harnel house of the prep room and the other was the route a killer had used to flee this insane crime scene.
Then that door suddenly opened and Chief Martin Goss waddled through the door from the prep room and into the office. He was a short, fat man with boiled red skin that was permanently coated with hypertensive sweat.
Goss’s eyes went from JT to Dez to the corpse and back again. He looked at the gore splattered on Dez’s uniform.
“Holy Jesus jumped-up Christ,” he said. “Dez—are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she mumbled.
“You sure? We have paramedics inbound—”
She nodded. “I’m good, Chief. Just shook up. ”
“JT?”
“I’m fine. I was outside when this went down. ”
Goss licked his lips. “Your call-in said that there was a suspect on foot?”
JT showed him the tracks of the bloody bare feet. “Prints disappear near the edge of the lawn. Looks like the suspect was heading west, but that’s a guess. ”
Goss nodded curtly, clicked his shoulder mike and relayed the information to the rest of the team, ordering a search and advising extreme caution. He also called the state police and requested their assistance. The staties had more men and they had choppers. Other officers, including Paul Scott, the county’s forensics officer, flooded into the place. Scott flicked a brief glance at JT and Dez and then went into the other room, his evidence collection bag in hand.
Then Goss turned back to JT and Dez. “Okay … now tell me everything that happened. ”
Dez started to speak, but her words came out in a jumble. She could hear the panic in her own voice.
JT stepped in and took a swing at it. Despite his earlier reactions, he appeared to have reclaimed his calm, and he gave the report in quick, clinical police jargon, from the moment they parked the car, to the handprint in the utility room, to finding Doc Hartnup’s body. Goss’s eyes narrowed for a moment, but he didn’t interrupt; Dez watched his face, trying to read him.
JT said, “Believing this to be an active crime scene, we did only a cursory examination of the second victim and determined that she was dead. I went outside to do a walk-around while Dez—I mean Officer Fox—began documenting the crime scene in here with a digital camera. The, um…” he paused only a second, Dez had to give him that much, “second victim was apparently still alive and proceeded to attack Officer Fox in a very aggressive and irrational way. Officer Fox was compelled to use deadly force to protect her own life. ”
The officers had all stopped to listen to this account. Their faces registered varying levels of confusion, doubt, and disgust. Paul Scott came back in and bent close to whisper something to Goss. The chief looked at him, went and peered into the other room, and then came back and studied the faces of both JT and Dez. His face was clouded with confusion and doubt.
He’s not buying it, Dez thought. I am well and truly fucked.
“That’s it?” asked Chief Goss slowly, his eyebrows arched almost to his hairline. “That’s your story?”
“That’s the way it happened, Chief,” said JT.
Dez nodded. Her clothes were splattered with blood, her hair was in disarray, and she knew that she must look like a crazy woman.
Goss pointed at the dead woman. “Did you inflict those injuries on her throat?”
“Of course not,” Dez began, but JT touched her arm.
“She appeared to have sustained some injuries when we arrived on the scene, Chief,” said JT. “As I said, we did a cursory examination and—”
“Did you also do a cursory examination on Doc Hartnup?”
JT winced at the inflection Goss put on “cursory. ” “Yes, sir. ”
“Did you determine that he was probably dead or apparently still alive?”
“Dead, sir,” said Dez.
“Really?” Goss said slowly. “The cleaning lady attacked you in here?”
“Yes. ”