Devoted(48)



For a moment, Woody felt disoriented, wondering what happened to the car and everyone in it, and then he realized he had been dreaming. For another moment, he thought he might still be dreaming as the kneeling man stopped blowing and smiled at him.

And then he caught the scent of the intruder, the subtle odor that he couldn’t describe, that he’d experienced a few times before, the scent that maybe smelled stronger to dogs, like they said in those articles he’d read. This man smelled scary.

Worse than scary. What was worse? Evil?



Fear paralyzed Woody, so he couldn’t even lift his head from the pillow.

The stranger spoke softly. “Hey, little dude, what do you say?”

Woody said nothing.

“Cat got your tongue?”

Their faces were maybe six or eight inches apart.

The man’s left eye was gray, his right eye brown, as if he wore colored contacts and one of them had fallen out.

Something was odd about the left eye, a soft glow deep in it. “You hear me, Woodrow?” the stranger whispered. “Are you mute and deaf, you little freak?”





51



The ice-white fluorescent radiance in the cold-holding room fell on bone-white ceramic-tile walls and floor, on the stainless-steel fronts of two banks of cadaver drawers, four above and four below, on Carson Conroy and Sheriff Hayden Eckman, and on the two men from Sacramento. The hard light made no one look young or handsome, or kind.

Of the men from the state capital, the one named Frawley was supposed to be an assistant medical examiner. Even at this hour of the night, he wore a well-tailored suit, white shirt, and silk tie. His wingtips looked English, maybe by Crockett & Jones, which meant they probably cost six or seven hundred dollars, and he sported a gold Rolex watch.



The other guy, Zellman, was a blocky individual with a face like one you might find frowning eternally in a deep-jungle temple, carved from stone by worshipers and meant to represent a god of the wrathful variety. Thick neck. Long arms. Enormous hands. He claimed to be a morgue attendant and driver.

Carson didn’t believe either man was what he presented himself to be. Frawley looked like a fixer, a slick operator who had friends in all the highest places and knew how to take care of any screwup they committed. Zellman had to be muscle, plain and simple.

They were here to take possession of the bodies of Painton Spader and Justine Klineman, which were zippered tight in cadaver bags and snugged in two of the stainless-steel drawers.

“We’ll remove them to the morgue in Sacramento,” said Frawley.

“I don’t understand this,” Carson said.

“We’re asserting jurisdiction. Sheriff Eckman has agreed to relinquish investigative authority to the state.”

To Carson, Hayden Eckman said, “The AG called me himself, a few hours ago. He made a persuasive argument.”

“What argument?”

Frawley turned to an attaché case that lay on a gurney employed to move cadavers through the morgue. Opening the case and extracting a sheaf of papers, he said, “One of Sheriff Eckman’s men found the killer’s wallet near Justine Klineman’s body. It must have fallen out of his pants when he was . . . savaging her. ID in the wallet is for Nathan Palmer, who’s a fugitive wanted for murder.”



“When we had the ID,” Hayden Eckman told Carson, “we went to the National Crime Information Center website to see if there was any posting for this guy. There was. State and federal authorities are after him big-time.”

“When did this happen?”

“Earlier this evening.”

“While I was doing the autopsies?”

“You and Jim had just started the first one.”

Jim Harmon was Carson’s one assistant.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

Eckman didn’t meet Carson’s eyes, but instead stared at the papers Frawley had produced. “The want on this Nathan Palmer creep is intense. It’s not something to dick around with. I’ve been on the phone working things out with the attorney general and the FBI for hours. We have a good lab here, but nothing like the state and feds can provide in Sacramento.” He stepped to the gurney and began to sign the documents where they were marked with brightly colored stick-on plastic arrows.

For the past nine months, Carson had been trying with some difficulty to get a fix on Hayden Eckman, who wasn’t the sheriff who’d brought him to Pinehaven County four years earlier. Eckman was a competent lawman and department manager, but more political than his predecessor, perhaps with one eye on a higher elected office.

“He urinated on the bodies, on their clothes,” Carson said.

Frawley looked at him as if to say, And your point is?



“I have the clothes, other evidence. We’ll find a few hairs of his, other DNA. Everything’s ready for the lab in the morning.”

Frawley nodded. “We’ll take all that with us tonight. Our lab operates twenty-four/seven.” He presented a new document. He said to the sheriff, “Signature there, initial here.”

“But what about finding him?”

“It’s inevitable, Mr. Conroy.”

“You seem very laid-back about this. Palmer bit the woman to death. He ate her face, her breasts, for Christ’s sake.”

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