were stomping them flat, contaminating the crime scene.
As expected, there were yellow strips across the front door of the house with POLICE, DO NOT CROSS written on them in big black letters. A couple of guys wearing the footsies and plastic gloves pulled their masks up and ducked under the tape and entered the house.
The chief was leaning against an unmarked car, glaring up at the sky, waiting for a revelation, or perhaps the Rapture.
He looked at me as I came up. “Reporter, how are you? I’m so goddamn glad to see you.”
He sounded more than a little insincere.
“What’s the scoop?” I said.
“It’s ugly, Jason.”
“Cason. How ugly?”
“Dead is pretty ugly,” he said. “And the next-door neighbors, they tell us there was a girl, and she’s missing. They don’t think she could do such a thing, so maybe she got ’napped since we can’t find her. That’s what we’re saying for now.”
“But you’re not so sure?”
“We got her name and we’ve notified her family, and we’re going to notify the boy’s family. Holding off on that for a little bit, wait until we can get him sacked up.”
“Was the girl a student?” I knew she was, but if she was missing, it might give them a lead. An idea to start checking the school and who might have known her. Of course, that could lead them right to Jimmy, but it was better at the moment for me to fish a bit, find out what they knew.
“Yeah. She’s a student. We’ve checked at school, class she’s supposed to be in. Followed up a few leads we got from the neighbors. Doesn’t look good. Damn. I need a drink.”
I thought what he really meant was he needed another.
“No note?” I asked.
“Note?”
“From the kidnappers.”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. If there was a note, I’d know for a fact she got ’napped, now wouldn’t I? I got that much savvy. I know how to pull my socks on one at a time, shit in the pot and not on the floor. I’m not totally useless. So, there was a note, I’d know if she was kidnapped, now wouldn’t I, Jason?”
“Cason.”
“You’re not saying Jason?”
“No. Cason. With a C.”
“I’ll be damned. Could have sworn you were saying Jason.”
“Nope.”
“Huh.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re right. You would.”
“Would what?”
“Know if she had been kidnapped…if there was a note.”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Of course. They leave a note, you got their word, and who wouldn’t believe the word of a murderer? I see you got a camera there. Nice little camera, small, easy to handle. Maybe you should have been sneakier.”
“Why would I be sneaky?”
“There’s nothing you’re going to be photographing inside.”
“I was gonna take some outside photos. You know, the POLICE, DO NOT CROSS strips. Maybe a shot of you looking very investigative.”
“Again, you’re not going inside. You did, you’d wish you hadn’t. I did. I wish I hadn’t.”
“That bad?” I said.
“I’m always surprised at how much blood is in the human body. It’s spread from one end of that shithole to the other. And it’s pretty fresh, he’s been dead, oh, I don’t know, maybe today early, before light. Maybe yesterday late. Guy was naked and in bed. Well, a lot of him was. There was some more of him elsewhere, and, I’m sure you know this, being a crack reporter and all, but he shit all over the place too.”
“How was he killed?”
“Machete or axe would be my guess. Sword if one was available. Might have been more than one person did it. It was one killer, it was a goddamn tiger. It was like someone held him down and ran a lawn mower over him. Meth heads is a good guess. They seem to always be hacking people or chopping heads off.”
I tried to keep my face neutral, but what I was thinking was Jimmy and I had been in that house, our fingerprints might be in there. Then I remembered we had been wearing gloves and felt a shade better.
“So a tiger did it with a machete, or possibly a lawn mower?” I said.
“Find your own comparison. I’m not that poetic. Do I look like fuckin’ Dylan Thomas?”
“No. But a lot of people will be surprised you know who he is, and a lot of them will wonder who it is you know about.”
“I’m surprised you know who he is,” the chief said.
“Touche.”
“Literature major. That was me. Should have stuck with it. I’d be in a university somewhere, teaching kids that would hang on my every word. I could be looking up coeds’ dresses watching beaver move inside underpants, and I could be talking. I like to talk. I’m good at it. Everything else for me sucks the big old donkey dong. I’m not cop material, you know? But don’t tell the town council. I need the job. My wife and kids like to eat.”
“So you don’t know anything about the girl?”
“Officially, we haven’t got a clue. Me, I’m thinking she might have done it, woke up in the night, worked the dirty deed.”
He pushed away from the car to stand for a moment, took a deep breath. I decided he wasn’t drunk after all. He hung his head and patted at his pocket like he might be looking for cigarettes, but nothing was there. I tagged him for an ex-smoker.
“Why would she do it?” I asked.
“He left the toilet lid up. I don’t know. It could be anything. That’s another thing to be answered, and guess who doesn’t have the answers yet? Your one and only swinging dick of a chief of police, that’s who, and that would be me, pardner. Shit, Jason—”
“Cason.”
“Damn, I’m sorry. We just went through that. But I was going to say, I seen some car wrecks, shit like that, even a murder, a suicide, a guy jumped from an overpass and did a one-point on his noggin. He was all over the highway, like a dropped watermelon. Saw some things like that even before I was a cop. Had a job once where I cleaned apartments. Back in college. And this guy, he blew his brains out with a shotgun, and it was all over the place. And the company I worked with, we got hired to clean it up, and I thought that was bad, but now I got this, and let me tell you, this is bad, boy, bad. It looks like there was a tomato fight in the bedroom. Except it don’t smell like tomatoes. It smells like what’s in there, and there’s some kind of cat piss smell too, only there isn’t a cat. Let me just boil it down, and say it is some ugly goddamn business.”
“I’m starting to get the picture,” I said.
I remembered that cat piss smell from when Jimmy and I were in the house. It could have been from former renters; cat piss stays with a place better than fresh paint.
“Shit, boy. They chopped off his dick. Looked like a little sausage lying there on the floor. One of them, what do you call them, Vienna sausages, isn’t that it? Isn’t that the little ones?”
He was chattering on like a squirrel. He didn’t wait for me to respond.
“I don’t like this at all,” he continued. “Not even one little bit. Today I have looked at the abyss, and let me tell you, it has looked back with both eyeballs and it is one hideous motherfucker.”
“You should have finished college,” I said. “Quoting philosophers and the like.”
“I got too deep in debt. I only lack a year. Don’t think I don’t think about going back. As of today, I’m thinking about it a lot more. I got the job here because I thought it was even sleepier than the town I came from. Truth is, though, there’s always something, and there isn’t any such thing as a quiet town, unless maybe there are only two people in it and one of them is dead.”
