Widow Town (2 page)

Gray stared at the sky while the lights of the emergency vehicles flashed against his face.

He sat on his c
ruiser, his black ball cap off, eyes locked on the cobalt above, tainted only by the barest of clouds, wisps of gossamer flotsam. Occasionally he heard voices clamoring around him; a yelled word not connected to anything else, a curse, a man throwing up in the bushes across the yard. Gray watched the sky as a cleaner passed over, its massive wings dwarfed by the altitude it cruised at. A white light flashed on its belly and the sun glinted off its silver skin. A trail of pure oxygen, lighter blue than the surrounding sky, expanded behind it as it trundled on, inhaling the noxiousness of the upper atmosphere.

Ruthers approached him and stopped
several feet away, his hands twisting in the fabric of his uniform.

“Sir, they’ve ID’d them all.”

“My God, Joseph, this is the Jacobses’ farm, who the hell else do they think is laying murdered in their beds?”

Ruthers shifted
his feet. “I’m not sure, Sheriff.”

Gray
broke his gaze from the sky and glanced at his deputy. “I’m not either.” He looked away and began to examine the woods, his eyes moving from the leaves to the ground. Dead grass withering in the heat of the day. “There used to be deer in these forests.”

Ruthers licked his lips, his eyebrows drawing down
. “Deer, sir?”

“Yeah, you know,
white-tailed deer? Game animals? Didn’t you ever learn about them in history lessons?”

“I suppose I did.”

“They used to be everywhere. Can you believe people used to get killed by them on the highways?”

“Sheriff?”

“I shit you not. People would come and hit them as they crossed the road, the deer would blast right through the windshield and kill the driver, maybe the passenger. Happened from time to time.”

“It’s hard to believe.”

“It sure is. Wolves too, you know. Timberwolves, Canis lupus. They hunted the deer, ate whatever they could find. They used to be around here too. People were terrified of them, Joseph, for no reason, no reason whatsoever. They were reclusive creatures, prone to staying away from people and civilization if they could help it.” Gray picked his hat off of the car hood and pulled it on, adjusted it until it sat just above his eyes. “But we killed them anyway. Extinguished them like cockroaches, except we still have cockroaches, don’t we, Joseph.”

“
We sure do sir.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to call for Sheriff Enson?”

“No, I’m gu
essing he’ll be over directly.”

“Would
you like me to go back inside?”

“No, just sit here a moment. There’s nothing you can do about what’
s inside that house right now.”

They waited.
Gray sitting on the cruiser’s hood, Ruthers standing off to one side, sometimes adjusting his duty belt and others watching for one of the white-smocked forensic members that was shorter than all the others. After a while a man came toward them. His feet were clad in soft-toed dress shoes and he walked in a careful manner as if he expected to step in a pile of feces at any moment. When he stopped short of the cruiser Ruthers stepped aside, dipping his head once.

“Deputy.
Gray,” Enson said.

“Hello Mitchel,”
Gray said, pivoting a little on the hood.

Enson sucked on his lower lip, biting the ski
n there before he spoke. “Hot.”

“Yes it is.”

“Rain hasn’t come like they said it would.”

“Nope.”

“Fire’s could start anytime now.”

“That they could.”

“Lucky this one didn’t do the trick.”

“Lucky for some.”

Enson glanced at the sky and then put one hand on the cruiser, supporting his heavy form. “Terrible robbery.”

Gray
inhaled slowly, letting the air trace to the very bottom of his lungs before breathing out. “So something was taken?”

“Cash, there were a few bills still on the floor in the master bedroom where, well, w
here Jacobs and his wife were.”

“Yeah, how much on the floor?”

“A couple hundred.”

“Isn’t that something.”

Enson stared at Gray for a long second before dropping his head and huffing a short laugh. He drew a line in the dirt with the toe of one of his dress shoes, careful to keep the leather free of soil, and then looked up.

“What,
Gray?”

Gray
looked at him and then began to follow the progress of the cleaner, nearly out of sight. “Oh nothing, Mitchel.”

“No?”

“Well, not exactly nothing.” Gray glanced back at Enson’s face, which was beginning to redden.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Ruthers took off his hat and readjusted the bill, ferreting t
he cap around in circles.

“So?” Enson said as he spread his arms apart.

“Joseph and I are going to go over to Wheaton Medical after this and wait for the autopsy results. After that we’ll be in touch.”

Enson’s mouth twitched once and then he rubbed his foot in the dirt again. “
Gray, I’ve no time for your bullshit today. You’ve got something on your brain that won’t let things go.”

“I
suppose you’re right, Mitchel.”

“There’s no reason for you to go over to the center because I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to stir up things that aren’t there, make mountains from molehills, and I won’t h
ave it, not in my county. Your infatuations with history are irritating.”

Gray
slid from the hood in one motion and stood to his full height. He took two steps and loomed over Enson, looking down at him from beneath his hat.

“
If you’ve forgotten how you drove here, Mitchel, this is not your county. Section 16 of the county arbiters states that if a county does not have the facilities to deal with a crime, the nearest county will assist and abide by all reliefs necessary in conceding the law’s due order.”

“I know what the damn law states,
Gray, what I’m saying is—”

“Joseph and I will be over no later than noon. It’s hotter than the devil’s ass out here and we n
eed some shade.”

Gray
walked to the driver’s side door, nodding at Ruthers once before climbing inside. When their doors clicked shut, Gray watched Enson walk away, his heavy body laboring in the heat.

“I don’t think he liked that,
Sheriff,” Ruthers said, still looking after Enson’s awkward shape.

“Joseph, you could fit
into a raindrop how much I care about what Sheriff Enson likes, but that would be a waste of good water.” Gray looked at the younger man. “Can you hold down food?”

Ruthers considered it.
“I think so.”

Gray
started the cruiser and flipped it into gear. “Then let’s get something to eat before we go and hear all the details about what happened inside that house.”

~

They ate in the cruiser, their food steaming in recycled containers on their laps.

“Coffee still tastes like shit,” Ruthers said, lowering his cup.

“Joseph, I don’t know why you order it over and over then. Repetition of an asinine act doesn’t speak well of the repeater.”

“I’m sorry,
Sheriff, I guess it’s convenience.”

“We can stop anywhere else you’d like, as long as you
quit complaining about coffee.”

“Yes sir.” Ruthers ate another bite of his mashed potatoes, bits of gravy and meat falling from his fork, before squinting at his
container. “So could I ask you what you think?”

“About what, Joseph? Life in general or something more particular?”

“Well, what happened at the house, your theory?”

“Theo
ry is a dangerous thing, Joseph. Theory can wreck a man if he begins to believe too closely in the way he thinks things are. Things are never the way a person thinks they are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the only thing you need to remember about law enforcement is what our real job is.”

Gray took several b
ites of his sandwich and chewed, glancing across the street they were parked on. Ruthers nodded, drinking some more of his coffee before holding up a finger.

“And what is that?”

“Our real job?”

“Yes.”

Gray looked at the deputy and then away. “The truth, Joseph, we find the truth. The truth can be hidden, disguised as something else, but never dissolved. It’s always there, you just have to know where and how to look.”

Ruthers frowned and
licked his lips.

“Is that why you left the city? Th
e truth was too hard to find?”

Gray paused, his water halfway to his mouth
. “No, I found too much of it.”

Ruthers took in the blank look behind the sheriff’s eyes and shook his head. “I didn
’t mean to overstep my bounds.”

“You didn’t at all, I know what you meant.
” He was quiet for a time and then said, more to himself than anything, “Maybe the wolves aren’t all gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. Let’s finish up, shall we? Death awaits us.”

“Sir?”

“I guess I should rephrase, death’s reports await us.” Gray slid the cruiser into drive and pulled away from the curb. Ruthers nodded once and finished the last swallow of his coffee, grimacing at the taste.

Wheaton Medical stood without conscience amidst two adjoining cornfields.

Its front was solid glass with metal interspersions crisscrossing the shining surfaces. Two wings, one to either side, sat like shoulders beneath its overbearing head. Brick lined its outer edges and a constantly revolving door turned at a steady
pace below the shining façade.

When
they stepped from the cruiser, Gray eyed the building, adjusting his sunglasses to cut the glare that blazed from its mirrored front. The air was so hot, it felt ready to ignite, and he imagined it doing just that. Waves of fire flowing above him. The corn stalks danced, swaying in a timeless rhythm the wind played with abandon. When he began walking, the coolness of the cruiser stayed with him for two steps and then fell away like cheap armor under the heat of the morning.

They entered the facility and stopped only to check in at the front desk, donning visitor’s badges after Gray fl
ipped the receptionist his own. Patients waited in the lobby before doors labeled under large letters, A through E. Gray led the way past these with Ruthers close behind. They reached the end of the lobby and walked through a door that fell away into stairs, turned once, and then opened into a featureless hallway lit by overhead fluorescents, the buzz of which began to grate on Gray as soon as they walked beneath them.

“They can send a manned ship to Mars, colonize the place, and bring back a new industrial power source, but they can’t make a light bulb that doesn’t sound like a hornet,” Gray said, walking past a f
ew closed doors on their right.

“Mayb
e that’s where the money went.”

Gray huffed a
laugh. “To the space program?”

“Yes sir.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

Gray stopped outside a final door on the left at the very end of the hallway. He rapped on the steel once
and entered, not waiting for a response.

The room
spread out before them, longer than wide, with walls the color of brain matter where the stainless steel didn’t grow. The floor was pocked with drains, some large, others small, their dark, gapped eyes staring up. Shining tables the color of water beneath a storm sat in a row. Gray counted ten in all, three occupied at the moment. A woman in a white smock wearing green gloves was bent over the last table, its contents still mercifully indistinct. Her face hid behind a white mask but her eyes flashed once as the door shut behind them and Gray saw a smile that the material covering her mouth couldn’t hide.

“
Wondered when I’d see you again, Mr. Gray.”

“Stop it, you make me sound l
ike I’m a character from Clue.”

“What’s that?”

“Board game? Whodunnit? Little pieces shaped like a candlestick, rope, et cetera? No? Nothing?”

Tilly
Swenson’s eyes narrowed a little and she straightened, wiping the red-smeared palms of her gloves together. “You’re a strange one, Mac.”

“So I’m told
,” Gray said, moving across the room toward her. “This is my deputy, Joseph Ruthers, you may have met him before.”

“
I may have but I don’t recall.”

“He’s not as memo
rable as I am, are you Joseph?”

Ruthers
smiled as he shook his head. “It’s a pleasure, doctor.”

“Well he’s got manners you don’t, Mac
. He addressed me by my title.”

“Titles are for sports, not people,” Gray said, stopping short of the dissection table. He didn’t let his eyes wander down, though he could see it was a mess. “Wait
until she takes off her gloves to shake her hand, Joseph.”

“Yes sir.”

“So what brings you two to my humble domain?” Tilly asked, turning her attention back to the mass on the table.

“Well, these people were from our county, but I’m sure you knew that already. Mitchel didn’t want us to bother with coming down here ourselves but we decided that it wasn
’t such a long drive after all.”

“I’m not surprised the sheriff didn
’t want you here.”

“Nothing surprises me anymore.”

Tilly straightened again and reached for a pointed instrument twice the length of a pencil and half as narrow. “Well, if you can’t tell the difference, here lies Mr. Jacobs, his wife is on the table behind you gentlemen and their daughter Devi is in the one after that.”

Gray finally looked down,
taking in the colors, textures, and shape that lay on the table. The man that had helped him fix a flat tire on his cruiser one day nearly three months ago, was unrecognizable. Stanley Jacobs now looked like a high-speed crash victim. His arms and legs were severed at the knee and elbow joints, white bone glared under the wash of lights. The man’s head faced the wall as if ashamed of something, his mouth half open, bruised eyelids closed. A Y incision ran from his upper sternum down in a clean cut until it reached his lower stomach, everything below it was a grisly mass of flesh and yellowed fat. Several deep gouges ringed the corpse’s thighs and sides, their serrated marks flicking an internal switch in Gray’s head.

“My Lord,” Gray said.

Ruthers’s swallowing was very loud in the quiet room.

“Yes, it’s really something
,” Tilly said.

“We didn’t get the full affect at the crime scene this morning, too much blood ob
structing everything.”

Tilly nodded. “Yes, and I won’t actually know anything for sure u
ntil I’ve completely finished.”

Gray moved around the end of the table.
“What can you tell us so far?”

“Like I said, until I’ve finished
—”

“Dr.? Please.”

Tilly sighed and regarded Gray for a moment before shrugging. “Severe trauma, most likely incurred by an edged weapon to all the victims.” Tilly pointed to the gaping wound in Stanley’s body. “This is by far the most drastic. Basically the man was eviscerated after receiving these.” She touched the gouges on the corpse’s thighs and sides with the pointer.

“He was still alive when those happened?” Gray asked.

“Yes. It looks like a minor gash was made across his chest initially, but the cut wasn’t very deep.”

“A warn
ing.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

Gray worked his jaw up and down several times, wishing he’d brought a pack of gum. “How about the other two?”

Tilly rounded the table and approached the next in line holding Teri Jacobs’s body. “Mrs. Jacobs died of severe trauma to the brachial tube. It’s been severed in half a dozen places causing her to drown in her own blood.
Here you can see the same gouges on her thighs and there are more on her back.”

“Tilly, what do those wounds look like to you?” Gray asked, lifting his head from the carnage. The smell in the room was getting to him, death mixed with formaldehyde, a cocktail that
churned his stomach.

“Why don’t you tell me,
Sheriff? It appears you have an idea.”

“They look like bite marks.”

Tilly nodded. “They are.”

“From what?”

“I’m not sure yet, something large, a big dog maybe? The depth of the wounds indicate a wide snout, Rottweiler or Great Dane perhaps. We’ll know for sure after a swabbing to determine saliva type. On the other hand the amount of flesh removed is too much for a single bite, which is what we’re looking at here.”

Gray paused, taking in the wo
rds. “One bite for each wound?”

“That’s right.”

“Is all the removed tissue accounted for?”

Something flashed across the medical examiner’s eyes, there and g
one, a shadow of disgust. “No.”

The room fell silent again until Ruthers shuffled closer, still not within touching distance of any of the tables. “Are you saying that the animal tha
t did this, ate parts of them?”

Silence fell again until the door to the room swung open, jerking them all from their
thoughts. A petite brunette woman wearing a smart pair of dress slacks and yellow blouse that hugged her pregnant stomach entered the room. She carried a batch of files under one arm. Her hazel eyes scanned them all and found Ruthers last. A smile. Ruthers returned it, his eyes crinkling.

“Well hello
, Siri, how’re you feeling?” Gray said.

“Hi
, Sheriff Gray. Good, and big, but good. Hi, Joe.”

“Hi
, Siri,” Ruthers said, stepping out of her way. Siri smiled again and made her way toward Tilly. Gray watched Ruthers watch Siri pass, the younger man’s eyes those of a puppy beneath his hat. When Ruthers saw Gray looking at him, he bit his lower lip and began to examine the blank wall beside him.

“I brought the initial ballistic reports along with the crime scene photos,” Siri said, se
tting the files down on a desk.

“Thank you, Siri, I appreciate it,” Tilly said
, stripping off her wet gloves.

“While you’re here, Siri, do you mind answering a few questions for us?” Gray asked.

“Sure, Sheriff. Um, did you okay it with Sheriff Enson already?”

“My questions? Oh, Mitchel knows I like to ask questions. I’ve even tried to get him interested in doing the
same but it hasn’t taken yet.”

Siri smiled and Tilly raised he
r eyebrows once.

“Do we know the su
ccession of events last night?”

“We’re pretty sure that they came in through the back door,” Siri said, her eyes shooting to the tables and then away. “There was no sign of forced entry and the front door was still locked. We think there was two, possibly three
assailants. After that it’s a little sketchy. Do you want my opinion?”

“Please.”

“It looks like to me that one went upstairs and the other went directly to Devi’s room, and maybe Dr. Swenson can reinforce this, but from looking at the scene it appears that they tortured Mr. Jacobs first and made his wife watch.” Siri turned her head toward Tilly.

Tilly nodded. “That concurs with what I’ve found so fa
r along with times of death.”

“Sick bastards,” Ruthers said under his breath.

“And what about Devi?” Gray asked, his eyes flitting to the table that held what remained of the pretty girl he’d seen picking beans with her mother in their garden from time to time.

“No signs of rape or semen, but she was definitely killed last. There’s no bite marks on her body, but the amount of laceration
s are innumerable,” Tilly said.

“Any guess at how many?” Gray asked.

Tilly sighed, glancing at the sundered flesh of a girl that should’ve graduated the next year. “A hundred, maybe more.”

Gray nodded, rubbing his fingers across his forehead, smoothing the wrinkles that were trying to embed themselves there. A faint promise of a headache began to pulse in the back of his skull. “Tilly, you did the autopsies on the
Olsons last month, right?”

“Yes, why?”

“Was there anything unusual about the bodies?”

“Like this? Mac, those two poor people burned at more than
eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. There were barely bones left to look at. Besides, the two couldn’t be related, not with the state of these bodies.”

“Yeah,” Gray said.

“Mac, what are you trying to do here?”

Gray took a deep breath in and then let it filter o
ut between his teeth. “My job.”

“Look, whoever did this is deeply disturbed, I’ll give you that, but it must’ve been a one time, fluke thing. A couple people, maybe drifters, decided to rob the
Jacobses and they got carried away. Maybe the Jacobses resisted and they retaliated.”

“And they brought a bloodthirsty dog along just in case?” Gray said, tipping his head a little to
one side.

Tilly’s face hardened. “All I’m saying is there’s no evidence that the two are connected except for the fire, and if they are then it was a crime of passion, anger and rage.”

Gray glanced at the door, checking the digital clock above it. “Yeah, definitely.”

“Gray,” Tilly lowered her voice as though to keep Siri and Ruthers from hearing even though they were only steps away. “You’re going down a dead end road. We need to find whoever did this before they skip town.”

Gray nodded once. “Thank you, doctor. Siri.” Gray tapped the bill of his cap and turned on his heel.

“I’ll send over the full report when I’m through,” Tilly called after them as they moved toward the door. Ruthers looked back and nodded, smiling tightly. He gave a little wave at Siri and followed Gray out of the room.