Creekers (26 page)

“The jail stint—that was narcotics?”

“Yep,” Susan answered. “Possession, transport, and intent to distribute.”

“To distribute what?”

“Your pet peeve. Synthetic phencyclidine.”

PCP. Paydirt.

Phil sat a moment more; now he felt geared up. Eagle would be the perfect schmooze. He didn’t know Phil was a cop, plus they were childhood friends. If Eagle was in deep, he could lead them right to Natter…

“Hey, Susan?”

“Yeeees,” she groaned.

“Do me a favor and run raps on these guys too, Orndorf and Sullivan.”

“You know, whenever we run a rap check through the county mainframe, the department gets charged.”

“I don’t care,” Phil almost snapped. “Just run the raps…pretty please.”

“Well, in that case…” More clicking, more waiting. Then: “You got some sense of foresight. Both guys have several priors, same thing. Possession with intent to distribute.”

“PCP?”

“Ten-four.”

Well well well,
Phil thought. This was getting downright interesting. Phil poured some coffee, oblivious to its acrid tang. Three rap checks in a row, three base hits on PCP busts. He couldn’t wait to tell Mullins.

Mullins…

Then Phil looked at the cracked VFW clock mounted above the chief’s shooting trophies.

“Hey, Susan?”

“What now! You want me to run a rap check on Snow White?”

“No, but how about the Easter Bunny? He hangs out at Sallee’s, too… Where’s Chief Mullins? It’s almost eight-thirty.”

A pause, then, “You’re right. He’s never late.”

“Maybe he’s hungover.”

“Naw, he quit drinking years ago.”

“Maybe you should call him. Maybe he forgot to set his alarm clock or something.”

“I doubt it,” she said, but then he could hear her dialing anyway…

“No answer.”

That’s weird.
Then he shrugged. “He’ll be in. He’s probably waiting in the donut line at the Qwik-Stop.”

“Now
that’s
a possibility.”

Well, looks like I’m stuck here till he comes in.
 He killed some time calling the county hospital, the lockup, and the morgue, but no one by the name of Kevin Orndorf had checked in. Then he called the state and had them run the name on their blotter program.

Nothing.

“Hey, Phil?”

We really should get an intercom,
 he thought. “Yes?”

“You ever gonna ask me out again, or should I just give up?”

Phil almost spat his coffee out all over Mullins’ desk. He tried to recover as quickly as he could, but what could he say? The smart-ass approach, he decided, might be best. “Hey, I already asked, but you were
too busy
. Remember? My rule is to never ask more than three times. Women have to stand in line to go out with me, I’ll have you know. Sometimes they pay.”

Susan shrieked a laugh.

“And if my memory serves me correctly, Ms. Ryder, your three chances have already been expended.” Phil smiled at his own cockiness, even though, from her commo cubby, she couldn’t see him. “It’s like baseball,” he told her. “Three strikes, and you’re out.”

“Hey!” she shot back. “I can’t help it if you only ask me out on days I have class.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right, so just to show you I’m a man of character and fairness, I’ll give you an unprecedented
fourth
opportunity to be graced by my presence.” He paused for effect. “You want to go out tonight?”

“I can’t. I have class.”

Phil winced. “You evil, toying, malicious—”

“But tomorrow would be great,” she interrupted. “Call me when you manage to drag your behind out of bed.”

“Why bother calling? I’ll just yell up through the heating duct.”

“Don’t forget,” she warned him. “You ever heard the line ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?”

Forget?
Phil nearly laughed.
Yeah, like I’m gonna forget I have a date with you.
 “You needn’t worry, Ms. Ryder. In fact I’ll have my itinerary director mark it down on my calendar, posthaste.”

“Posthaste, my ass,” she came back.
“Don’t
stand me up.”

Jesus, she’s serious,
Phil realized.

“And speaking of getting stood up, I think we’ve both been,” Susan said.

“What?”

“The chief. He’s
really
late.”

“You’re right,” Phil agreed when he noted the clock again. Chief Mullins was a lot of things—arrogant, biased, stubborn, crotchety. But there was one thing he
wasn’t:
late.

“He’s got a radio in that big land yacht of his, right?” Phil asked. “Try giving him a call.”

“Good idea.” Susan keyed her base station mike. “Two-zero-one, relay Signal 3 immediately.”

The only reply was static.

“Two-zero-one, do you copy?”

Nothing.

“Chief Mullins? Do you copy?”

Still, no reply.

“To hell with this,” Phil said and got up, grabbing the cruiser keys. “I’m gonna go look for him. Something’s not right here.” But before he made it to the back door, Susan called out, “Wait! He just came on line.”

Phil stepped quickly into the commo cove. Mullins’ voice, even more gravelly through the airwaves, was grumbling, “…yeah, Susan, I’m 10-20’d north on 154, just past Hockley’s Swamp…”

“We were getting a little worried. Are you all right? Do you need assistance?”

“You might say that—Christ. Is Phil still at the station?”

“Yeah, Chief, he’s right here.”

“Good. I want you to lock the place up and get out here,” Mullins directed. “But first, Susan, I want you to get several pairs of plastic gloves, some forceps, and a handful of evidence bags.” Static crackled through his next pause. “And tell Phil to bring a Signal 64 report.”

Holy shit,
Phil thought.

Susan turned off the base station. Her face looked grim. “You heard him,” she said as she opened the small drawer they kept their evidence collection materials in.

Yeah, I heard him, all right.
Phil then, just as grimly, went to the file cabinet and retrieved a Signal 64 form, otherwise known as a Uniform Jurisdictional Standard Report for Homicide.

««—»»

“What in the name of…”

Phil didn’t go to the trouble of finishing.
In the name of what, exactly? What,
he wondered in fragments.
Could possibly. Describe. This?

Susan, standing right beside him, gaped down into the ragged ravine, while Mullins lingered several yards off, facing away. He looked on the verge of displacing his last meal into the woods.

If he hadn’t already.

The corpse glistened, scarlet hands locked in rigor. A few flies peppered the gore-sheened head; it took Phil a few solid moments of staring before he could even discern it as human. The chief, his bulbous face going pallid, was pointing to the flat front-right tire on his Caddy and explaining “…so just when I come around the bend, I get a blowout. Brand-new friggin’ tire, too. And anyway, I’m lugging the jack out of the trunk, I turn to take a spit in the ravine, and the first thing I see is
that.”

Hell of a way to start the day,
Phil thought. His stomach felt as though it were shrinking to something the size of a prune as he looked more closely. It was still early; the sun hadn’t yet cleared the ridge, which left them in dappled shade. This lent a strange purplish hue to the corpse’s glittery scarlet. At first Phil surmised that the body was merely nude and covered in blood, but when he stooped over, hands on knees, he realized it was something far worse than that.

“My God,” Susan croaked. “It looks like it’s been—”

“Skinned,” Phil finished. “And a humdinger of a job, too. This is some serious, calculated work here, Chief.”

“Tell me about it.”

The corpse lay in the ravine as if haphazardly dropped there, its arms and legs canted at impossible angles.
Probably pushed out of a moving car,
Phil guessed, though he pitied the poor chump who had to clean the car out afterward. Sinew, tendons, and even veins remained flawlessly intact along the flensed musculature. “Yeah,” Phil mumbled. “Somebody really did the job on this guy…if it even is a guy.”