Crowbones

CHAPTER 14

Grimshaw

Thaisday, Novembros 1

By the clock, it was morning, and the gloomy start to the day fit his mood even before Grimshaw spotted the bundle someone had dumped in the middle parking space, reserved for the police station. Pulling across all three spaces, he turned on his flashing lights, grabbed the flashlight he’d left on the passenger seat, and got out of the cruiser. Walking around the front of the cruiser, he took careful steps in the first open space until he reached the bundle.

He touched the gold medal under his shirt, said a quick prayer to Mikhos, then turned on the flashlight to get a good look at what had been left where the police would find it.

Blood-soaked jeans. Bloody shoes. The ripped shirt was the worst because he could see the hollowed-out torso and part of the rib cage stripped to the bone.

Gods above and below.

He unlocked the police station, called the Bristol station, and informed the dispatcher that he needed Detective Kipp and his CIU team in Sproing as soon as possible. Kipp headed one of the two CIU teams that worked out of Bristol and had been the lead investigator who had come to The Jumble that summer. The man wouldn’t thank him for the specific request, but Grimshaw figured a team that had some experience working around Lake Silence had a better chance of staying alive.

He also called Captain Hargreaves, catching his former boss as the man was walking out the door to go to work, and repeated his request for assistance from Kipp and his CIU team.

After he hung up, a thought occurred to him. Chilled him. Taking a pair of crime scene gloves out of his desk, he went outside and studied the bundle. Last night he’d had a head without a body. This morning he had a body without a head.

If this wasn’t a taunt or a threat . . .

Trying to disturb as little as possible, he eased a wallet out of a back pocket of the jeans. When he opened the wallet, he sucked in a breath.

Just a kid, he thought as he looked at a student photo ID belonging to Adam Fewks. Just a damn fool college boy.

He stripped off one blood-smeared glove, removed the ID, then laid the wallet beside the remains before he slipped the ID into his shirt pocket. Having stripped off the other glove, he dropped the gloves in the empty parking space, to be collected with whatever debris the CIU team would create.

He fetched the two manila envelopes from the passenger seat of his cruiser and brought them into the station—two sets of the photos he’d taken last night at The Jumble and Ames Funeral Home. One set would go to Bristol with Kipp. The other would stay here.

He opened one envelope and pulled out one of the prints of the head. Then he set Fewks’s photo ID next to the headshot—and swore with quiet savagery before slipping the ID back into his shirt pocket and going outside to stand guard until Kipp arrived.

Just a ballsy college boy who, like every boy that age, believed he could survive anything and everything, and a prank would have no consequences.

Then he thought about the academics from various universities and colleges around the Finger Lakes who had gathered at The Jumble last night and were staying at the Mill Creek Cabins. And he thought about the Elementals who were guarding the gravel road, preventing anyone from driving away. And he thought about the car keys he’d found next to his cabin’s front door when he got home last night.

And he thought about how he and Ilya had talked about police procedure while something Ilya didn’t recognize had watched them from the dark.

Not a taunt or a threat. Someone had left evidence where he would find it.

Grimshaw recognized Julian’s car and gave his friend a nod as the car slowed, then turned into the narrow driveway that led to the parking area behind Lettuce Reed. A minute later, Julian and Natasha Sanguinati were standing next to him.

“Gods,” Julian said softly.

“Maybe we can rig a tarp or block the space with cars until the CIU team arrives,” Grimshaw said. “We’ve got too many tourists in town, and we need to keep people from seeing this.”

“Ah,” Natasha said at the same time Grimshaw spotted the black luxury sedan heading toward them.

Then a sudden gust of wind lifted Natasha’s hair—and a dense fog obscured the parking space. Just that space.

“Air says you owe Fog a carrot,” Natasha said before she stepped away from them to meet Ilya as he got out of the car.

“I have a couple of carrots at the bookstore,” Julian said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Julian returned with a small bowl of carrot chunks. Seconds after that, a chubby, misty gray pony with clompy feet stood next to Grimshaw, clearly expecting his payment. Grimshaw fed him the carrot chunks, thanked Fog for his assistance, and watched the pony wander down Main Street, covering other parking spaces—and wondered how the pony had learned to fog between the lines.

Grimshaw looked at Ilya and tipped his head before walking into the station. When Ilya followed, Grimshaw went to the supply room, opened a drawer in a filing cabinet, and returned with the game board and all the extra pieces of the altered Murder game.

“When Osgood comes in, I’ll go over to the store,” he said, handing the game to Ilya. “I’d like to be there before you start playing, but there’s no reason not to start setting up.”

He hesitated, sure that the village’s human government wouldn’t be happy about his including the Sanguinati in the investigation of a crime. But this crime was connected with humans as well as the terra indigene, and he needed all the help he could get.

Besides, his paycheck might come out of the village’s budget, but Ilya was the person who had hired him.

“I printed out all the photos I took last night. When Doc Wallace and I unwrapped that bundle of feathers, we found a head.”

Ilya stiffened. “One of the terra indigene?”

He removed Fewks’s photo ID from his pocket and held it out. “Not one of your people. He’s one of mine.”