If Thor kept up his pity party, Ordinary was going to rust clear through by next spring and leave nothing but a sinkhole behind.
Myra declined paper or plastic and came over to stand next to me. Stan positioned the laptop so that all three of us could see the screen.
A bell rang out and Apoca-blo dashed out from behind the till. “Got a customer. Do you officers need me to stay?”
“No, we’ve got your statement,” I said. “Thank you, Apoc—ah, I mean Pablo.”
“Sure, sure.” He pushed out the door and before it closed, I heard his cheerful greeting: “Good afternoon! Such a nice day! Are you ready for the end of the world?”
Stan shook his head. “Something not right with that one. But he’s a good worker. Heck of a salesman. Nice kid too. Just...” He shook his head like that explained it all.
And it did. Compared to the things that happened in Ordinary, and the citizens who made it their home, one happy-go-lucky apocalypse enthusiast wasn’t even a blip on the town’s weirdness radar.
“Here it is.” Stan clicked on the link to the video feed. “I have it set to record from sundown to sunrise. As a security measure for my employees.”
And for catching Bigfoot in the act. He wouldn’t mention that because everyone knew it was crazy to believe that Bigfoot was real. And yes, Bigfoot got a kick out of that.
Stan hit the button and the black and white video played. It was a still shot of the shed, and just a corner of the road beyond it. The only way I could tell the recording was playing was by the occasional car that zoomed down the road at a fast-forward speed.
We watched as the time stamp ticked down. Nothing changed at the shed. No one drove close to it, no one walked near it, no one touched it.
The sky was dark, raindrops a flurry of silver lancets.
Something flashed by the screen.
“Wait,” I said.
Myra tensed beside me at the same moment.
“Back up slowly.”
“I think it was just a bird.” Stan backed up the recording, a little too quickly so that we got only the briefest glimpse of something moving in front of the camera again.
“Slow it down,” I said.
He hit play and the recording rolled, rain falling at the right speed.
I held my breath, curled my fingers so that I could feel the press of my fingernails in my palm. Had we really caught a break? A clue as to who had dumped Sven’s body in the shed?
Would it be Ryder?
Please don’t let it be Ryder, I chanted silently. Please don’t let it be Ryder.
Stan stabbed the button to stop the recording. “Sweet Mother Mary,” he breathed.
And there, frozen on the screen clear enough to crawl through it, was a man.
My mind furiously cataloged hair, eyes, face, jaw.
Not Ryder. Oh, thank gods.
I broke out in a cold sweat and shivered in relief.
“That’s Sven, isn’t it?” Stan said. “His face...it’s wrong. Animal...”
“It’s the lighting,” Myra said.
It wasn’t the lighting. It was his fear, his pain, his death. Sven looked more vampiric in that image than I’d ever seen him in life. His eyes were wide, pupils blown out to cover any color, a hole centered in his forehead above them. His face was sharpened, and out of shape. At the paused moment of the video his three-quarter profile showed bloody, swollen lips hanging open enough to reveal the wickedly sharp point of an elongated fang.
He was dead.
“We’ll need to take this file,” Myra said. “To look over it more carefully.” She smoothly killed the video, erasing Sven’s face from the screen.
My heart was hammering and I had to take little gulps of air to get my breathing back to normal. The sheer horror of death on Sven’s face triggered my run now, run now instincts.
I didn’t know how Myra remained so calm.
“Sure, sure,” he said. “Where do you want me to send it?”
“Here. Let me do it.” She took over the keyboard and sent the file to our secure server, then erased the video from his hard drive. “Are there any back up copies?”
He shook his head. “Just the computer.”
“Okay. Since this could be admitted as evidence, we’ll hold the copy. We’ll try to get it back to you if you want it after this investigation is over.”
Stan looked a little pale. “That’s okay. I don’t need to see it again.”
“Thank you for this,” I said. “I know that was hard to see. If you need someone to talk to, I could refer you to a couple of good counselors who work with the police and other emergency responders in the area.”
“No,” he said, his voice a little thin. Then, stronger: “No, that’s fine. I’m just sad for him. For his family. For the Rossis. You’re going to catch whoever did that to him, aren’t you?”
“Damn right we are.”
“Good. Thank you. Both of you. I sure miss having your dad in town, but he’d be real proud of you girls.”
We mumbled our good-byes and left with our squeegees, Myra crowding into the front of my Jeep with me.
Doors shut, rain pattering down. We both sat there just trying to get sea legs on reality again.
“Okay,” I said. “Pull it up. Let’s see it.”
She took a tablet out of the inside pocket of her coat—trust Myra to be prepared for anything—and pulled up the video.
We watched a super-slow motion Sven get dragged in front of the camera, face toward the lens like they knew he was being recorded. Like they knew we would find the tape.
An invitation, just like Rossi had said.
Neither of us spoke as we watched the rest of the scene scroll out.
A hand reached out of the darkness behind Sven. From the angle, the other person was shorter than Sven, supporting him under the arms, sleeves plain and dark. The hand wrapped around Sven’s head and clamped down tight on his mouth.
It was a man’s hand. Wide, thick. In the crappy light and downpour it was hard to make out any distinguishing features.
Even though the picture was blurred by rain, there was a sort of haze of light radiating from Sven’s chest. From the ichor techne painted there.
The video feed cut, sputtered, picked back up. The time stamp was five minutes later. The screen showed nothing but darkness, rain, and the watery shape of the shed, door open, the darkness beyond it a gaping maw.
I couldn’t tell if there were any footprints in the mud and gravel and grass that separated the shed from the mini-mart. Didn’t see tire tracks.
“Well, hell,” Myra said. “I’ll get Jean on this. See if we can enhance the video. That looked like a man’s hand to me.”
I nodded. “Have her check the fingers. I thought I saw something, maybe a ring.”
She rewound the video, then started it forward in tiny, slow skips.
We watched the hand arc up, forward and just before it curled toward Sven’s mouth, Myra paused.
We stared at the fingers. “Maybe?” I asked.
“Maybe.” She turned off the video and then touched my arm. “Who did you think was going to be on this video, Delaney?”
“No one.”
“I saw you in there when Stan first played it. You thought it was going to be Ryder. Do you know something I don’t know?” She waited, her patience endless.
“No.”
“Maybe you should step down from this one,” she said quietly. “Let Jean and me handle it.”