“What happened?” The pale cast to his complexion tells me he already knows.
“We’ve got another body.” Yanking open the stairwell door, I rush down the steps.
CHAPTER 14
Death is a terrible thing, but murder is worse. No matter how many times I see it, the ugliness and senselessness of it frighten me on some primal level. My speedometer hits eighty miles per hour on the highway, but I slow to a reasonable speed once I reach Thigpen Road because it’s slick with snow. The Huffman place is down a short lane and surrounded by skeletal trees, like bony fingers holding the place together.
I turn the Explorer in to the driveway and follow the tire tracks to the rear of the house. Ronnie Stedt and a teenaged girl I don’t recognize huddle inside a pickup truck.
Jamming the Explorer into Park, I swing open the door. The kids disembark and rush toward me.
“What happened?” I ask.
Stedt’s face is the color of paste. His eyes are glassy. He stops a couple of feet away and I smell vomit. “There’s a dead person inside.”
I look at the female. Her cheeks are bright red and streaked with mascara. She looks a lot tougher than Ronnie Stedt. “What’s your name?” I ask.
“J-Jess Hardiman.”
“Is there anyone else in the house?” I slide my .38 from its holster.
“Just the . . . body.”
“Where?”
“B-bedroom.”
“Stay here. If you see something or get scared, get in the truck and hit the horn, okay?”
Both heads bob.
I jog to the back door and shove it open. The house smells of death and marijuana. An old Led Zeppelin song blares from a radio on the counter. My nerves crawl like worms beneath my skin. Fear runs thick in my veins as I enter the living room. I don’t think there’s anyone in the house. But I’m afraid of what waits ahead.
I move into the hall. It’s narrow and dark. The smell is stronger here. Blood and feces laced with the underlying stench of putrefaction. I sidestep a puddle of vomit. To my left, the bedroom door stands open. I don’t want to look, but I can’t stop. I see a horribly bloated corpse. Brown skin stretched impossibly tight. Hair matted and hanging down. Breasts drooping like wrinkled fruit. Ankles bound and chained to a beam in the ceiling. Black feet. A wet, black tongue protruding between swollen lips.
A sound escapes me as I stumble backward into the hall. My breaths come shallow and fast. My stomach roils, and my mouth fills with bile. Footsteps sound behind me. I swing around, my gun rising.
Glock halts, his hands come up. “Jesus Christ, it’s me.”
“Goddamnit.” I lower my weapon. “I almost plugged you.”
His gaze flicks down the hall. “Scene clear?”
I shake my head because I can’t find my voice. I’m dangerously close to throwing up.
He moves past me and peers into the bedroom. “Holy hell.”
While Glock clears the rest of the house, I struggle to pull myself together. By the time he meets me in the hall, I have my cop’s coat of armor back in place.
“It’s clear,” he says.
I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, as if he thinks I’m going to lose it. “Damn it, Glock, I should have asked Detrick to assist,” I manage. “I should have formed a task force.”
“Even if you had, it wouldn’t have prevented this. She’s been there a while. Fuckin’ hindsight.”
I walk into the living room. Behind me I hear him speaking into his radio. Through the kitchen window, I see Ronnie Stedt and his girlfriend standing where I left them.
Glock comes up beside me. “Pickles and Skid are on the way.”
I nod toward the teenagers. “We need to talk to them. I’ll take the Stedt boy.”
“Chick looks tough.”
“You’re tougher.”
“I’m a Marine,” he says, as if that explains everything.
I go through the back door and approach Ronnie Stedt. The air smells incredibly clean and I gulp it like water. He looks at me, then quickly glances away. “Come here,” I say.
Glock ushers the girl toward his cruiser. Ronnie watches them walk away and gets a scared-little-boy look on his face.
“You okay?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I never seen anything like that in my life.”
I motion toward the Explorer. “Let’s get out of the cold.”
Casting a final glance at his girlfriend, he trails me to the Explorer. I put him in the passenger seat, then climb behind the wheel. “You need a smoke?” I ask.
“I don’t smoke.” He heaves a sigh. “Cigarettes, anyway.”
“I’m going to let you slide on the pot.”
“Thanks.”
I start the engine and turn on the heater. “What were you doing here?”
“Nothin’.”
I make eye contact, but he looks away. “You’re not in any trouble,” I say. “I just need to know how you found that body.”
Looking thoroughly busted, he shakes his head. “We skipped school. We were just going to hang out.” He shrugs. “I can’t believe this happened.”
“Was there anyone here when you arrived?” I ask.
“No.”