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The compound gate hung open, uncordoned. Some crime scene, Lydia Prentiss thought. Two more cruisers sat out front, both with keys in the ignitions. She grabbed her field kits and went in.
Field forensic experience was part of what she’d been hired for. Equal opportunity was the other part, which irked her because she knew she was the best cop in the department. The others seemed pressed from the same mold—redneck, bigoted, and barely anthropoid when it came to intelligence. Everyone spoke in thick southern drawls, and everyone was lazy—though she supposed this judgment, like all of them, was of her own prejudice. She took things too seriously, she’d been told for her whole life. Her college career counselor had told her she was a hypercritical Type-A personality. Her watch commander at D.C. had told her she was an insubordinate smart ass. These vain faults had always haunted her, had made college very lonely, had kept her from making friends, and had pushed her out of D.C. Not fired, really, just urged to “move on.” She’d even been in love once—just once—and had ruined that too. She’d ruined everything for herself.
Stop. Why think of these things now?
Chief White didn’t like her, but at least he respected her. The other officers were morons who only wanted to get into her pants. They all regarded her as a blond curio, not a cop.
She found Chief White and Sergeant Peerce in the compound office. “What the hell’s going on?” she asked. “The dispatcher calls me and says to get down here with my field gear but doesn’t say why.”
“That so?” White kicked back in the chair. “Guess that means my dispatch is incompetent, right? Like everyone else in this department, right? Except you…right?”
Off to a great start, Lydia thought. “Chief, I only meant—”
“You meant that we’re just a bunch of hick cops who don’t know nothin’ compared to slick city sharpies like you.”
Peerce laughed. Lydia frowned.
Chief White must’ve been about fifty, with short American Legion gray hair and a potbelly. Peerce was a big South Georgia stupe: redneck sneer, Elvis sideburns, and slicked back hair.
“We gotta missing security guard,” White told her, rubbing his temples. “Old rummy named Sladder. We also got evidence a female student was out here with him last night. And that’s just starters.”
“There was a power failure,” Peerce added. “Last anyone heard from Sladder was when he called it in to Physical Plant and the power company. Only sign of the old fucker is his wallet.”
“His wallet?”
“That’s right. Old fucker musta dropped it. We also found a purse,” White said, pointing to a slim purse on the desk. “Belongs to a student, Penelope somethin’, lives over in Lillian Hall. I got Porker out lookin’ for her. Peerce already been over the stables, but I want you to have a look too, judgin’ the seriousness of the situation.”
“Seriousness? A wallet and purse? What’s the big deal?”
White’s snide grin vanished. “Show her the big deal, Peerce.
Peerce took her out, not offering to help carry the field kits. Most of the stables were open faced. She noticed some animals in the field, dead. Their heads all seemed to point toward the woods. From the first stable she heard the buzzing. Then she saw.
Peerce led her from building to building, from bad to worse. Though the animals were token in number, they were all dead. Lydia had seen her share of 81s in D.C.; she was used to viewing dead men. But this was queerly different. Cows and pigs had always struck her as harmless, even comical. Here they were grotesque, swollen masses of meat. The buzzing, of course, came from blankets of flies, oblivious in their feast.
Poisoned, she concluded. But why? And what did they want her to do? Take latent hoof prints? She was an evidence tech, not a toxicologist.
“In here,” Peerce said. Was he amused by her uneasiness? He took her into the horse stable, where each stall housed a dead, gas bloated horse. Channels of white foam lay in their opened mouths, and their faces moved—masks of flies shifting grainily like an optical illusion. Lydia switched on her Streamlight. Clots of flies filled the horses’ eye sockets. Maggots shimmered.
“Serious enough for ya?” Peerce commented.
Asshole. She gulped. “How well did you look over these stables?”
“Like a fine tooth comb. Found nothin’.”
“Nothing? There’s blood on the floor, Peerce.”
“What blood? I don’t see no blood.”
“Bend over and look down, Sherlock.” She pointed to the darkened streaks along the run. “What do you call that? Cherry smash?”
Peerce lost his southern snideness. “Thought it was horsepiss.”
“Yeah, horsepiss. Look out, and watch where you walk!” She followed the blood line with her SL beam. It ended at some larger splashes by a utility stall. A spatter of “fall” dotted the wall in an arch; what she knew about bloodfall trajectory told her the victim must’ve been moving away, not forward. Drop-configuration like this was rare. The large bleed at her feet bothered her most of all. A bleed this big in conjunction with this fall pattern indicated an excruciating wound. At D.C. they’d once walked into a basement where two crack taxis had been murdered. They’d found the men in a pile of neatly stacked pieces. Axes had been used.
Her eyes followed another line up. The halfboard on the stall had a gouge in it, what a tech would call strike impactation. More blood stained the gouge. Shit, she thought. Had the victim been reaching for the pitchforks in the stall? Yes. It’s too perfect. She peered over and looked down. More blood.
The impactation looked good, a good strike. She’d need no toolmarks workup to tell her this was an ax, and a big one. A big blade with an unusually flat cutting edge. But there had to be more.
Follow back, she thought. “Look at the fall.”
“Huh?”
“The bloodfall. The drop points change direction here, a 180 degree shift. They don’t lead forward, they lead back.”
Peerce didn’t know what she was talking about. Lydia followed the line. “Jesus,” Peerce observed. “Fucker lost a lot of blood.”
“Don’t walk in it!” Lydia yelled. “Look, Peerce, this place is too small for both of us. Do me a favor and—”
Peerce didn’t need to be told. He sputtered and went back to the office, bitterly chewing a wad of tobacco.
Now we’re in business. She aimed the SL back on the blood. It went about fifteen feet to the stable charge’s office. The phone hung off the hook. A larger splash had coagulated on the floor. Lydia crouched down, thinking. She closed her eyes and tried to see the victim. Despite the wound, he’d made it back here.
Why? To use the phone.
What then? He hadn’t died here. Not enough blood.
So he left. He’d dressed his wound and he’d left.
Now where? Where would I go if I’d just been severely cut by an ax wielding maniac near the stable entrance?
The stable exit, dumb ass.
But what about the attacker, the axman? He’d still be in the aisle. Cut this bad, did the victim actually have the balls to go back out and fight?
Weapons.
Maybe he was strapped. If the victim was Sladder, maybe he had a gun. Some guards carried them, some didn’t. The security office would know; they had sign out sheets. The suspicion needled her.