Omens

Cleanup Duty

The man looked at the spot where he was supposed to find Josh Gray’s body. It was gone.

He peered up and down the alley. Then he walked from one end to the other and checked the GPS coordinates on his phone. This was definitely the place.

He made a call.

“It’s not here,” he said when his boss answered.

Silence.

“The body,” he said. “Gray’s—”

“Are you actually telling me this on an unsecured cell line?”

Yeah, because I don’t have a secured one, he wanted to snap back. He didn’t. He apologized. Then he asked what the boss wanted him to do.

“Find it, of course. She didn’t drag him out of there.”

The line went dead. The man sucked in breath. This was stupid. If you want someone dead, you just kill them. All these layers of complication. First the old man. Now this. He didn’t understand it.

The boss said Gunderson’s death was a precaution, in case he decided to help the Larsen girl. Which was bullshit—from what he’d read in the paper, there was no way in hell Gunderson was helping the Larsen girl. And how would he anyway? He didn’t know anything.

It was just a lame excuse to test the latest “upgrade” to the boss’s invention. Now he’d tested it a second time, which left his loyal employee here, trying to move a body that appeared to have…

His gaze caught on the Dumpster. He shook his head. No way. The boss was right—the meth-head chick couldn’t drag a two-hundred-pound guy, let alone lift him into a bin, which is why he’d been called on cleanup.

And yet … well, there wasn’t anywhere else to take him, was there?

He put his gloves back on and climbed onto the base of the Dumpster. Then he lifted the lid, peered in, and…

Holy shit. How the hell had she done that?

She hadn’t. It wasn’t possible.

Then who had?

As he took out his phone, a shadow passed overhead and he toppled off the bin, landing on his ass. He fumbled his .45 out and swung it up at…

A damned bird. A crow, it looked like. A huge one sitting on the side of the bin.

Had it smelled the body? That was all he needed.

But the bird wasn’t looking in at the feast below. It was staring at him.

When he rose, the bird lifted off, almost lazily, but only flew onto a balcony overhead. Then it perched there.

“You think you’re getting some of that?” he gestured at the bin. “Not a chance, birdie.”

He started to turn back to the bin. That’s when he saw the dog. A massive dog, black, with strange reddish-brown eyes. He swallowed and gripped his gun. The dog stared at him a moment, then snorted, turned, and disappeared into the shadows.

Gun raised, he carefully walked over to where he’d seen the dog. It was gone. He peered down the alley. No sign of it. A sigh of relief. He holstered the gun, but kept his jacket open, in case it came back.

He climbed back up and closed the bin. He took out his phone again, then stopped and peered up at the bird. It was still staring at him. He fought a shiver and looked around.

The boss told him not to use the phone. So he shouldn’t. He should just leave. Go tell the boss what he’d found. With any luck, he’d decide Mr. Gray could stay right where he was.

One last furtive look at the bird, and the man hurried off.