Unearthed (13 page)

“I sure hope
that’s
not literal,” Arch said.

“It’s very literal,” Duncan said. “The demon world may not have invented lawyers, but we sure as hell corrupted the human ones enough that I could tell you every one of them was a demon and you’d believe me.”

“Are they?” Alison asked. “Because that would explain a lot.”

“Less than two percent, according to the last census,” Duncan said. “I am … with you, on wanting to drive a shiny piece of consecrated metal through Katlin Elizabeth’s midsection—”

“I’d aim for that fucking smug face, personally,” Hendricks said.

“—but if I screw this up,” Duncan said, “I get a one way trip back to the same pits as Lerner, with a sentence one hundred times nastier than he’s been saddled with just for failing. We’re talking the essence equivalent of that old myth with the guy who got his internal organs eaten every day and then regrown.”

There was a moment’s silence. Hendricks didn’t want to stab Duncan anymore, but he sure wouldn’t have minded punching him one good. “Let me boil this down and leave off the idle threats—how do we turn her into vapor?”

Duncan blew air out through his lips, but he did it weird—again. “She’s been walking the earth for a long time and doing pretty evil things all that while. She’s probably killed thousands. Maybe more. Maybe hundreds of thousands.”

“Jesus,” Bill said, whispering. “Goddamn.”

“She’s crafty, though,” Duncan said. “She knows the letter of the law, knows how far she can push, knows how to hide evidence and dispose of things when she’s done. Which is why she’s still walking around free as a bird. How do you get her?” Duncan threw his hands up. “I dunno. If you figure it out, though, you’re doing better than about twelve generations of OOCs, because it’s not like we don’t go after her. We just can’t seem to lay a glove on her.” He looked at each of them in turn, making Hendricks feel a little sick and for more than one reason. “And if you try, even if I don’t have to turn on you, you’re still gonna get your face rammed right into her crotch, because she’s like nothing you’ve ever dealt with before.”

Reeve had been surprised when Lauren Darlington had called him. Surprised, but pleased, because Fries’s pleas to the Chattanooga CSI people were falling on ears that were stone deaf. When she’d suggested she’d be willing to help again, like she had—albeit not greatly—a few weeks ago, Reeve had just about crapped himself with glee. She might not have been a full-blown medical examiner, but she could do enough that he’d be able to pack poor Reyes into a body bag and get him off the side of the road. That was the least the man deserved.

She came rolling up the road a few minutes later, parking behind Erin’s crooked Honda, wearing a tank top under a light flannel and a pair of jeans. She had her dark hair back in a ponytail, and she exhibited none of the barely-controlled irritation that she’d let bleed out all over him the last few times he’d asked her to come to a crime scene. It was a pleasant change of pace; he figured they’d gone full adversarial after the Summer Lights Festival, and while it didn’t rate high on his scale of shit to worry about, he didn’t need anything more on that list.

“Thank you for coming, Doctor,” Reeve said, going out to the car to greet her. He ignored Erin, splayed out in her back seat and snoring through a cracked window, and hoped the doctor would, too.

“Not a problem,” Dr. Darlington said tensely. She still had defensive body language, arms in front of her, ill at ease. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It’s tough to lose people,” Reeve said, leading the way back to where Reyes was covered by a sheet, “especially when we’re in the pickle we’re in right now.”

“I can only imagine,” Dr. Darlington said, her voice thick with irony that he didn’t understand. Maybe it was just sympathy and she was expressing it wrong. He got the feeling she did that.

Reeve stood and watched her peer down at Reyes’s body for a short spell, then a thought occurred to him. “What made you decide to give me a call?” She glanced back at him, a flash of surprise. “Not that I’m not grateful for the help; Reyes was gonna be out here all night otherwise.”

She kept her head down. “Town’s in a crisis. Guess I figured maybe I could do some good, help out.”

“It ain’t just the town,” Reeve said. “It’s pretty hard to fathom what’s going on here.”

She paused for a second. “What do you think is going on here?”

Reeve sighed, let his mouth sputter. “Been asking myself that a lot. I like to think of myself as an educated man when it comes to my job. It’s a point of professional pride for me; I keep up with what happens in the big cities and small towns and everything in between. Latest drugs, newest scams. I mean, I try and keep an eye on it all. So, when people start dying in numbers that make a major metro look like Sunday picnic at the park, I start asking myself—serial killer? Mass hysteria? Organized crime? And I start applying all the things I’ve seen and read about to the puzzle.” He scratched his scalp. “You know what the problem is with that?”

She looked up at him. “What?”

“This don’t fit a damned thing I’ve ever read about,” Reeve said. “It doesn’t fit anything I’ve even heard whispered about, because you know we cops have our little gossip circles too. So I’m left without an explanation. Nothing makes sense.”

She was still for a little while, down on one knee, staring at the corpse of his deputy. “So, maybe it’s something that doesn’t make sense.”

“That seems to be an obvious diagnosis, Doctor,” he said with a little laugh. With her, it felt different than when Pike had asked. He didn’t feel like he had to wait for the other shoe to drop.

“I don’t think you’re understanding me,” she said.

“I don’t think I understand much of anything nowadays. What were you thinking?”

“In med school we got hit with that old adage, ‘When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.’ Over and over, actually,” she said frowning. “I think the professor who said it must have gotten a percentage every time the phrase was uttered, as often as he spouted it. But it was his way of reminding us that when someone came in presenting with whatever symptoms, it was probably something mundane rather than exotic. But the problem with that thinking is, if you’re always thinking horses, you might miss a zebra when it comes parading by.”

“Seems like the stripes would be a giveaway.”

“It’s an imperfect metaphor,” she said. “My point is … maybe you’re dealing with something exotic here. Something new. Something no one’s ever seen before.” She shrugged and turned back to the body. “Or something really old that no one recognizes for what it is.”

“Murder’s a pretty old crime,” Reeve said, brow furrowed. “Pretty much the oldest, in fact. I think we recognize it for what it is.”

“Yeah, but Cain killed one person. Not a hundred.”

“It ain’t a hundred yet,” Reeve said, feeling the bristling subside after a moment. “Though it is heading in that direction.” He remained silent for a piece, letting his shame pass. “Any thoughts on this one, Doc?”

“I think you know how he died,” Dr. Darlington said, rising back to her feet. “Maybe the medical examiner can give you more specifics, but my ruling would be that his throat was crushed to the size of a churro.”

“That’s an inelegant description.”

“Factual, though,” she said. “Maybe he died of his spinal cord being crushed, maybe he died from his airway being collapsed, but either way, trauma to the neck was the culprit. Someone strong wrapped a hand or two around his throat and squeezed ’til he died. It happened fast, I’d guess, because he doesn’t really show much sign of having dug fingernails into their eyes, and it doesn’t look like he managed to get his gun out.”

“He might have panicked,” Reeve said. “Might have forgotten he carried a weapon. I don’t think Reyes ever fired a shot on duty.”

“Maybe,” she said, impassive. She had to be tired; it was certainly getting late enough. “I didn’t know him that well. The point is he was overwhelmed, I think.”

“Someone bigger and stronger than him,” Reeve said. “Maybe knocked his hands away from the gun if he went for it?”

“Not a bad guess,” she said. “Though I’m hardly an expert.”

“Well, I appreciate your help anyway.” He sighed. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“No problem,” she said, and turned to leave. “One other thing …”

“Hm?”

She turned back to look at him. “Whoever did this … may not necessarily be bigger than him.”

Reeve felt a rough sense of amusement ripple through him. “You said they were stronger.”

“Doesn’t mean they were bigger,” Dr. Darlington said.

He chuckled. “Are you suggesting that a little person choked him out?”

“No,” she said, and looked like she wanted to say more, “just mentioning that size doesn’t always equal power.”

“This guy crushed his neck,” Reeve said, employing as patient a tone as he could muster under the circumstances. “This ain’t no wilting violet, okay? This kind of raw power doesn’t come on a tiny frame. The type of hand strength required for this kind of feat is enormous.”

“I agree,” she said. “I just wouldn’t rule out other possibilities, because if all you’re looking at is men over the height of six feet with muscles stacked on their muscles, you might rule out the culprit accidentally.”

“Well, I’ll just go ahead and put out an APB on a petite woman with big hands, just to cover the bases.” He couldn’t keep that slight bit of mockery from slipping out.

Dr. Darlington looked like she wanted to say something else, but instead she just nodded at him, shrugged, and started back to her car.

Lauren tried to keep her gait steady even as she fumed. She’d tried to help the idiot, tried to hint that he should broaden his search, but Reeve was so certain he knew what he was looking for that he was going to miss the obvious because he had not one fucking clue what was going on. And she couldn’t tell him because he’d think she was out of her goddamned mind.

She worked her way around Erin’s Honda, waiting for Reeve to turn his back. He did after another minute, and just in time, too. Lauren slipped into the passenger side and ducked down. Erin was splayed out across the back of the small car, breathing through her mouth, snoring gently.

Lauren slapped her on the thigh, causing Erin to jerk upright with wild eyes, hair a mess from where it had been shaped by the seat. “The fuck!” the deputy said, caught somewhere between outrage and fear.

“You’re drunk,” Lauren said.

“I was drunk earlier when you saw me, too,” Erin said. “Who cares?”

“Other than you drove here while intoxicated?” Lauren looked through the windshield to see Reeve still standing over the body, back turned. When Erin didn’t say anything, she went on. “Reyes was killed by a demon.”

“Whatever, man,” Erin said, shaking her head, eyes closed. She settled back down in the back seat.

“He got crushed by one,” Lauren went on, even though she didn’t know if Erin was even still listening. “Throat smashed, bones in the neck shattered. One of them got hold of him and just throttled the life out. Pretty quick, too—”

“Guess he was the lucky one, then,” Erin said, “since he’s not here to listen to you go on.”

“You think this was random?” Lauren asked, turning back to look at her. “Or do you think whatever demon did this targeted him because he was a cop?”

“Don’t know,” Erin said. “This is not my problem right now.”

“Because if it wasn’t random,” Lauren went on, “if this demon is targeting cops … it seems like they don’t have all that many more to go through. What is it, like a one in three chance the dial lands on you next?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Erin said. “Stop being such a ragged cunt, okay?”

“People are dying, you don’t care, and somehow
I’m
the cunt? I think you’re just projecting.”

“Take your fancy medical definitions and get gone,” Erin said, not even opening her eyes.

Lauren threw the door open and started to get out. “Good thing your family all left town. Otherwise maybe you’d actually have to care about what was going on. It’s probably easier to slip into a nihilistic, ‘don’t give a shit about anybody but myself and my fun’ attitude without anyone to worry about. It’s not like anybody you know is dying.” She threw that last little bit in there for the jab and watched Erin’s eyes snap open. She slammed the door and walked away before the little bitch could respond. She dealt with her own snotty teenager too often to take any shit from one that wasn’t even hers.

Brian was waiting in the living room when his dad came creeping in around one in the morning. He was chock full of gleeful at this reversal of roles, the old man dragging in with heavy eyelids, his flannel shirt smudged with dirt. “Evening, Bill,” Brian said, a little mocking.

Brian started calling his dad Bill at eighteen, because it was a reversal of the power structure his dad loved so much. At first it was just fun to throw him off balance. His dad would protest and say it was a manners thing, that it showed no respect, but the truth was obvious for anyone with a brain.

“Brian,” Bill said.

“Have a good night?” Brian asked, still grinning.

“Oh, it was marvelous,” Bill said, looking at him warily. “And you?”

“Just been waiting up for you,” Brian said. “What have you been up to?”

Bill stared at him. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I had a drink or two and needed to wait until I’d sobered up to come home.”

Now that was a good excuse, Brian had to admit. Except his dad was kind of a teetotaler, mostly. But if he argued that, his dad would argue emotional stress driving him to drink, and it’d get him nowhere. Hrm. Clever, clever.

“You should have called me to pick you up,” Brian said. “You know I’d come get you. Gladly.”

Bill raised an eyebrow. “I did not know that, in fact.” He was still wary, like he was expecting some kind of verbal right cross. Well, they’d certainly argued enough times for him to have reason. “I will most definitely keep that in mind for the future.”

“Planning on staying out late drinking again?” Brian asked as his father headed toward his bedroom at the back of the house.