Читать книгу Night Shift - Annelise Ryan - Страница 10

Chapter 3

Allie’s revelation is disturbing on more than one level. While I still favor the idea that she saw something—fog or mist—and her mind simply interpreted things the way her brother had described them, I also wonder if Allie might have inherited some of her brother’s mental illness. She confided in me some time back that an aunt had had schizophrenia and had killed herself as a result, and these things can run in families. Granted, at thirty-something, Allie is a bit old only now to be manifesting signs of the illness, which typically present in the late teens and early twenties. That’s when it first appeared with Danny, and the guy’s been struggling with it for more than a decade now.

I reassure Allie with some verbal gobbledygook about how our minds can play tricks and make us see things that are suggested to us when we’re under high emotional stress. It’s not complete nonsense; this can and does happen to people all the time and might have happened to Allie. But something in my gut says this isn’t the case.

It looks like further contemplation will have to wait because Devo is telling me that he just got a call from the sheriff’s department asking Sorenson for an assist on a call for a welfare check.

“The daughter of a farmer who lives not too far outside our city limits said she hasn’t been able to reach her father all day and that’s not like him,” Devo explains.

“Maybe he took a trip,” I suggest.

“Daughter claims the guy is a homebody who never goes anywhere, especially since his wife died four years ago. She says she has a standing call time with him every Friday evening. And since today is her birthday, she’s certain her father wouldn’t miss the call tonight unless something was wrong. The girls—he has two daughters, both living in Minnesota—are thinking he might be ill or injured.”

“Or maybe he has a new relationship in his life,” I counter.

“Maybe,” Devo says with a shrug. “Either way, this is the kind of call your position is designed to help with. If the guy is hurt, or if he’s depressed, or having a mental breakdown of some sort, you can step in. If it turns out to be nothing, I think your presence will help minimize our intrusion to some degree.”

“Okay, give me a minute. I’ll meet you outside.” I check in with Dr. Finnegan and leave my number in case I’m needed for anything more with Danny, though the plan for now is to reassess him when the medication wears off and determine if he’s safe to be sent home with his sister.

Five minutes later, Devo and I are back in the cruiser, Roscoe inside his carrier, heading out of town.

“Do you get a lot of assist calls for stuff outside the city limits?” I ask Devo.

“Depends. The sheriff’s office shares a lot of duties with us and they assist us here in town when we need extra manpower. We often share investigations, too. Right now, the sheriff’s office is short-staffed, so they utilize us when they can for help with things. Something like a welfare check isn’t likely to involve any jurisdictional issues unless a crime has been committed. If we find that’s the case, then the sheriff’s department will need to come out to the site and take charge, though we can continue to assist.”

“It’s nice that you guys all work together,” I observe. “No competition issues between you then?”

“I didn’t say that,” Devo says with a roll of his eyes. “Things can get territorial at times, especially when there’s fun stuff like a big drug bust or a murder. But for the penny-ante stuff, like traffic accidents and welfare checks, it’s not a problem.”

“Murder is fun then?” I say, giving him an arch look.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” he says. He squirms in his seat and gives me an annoyed look.

I chuckle at his discomfort. “I get it. You guys are all a bunch of adrenaline junkies. You’re like the ER staff and the EMS folks.”

“I suppose,” Devo says. “Nights like last night drive me a little crazy.”

My first night on the new job was a quiet one. The only calls that came in were for a nuisance noise complaint from a man whose neighbor was having a party that lasted well into the wee hours of the morning with lots of loud revelers and pounding music, and a call from a lady who lives along the river and found a huge snapping turtle on her back deck when her dogs started barking and wouldn’t stop. Devo informed me that the cops serve as animal control during off hours, so we had to figure out a way to dispatch the critter, as the lady was afraid to let her dogs out into the yard to do their business. Devo picked the turtle up by its tail and carried it down to the river, where he then let it go. The turtle was none too happy about this ignominious dispatch and it tried its darnedest to snake its long neck over its shell and bite Devo’s hand while it was being carried, but Devo never flinched. I admit, I was impressed.

Since those two calls were the only ones we had, the rest of our eight-hour shift was spent with Devo driving and me yakking at him about everything under the sun. I downed several high-octane coffees before and during the shift so I could stay awake, and I was wired. I suspect this is why Devo didn’t look happy to see me at the start of our shift tonight, though so far we are keeping ourselves well occupied.

He turns off the highway onto a rutted dirt and gravel drive and shifts into park. His headlights had briefly illuminated a newspaper tube and a mailbox with the name Fletcher applied to the side of it in reflective, sticky letters mounted on a post at the base of the driveway. Devo gets out to check them and finds two newspapers in the tube and several pieces of mail in the mailbox.

He leaves them and gets back in the car, steering it up the drive, which takes us toward a weathered old barn with a fieldstone foundation, a common site in these parts. But before we reach the barn, the drive veers to the left and splits off, with one portion leading to the resident farmhouse and another leg going off toward a silo, some other outbuildings, and, eventually, the barn.

The farmhouse is typical for the area: white, two-story, a large propane tank positioned beside it, the exterior of the house showing its age and in bad need of a paint job. I’m betting it’s not much better on the inside. All the windows in the house are dark and it appears as if no one is home. Then again, it’s nearly two in the morning, so the occupants may simply be asleep.

“Isn’t this an odd time to be doing a welfare check?” I ask Devo. “Anyone who is home will likely be sleeping.”

“It would be for most people,” he says. “but the daughter told the sheriff’s department that her father typically gets up around two-thirty or three in the morning, a habit born out of all his years of farming. So, if we wake him at two, it’s not that far outside his normal hours. If no one answers we can take a cursory look around, but unless we find something alarming, we’ll likely come back later and try again.”

The drive forms a circle in front of the house, making its way around a giant old oak tree that I’d bet is a hundred years old or more. Devo pulls up by the front porch and shifts the car into park. He updates our location via his radio and then the two of us get out and make our way up the wooden steps to the front door. There is a screen door that creaks as Devo opens it. The main door has glass in the upper half of it, a lace curtain hanging on the inside. Devo looks for a doorbell but there is simply a hole in the wall where one might have been. With a sigh, Devo knocks hard on the door’s glass.

We wait, and I listen to the gentle soughing of the warm night breeze through the branches of the oak tree. After a minute or so, Devo knocks again, harder this time, and he announces that we are the Sorenson Police Department. Still no answer.

I reach down and try to give the doorknob a turn. It doesn’t move and Devo chastises me with a “Hey, don’t do that.”

“Should we go around back?” I suggest. “I’ll bet there’s another door.”

Frowning, Devo agrees, and he leads the way off the front porch and heads around the far side of the house, the part we haven’t put eyes on yet. He scans the windows as we go—they are all dark, just like the front windows and those on the other side of the house—and we find one near the back that is open. We round the corner to the backyard, past an older model, rust-scarred pickup parked on the grass, and a sudden gust of wind rises up and lifts the hair off my neck. With it comes a smell that seems to be coming from inside the house, a disturbing, carnal smell with underlying hints of urine and feces. It makes the tiny hairs growing out of my neck rise to attention.

I’m about to ask Devo if he caught the same whiff but I know the answer when he says, “Oh, hell.”

There is a back door, a simple, two-step, concrete stoop leading up to it. Like the front door, this one has glass in the upper half of it, but unlike the front one there is no curtain and the glass here is divided into small panes. Devo pulls on a pair of latex gloves that he takes from his pocket, and then he hands me a pair. I pull them on—they are too big for me, but they’ll do for now—and clasp my hands in front of me. I know from the training I was required to go through before starting this job that the gloves are as much for my protection as they are for ensuring that I don’t contaminate any possible crime scenes.

Devo mounts the steps and shines his flashlight through the glass to the interior of the house. He reaches down and tries the doorknob, but it doesn’t turn. With a sigh, he turns his flashlight around and uses the butt end of it to break the lower left pane of the glass window in the door. Then he carefully clears away enough shards so that he can reach his hand inside and undo the lock without cutting himself.

“You should wait out here,” he says to me, opening the door.

“I’m okay,” I say.

He shakes his head. “Wait out here until I see what’s inside.”

“I’m fairly certain you have a dead body inside,” I say.

Devo shoots me a look that is part curiosity, part perturbation. “How—”

“I smell old blood—lots of it—and excreta. That’s not a smell one easily forgets or confuses with anything else. So, the only real question at this point is whether the death is by natural causes, suicide, or suspicious circumstances.”

“Right,” Devo says, drawing the word out and continuing to look at me with wary curiosity. “And until I determine which it is, you need to stay out here. If this turns out to be a crime scene, I don’t need you traipsing about contaminating evidence.”

“I have never traipsed once in my entire life,” I assure him. “And I was required to go through those police procedure classes before starting this job, remember? I know how to handle myself at a scene.”

Devo glares at me, but apparently my look of determination convinces him. “Fine. Just don’t touch anything. And stay behind me.”

I walk up the steps and follow Devo inside. The smell of death and old blood grows stronger and as soon as we pass through a mudroom, Devo reaches along the wall and finds a light switch. When he flips it, the scene it reveals is a stark one, the kind most people only see in their nightmares.

We are at the threshold of a kitchen and there is a large, oval wooden table in the center of the room. To my right is a big, double porcelain sink and cabinetry that looks like it was built in place about a half century ago. The countertops are blue tile, several of them broken or missing in spots. Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink and there is a dishrack on the counter with a red and white striped kitchen towel beneath it. To my immediate left are more cabinets going to the corner, and against the next wall is an old-fashioned wooden hutch with several drawers and doors in the bottom, a flat work area in the middle, and two cabinet storage areas at the top.

I take all of this in in a split second and then focus my attention on the elephant in the room: the dead man seated at the table. His head is lolled back, and I can see a dark hole in the soft spot under his chin. Tufts of dark hair protrude from his head around his ears, and the top of his head is a bloody mess that appears oddly misshapen, too flat. He looks like the old Dick Tracy villain Flat-top. Both of his arms are hanging at his sides and beneath the hand of the right one, the one closest to me, I see a handgun resting on the floor. He is dressed in pajamas. The only sounds I can hear are that of Devo’s heavy breathing and the low buzz of flies, several of which are darting in and around the man’s gaping mouth and bloodied scalp.

Devo mutters, “Aw crap,” and then grabs for his radio to call for backup. Except he doesn’t. He hesitates, and when I look over at him, I see that his eyes are focused on the ceiling. He grimaces, swallowing so hard that his Adam’s apple bounces spastically for a second. I follow his gaze and see something dark on the ceiling. At first, I can’t figure out what it is because despite what appears to be a solid center a couple of inches wide, the sides are very irregular and thready looking. It resembles a paramecium I remember seeing through a microscope in a biology class once. Was it in high school? Or college? Like it matters. The mind takes some weird side trips at times like these.

I let my eyes drift back to the dead man, to the odd shape of his head. And then, with a sickening start, I realize what’s on the ceiling. It’s the top of his head.

I look over at Devo, worried. Rumors run through the police department like rats in a catacomb and one of the ones I’ve heard repeated several times is that Devo has a weak stomach. It’s said to be even odds whether he’ll toss his cookies at a grim crime scene and this one certainly qualifies as grim. I feel my own stomach lurch a bit and try to distract myself.

“Think it’s a suicide?” I say, hoping to maybe distract Devo some, too.

He doesn’t answer.

I divert my eyes away from the ceiling and look back at the hutch. Doing my best to focus on something, anything other than the dead man and that paramecium on the ceiling, I zero in on a whimsical cookie jar sitting at the back of the hutch’s middle work area. My gut does another flip-flop, but for a different reason this time.

“Uh, we have a problem, Devo,” I say, and I hear the tremor in my voice.

He glances over at me and makes a face. He licks his lips and exhales through pursed lips.

“You okay?” I say. “You’re not going to barf, are you?”

“No, of course not,” he shoots back irritably. “Are you? If that’s the problem, go back outside.”

“That’s not the problem.” I take a few careful steps toward the hutch, making sure I don’t step on any blood or other material, and point to the cookie jar. “This is.”

Devo looks at the cookie jar, then at me, his expression suggesting that he thinks I’ve lost my mind. “I’m not following you, Hildy.”

“Remember what Danny kept saying at the house when we first got there?”

“Yeah, he was babbling some nonsense about seeing ghosts. The guy’s a nutter. So what?”

“So, when I was talking with Allie some more about it later, she told me about the stuff Danny was saying before we got there, stuff that made no sense and led us to believe that in addition to his usual auditory hallucinations, he might be having visual ones, too. One of the things he said was that he saw a man get killed and a spotted purple and pink dinosaur watched the whole thing.”

Devo snorts a quick laugh, but the humor quickly fades from his expression as he looks again at the cookie jar. I’d bet it’s an antique, probably dating back to the forties or fifties. The main body of the jar is purple with little pink spots on it, and it has four feet at the bottom. Attached to one end is a green plate and protruding from that plate are three pink horns. Two eyes are painted on the green plate below and between two of the horns. It looks like a cartoonish triceratops.

“I think our gentleman here might have been murdered,” I tell Devo. “And what’s more, I think Danny Hildebrand saw it happen.”