Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(35)
“Of course not,” Constance said in a calm voice. “I was merely wandering. Would you mind telling me where the hotel library is located?”
“On the first floor, room 104.”
“Thank you.”
The maid curtsied—a little awkwardly, given the tray she was holding—then walked past Constance. Constance watched as she knocked on a guest’s door; disappeared inside the room for a minute; then came back out again, empty-handed except for the bill. She walked past Constance again with a small, nervous smile, then went out of sight past the jog in the corridor, heading for the service elevator.
Constance stood where she was for another few minutes, gazing first in the direction the maid had taken, then at the unmarked door. Finally she turned and—silent as a cat—returned along the hallway the way she’d come and disappeared down the stairs.
23
AGENT COLDMOON STOOD AT the edge of the clearing, the early-morning sun filtering down through the mist that rose among moss-draped trees. A lot of useless crime scene tape had been strung, he thought: a sign of overzealous police work, unnecessary since the area where the dog had been killed wasn’t accessible to the public anyway. The local homicide team and a bevy of Georgia crime scene investigators had worked the site under lights over the course of the night. The local PD technicians had made a credible show of investigating the area: taking photos, collecting samples, scouring the ground for every clue. The M.E., McDuffie, and a forensic veterinarian had gone in next and examined the corpse in situ.
Coldmoon had made sure to position himself upwind from the dead dog. It had been a warm, humid night and he didn’t want to take any chances. Even without the smell it was a pretty horrific sight.
“Curious,” murmured Pendergast. “Most curious.”
Coldmoon wasn’t inclined to ask Pendergast what he found curious, even if the agent would have told him—which he probably would not.
“I believe it is our turn, Agent Coldmoon,” said Pendergast. “Shall we?”
Pendergast ducked under the tape and Coldmoon followed. There was no need to put on a monkey suit, thank God: it was only eight in the morning but already a scorcher. And here was his partner, wearing a damn linen suit with big green rubber Wellingtons on his feet. Somehow, he’d kept the suit immaculate even as they’d pushed through vegetation and waded through muck along the riverbank to reach this spot.
Coldmoon hung back a little. Dead dogs weren’t really his area of expertise, and he was happy to let others take the lead. Pendergast, on the other hand, seemed as eager as ever when a dead body—human or otherwise—was in the vicinity. He made a beeline for the severed head and knelt next to it, slipping on a pair of nitrile gloves. He examined it with a magnifying glass.
“By Jove, Watson,” Coldmoon muttered.
If Pendergast heard, he made no sign. He lifted the dog’s tongue, turned it over, and swabbed something from it; then swabbed the dog’s canines and put both swabs in a tube. Another tube came out and he took more rapid samples. Meanwhile, the M.E. and vet were examining the rest of the dog, twenty feet distant.
Now Pendergast was examining the dog’s badly torn neck. “Agent Coldmoon?”
Coldmoon came over. Pendergast was pointing to vertebrae exposed in the neck. He waved off a few flies as they looked closer at the bloody mess.
Pendergast handed him the glass. “If you please.”
It didn’t please, but Coldmoon took a look anyway. He could see that the tip of one vertebra had broken off and the spinal cord was ragged and torn. “Looks like a lot of force was used.”
“Exactly,” said Pendergast. “One might assume the head was cut off, but when you examine the flesh, here, and here”—he poked at some muscles in the neck with a swab—“and that fractured vertebra, it looks more like it was torn off. Do you see?”
“Right,” said Coldmoon. “Right.”
Pendergast rose. “Let us look at the other section of the body.”
They joined the M.E. and the vet, still crouching over the remains. Pendergast gave the carcass such a thorough examination, once again with his magnifying glass almost pressed against the fast-decaying flesh, spreading open this wound and probing into that cut, that Coldmoon had to avert his eyes. He hoped to God he wouldn’t be asked to examine something.
“Well,” said Pendergast as he rose, examination complete. “Dr. McDuffie, what do you make of it?”
The M.E., high-strung to begin with, seemed particularly nervous. Coldmoon understood why when he saw Commander Delaplane come striding out of the swamp, a look of displeasure on her face.
“I’ll defer to my veterinary colleague, Dr. Suarez.”
The vet, a young fellow with a lean frame, laid-back in comparison to McDuffie’s fretfulness, said: “Well, if we weren’t out in the middle of a bayou, I’d say this dog had been hit by a truck. You can see evidence of trauma, significant internal injuries, and broken bones.” As he spoke, he gestured with a bloody scalpel, which he had been using to take tissue samples.
“Curious,” said Pendergast.
Delaplane was now standing behind them, listening, her arms crossed.
“So, in the absence of being hit by a Peterbilt, I’d say the dog was beaten badly—perhaps with a baseball bat or crowbar—and cut or slashed. Possibly, both the butt and blade of an ax were used. We’ll know more when we get the remains to the lab.”