Peter Decker 2-Book Thriller Collection: Blindman’s Bluff, Hangman. Faye Kellerman

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СКАЧАТЬ Wynona Pratt and her band of searchers came in from the field. She spied Decker and brought him up to date, handing him a map of the areas recently combed.

      “We’re going to reconvene tomorrow at nine to go over the last sector. I’ll do the entrances and the exits to the property at that time.” Wynona kicked the ground softly. “If you’re okay with it, I thought I might stick around to see what’s going on.”

      “Grab a set of gloves and help us sieve through the dirt.”

      As the night darkened, Marge turned on the spots, casting hot white light on the dig. The crew worked steadily for the next hour. As the hole grew deeper, it gave off a hint of odor.

      The crows had turned in for the night, but the buzzards still circled.

      The stink, faint at first, grew steadily stronger until everyone could easily discern it as the smell of rot. A garbage dump? In areas this rural, the local trash wasn’t picked up on a once-a-week schedule.

      Another twenty minutes of digging passed until someone held up his shovel and announced that he had hit something hard. As a flurry of people gathered around the spot, another digger proclaimed he had come upon something as well. From that point on, the work was more carefully crafted, going from shovels to trowels in order not to disturb or mangle what lay beneath the ground. The physical positions had shifted from backbreaking spading to knee-straining squatting as the group systematically began to remove dirt.

      The sky had become studded with twinkling lights. Crickets chirped, frogs croaked, and a distant owl hooted. Gnarled trees became frozen inky specters.

      And still vultures flew overhead, bathing in the artificial lights.

      Another hour passed before the ground started yielding its booty. Decker could make out several elongated skulls, large arcing ribs, and multiple femurs.

      A reliquary of bones.

      From the looks of it, it appeared that they had exhumed a horse grave.

      The animals had been in the ground long enough for most of the flesh to deteriorate, although not completely. Decker could discern some musculature, hair, fur, and a couple of melting hooves. Still, the stink was disproportionately strong given the amount of remaining soft tissue. And the stench grew stronger as they began to uncover more material.

      Decker allowed them to keep going until the smell became downright toxic. He ordered everyone to stop, step back, and take a few breaths of fresh air. He called over his detectives. “Obviously, we hit a horse grave. It’s not unusual to bury a dead animal out here when you have so much land, but something’s off. There’s too much stink for the amount of remaining flesh. Any ideas?”

      Oliver said, “It’s more than one horse.”

      “About three horses, looking at all the bones,” Wynona added.

      “That’s weird,” Oliver said. “Burying three horses at the same time. What’d they do? Put a couple in cold storage until they had enough to fill the hole?”

      “You know what’s really weird?” Marge said. “If you bury a dead horse—just dump it in the ground—when you dig it up, it should look like a skeleton of a horse that you dumped. It should be in roughly the same position as when it was buried. But all these bones are strewn willy-nilly.”

      Decker said, “What if the horse skeletons were disturbed by human interference, specifically by somebody wanting to bury something underneath the equine bones?”

      Marge said, “Like the bodies of our missing guards?”

      Decker said, “Suppose one of the murderers knew about the grave because he saw it originally being dug. What better place to dump the bodies of the missing guards?”

      Oliver said, “Certainly smells like recent death down there.”

      Decker said, “Let’s get everybody gloved up and wearing face masks. Who has a camera?”

      “I do,” Marge said.

      “Me, too,” Wynona added.

      “Good. Before we remove any horse bones, I want photographs of before and after. Then we’ll start removing biological material, bone by bone. Each time we remove something, take a picture. If the smell gets worse, and I fear it will, we’ll have to stop and call the M.E.’s office. At that point, we’ll turn this over to professional exhumers.”

      “Whoever put him in the ground did you a favor.” The field coroner was named Lance Yakamoto. In his thirties, he was around five feet nine inches, 140 pounds, with a long face and tawny-colored eyes that sloped upward. He was in his blue scrubs and a black jacket, the yellow lettering in back stating that he was from the Coroner’s Office. “If the body would have been dumped in the open, the decomposition would have been a lot quicker. With all the carrion-eating birds, we wouldn’t have much to work with.”

      Decker said, “When I find and arrest the culprit, I’ll be sure to give my thanks for dumping him in the ground.”

      Yakamoto said, “I’m just saying fact.”

      “I know,” Decker answered. “Anything you want to tell me?”

      “No rigor, some lividity, lots of insect activity. Once we get the body up, we’ll put the bugs in bags and hand them over to the entomologist. He can probably give you a better fix on how long it’s been in there. From what I saw, my guess is that he’s been there for a couple of days. That would square with your murders, right?”

      “Right.” Decker looked at the brightly illuminated pit. The county had sent a quartet of techs in HAZMAT suits. They were at the bottom of the hole, figuring out the best way to slide the corpse into a body bag. Since it had been rotting for a few days, skin had begun to slough off. There was some residual bloat from the internal gasses, but most of that had settled down. Still, with careful handling, the detectives were able to make out the distinct features even though much of the face was black, distorted, and bug eaten. Both Marge and Oliver thought he might have resembled the pictures they had of Denny Orlando.

      “Are we sure there’s only one body down there?” Decker asked Yakamoto.

      “No, we’re not sure,” the assistant M.E. responded. “Not yet.”

      Oliver said, “Smells ripe enough for two bodies.”

      Decker said, “If Rondo Martin’s down there, my lead is shot.” He told the three detectives about his meeting with Brett Harriman, trying to remember the story as well as he could without notes.

      Oliver asked, “You believe this guy? I mean it’s hard enough getting something substantial from eyewitnesses, Loo.”

      “Just because he’s blind and couldn’t see them doesn’t mean he didn’t hear the conversation correctly,” Decker said. “That’s what he’s trained to do. To use his ears, Scott. Anyway, how would he know that Rondo Martin is involved?”

      “He’s a missing guard,” Marge pointed out. “His name might have been in the papers.”

      Wynona said, “How does he read the papers if he’s blind?”

      “He has a voice-activated computer СКАЧАТЬ