City of the Lost (Casey Duncan #1)(28)

Dalton stops, mouth still open. I seem to have accomplished the impossible: I’ve surprised him.

I continue. “Drugs are being smuggled in, presumably in the drop-offs handled by the council. You have Hastings, a chemist who can manufacture designer drugs. Now you have this guy. It’s possible he faked his background records, but more likely the council did. They’re letting in hardened criminals. Including murderers who’d woo immigrants hoping for a better life and carve them for a profit.”

“It’s not the whole council,” Lowry says.

Dalton gives her a look, as if to say, And that makes it better? Then he says to me, “Good work, detective. You’ve earned your rep. Yeah, we believe they green-light criminals who will pay a shitload for the privilege. Unlike with the white-collar guys, the extra doesn’t go to the town. The council members pocket it.”

I stare at him.

“Back to work,” Dalton says, as if we’ve just discussed a rather dull town bylaw. He waves at Lowry. She hesitates and glances at me, knowing I want more. I nod for her to go on. I’ll deal with this later, after I’ve processed it.

Lowry peels back the sheet. I see the body of Harry Powys, and my stomach churns. I’ll partially blame what I’ve just learned—about the town and about him. But the body …

I’ve witnessed autopsies. I was always fine with taking that chore from my partners. My parents inured me to gore—via surgery videos—from an early age. Of course, that’s because they wanted me to have a strong stomach for a career in medicine, but it inadvertently prepared me to be a cop, too.

One thing you don’t see on a city beat? Predation—the point at which a victim turns into meat. That’s what I’m looking at here. A side of half-devoured meat wearing a human head and the tattered remains of clothing.

I don’t throw up. I’m not even tempted. But I do decide I’ll skip lunch today. Anders looks green, though he stands his ground. And Dalton? He’s right in there, as if this is a biology dissection sample. He’s circling the body, leaning down for a better look, poking at the spots where both legs have been removed. He even grabs a blunt probe from the tray and prods aside some of the mangled flesh.

Lowry watches while he examines the ribs. Then he looks at her. She nods.

“Fuck,” he says.

He shakes his head and drops the probe back on the tray with a clatter.

“You said homicide?” I begin.

She nods. “Looks like massive blood loss.”

“We didn’t see that at the scene,” Anders says.

“Because the body was moved.”

“By predators?” There’s a note of hope in his voice. Please, please tell me this was a grizzly.

“Possibly,” she says. “There are signs of animal predation.”

I look at her and hope my disbelief isn’t too obvious. Signs of animal predation? The body is hamburger. Half a hamburger. You don’t need a medical degree to know something has eaten Harry Powys.

“So, massive blood loss,” I say. “Could be a bullet in the femoral artery, but we don’t have the legs to check that. It’s not the neck.” The head is the one part relatively untouched, except for the eyes, which have been pecked out. “Stabbing?”

“Cutting.”

“Cut …” I look toward the missing legs. “You mean he was …”

“Alive, most likely.”

“A saw?” I manage to ask.

“Hatchet.”

“At the hip?” I say. It’s not an easy cut, and I’m struggling to imagine holding a man down for that.

“The upper cut appears to be post-mortem. I’m guessing there was a lower one. Likely the knee.”

“I’ve seen dismembering once. But that was chopping up a corpse for disposal. Why kill him by hacking off his lower legs and then remove the thighs?”

I walk to the tray and take the blunt probe Dalton used. I push aside tattered flesh from the ribs. As I do, I mentally process the condition of the flesh. It isn’t tattered. Not the way I’d expect from a beast with teeth and claws. I’m looking for evidence of those teeth and claws on the ribs. Instead, I see knife marks.

Harry Powys hasn’t just been murdered. He’s been butchered. By humans.





Nine

When I tell the others what I think happened, Anders stares at me. Then he looks at Lowry and Dalton. After a moment, Dalton says, “Yeah.” Anders looks at the body again. Then he’s in the next room, puking in the sink. It only takes a minute, then he’s storming back into the autopsy room, wiping his face on his sleeve.

“You knew about this,” he says to Dalton.

The sheriff grunts.

“Cannibals?” Anders stalks over and plants himself in front of Dalton. “You’ve got f*cking cannibals in the forest and you didn’t see fit to tell me?”

“Did you read the files?”

“What?”

“The files I gave you. The town’s background. What we have out there.”

“I went through them.”

“Flipped through them. Didn’t actually read them. Or you’d have known that we’ve found evidence of cannibalism before. Been a few years and, yeah, it’s questionable. But the possibility has always been there, in the files. Not my fault you did a half-assed job reading them.”