thing.

      “Get this guy, Grace. He’s a nasty piece of work.”

      She nodded and stepped into the parking lot.

      After the door closed on him, Grace trotted behind her car and threw up.

       EIGHT

      She took 10 to the 111, navigating switchbacks of purple hills cut with dark brown trenches and expanses of sand. Miles of desert stretched ahead. Wind turbines stood close to the road, marching in regiments up the brown hillside, protecting what looked, at a distance, like a compound of windmills—a family—the big ones towering over the little ones. She passed shopping outlets and a billboard advertising dinosaurs. Next to the road, the Union Pacific carried freight in a steady stream of double boxcars.

      It was just after four and the dry desert sun turned the asphalt a shiny black. Just after seven in Harbor Island. She’d tried reaching Katie that morning when she’d flown in to Lindbergh Field and taken a taxi home to pick up her car and pack a few things for Palm Springs.

      No answer. She’d tried again, compulsively, right away, and this time, the hotel desk clerk had apologetically said he’d thought they were already out.

      Maybe they’d be back by now, Katie brimming with news.

      Or not.

      Maybe Katie wouldn’t want to share a piece of the day she’d had with her dad.

      Grace hit the gas and passed a slow truck. The wind punched against her car and lifted it sideways in a scalding wash of blowing sand. It was a bump, a hiccup, a swat of a giant invisible hand, but its power sent a flush of heat up her body. She gripped the steering wheel and steadied the car. A row of giant windmills gyrated in a frenzied dance and the boxcars rolled on in a yellow swirl of dust.

      Traffic was stalled on Indian Canyon Drive and Grace cracked her head out the window, straining to get a better look. Up ahead a police siren wailed, the sound undercut by the murmuring roar of protesters. The cars crawled forward.

      Through her passenger window, Grace caught a glimpse of a brown valley sweeping down to her right. Wind turbines churned on the ridges. Dust spumed across a dirt road leading to a small train depot.

      She put up the windows, adjusted the air conditioner, and spread MapQuest on the seat, wishing she had a map to navigate what came next.

      It was an older neighborhood off Ramon Avenue, fading apartments and duplexes and cottages with cracked sidewalks. Grace missed it the first time and circled back. Bartholomew’s house was set back from the street, a cement pebbly structure with an iron gate. Barrel cactus lined СКАЧАТЬ