Chapter 30

Cops and Corpses

"This guy is pissing me off," Cavuto said, expelling a blue cloud of cigar smoke against the file drawers of the dead. "I hate this fucking guy." He was standing over the body of Gilbert Bendetti, who had a thermometer sticking out of the side of his abdomen.

"Inspector, there's no smoking allowed in here," said a uniformed officer who had been called to the scene.

Cavuto waved to the drawers. "Do you think they mind?"

The officer shook his head. "No, sir."

Cavuto blew a stream of smoke at Gilbert. "And him, do you think he minds?"

"No, sir."

"And you, Patrolman Jeeter, you don't mind, do you?"

Jeeter cleared his throat. "Uh… no, sir."

"Well, good," Cavuto said. "Look on the side of the car, Jeeter. It says 'Protect and Serve, not 'Piss and Moan. »

"Yes, sir."

Rivera came through the double doors, followed by a tall, sixtyish man in a lab coat and silver wire-frame glasses.

Cavuto looked up. "Doc, this guy done, or what?"

The doctor pulled a surgical mask over his face as he approached the body. He bent over Gilbert and checked the thermometer. "He's been dead about four hours. I'd put the time of death between one and one-thirty. I won't be able to tell for sure until I finish the postmortem, but offhand I'd say myocardial infarction."

"I hate this guy," Cavuto repeated. He looked down at Jody's toe tag, which was lying on the linoleum with a chalk circle drawn around it. "Any chance this guy misplaced the redhead?"

The coroner looked up. "None at all. Someone removed the body."

Rivera had his notebook out and was scribbling as the doctor talked. "Any news on the one that just came in, the cowboy? Any blood loss?"

"Again, I can't say for sure, but it looks like a broken neck is the cause of death. There may have been some blood loss, but not as much as we've seen with the others. Since he was sitting up, it could just be settling."

"What about the wound on the throat?" Rivera asked.

"What wound?" the coroner said. "There was no wound on the throat; I checked the body myself."

Rivera's arms fell to his sides, his pen clattered on the linoleum. "Doctor, could you check again? Nick and I both saw distinct puncture wounds on the right side of the neck."

The doctor stood up and walked to the rack of drawers and pulled one out. "Check for yourself."

Cavuto and Rivera moved to either side of the drawer. Rivera turned Simon's head to the side while inspecting his neck. He looked up at Cavuto, who shook his head and walked away.

"Nick, you saw it, right?"

Cavuto nodded.

Rivera turned to the doctor. "I saw the wounds, Doc, I swear. I've been doing this too long to get something like that wrong."

The coroner shrugged. "When was the last time you two slept?"

"Together, you mean?" said Cavuto.

The coroner frowned.

Rivera said, "Thanks, Doc, we've got some more work at the other crime scene. We'll be back. Let's go, Nick."

Cavuto was standing over Gilbert again. "I hate this guy, and I hate that cowboy in the drawer. Did I mention that?"

Rivera tuned on his heel and started toward the doors, then stopped and looked down. There was a distinct footprint on the linoleum in brown gravy. Made by a small foot, a woman's bare foot.

Rivera turned to the coroner. "Doc, you got any women working here?"

"Not down here. Only in the office."

"Fuck! Nick, come on, we need to talk." Rivera stormed through the double doors, leaving them swinging.

Cavuto ambled after him. He paused at the doors and turned back to the coroner. "He's moody, Doc."

The coroner nodded.

"Nothing to the press about the blood loss, if there was any. And nothing about the missing body."

"Of course not. I have no desire to advertise that my office is losing bodies," the coroner said.

Rivera was waiting in the hallway when Cavuto came through the doors. "We've got to cut the kid loose, you know that."

"We can hold him another twenty-four hours."

"He didn't do it."

"Yeah, but he knows something."

"Maybe we should let him go and follow him."

"Give me one more shot at him. Alone."

"Whatever. We've got something else to consider too. You saw those puncture marks on the cowboy's throat the same as I did, right?"

Cavuto chewed his cigar and looked at the ceiling.

"Well?"

Cavuto nodded.

"Then maybe the others had wounds too. Maybe they had wounds that went away. And did you see the footprint?"

"I saw it."

"Nick, do you believe in vampires?"

Cavuto turned and walked down the hall. "I need a stiff one."

"You mean a drink?"

Cavuto glared over his shoulder and growled. Rivera grinned. "I owed you that one."

Tommy guessed the temperature in the cell to be about sixty-five, but even so, his cellmate, the six-foot-five, two-hundred-fifty-pound, unshaven, unbathed, one-eyed psychopath with the Disney-character tattoos, was dripping with sweat.

Maybe, Tommy thought, as he cowered in the corner behind the toilet, it's warmer up there on the bunk. Or maybe it's hard work trying to stare at someone menacingly, without blinking, for six hours when you only have one eye.

"I hate you," said One-Eye.

"Sorry," said Tommy.

One-Eye stood up and flexed his biceps; Micky and Goofy bulged angrily. "Are you making fun of me?"

Tommy didn't want to say anything, so he shook his head violently, trying to make sure that nothing remotely resembling a smile crossed his face.

One-Eye sat down on the bunk and resumed menacing. "What are you in for?"

"Nothing," Tommy said. "I didn't do anything."

"Don't fuck with me, ass-wipe. What were you arrested for?"

Tommy fidgeted, trying to work his way into the cinder-block wall. "Well, I put my girlfriend in the freezer, but I don't think that's a crime."

One-Eye, for the first time since he'd been put in the cell, smiled. "Me either. You didn't use an assault weapon, did you?"

"Nope, a Sears frost-free."

"Oh, good; they're really tough on crimes with assault weapons."

"So," Tommy said, venturing an inch out of the corner, "what are you in for?" Thinking baby-stomping, thinking cannibalism, thinking fast-food massacre.

One-Eye hung his head. "Copyright infringement."

"You're kidding?"

One-Eye frowned. Tommy slid back into his corner, adding, "Really? That's bad."

One-Eye pulled off his ratty T-shirt. The Seven Dwarfs danced across his massive chest between knife and bullet scars. On his stomach, Snow White and Cinderella were locked in a frothy embrace of mutual muffin munching.

"Yeah, I made the mistake of walking around without a shirt. A Disney executive who was up here on vacation saw me down by the wharf. He called their legal pit bulls."

Tommy shook his head in sympathy. "I didn't know they put you in jail for copyright infringement."

"Well, they don't, really. It was when I ripped the guy's shoulders out of their sockets that the police got involved."

"That's not a crime either, is it?"

One-Eye rubbed his temples as if it was excruciating to remember. "It was in front of his kids."

"Oh," Tommy said.

"Flood, on your feet," a guard said from the cell door. Inspector Nick Cavuto stood behind him.

"C'mon, cutie," Cavuto said. "We're going for a last walk."

The blood-high wasn't racing through her with flush and fever as it always had before. No, it was more like the satisfying fullness of a lasagna dinner chased with double espressos. Still, the strength sang in her limbs; she ripped the loft-door dead bolts through the metal doorjamb as easily as she had torn the plastic crime-scene tape the police had put across the door.

Strange, she thought, there is a difference in drinking from a living body.