Header

into the bag of sandwiches.

'So what've you got here?' Cummings asked. He slipped his Streamlight out of his belt.

'Some fat lady, hillfolk probably, as ya can see. Just saw her layin' here. Stew, when I was comin' up the Route. Blood all caked in her hair.'

'But no blood under her head.' Cummings noticed, adjusting his beam. Just like last night.

'Must've been killed somewhere else and then dumped here.'

'Yeah.' Just like last night.

Amburgy munched a BLT and chugged coffee right out of the thermos. 'I didn't have too close a look, didn't want to risk messin' up the crime scene.' Amburgy pronounced crime as cram. 'Peerce told me to radio the state and wait for 'em. Pretty pissant job of body-dumpin' though. Just dumped her flat out in the middle of the field.'

Yeah. Just like...

Cummings carefully hunkered down, aimed his flash beam right on top of the decedent's head, which was a mess of caked blood. With a pencil end, he pushed aside some of the clotted tresses, to reveal the insult.

'Yeah, someone cracked her good in the head.' Amburgy postulated.

'Not cracked. Drilled.'

'Huh?'

Cummings let it pass. A perfect circle had been cut out of the top of her skull, exposing the keenly slit brain. More macabre words came back to haunt Cummings... a peculiar aspiration of human seminal fluid.

And, again. Peerce. A fuckin' header...

'You check the perimeter for tire tracks?'

'Naw, not much. Dirt trail right there at the treeline. Must've been where he drove in. But the trail's dry.'

Cummings cast his light. No. there'd be no impressions left there. He'd leave it for the state to look at. At least the semen in the head could be typed, for all the good that would do, and they could run a g/p scan too, and their toolmarks lab could try to make the brand of the hole-saw, but Cummings doubted that the state police criminal evidence section would bother. This was just a cracker murder to them, a fly-by-night.

'What the hell is that?' Cummings asked when he stood up and roved his Streamlight again. A yard off from the victim's feet something glistened.

'Looks like...' Amburgy leaned, his checks stuffed as he chewed his sandwich. His nose twitched. 'Looks like a pile'a dogshit or maybe a horse-flop. Looks like it's been—'

Cummings nodded. There, satcheled amid weeds, clearly lay a deposit of some kind of animal excrement, and said deposit just as clearly had been—

'Damn right, Chad.' Cummings observed. His Streamlight glared down. 'And it's been stepped in.'

........

Peerce glanced up, glanced at his watch, then glanced up again from behind his desk at the FO. As discreetly as possible, which wasn't very discreet at all, he slipped this month's issue of Babes With Big Boobs under his desk blotter.

'Ain't like you ta be three hours late ta work. Stew.'

'Didn't you look on the op log?' Cummings sniped back. 'I was 10-6 to Millersville.'

'State Sub HQ? What'cha doin there all morning?'

Some Special Agent in Charge. Cummings complained. Doesn't even read his own operating report. 'It's right there in the log, J.L. I was 10-6 to Millersville, on an evidence check. That 64 Amburgy stumbled on last night? Identical m.?. to the Reid girl the night before. Only this time the perp left a footprint.'

'Oh yeah?' Peerce replied without much interest.

'Stepped in a pile of dogshit, left a perfect impression of the bottom of his right boot.'

'Some hayseed steps in dogshit and you take it to state police CES?'

'I photographed it. Showed it to their tech and got a pattern layout. Was hoping they'd be able to match the pattern to a manufacturer's solescheme in their computer.'

'What the hell fer?' Peerce asked, more absurdly now.

Cummings rolled his eyes. 'Finding out the manufacturer of the boots would give us a list of local outlets. Might be able to narrow down the stores in the area, check invoices, get a clerk who remembers, that sort of thing. If we have a list of the stores that sell the boots, we have a list of areas the perp might live in.'

'Wastin' yer time, Stew.'

'Oh? They'd already run an electrophoresis test on the semen in both heads,' Cummings challenged. 'The perp's bloodtype is A pos, subtype Mn. But there's A pos and ? pos in the second head, the one from last night. What's that tell you?'

'Nothin' of importance.' Peerce was barely listening now. He even retrieved his copy of Babes With Big Boobs. 'You tell me. city boy.'

'It tells us that two guys ejaculated in the second head.' Cummings caught himself there, realizing exactly what he'd just said. Ejaculated in the second head. I've got two perps out there, somewhere who've cut holes in the skulls of two women, and then they...

He didn't finish the thought.

'It ain't squat. Stew,' Peerce insisted. 'What good's knowing the perp's bloodtype?'

'I can run a records sweep now, check out any A pos Mn ex-cons or psych-ward releases in the area. It's something.'

'It's squat, Stew. Yer pissin' in the wind. And what about the footprint?'

'The state evidence tech ran a digitalization of the print pattern in their comparison computer. They've got every tread scheme of every shoe or boot ever made in the country. She knew it was a boot due to the sole-depth. But there was no match.'

'See? Squat.'

'Which tells me that the boot was handmade, which'll be even easier to check out. Get a line on any local shoemakers, and I got a line on the killer'

Peerce looked up again, trying now to play Boss Man. 'Ain't you got more important things ta do? Like stake out McKully's land fer more stills? That's yer job, ya know, not playin' Dick Fuckin' Tracy on a coupl'a no- account cracker murders.'

'I'm a fuckin' cop.' Cummings profaned in reply. 'My job is to investigate criminal activity.'

'Yer job. Stew, is ta bust stills—'

'And that leads me to my next question.' Cummings sat down, took a breath. Peerce, low IQ notwithstanding, was his superior. He couldn't get too shitty.

'You're not leveling with me. J.L' he said.

'How's that?' Peerce asked without looking up from the tit mag.

Cummings caught a glimpse of the mag. A blonde was spraying milk into a redhead's wide-open mouth. He blinked away the image, cleared his throat. 'What's a 'header'?'

Peerce slapped the mag closed again. 'Aw. shit, man! Just leave it, will ya!'

'No. I want to know. That's what you said under your breath after the state sent the fax on the Reid girl. A 'header,' you called it. What the hell's going on?'

Peerce spat tobacco juice into his obligatory cup. then pinched the bridge of his nose as if attempting to tamp a migraine. 'Cain't you just leave shit be?'

'No. What's a header?'

Peerce opened his hands on the desk, leaned back, sighed. 'It's just somethin' that goes on, is all. somethin' folks don't talk much about. It's nothin'.'

Cummings looked aghast. 'J.L., we've got at least two men in our juris who are cutting women's heads open with a hole-saw and fucking their brains. That's