“What? What? What? What?” Smith yelled and continued to long after he was cuffed.
“Lonnie Wayne Smith,” Ralph Bigham stated. “You have the right to remain silent...” Ralph continued the Miranda warning and at end of it, after one of the ATF guys had turned on the bedroom light and they all lifted their night-vision goggles to rest perched atop their foreheads, he continued with the rest of it.
“Additionally,” Ralph said, “this is a search warrant signed by a District Court Judge, duly empowering me to search this premises for certain evidence.”
“What? What evidence?” Smith stated. Smith looked a sight. His hair was disheveled and his face was purplish and swollen, no doubt from where Kyle Anders had punched him the face in the bar on Sixth Street on Saturday night. But, then again, Lonnie Wayne Smith did have a face that looked terribly punch-able.
“Well,” Ralph said. “This warrant is not general at all. It says here very specifically,” and Ralph pointed at the line of fine handwriting. “We’re to search for human remains.” Ralph Bigham keyed the microphone below his lips.
“Parchman, bring in the dogs.”
*
“There is only one place to find such a bacteria. Are you following me?” Ralph Bigham said, there behind the billowing curtains in the Brackenridge Hopital ER that Monday night.
And Erica nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Dead people, Ms. DeWare. The rotting flesh of dead people. Your Lonnie is the serial killer we’ve been looking for these last five years.”
And at that moment, although there was zero for contents in Erica DeWare’s stomach, she began yarking up every bit of fluid to be found there. Ralph Bigham hopped up and grabbed a towel for her. Her friend Lori grabbed the plastic tray beneath the rolling dinner tray by the bed, but they were both too late.
*
Another day going down. Ralph Bigham breathed in the air over Ladybird Lake, locally referred to as Town Lake. All those health-conscious people down there running the long jogging trail around the lake. So many of them.
Ralph lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply. He had taken to smoking after moving to Austin, mostly because several of his favorite co-workers were smokers.
Six bodies had been recovered from Lonnie Wayne Smith’s basement. It was interesting to him that the house even had a basement―there were damned few basements in Austin, likely due to the rocky nature of the soil. But Smith’s house had been built around 1895, and while it may not have been one of the architectural jewels of the Victorian Era, it was spacious, well-made and solid. Someone, somewhere back in that previous lost century, had been determined to dig. Unfortunately, all these years later, someone else had chosen to stock the place, but with exactly the wrong thing.
Lonnie Wayne Smith had been indicted by the Grand Jury that morning. Three of the Grand Jurors, all men, had thrown up at the pictures. That’s when Ralph Bigham knew the case was going to be a slam dunk. Some lawyer would no doubt latch onto the case and try to plead it out to insanity. But then again the insanity defense usually didn’t go over well in Texas courts. Particularly for serial killers.
“The smell,” Ralph said. The sun was going down across the lake and to the west, and most of the canoes and kayaks were plodding their way across the surface back towards the various boat ramps dotting the shore. “Why don’t the neighbors ever notice the smell?”
Delores Rogers was there. She took the cigarette from his mouth and stubbed it out. “These things will kill you. Besides that, there’s a Burn Ban in effect. That includes smoking outdoors.”
“Oh. Forgot.”
“They don’t smell it because they’re kind of use to it,” Delores said.
“What do you mean?”
“I suppose we are talking about Smith’s neighbors, right?”
“Right,” Bigham agreed.
“Maybe in the back of their minds they know something is there. That it’s something very, how shall we say, not right. It’s there when they go out to their cars in the morning to go to work. Maybe they think ‘It’s coming up from the ground’ or ‘It’s those trashcans across the way.’ Something like that. Or maybe they’re afraid to know what they know. Like the neighbors must have known near Buchenwald or Auschwitz.”
“That’s a pretty bleak look, don’t you think?” Ralph said.
“Well, you asked,” Delores said. “But I’ll tell you what. What gets me is that girl kissing him. Letting him feel her up and everything. Like she said, she knew there was some smell there. Something ‘underneath’, she said. She just didn’t know what it was, though.”
“Underneath,” Ralph said. “Yeah. That fits.
The two lapsed into silence for a moment.
“By the way, dogs do it,” Ralph said.
“Do what?”
“They do what Lonnie Smith did. They find a carcass like that, then they play with it and roll around in it and get the dead smell all over them. I never figured that one out satisfactorily for myself. Why dogs do it, that is.”
“Dogs don’t do that!” Delores said.
“You have never lived in the country,” Ralph said.
Delores paused for a moment.
“True,” she admitted.
“But I think I know why,” Ralph continued. “It’s only a theory, and in this instance it only applies to the dogs.”
“I’m dying for you to tell me,” Delores said.
“I am willing to bet that Necrotizing fasciitis bacteria is nature’s only true and effective flea and tick treatment.”
Delores raised her eyebrows. “Ahh. I get it. But what about Smith? Why would he act like a dog? And why the hell didn’t his flesh start rotting?”
Ralph shook his head. “Since we’re having him held at the hospital pending a full toxicology report, I will guess that he’ll be found to be a carrier. And, by definition, carriers are immune. Classic Typhoid Mary syndrome.”
“Fleas and ticks,” Delores said, and shivered.