Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(55)

Trish led him through the office and into the rear area where the autopsies were done. She stopped at one of the examining tables and drew the cover off the cadaver, with an almost imperceptible flourish.

Petrie took a look. And froze. Mouth hanging open.

“They called me in to take pictures,” Trish said. “That suicide on Wygant this morning, remember? He’d put the gun in his mouth. It took out the back of his skull, but left his face intact.”

Petrie looked up. Trish’s face was somber, but her eyes had a glint of excitement. “It’s him, isn’t it?” she prompted.

He just stared down at the dead man’s face. It was Bruno Ranieri. Feature for feature. His hair was an inch or so longer than it had been in the photo, but it was him, right down to the dimples. Trish indicated them with a blue fingernail. “Check out those bifid zigomaticus, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Who caught this one?”

“Barlow,” she said.

“You tell him?”

“Not yet. Wasn’t quite sure. Wanted you to see it first.”

He looked into her eyes. “OK,” he said. “I’ll tell Barlow. I guess I have to call Rosa Ranieri to come ID him for us.”

He stood outside, in the chilly October rain for a long time afterward. Immobile, even with Grandmam waiting at the restaurant. Staring at the slip of paper that held Rosa Ranieri’s contact info.

This was the part he hated. Telling a person that someone they loved had died, badly. He never got used to that. It never got easier.

He punched in one of the McCloud numbers and waited. A young woman’s voice answered. “Hello, McCloud residence.”div width="1em">“Hello, this is Detective Samuel Petrie, of the Portland Police Bureau,” he said. “I’d like to speak to Rosa Ranieri, please.”





13


B





runo massaged Lily’s naked ankle. She winced and flinched like she had a multiple compound fracture that was gushing blood, for God’s sake. What a wuss. Odd, knowing how tough she actually was.

“It’s not swelling,” he said for the tenth time. “It’s not sprained.”

“Well, it hurts! I’m the one inside my body, OK?”

“For Christ’s sake, Lily. What part of ‘the sun will go down soon, leaving us stranded in pitch-black, sub-zero cold and hundred-mile-an-hour wind gusts if you don’t get off your ass’ do you not understand?”

“So leave me here! Collect me on the way down! I won’t move, I promise. I’d get eaten by a grizzly or instantly lost. So just go!” She flapped her hand at him, in a “be off” gesture. “Buh-bye! See ya!”

He stared at her, stony. “You’re sticking to me. Like glue.”

Her eyes burned. She was furious, with good reason. He could see it, and feel it, too, from her point of view. It made him feel like shit. But he couldn’t follow her to the realm of bugf*ck lunacy. Mamma, involved in a sinister plot with an evil mastermind? Not. She’d just had bad taste in boyfriends. And in any case, the subject was charged with such lethal emotional voltage, a single touch would fry him.

So he wasn’t touching it.

But if he couldn’t support her version of reality, the next best thing was to try to keep those shitheads from killing her until she could get the help she needed. That help was out of his depth, maybe. But kicking shitheads’ asses, that was a job he could wrap himself around.

He wrapped both hands around her delicate ankle, trying to impart some of his body heat, and started inserting her clammy foot back into her sock. She responded by kicking his chest, knocking him onto his ass. Ouch. Ingrate.

“I’m capable of putting on my own sock, thanks,” she snipped.

“Do it, then,” he growled. “And hurry.”

She shook his arm off when he tried to help her up.

He stopped at the turnoff, debating whether to do the pilgrimage. Didn’t seem like a great idea under the circumstances, but as soon as he thought the sensible decision was made, and tried to proceed on up to the bluff, the impulse sank in and forced him right off the path. So. That was how it was going to be. He gave in and struck off horizontally across a long, treacherous slope of broken rock.

“Hey! “ she yelled. “Didn’t you say the cell reception is at the top of the bluff?”

“Quick detour. Something I have to do first. Come on. Keep up.”

“Detour?” Her voice cracked in disbelief. “What the hell could you possibly have to do up here in the frozen wastes?”

He didn’t bother to turn. “It’s personal.”

“Is it, now! Well, excuse me for wondering why I’m being dragged across a goddamn rockslide!”

He could estimate how far behind him she was from her labored breathing, and she was doing all right, so he just pushed on, scrambled up the steep part, and crawled over the lip of the small hanging valley.

It was almost level up there, a long, gentle slope, with a broad swath of trees, larger and taller than the scrawny malformed ones on the more exposed, wind-whipped side of the bluff. It was a pretty place.

He walked over to Tony’s silver pine, laid his hand on it. The contact calmed him down. He’d been up here maybe four or five times since he’d lost Tony. He’d found that it helped. For a little while.