Eternal. V.K. Forrest

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СКАЧАТЬ locks—”

      Be careful what you say, Uncle Sean. The human is listening, Fia warned.

      “…Not that locks mean much. Not these days, they don’t,” Sean bumbled.

      “You’re not serious,” the Baltimore agent barked into his phone.

      Fia glanced over her shoulder at the Ian imposter as she followed her uncle into the large, open mail-sorting room. She halted as all at once the smell of burnt human flesh filled her nostrils and the meaning hit her again. Bobby was really dead. Her stomach did a somersault. Oh, Bobby…

      There was a large charred spot on the floor. Blackened goo still puddled haphazardly, blood, tendons, sinew, muscle, and ligaments melted, burnt, and gluey. A gelatin of what had probably been paunch fat had bubbled on the floor and pooled into a translucent smudge.

      “We didn’t know whether we should clean that up, we didn’t,” her uncle apologized.

      Fia patted his arm, thinking old men shouldn’t have to deal with this. She let her gaze drift over the scattered ashes that had obviously been paper. Envelopes. Newspapers. Mail…She could smell the accelerant, gasoline probably.

      You’re sure the head isn’t here somewhere? She moved a piece of charred paper with the toe of her boot.

      I’m sure. Not the head or the feet.

      She stared at him. “His feet are missing? Sweet God—” The words were out of her mouth before she realized she was speaking out loud in response to something Sean had said silently. Glancing over her shoulder in the direction of Agent Duncan’s voice, she just hoped he wasn’t paying too close attention. She pulled her camera out of her pocket and flipped the power switch on.

      I understand the head, Uncle Sean, but why the feet?

      I can’t say, Fee.

      “So the body was discovered by Patrolman Kahill minus the head and feet, with no sign of either in the vicinity,” she said aloud, again refocusing.

      “I got all my available men out looking for the body parts or any blood trail. Pictures, I have, back at the station. Knew ye’d want to see just what things looked like before Bobby…before we removed the body,” Sean said.

      Mahon’s got one those fancy digital cameras, he does. Shows the pictures right on the computer. Didn’t think they should go to the drugstore. I never liked how those pictures came out of that machine anyway. Our faces are always kind of hazy. Why do ye think that is, Fee? Imprints of a man’s soul?

      I don’t know why, Uncle Sean!

      She didn’t mean to snap at him, but the hurt look on his face shamed her. I’m sorry, she thought. I’m as upset as you are. Let’s just get through this, OK, Uncle Sean? “I’d still like to take some of my own photographs, if you don’t mind,” she said aloud.

      She turned slowly, surveying the entire room. It was only twenty-five by thirty feet. Eight-foot tiled ceiling and pale government-green walls that appeared to have been painted recently. Everything as neat as a pin, just as in the lobby…except for the obvious.

      Fia heard Duncan snap his cell phone shut out front and footsteps followed as he approached, their echo booming in her head. She clicked the shutter, barely bothering to look at the viewing screen on the camera.

      Click, click, click. She took photographs of the charred, gory spot on the floor. The ashes of the mail. Other than an overturned mail cart, and a stool Bobby could have been sitting on, very little else looked disturbed.

      She looked up and, spotting a few drops of blood spray on the ceiling tile, she pointed the camera lens and clicked again. She expected more blood. Remembered more…

      “Looks like we’re stuck with each other, Special Agent Kahill.” Duncan walked through the doorway, sounding as if he was trying to speak through clenched teeth. “My SAC talked to your SAC and decided this would be a bipartisan investigation.”

      Great, Fia thought. She’d been afraid of that. Uncle Bill’s office was probably able to request her without riling any suspicions, but she guessed the senator wasn’t willing to put up a fight when the Baltimore office screamed “No fair!” He had his own causes to protect. She continued to take photos, not looking at Duncan.

      “The accelerant was probably gasoline. Easy to obtain without suspicion. Easy to carry. Mail was used to build the fire.” He walked over to stand beside her, sliding his hands into his pants pockets. He sounded as if he was narrating one of her uncle’s favorite police-procedural TV shows. “An amateur. The fire wasn’t hot enough to burn much more than the skin and some fat. You want to completely burn up a body, the fire’s got to be a hell of a lot hotter than this one was.” He glanced overhead, then at Sean. “Fire alarm go off, Chief?”

      Sean shook his head. “Battery’s probably dead, it is. Bobby didn’t get up on ladders, lest he absolutely had to, bein’ the big man that he was.”

      Duncan frowned. “We’ll check for fingerprints on the smoke detector, see if the batteries were taken out.”

      “Uh, have to get some more print powder before we lift any more prints. We’re out.”

      “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Duncan looked at Fia, but she didn’t respond.

      “We don’t lift many fingerprints around here, Agent Duncan.”

      He exhaled. “And I don’t suppose there was a burglar-alarm system?”

      “Never needed one,” Sean answered.

      Fia pressed her lips together. Everything Duncan had said, a rookie just out of the academy would have been able to deduce. So far, she wasn’t impressed. “No gas can found?” she asked her uncle. “Not in here, not in the alley?”

      He shook his head, reaching for his handkerchief in his back pocket. No, but I once saw this case on that Cold Case Files where this guy—

      She snapped another photo. Please, Uncle Sean…

      “Perp brought it with him; he meant to start a fire,” she intoned, silencing the camera. She tried to take in the entire scene, attempting to concentrate on the crime and not her uncle’s rambling and not the man standing beside her, who was as close to a ghost as she had ever seen.

      “Maybe there was something here the killer wanted, or didn’t want to leave in the post office,” she continued, nodding in the direction of the canvas mail cart lying on its side. “Perp wasn’t expecting the postmaster to be working late. Came in, surprised him. Maybe Bobby was sitting on that stool, back to the rear door. Perp figured he had to kill Bobby so there’d be no witness.”

      “Maybe. Of course, the cash is missing, too, bank bag and all,” Duncan one-upped her.

      Fia glanced up at her uncle. They hadn’t gotten that far in her questioning, but she didn’t like surprises. Not this guy springing them on her. “Could be motive,” she agreed. “But decapitation? Setting the body on fire? Talk about overkill to steal a bank bag that couldn’t have had more than a couple hundred dollars in it. And why take the head and the feet? And how the hell did he cut them off?” Her last words were as much for her own benefit as his.

      “Perp СКАЧАТЬ