The trailer belonging to the late Truman Mayweather had not looked good the last time Terry Coombs was out here (to cool down a domestic disturbance involving one of Truman’s many “sisters,” who had vacated the residence shortly thereafter), but this morning it looked like high tea in hell. Mayweather was sprawled beneath the eating table with some of his brains on his bare chest. The furniture (mostly purchased at roadside rummage sales, Dollar Discount, or Chapter 11, Terry guessed) was scattered everywhere. The television was upside down in the rust-scaled shower stall. In the sink a toaster was making friends with a Converse sneaker mended with friction tape. Blood was splashed all over the walls. Plus, of course, there was a hunched-over body with his head sticking out through the side of the trailer and his plumber’s crack showing above his beltless jeans. A wallet on the floor of the trailer contained an ID for Mr. Jacob Pyle, of Little Rock, Arkansas.
How much strength did it take to pound a man’s head through a wall like that? Terry wondered. The trailer walls were thin, granted, but still.
He duly photographed everything, then did a three-sixty panning shot with one of the department’s iPads. He stood just inside the door long enough to send the photographic evidence to Linny Mars at the station. She would print off a set of pics for Lila and start two files, one digital and one hard copy. To Lila, Terry texted a brief message.
Know you’re tired, but you better get out here.
Faint but approaching came the recognizable sound of St. Theresa’s one and only fully equipped ambulance, not a full-throated WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP, but a somehow prissy whink-whink-whink.
Roger Elway was stringing yellow CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Terry called to him from the trailer’s steps.
“If Lila finds out you’ve been smoking at a crime scene, she’ll tear you a new one.”
Roger removed the cigarette from his mouth, examined it as if he’d never seen such a thing before, put it out on the sole of his shoe, and tucked the butt into his shirt pocket. “Where is Lila, anyway? Assistant DA’s on his way, he’ll expect her.”
The ambo pulled up, the doors sprang open, and Dick Bartlett and Andy Emerson, two EMTs that Terry had worked with before, got out fast, already gloving up. One carried a backboard, the other toted the portable hospital they called First In Bag.
Terry grunted. “Only the Assistant Duck’s Ass, huh? Two dead and we still don’t rate the top guy.”
Roger shrugged. Bartlett and Emerson, meanwhile, after the initial hustle, had come to a halt beside the trailer, where the head stuck out of the wall.
Emerson said, “I don’t think that gentleman is going to benefit too much from our services.”
Bartlett was pointing a rubber-gloved finger at the place where the neck protruded. “I believe he’s got Mr. Hankey tattooed on his neck.”
“The talking turd from South Park? Seriously?” Emerson came around to look. “Oh, yeah. So he does.”
“Howdy-ho!” Bartlett sang.
“Hey,” Terry said. “That’s great, guys. Someday you should put your routine on YouTube. Right now we got another corpse inside, and there’s a woman in our cruiser who could use a little help.”
Roger said, “You sure you want to wake her up?” He jerked his head at Unit Four. A swatch of lank, dirty hair was plastered against the rear window. “Girlfriend be crashing. Christ knows what she’s been on.”
Bartlett and Emerson came across the junked-out yard to the cruiser, and Bartlett knocked on the window. “Ma’am? Miss?” Nothing. He knocked harder. “Come on, wakey-wakey.” Still nothing. He tried the doorhandle, and looked back at Terry and Roger when it didn’t give. “I need you to unlock it.”
“Oh,” Roger said. “Right.” He thumbed the unlock button on his key fob. Dick Bartlett opened the back door, and Tiffany Jones spilled out like a load of dirty laundry. Bartlett grabbed her just in time to keep the top half of her body from hitting the weedy gravel.
Emerson sprang forward to help. Roger stayed put, looking vaguely irked. “If she eighty-sixed on us, Lila’s gonna be pissed like a bear. She’s the only wit—”
“Where’s her face?” Emerson asked. His voice was shocked. “Where’s her goddam face?”
That got Terry moving. He moved next to the cruiser as the two EMTs eased Tiffany gently to the ground. Terry grabbed her hanging hair—why, he wasn’t sure—but let go in a hurry when something greasy squelched between his fingers. He wiped his hand on his shirt. Her hair was shot through with white, membranous stuff. Her face was also covered, her features now just dimly visible, as if seen through the kind of veil some older ladies still wore on their hats when they went to church out here in thank-you-Jesus country.
“What is that stuff?” Terry was still rubbing his hand. The stuff felt nasty, slippery, a little tingly. “Spiderwebs?”
Roger was looking over his shoulder, eyes wide with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. “It’s coming out of her nose, Ter! And her eyes! What the fuck?”
EMT Bartlett pulled a swatch of the goo away from Tiffany’s jawline and wiped it on his own shirt, but before he did, Terry saw that it appeared to be melting as soon as it was off her face. He looked at his own hand. The skin was dry and clear. Nothing on his shirt, either, although there had been a moment ago.
Emerson had his fingers on the side of Tiffany’s throat. “I have a pulse. Nice and steady. And she’s breathing fine. I can see that crap billowing out and then sucking in. Let’s get the MABIS.”
Bartlett hauled the orange MABIS all-in-one kit out of the First In Bag, hesitated, then went back into the bag for disposable glove packs. He gave one set to Emerson and took another for himself. Terry watched, wishing mightily he hadn’t touched the webby stuff on Tiffany’s skin. What if it was poisonous?
They got a blood pressure that Emerson said was normal. The EMTs went back and forth about whether or not to clear her eyes and check her pupils and, although they didn’t know it then, made the best decision of their lives when they decided not to.
While they talked, Terry saw something he didn’t like: Tiffany’s web-encrusted mouth slowly opening and closing, as if she were chewing on air. Her tongue had gone white. Filaments rose from it, wavering like plankton.
Bartlett rose. “We should get her to St. Theresa’s, stat, unless you have a problem with that. Say so if you do, because she seems stable . . .” He looked at Emerson, who nodded.
“Look at her eyes,” Roger said. “All white. Gag me with a spoon.”
“Go on, take her,” Terry said. “It’s not like we can question her.”
“The two decedents,” Bartlett said. “Is this stuff growing on them?”
“No,” Terry said, and pointed to the protruding head. “On that one you can see for yourselves. Not Truman, the guy inside, either.”