LITMIR.BIZ

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about to ask Devo if he caught the same whiff but I know the answer when he says, “Oh, hell.”

      There is a back door, a simple, two-step, concrete stoop leading up to it. Like the front door, this one has glass in the upper half of it, but unlike the front one there is no curtain and the glass here is divided into small panes. Devo pulls on a pair of latex gloves that he takes from his pocket, and then he hands me a pair. I pull them on—they are too big for me, but they’ll do for now—and clasp my hands in front of me. I know from the training I was required to go through before starting this job that the gloves are as much for my protection as they are for ensuring that I don’t contaminate any possible crime scenes.

      Devo mounts the steps and shines his flashlight through the glass to the interior of the house. He reaches down and tries the doorknob, but it doesn’t turn. With a sigh, he turns his flashlight around and uses the butt end of it to break the lower left pane of the glass window in the door. Then he carefully clears away enough shards so that he can reach his hand inside and undo the lock without cutting himself.

      “You should wait out here,” he says to me, opening the door.

      “I’m okay,” I say.

      He shakes his head. “Wait out here until I see what’s inside.”

      “I’m fairly certain you have a dead body inside,” I say.

      Devo shoots me a look that is part curiosity, part perturbation. “How—”

      “I smell old blood—lots of it—and excreta. That’s not a smell one easily forgets or confuses with anything else. So, the only real question at this point is whether the death is by natural causes, suicide, or suspicious circumstances.”

      “Right,” Devo says, drawing the word out and continuing to look at me with wary curiosity. “And until I determine which it is, you need to stay out here. If this turns out to be a crime scene, I don’t need you traipsing about contaminating evidence.”

      “I have never traipsed once in my entire life,” I assure him. “And I was required to go through those police procedure classes before starting this job, remember? I know how to handle myself at a scene.”

      Devo glares at me, but apparently my look of determination convinces him. “Fine. Just don’t touch anything. And stay behind me.”

      I walk up the steps and follow Devo inside. The smell of death and old blood grows stronger and as soon as we pass through a mudroom, Devo reaches along the wall and finds a light switch. When he flips it, the scene it reveals is a stark one, the kind most people only see in their nightmares.

      We are at the threshold of a kitchen and there is a large, oval wooden table in the center of the room. To my right is a big, double porcelain sink and cabinetry that looks like it was built in place about a half century ago. The countertops are blue tile, several of them broken or missing in spots. Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink and there is a dishrack on the counter with a red and white striped kitchen towel beneath it. To my immediate left are more cabinets going to the corner, and against the next wall is an old-fashioned wooden hutch with several drawers and doors in the bottom, a flat work area in the middle, and two cabinet storage areas at the top.

      I take all of this in in a split second and then focus my attention on the elephant in the room: the dead man seated at the table. His head is lolled back, and I can see a dark hole in the soft spot under his chin. Tufts of dark hair protrude from his head around his ears, and the top of his head is a bloody mess that appears oddly misshapen, too flat. He looks like the old Dick Tracy villain Flat-top. Both of his arms are hanging at his sides and beneath the hand of the right one, the one closest to me, I see a handgun resting on the floor. He is dressed in pajamas. The only sounds I can hear are that of Devo’s heavy breathing and the low buzz of flies, several of which are darting in and around the man’s gaping mouth and bloodied scalp.

      Devo mutters, “Aw crap,” and then grabs for his radio to call for backup. Except he doesn’t. He hesitates, and when I look over at him, I see that his eyes are focused on the ceiling. He grimaces, swallowing so hard that his Adam’s apple bounces spastically for a second. I follow his gaze and see something dark on the ceiling. At first, I can’t figure out what it is because despite what appears to be a solid center a couple of inches wide, the sides are very irregular and thready looking. It resembles a paramecium I remember seeing through a microscope in a biology class once. Was it in high school? Or college? Like it matters. The mind takes some weird side trips at times like these.

      I let my eyes drift back to the dead man, to the odd shape of his head. And then, with a sickening start, I realize what’s on the ceiling. It’s the top of his head.

      I look over at Devo, worried. Rumors run through the police department like rats in a catacomb and one of the ones I’ve heard repeated several times is that Devo has a weak stomach. It’s said to be even odds whether he’ll toss his cookies at a grim crime scene and this one certainly qualifies as grim. I feel my own stomach lurch a bit and try to distract myself.

      “Think it’s a suicide?” I say, hoping to maybe distract Devo some, too.

      He doesn’t answer.

      I divert my eyes away from the ceiling and look back at the hutch. Doing my best to focus on something, anything other than the dead man and that paramecium on the ceiling, I zero in on a whimsical cookie jar sitting at the back of the hutch’s middle work area. My gut does another flip-flop, but for a different reason this time.

      “Uh, we have a problem, Devo,” I say, and I hear the tremor in my voice.

      He glances over at me and makes a face. He licks his lips and exhales through pursed lips.

      “You okay?” I say. “You’re not going to barf, are you?”

      “No, of course not,” he shoots back irritably. “Are you? If that’s the problem, go back outside.”

      “That’s not the problem.” I take a few careful steps toward the hutch, making sure I don’t step on any blood or other material, and point to the cookie jar. “This is.”

      Devo looks at the cookie jar, then at me, his expression suggesting that he thinks I’ve lost my mind. “I’m not following you, Hildy.”

      “Remember what Danny kept saying at the house when we first got there?”

      “Yeah, he was babbling some nonsense about seeing ghosts. The guy’s a nutter. So what?”

      “So, when I was talking with Allie some more about it later, she told me about the stuff Danny was saying before we got there, stuff that made no sense and led us to believe that in addition to his usual auditory hallucinations, he might be having visual ones, too. One of the things he said was that he saw a man get killed and a spotted purple and pink dinosaur watched the whole thing.”

      Devo snorts a quick laugh, but the humor quickly fades from his expression as he looks again at the cookie jar. I’d bet it’s an antique, probably dating back to the forties or fifties. The main body of the jar is purple with little pink spots on it, and it has four feet at the bottom. Attached to one end is a green plate and protruding from that plate are three pink horns. Two eyes are painted on the green plate below and between two of the horns. It looks like a cartoonish triceratops.

      “I think our gentleman here might have been murdered,” I tell Devo. “And what’s more, I think Danny Hildebrand saw it happen.”

      Chapter 4

      The little dinosaur cookie jar distracts Devo enough to get him back on track. He radios dispatch and asks to have the sheriff’s department send someone out to the site. He also requests the medical examiner’s office, at least one more uniformed police officer, and an evidence technician.

      When he’s done with that, Devo tells me to stay put so he can do a quick check of the rest of the house to make sure it’s empty. I do as I’m told, resisting an urge to go back outside where the air is fresh. After Devo returns and declares

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