Coven (19 page)

What he withdrew next looked like a large
strip of steak with a lump on the end. He slapped it down on the
table. “See that?”

Lydia nodded rather morosely.

“
It’s the infundibulum,
ampula, left side. See that lump?”

“
Uh, yeah.”

“
That’s the ovary. Next to
the brain, it’s the most complex organ in the body, and, like the
male testes, it’s the
hardest.
Harder than the heart, the kidneys, etcetera. It’s
dense, heavily celled, firm. Understand?”

“
I think so.”

Hatton punctured the ovary’s germinus with
the scalpel. Globs of reddish gray mush oozed from the
puncture. “See, see?” he said. “It’s almost liquefied, just like
the testes on the other horse. But they’re not supposed to be like
this. They should still be firm.”

“
They’re decomposed,” Lydia
ventured.

“
No, no,
no
!” Hatton snapped.
“There wasn’t time. The things hadn’t been dead twelve hours before
we got them cooled down; they were still in rigor. These organs
could not possibly decompose to this consistency in twelve hours
under
any
condition.”

“
Maybe it’s a disease,
cancer or something.”

“
Cancer! In every single
animal, at the
same time?
That’s not how it works.” He washed his hands at a
metal sink then shook them dry against the wall, disgusted. “I’m
supposed to be the expert here. Shit. My people are going to want
an explanation and I can’t give them one. I don’t know anything
more than I did the minute we pulled in.”

Now Lydia understood why he’d been
stonewalling. He was a preposterous sight, a grown man sitting
dejected in a gore-splattered raincoat, hood, and face-shield. “How
can you determine that the agro site is safe to reoccupy if you
don’t know what killed the animals?”

“
State protocol,” he said,
shrugging. “We simply followed the standard legal procedures. The
bloodwork all came back negative, which satisfied the state
quarantine criteria. We screened for everything and found nothing;
I had lab couriers coming in and out of here day and night. We
exhausted every standard detection test. There were no mold toxins
in the feed, no poisons, no bacteria, and there was nothing wrong
with the water. We even ran tests on the grass, the soil, the water
table. Nothing.”

“
So what about this?” She
pointed to the punctured ovary.

“
All I can say is we’ve got
some thus far undetectable factor that has degenerated
the reproductive organs of every animal on this site. Even the
chickens, for God’s sake.” He shook his head in sheer disillusion.
“Have you ever tried to autopsy a
chicken?”

“
Can’t say that I have,”
Lydia said.

««—»»

“
Chief White’s at the main
office,” Sergeant Peerce informed her when she walked into the
substation. He quickly stashed a glossy magazine, titled
Pizza Slut,
into a
drawer. Porker sat at the booking desk, taking care of a box of
SafeWay chocolate cream wheels. He kept his face down when
Lydia entered.

Peerce was smiling,
flipping the cylinder of his Ruger Blackhawk open and
closed.
Click, clack. Click, clack.
Other officers in for shift-change were smiling
too. She glanced again to Porker, but he still refused to look
up.

“
Better get that prelim to
Chief White,” Peerce advised.
Click,
clack. Click, clack.
Smiling. “He’s been
waitin’ on it.”

Lydia left for Main Administration.
Something was going on and she didn’t like not knowing what.
White’s personal cruiser was parked next to the dean’s Rolls.
Inside, she passed the dean’s office. The man looked up from his
huge teak desk as she passed. “Officer Prentiss! Please come
in!”

Lydia hedged in. “Good morning, sir.”

“
And a very good morning to
you. That was fine work you did at the agro site yesterday. Chief
White told me all about it.”

Did Chief White also tell
you he’s putting a lid on it?
“Thank you,
sir.”

“
And I hope you appreciate
the necessity to
accentuate
certain details of the incident for the time
being.”

Sure, lie to the public
for convenience sake.
Lydia
nodded.

“
Good, good!” the dean
said. He was trying to be cordial, but Lydia knew he’d only called
her in to bust her chops a little. “Keep up the good work,” he
added. “And have a nice day!”

“
You too, sir.” Lydia went
back into the hall. Long display cases adorned the main lobby,
local relics and artifacts disinterred by Exham’s archaeology
department. Several battles of the Revolution had taken place
nearby. One case displayed an array of sabers and bayonets. Another
held firearms: flintlocks, wheel locks, cap and ball
pistols. Lydia should’ve looked harder at the last case, which was
hung with common tools of the colonial period. Rusted froes,
cradle scythes, hammers, and mattocks. One space was labeled
“Beam hewer, St. Clement’s Island, circa 1635.” But the large
space over the label was empty.

She killed some time scanning the cases.
What could she tell White? Eventually she dawdled into her boss’s
office. White was drinking from a coffee mug with a Confederate
flag on it. “Ah, there’s my girl,” he said. “You get that
prelim?”

“
It’s a health order, not a
prelim,” she said, and gave it to him.

White stuffed it in a drawer. “That guy
Latin say what happened?”

“
It’s Hatton, and no, he
didn’t. He’s taking the animals for more tests. He said whatever
killed them isn’t contagious.”

“
Well, then, that’s good,
ain’t it?”

“
Not when the papers ask
about it.”

“
That’s what I wanted to
talk to you about. The papers
don’t
know about it, and they ain’t gonna. It’s all
taken care of.” He gave her the eye. “You get what I’m
sayin’?”

“
Sure. You read my report
on the burglary last night?”

“
A’course I read it. What
about it?”

“
You want me to keep
working on the prints?”

“
Why? It wasn’t no burgle
anyway, just some two bit vandalism.”

“
Files
were stolen, Chief. Someone specifically targeted
them.”

“
So what?” he said. “Some
punk joker probably just grabbed a handful and throwed ’em all over
the Route. Big deal.”

“
So forget that too, huh?
Like the agro site? Like the ax?”

White gave her a big
shee it
shake of the
head. “You still thinkin’ on that goddamn ax? Shee it. You
wanna take a couple days off regular duty and follow up on that
shit, then go ahead. I’ll even pay ya. How’s that
sound?”

“
You’re
serious?”

“
Sure I’m serious. Go on
an’ do your thing.”

This didn’t sound right. “Do I get a
cruiser?”

“
Hell, no. What I look
like, fuckin’ Santa Claus?”

Take what you can get,
Lydia.
“Okay, Chief. Thanks.”

“
You’re quite welcome,
Prentiss, but remember. Anything you find out about
any
of this agro
business, you report to me and to me only, ya hear?”

“
Loud and clear, Chief.”
Lydia turned to leave, but—

“
Oh, and Prentiss?” The
chief clapped once, rubbed his knees. “I almost forgot. I heard
somethin’ a mite funny today,
real
funny.”

“
Oh, yeah?” Lydia
asked.

“
Yeah, see, I heard you got
a new boyfriend, and what’s funny about it is—and I mean
real
funny—”

“
Real
funny, I heard you,” she said, and now she knew why Peerce had
been smiling and why Porker hadn’t looked her in the
face.

“
I heard this new boyfriend
of yours is Wade St. John.” White stopped laughing. His face turned
to brick.

“
He’s not my
boyfriend,”
she said. “I
had a drink with him, and since when does my private life have any
bearing on work?”

White was rubbing his eyes. “Prentiss,
Prentiss, I been dealin’ with that phony con man
cock hounding rich punk for the last six years. He’s a user,
Prentiss. He’ll chew you up and spit you out, just like all the
others. That nut chase son of a bitch goes through women
faster than I go through cigars.”

“
Thanks for the warning.”
Lydia walked out, bemused. For the first time this morning, she
thought of Wade. Was he really as bad as White claimed?
At least he’s a good kisser,
she thought frivolously.
No, a great
kisser.
And with that frivolity she finally
acknowledged what she’d been repressing since last night. She liked
Wade St. John.

She liked him a lot.

She wondered if that was a big mistake.

««—»»

Wade leapt from bed,
swearing. The goddamn Baby Ben hadn’t gone off, and now it was past
9 A.M., and he was going to be late for that humiliating parody he
now thought of as “work.” Besser would come down on him, literally,
like a ton of bricks. Wade grabbed a towel, dashed for the shower,
when someone knocked on the door.
Must be
Jervis or Tom,
he reasoned, and, dressed
only in sagging Fruit of the Looms, he yanked open the door. “Can’t
talk now, I’m late for—”

It was Lydia Prentiss who stood in the
doorway. She did not seem shocked by his appearance; it was Wade
who was shocked. Instead of the usual tan cop suit, she wore
flip flops, cutoffs, and an orange bikini top. Her hair in a
ponytail, she appraised him through mirrored shades. Her faint
smile betrayed her amusement.

“
Nice briefs,” she
said.

“
Uh, um,” he said. “Excuse
me.” He left her at the door and pulled on his robe, hoping that
his trapdoor (a mysterious provision of all underwear
manufacturers) had not disclosed what dangled within. “Welcome to
my humble abode,” he said.

Lydia propped her
sunglasses up and walked in. To his dismay, she was toting a small
suitcase. “This is some dorm room,” she said. “You’ve got your own
shower, kitchen. Even a
trash
compactor.”

“
Reckless luxury is what
makes Exham College unique. Too bad the same can’t be said for
academic performance… What’s with the suitcase?”

She glanced at it, then shot Wade the
biggest, brightest, sexiest smile he’d ever seen. It was an angel’s
smile—the kind of smile, in other words, that a girl flashes when
she’s going to ask for something. Wade felt lost in it.

“
Will you drive me to
county police headquarters?”

“
Sure,” Wade
said.

Her smile faltered. “It’s only a hundred and
fifty miles away.”

“
Sure,” Wade said, still
floating on the smile. But then it all came tumbling down. “Oh, no,
I have to go to work. I have to clean toilets today, and I’m
already late.”

“
Well, not to sound
presumptuous, before I came over, I took the liberty of asking the
dean to give you the day off. He said yes. It’s all taken care
of.”

Wade gaped. “You mean I’m off? Just like
that?”

“
Just like
that.”

Wade rejoiced in
silence.
No toilets today, hot
damn!
He was showered and ready to roll in
record time.

“
I really appreciate this,”
Lydia said when they got into the Vette. Wade took off the sunroof
and put the suitcase in back.

“
Think nothing of it,” he
replied, starting up his 400 horses. “I’d drive you to Timbuktu if
it’d get me off work.” Within minutes he was out on Route 13. He
noticed the same change in her composure as he had last night
driving her home. The Vette seemed to unwrap some of her wires. He
supposed that being a cop—particularly a beautiful female cop in a
department full of shucksy Java men—had taken a toll on her. He saw
that stress run out of her now, her hard edges going soft. “So
what’s in the suitcase?” he eventually asked.

She rested back. “A cope of impactation,”
she answered.

“
A
what
of
what?”

“
It’s a hunk of
wood—evidence, in other words. The county crime lab agreed to take
a took at it.”

“
How important can a hunk
of wood be?”

“
Sometimes very important.
Anytime you hit something with a metal object, it leaves a
molecular trace of its surface oxidation—its rust. Analyzing the
rust can sometimes identify the grade of metal used, and from that,
if you’re lucky, you can ID the manufacturer of the metal object.
Unfortunately you need special equipment and indexes, and that’s
why they generally only do stuff like this for a major crime. White
doesn’t think this is major, but he’s letting me do it anyway. He
just wants me out of his hair for the time being; I’m a
troublemaker in his book, so he doesn’t want me fanning any
fires.”