I hold a single finger in the air; a signal for him to wait, a signal for patience. Following the various trails of shine drifting off from the main pool, I check eight locations before the hunch pays off.
Tossing the three-pound rock aside, I retrieve the small treasure hidden beneath and hurry back to Jimmy, dangling the single brass key between my index finger and my thumb. Placing it in Jimmy’s palm, I close his fingers around it. “I was thinking like Zell,” I say, trying to control the fear and adrenaline coursing through my body. “If I had a place like this, I wouldn’t want to risk losing the key or driving all the way out here and forgetting it.”
Jimmy’s quiet a moment, staring at the key. “Good work, Steps.” His words are soft and I know he’s feeling the same apprehension. We’ve felt it before on too many cases; sometimes it ended well, sometimes it didn’t.
We save the ones we can.
It’s an odd sensation. I felt the same prickly panicky rush when we were waiting for the results of my mother’s biopsy last year. A mammogram turned up an “anomaly,” and we had to wait nearly two weeks for the results. They told us when to expect the lab report, so on the big day we all gathered at my parents’ place and spent the day playing cards, watching movies, watching the phone.
The call came just before four.
As my mother stood in the kitchen with the phone pressed to her ear, nodding and answering in one-word sentences, it felt like every pore in my body was open and sweating. My body tingled with panic and fear, and my stomach was a twenty-pound concrete ball.
And then she turned and smiled … and it all washed away like so much dust under a warm spring shower. It was as if my soul just shrugged and let it all go. That night I slept for fourteen hours.
“Are you ready?” Jimmy has the key in the lock.
I nod and immediately hear a click as the key turns. Jimmy twists the lock from the latch and then pulls back the hasp. Together we lift the lid and reveal a rectangle of darkness yawning in the earth, like the lair of some feral beast.
A foul smell oozes from the black hole … a familiar smell.
I cover my nose quickly and reel back. “Jimmy, that’s—”
“I know,” he says, trying not to gag. “Let it air out a minute.”
“We’re too late, aren’t we?”
Jimmy just shakes his head; he won’t look at me.
I look around on the ground for Susan’s shine to see if it’s still vibrating, but there’s none to be found.
Decomp.
Even the truncated word is unpleasant—cop shorthand for decomposition. The smell is hard to explain and impossible to forget. The best description might be rank sweetness; a wretched stench that, if allowed to marinate, causes involuntary vomiting and seeps into every fiber of your clothes and every follicle of your hair.
The body begins to decompose almost immediately upon death through two distinct and separate processes: autolysis and putrefaction. Autolysis can best be described as self-digestion. The enzymes within the body begin to break down the cells and tissue, much like saliva and stomach acid break down food.
The uglier side of decomposition, putrefaction, is the process whereby bacteria in the body, particularly in the intestines, begin to break the body down. This causes massive bloating as the bacteria gives off gases that accumulate in the body’s cavities and in the skin. The skin itself becomes discolored, marbling into a spiderweb of green-black veins on the face, the torso, the arms and legs. Eventually the skin blisters, fingernails slough off, and purge fluids begin to drain from the nose and mouth.
The speed of this process varies greatly depending on the environment. The most significant factor is temperature: heat speeds up the process, cold slows it down. Other factors come into play as well, such as whether the body is exposed, buried, or submerged. Bacteria react differently in each of these environments. The exposed body is also subject to a greater degree of predation—animals making a meal of it.
That’s decomposition; the process is nasty, the smell is worse.
Moving close to the opening, I peer in. “FBI,” I shout. “If anyone’s in there, call out.” I barely get the words out before having to force down the bile rising in my throat. At the same time, my body starts dumping saliva into my mouth, that telltale precursor to vomiting. I move back from the hole and gulp fresh air.
“It’s pitch-black in there,” I gasp at Jimmy. “We’re going to need a flashlight or a torch or something.”
Jimmy quickly shrugs off his backpack and sets it on the ground. I follow his lead and begin with the pockets in the front, working my way into the main pouch. We each find a small Maglite and numerous packs of twelve-hour tactical glow sticks.
There’s something else.
At the bottom of the bag is a sealed container of light blue surgical face masks. Next to it is a small brown bottle that looks like it came from a kitchen pantry; it’s peppermint oil. I hold them up for Jimmy to see. “I guess we don’t have to throw up after all.”
Some people prefer a dab of Vicks VapoRub when dealing with decomp; you see it in the movies all the time, detectives walking in on an autopsy and dabbing some Vicks or other menthol-based gel under their nose to deal with the smell.
The peppermint oil is a nice touch, a better option.
Unwrapping two masks, I pour out three quick drops of oil onto each, hand one of the masks to Jimmy, and pull the other over my nose and mouth. The result is instantly pleasant, even soothing.
Standing above the bunker opening, I snap two glow sticks and toss them in. They land on dirt ten feet down and reveal a metal ladder at a slight incline connecting to the metal frame of the hatch. I shine my light into the hole as Jimmy descends the steps with his Glock in hand.
He moves forward into the darkness and I see the scattered beam of his flashlight as it sweeps left and right and left again. His back is to me and his figure is cast in shadow, but I see him slowly lower his gun, then, just as slowly, he holsters it.