The Christopher Killer (3 page)

“Okay, I admit it, he’s pretty far gone.” Patrick didn’t meet her gaze when he said this, which told her all that she needed to know. Her father had changed his mind—her pass into the coroner’s secret world had been rescinded.

“Dad, don’t!” she protested. “I can do this.”

“You can help me process the room itself,” he answered with false cheer.

Jacobs scratched at the skin behind his ear. “Speaking of which, who’s paying her salary? I don’t remember voting on this. You can’t just up and hire somebody without it getting approved.”

“Cameryn’s wages are coming out of my own pocket, which is more than I can say for that deputy of yours. The good citizens of Silverton are footing the bill for him, and I, for one, want my money back.”

“All right, all right,” Jacobs answered. “No need to get testy. I was just asking.”

“So, John,” Patrick asked, “what have you got?”

It was clear the two of them had shut her out. Cameryn felt as though she were standing behind a piece of glass she couldn’t walk through. Hadn’t her father just said she was twice as smart as most girls? Hadn’t he said she could be his partner? None of that seemed to matter now. Frustrated, she hugged the wall and watched as Jacobs flipped the pages in his notebook.

“Let’s get this thing done,” he said. “The wife’s got cinnamon rolls waiting.” He cleared his throat. As the sheriff began to read, his voice became dispassionate, as though he were reciting names from a phone book. “The manager opened the door about an hour ago ’cause Robertson—first name Larry—was supposed to check out yesterday and didn’t. Rullon said he followed his nose to the bathroom there.” Jacobs paused to point the end of his pen toward the hallway.

“Who’s Rullon?” Cameryn broke in. If they wouldn’t let her see the body she could still get in the game.

The sheriff gave her a look. “Rullon Sage. The manager. You know that old-timer who runs around wearing red suspenders? He’s the real skinny guy. Smokes a pipe.”

“Oh, yeah, I know him,” she said, nodding. “He comes into the Grand sometimes. He’s a lousy tipper.”

Jacobs gave her another look. “So, back to what I was saying. Rullon told me he poked his head inside the room and gave a holler, but no one answered. He opened the bathroom door. He said he hurried right back to his office and called us ’cause it was clear Larry didn’t need no doctor.”

“I’m sure the smell told him that,” Patrick said. “I don’t know if Rullon’s ever going to be able to use that tub again.”

“If it was me I’d rip the whole thing out and chuck it,” Jacobs agreed.

The room was littered with old clothing and cigarette butts; three empty whiskey bottles lay scattered across the floor like bowling pins. As the men talked, Cameryn went over to the bed, which was crumpled and unmade. There was a smell here, too, but this one was of cigarettes mingled with stale urine. A thin layer of grime seemed to have settled over everything, dulling the surfaces with a gray film. Even the window seemed opaque.

“I asked Rullon when was the last time he’d seen the guy,” Jacobs was saying, “and he said four days ago—the day the man checked in.” His reading glasses had slipped down his nose, and he pushed them up with his index finger. “Four days is a mighty big window, Pat. It’s gonna be a challenge fixing time of death, let alone cause.”

“Yeah, and from the looks of it I’m guessing he’s a drinker. But a bunch of empty whiskey bottles won’t tell enough of the story.” Sighing deeply, her father said, “We may be in for an autopsy.”

Cameryn’s gaze went back to the bed. The cheap polyester cover had been pulled down halfway, and the pillow had a depression in its middle. Only one side of the bed was unmade, though—the other side was as smoothed and tucked as an unopened letter. For some reason the empty half of the bed made her feel a bit sad. Had loneliness driven this man to alcohol? What kind of life must he have had to end up rotting in a cheap motel? But then again, what good did it do to wonder about the reasons? she chided herself. People made choices and people died. It was her job to figure out the death, not the life.

Her father and the sheriff were deep in a different conversation, this time about the budget and how Silverton would have to foot the bill for the autopsy. Once again she looked around. An old gym bag had been tossed on the floor. Squatting, she searched through it but found nothing save some dirt that had settled into the seams. Next, she turned her attention to a small lamp on the nightstand next to the bed. The bulb had been left on. Beneath the light she found a plastic cup, half-filled with water, which had been placed next to a pad of paper and an ashtray overflowing with the remains of crumpled cigarettes. In writing so wobbly she could barely decipher it, Cameryn made out the beginnings of what she guessed to be a phone number. It began with a string of numbers, but then the wobbly line faded out in a shepherd’s crook, the last digit incomplete.

She put her hand onto the pad; even through her plastic glove the paper felt warm to the touch. That meant the light must have been on a long time—maybe days—even when the room had been lit by natural sunlight. Curious, she opened the nightstand drawer and searched inside. There was nothing in there except a tattered phone book and an open book of matches. On a hunch she pulled out the phone book—hadn’t he been writing down a number?—with the idea of checking the partial number to a liquor store. As if on cue the pages fell open in her hand to a place where a small baggie had been inserted between its leaves. “Hell-o,” she murmured to herself. When she held the crumpled baggie to the light she saw a dozen yellow hexagons, stamped with the number 80. There was a prescription inside the bag as well, dirty and dog-eared.

“Hey, what you got there, Cammie?” her father asked.

At the sound of her name, Cameryn felt her scalp jump. “Uh—I was just—I saw a partial number written on this pad here and I thought maybe our guy was going through the phone book before he died. I found this baggie inside. It’s okay that I picked it up, right?”

“As long as you’ve got your gloves on. Like I told you, the coroner owns the effects of the deceased. The sheriff can’t touch anything,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “but we can.”

“So what’s in the bag, Cameryn?” Jacobs asked.

“There’s some loose pills and a prescription for…I think it says…‘Inderal.’” She smoothed the baggie between her fingers and read the scrolling print. “Yeah, it’s Inderal. It was prescribed to Lawrence Robertson. Wait, I think there’s more than one prescription inside.” She opened the bag and fanned three prescriptions in her hands like playing cards. “Looks like there’s one a month for three more months, all for Inderal.”

Sheriff Jacobs pulled the end of his long nose. “Inderal? What the heck is that?”

Her father seemed pleased. Walking over to Cameryn, he took the baggie from her hand. “It’s a drug used for esophageal varices.”

“Tell me in English,” Sheriff Jacobs snapped.

“It’s for enlarged veins in the esophagus. If they open up a person can bleed to death.” Squinting, Patrick held the baggie closer to the light. “Looks like Doc Kearney down in Durango wrote it for the deceased. Inderal’s a pill that’s prescribed when a patient’s a boozehound. I’d bet our Mr. Robertson had some serious liver damage to go along with the varices. So he was drinking while taking Inderal. Mmm, mmm, mmm, Cameryn may have found our answer. Nice work. Don’t know if I would have thought to look there.”

Cameryn flushed with the compliment. It felt good to work with her father, as a team and almost as equals.

“So what’s next?” Jacobs asked.

“I’ll call the doc and see what he has to say. If he tells me Robertson was on his last legs we’ll just skip the autopsy and call it a day.” Then, to Cameryn, he asked, “By the way, where’s the camera?”

Cameryn felt her eyes widen as she realized her mistake. Her job was to photograph the scene and she’d already forgotten her camera and disturbed the evidence. Was the case ruined? “I’m—I’m sorry, Dad,” she said. “I left it in the car.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t look so panicked. This isn’t a homicide. Just go get it now and start shooting the bed and the drawer and all of that. And next time, pictures before you move things, okay?”

“Sure,” she said, nodding. “Absolutely.”

Sheriff Jacobs ambled over to Pat, who pulled at the next flimsy drawer, checking for more clues. Cameryn made her way to the hallway and was about to leave when she found herself stopping at the bathroom door. The flies had ceased their buzzing but not their crawling, which created a strange pattern, like a kaleidoscope of undulating black. She could not be seen from where she stood, and that fact gave her pause. The doorknob, dirty brass with a dent in its middle, seemed to stare at her like a single eye.

Well, why not?
she asked herself fiercely. Why shouldn’t she? She wanted to see the man who had slept in only half his bed and washed down pills with whiskey. She wanted to see a real case and apply her book knowledge, and there was no doubt she could handle the gruesome sight. The two men were patronizing her. As quickly as that, she settled it in her mind: She was going in. As she inched closer to the bathroom door, the flies sensed her. They launched from the door, encircling her head, landing in her hair. Batting them away, she turned the knob. When she pushed the bathroom door open, the drone of flies grew louder, and then, in earnest, she fought the urge to turn and run.

In front of her an arm stretched out from the tub like a tree branch ending in gnarled fingers. The nails were dirty and thick, more like chips of wood than fingertips. A hundred flies or more walked delicately along the flesh of the exposed limb. The body looked bloated and grotesque, more surreal than human. Holding her breath, she moved until she could see his upper torso still propped in a seated position. His neck rested against the edge of the tub and his chin dropped open so that his bottom teeth showed. The eyes were open and sunken; more flies crawled over the vacant pupils that stared like bits of dusty glass. Robertson was a grizzled old man, pale and cold and unceremoniously dead, a man with dirty fingernails and underwater skin stretched so taut it looked like wax.

Still holding her breath, she moved closer, repelled and drawn at the same time. Something on the man’s face was moving. His skin? He was dead and yet alive, and her mind connected sideways—movement equaled life. For an instant she could make no sense of her own perception. Leaning closer, she tried to understand, then jerked back in horror as she realized the source.

The movement was from maggots. Tiny larvae wiggled out from beneath his eyelids like grains of crackling rice. They slid from his nose and in his mouth along his tongue, moved from the canals of his ears to migrate down his neck. Frozen, Cameryn stood transfixed until she suddenly realized her urgent need for air. With her hands over her mouth and nose she took a deep, gulping breath. Her peppermint oil, her finger, nothing could stem the sickly sweet scent of rotting flesh that filled her nose, her mouth, her very insides. She was breathing in particles of Larry Robertson. Her stomach twisted over on itself like a coil, and she knew then that she would throw up.

Gagging, she raced through the bathroom door and out of the motel room and away from the sight and smell of death. Her legs pumped hard as she sprinted around the back of the motel to where the trash cans were propped. She leaned over until she was doubled in two; a second later she threw up into the garbage can, retching from the deepest part of her, glad her father wasn’t watching, glad he hadn’t seen her fail. She puked until she was dry, coughing so hard her eyes teared and her stomach ached. Even with her eyes closed she could still see the maggots and their flickering movements. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood, her hands trembling, her throat on fire.

Something touched her lightly on the shoulder. Whirling around, she stared straight into the eyes of Deputy Crowley.

THROUGH THE BLUR SHE COULD
see him, and she noticed with a start that his eyes were a strange color, neither green nor blue but somewhere in between, like the water in the high mountain lakes.

“Here,” he told her, pressing tissues into her hand. “Take these. Nothing’s as bad as the smell of death, except maybe maggots. I just about lost it when I saw him, too.”

Cameryn took the fistful of Kleenex and wiped her mouth hard. What could be worse than to be caught puking her guts out, especially in front of a guy her father hated? Embarrassment shot through her as she realized some vomit had landed on her shirt, right on her breast pocket. She tried to wipe it, but only made the smear worse.

“I’d offer to help, but you might slap me,” the deputy said. He smiled a slow smile.

Was he laughing at her? After all her talk of wanting to be a forensic pathologist, she was exposed now as the fraud she was. No doubt he’d tell everyone in town that Cameryn Mahoney couldn’t take it. Balling up the tissue, she threw it into the garbage can with as much force as she could. “I gotta go,” she told him. “My dad’s waiting.”

“Hey, Cameryn, don’t look so mad. I just saw your pop—he was in the middle of telling Jacobs what a great job you did finding those pills in a phone book. He said he’d take you on every case from now on.”

Cameryn just stood there, waiting. What was she supposed to say to that?

“He thinks you’re a genius.”

“A genius. Yeah, right. I really look smart right now, don’t I?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being human, Cameryn.” He seemed to linger over every word, as though he had all the time in the world to talk to her. He leaned his elbow against the wall, propping up his lanky frame. “Your pop asked if I’d seen you. Don’t worry, I covered for you.”

She felt her heart jump sideways. “What did you say?”

“I said your cell phone went off and you were taking the call. That
was
a cell phone I saw in your back jeans pocket, wasn’t it?”

Cameryn just stared at him. Had he been looking at her rear end?

“I make it a point to be observant,” he said, his voice still slow and easy.

Raking her fingers through her hair, she pulled at the net of loose strands that had fallen into her face while bent over the garbage can. “So you lied,” she said finally. “You lied to my dad.”

A curl of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Only a little.”

Deputy Crowley was as tall as her father but leaner, and when he moved his motions were smooth, as if his joints were well oiled. With his wide-set eyes and strong jaw he was easily handsome—the kind of good-looking that understood its own power. A small sliver of a scar stretched from his ear to his chin, made more noticeable against his tan, although his cheekbones and the tip of his nose had deepened to red. Cameryn hesitated. She knew she’d be in trouble if her father caught her talking to him—that much he’d made clear. And yet she knew her curiosity was even stronger than her sense of caution. What did her father have against this deputy? Glancing around quickly she saw the alley was empty, save for a gray cat walking daintily along the fence line. She turned back to him. “Do you have a first name, Deputy?”

“Justin.”

“You’re new here.”

He nodded. “That’s right. Which must be why I haven’t run into you before now. But I do know a little about you. I know you work at the Grand Hotel as a waitress.”

Surprised, she asked, “Who told you that?”

The smile again. “I have my sources.”

“I don’t like it when people talk about me.”

“Even when it’s good?” He shifted more of his weight against the wall. “You know, I’ve been meaning to come by and grab lunch at the Grand. I’ll try to come by next time you’re on shift. I didn’t know the girls in Silverton were so pretty or I’d have moved here years ago.”

It was her turn to smile. Was he hitting on her? If he was, he was doing it badly, and yet his awkward play somehow emboldened her. She took a step in his direction, her arms crossed over her chest, hiding the stain, holding herself in. “First of all, I’m a server, not a waitress. Second, I’m a woman, not a girl. And third”—she leaned closer, her voice low—“my dad doesn’t like you. He won’t tell me why, but he’s a smart man. If he doesn’t like you”—she tilted her head up toward his—“I can’t like you, either.”

His voice was equally soft as he bent his head toward her until he was so near she could smell the peppermint on his breath. He was chewing gum; he snapped it between his teeth. “I bet your pop didn’t tell you why he hates my guts, did he? Bet he clammed right up when it came to the details. Am I right?”

She could feel a flush creep into her scalp.

“You don’t have to say anything, Cameryn. I can see the answer in your eyes.”

“You can’t see squat,” she said, angry that he could read her so clearly. “My dad—he told me everything!”

“Now who’s the liar?” He pulled away and straightened to his full height. “And I bet you’d like me to tell you all about it, but I won’t. Not now, anyway. See, sometimes they kill the messenger.” He winked and said, “You’d better get back and take your pictures before they notice you’re gone. Don’t want Daddy thinking you’ve been talking to the wrong people. See you around, Cammie.”

“Wait—”

But Justin kept walking.

“How am I supposed to find out if you won’t tell me?”

For a moment she thought he was going to turn the corner of the building without answering, but at the last second he stopped. Spinning on his heel, he faced her and gave her a slight bow. Then, with two fingers pressed to his forehead he sent her a mock salute. “You’re the genius, Cameryn,” he told her. “You figure it out.”

“I heard the new deputy’s really cute,” Rachel announced to Cameryn. “I mean he’s too old for you, but
I’m
almost nineteen and my sister told me the deputy’s only twenty-one. Of course I’m leaving for college soon so there’s not exactly much of a future, but I say why not at least try it out until I have to go? I don’t think two years is too much of a difference in age. What do you know about him?”

Cameryn shook her head and continued wiping down the table while Rachel Geller, her fellow server, chattered on as she always did. The smell of bleach burned Cameryn’s eyes and nostrils. Her boss always soaked the cloths in a too-strong solution, but today it didn’t bother her. After her stint with Robertson she had drenched her hands in her own bleach solution until her outer layer of skin seemed to dissolve, leaving her hands smooth and slick and sanitized. And yet, when she’d held her hands to her nose, she could still smell the lingering scent of the dead man. It seemed as if his very pores had fused into hers. “You’ll get used to it,” her father had assured her, but she wondered.

“I can’t believe you saw some dead guy,” Rachel went on. “It’s already all over town. You are
so
not like me. If I had seen some rotting corpse in a bathtub I would have absolutely lost it. But nothing bothers you. You are, like, the toughest girl I know.” She looked at Cameryn with frank admiration. “Sometimes I think you’re more like a guy.”

“What do you mean?” Cameryn asked, her voice sharp.

Rachel’s blue eyes widened as she realized her mistake. “No, I didn’t mean it
that
way. It’s because you’re into science and all that boy stuff. I’m not saying you’re
like
a guy, it’s just—you know you’re not—never mind, I’m only making it worse.” A redhead, Rachel had dyed her hair chestnut to disguise the original strawberry color, although nothing could cover the explosion of freckles that blazed across her milk-white skin. Cameryn had known her for years. Although they weren’t especially close, she liked Rachel. The only difficulty in dealing with her was that she tended to talk nonstop. Words poured out of her mouth in an uncensored cascade, which meant she spent half her life apologizing for what she said the other half of the time. And yet, no one ever really got mad at Rachel, because it was easy to read her heart. Cameryn herself often wished she was more free. She often felt she weighed her own words too carefully.

“Sorry if I offended you,” Rachel told her now. “You know me and my mouth.”

“No offense taken.” Dipping her rag in her bucket once more, Cameryn concentrated on scrubbing a piece of petrified cheese stuck to the table’s edge.

Rachel sighed. She walked to the end of the Grand and peered into the empty restaurant. She tapped her foot on the wooden floor and sighed again, louder this time. “It is so dead in here. Don’t you think it’s dead in here?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you mind if I went home? My parents are out of town, which means I’ve got, like, a billion things to do, and I’ve made, like, five dollars in tips. There is absolutely no reason for two of us to be here, don’t you think?”

That was true. Saturday afternoon sometimes dragged, but today’s business had slowed to a crawl. The Grand usually served a light but steady tourist crowd, mostly families who had come up on the D & S train or kids who took up booths while splitting a single order of fries or cranky old-timers who demanded endless coffee refills. For some reason today’s serving rooms remained empty.

“I was supposed to leave at seven,” Cameryn said. “I’ve got plans for tonight.”

“How about if I leave now and get back by then?”

“Sure,” Cameryn said, nodding. “If George says it’s okay, I’m fine with it.”

But something new had caught Rachel’s attention. A little bell jingled on the restaurant door as a man came in and strode to the bar. Plowing her hair back with her hand, Rachel stood, transfixed, as Justin Crowley straddled a round stool. They were in the back section of the restaurant, so they could watch, unnoticed.

“Ohmygosh, he
is
cute,” Rachel breathed. “I heard he was, but…” She didn’t finish her thought. It looked as though her entire body had gone on alert. As she stood staring, wide-eyed, Cameryn noticed the red-gold roots glinting at Rachel’s scalp, like infinitesimal flames ready to catch the chestnut hair on fire. “Don’t you think he’s
cute
, Cameryn?”

“I don’t know. He’s okay, I guess,” she replied.

“He’s
way
better than okay. Hey, can I serve him? I mean, he
is
in your section and I
was
about to leave”—she looked at Cameryn eagerly—“but I could stay a little longer. The thing is, lately I’ve been attracting the absolute worst guys—it’s like I’ve got some kind of loser radar or something. I mean, guess who’s been hanging around, trying to ask me out?”

“Who?”

“Adam the Freak. I’ve tried to be nice, you know, ’cause he’s always alone and stuff, but that’s where I went wrong. Now it’s like he never gets the hint and I’m, like, ‘Hello, go cast your spells on someone else,’ but he just orders food and watches me.
That’s
the caliber of guy I’ve been getting. But this deputy is totally fine. You don’t mind if I give it a whirl, do you?”

With a dismissive wave of the hand, Cameryn said, “Be my guest.”

“Thanks, Cammie—you’re a true friend!” She flashed a smile over her shoulder as she made her way to the bar.

Cameryn squeezed the rag hard and watched as Rachel swooped in on her prey. Although the street outside was bright with four-o’clock sun, most of the Grand Hotel Restaurant seemed caught in a perpetual twilight. That was because the restaurant itself was a long, thin shoe box of a room, bisected into a larger back area for eating and smaller room in front for the bar. Daylight did not penetrate more than three feet from the restaurant’s only window, and the rest of the fixtures—ten-inch hurricane lamps illuminated by electric candles—barely cast a glow. The hundred-year-old bar was the main attraction in the front room, which was where Crowley had settled himself. Carved with scrolls cut deep into mahogany, it stretched fifteen feet and boasted twelve stools. On the wall behind it hung a mirror, and directly above that was a bullet hole left there by Wyatt Earp himself, carefully circled so patrons would be sure not to miss that piece of the Grand’s colorful past. A small television had been bolted to the wall, flashing pictures silently at the empty room.

She could hear Rachel’s candied voice as she gave him a glass of water and began her usual small talk. Straining, she tried to decipher Justin’s monosyllabic replies. Although the dried cheese had already been completely removed from the table, she continued to swipe it, her eyes focused on the rag while her whole mind concentrated on their hushed conversation. There was a clink of a glass, and then silence. Suddenly a shadow darkened; when Cameryn looked up she saw Rachel standing over her, her face twisted into an uncharacteristic frown. “He asked for you,” she said curtly. “He says he wants you to wait on him.”

“
Serve
him. Besides, who cares? You want him so you got him. Tell him I’m busy.”

“That’s a little hard to pull off when the restaurant’s completely empty.”

“He’s your customer. I gave him to you.”

“He’s a customer who wants you, not me. By the way, you never told me you worked with him,” she went on accusingly. “You never said he was there with the dead guy. Don’t you think you should have mentioned it?”

“Why? He was there for, like, five minutes!”

“Whatever.” Rachel sighed and shoved her order pad into her apron pocket. “Look, I’m going home. Just serve him and collect your tip, which I’m guessing is going to be huge since he’s, like, ‘I really want my waitress to be Cameryn.’ I’ll check with Callahan and if he says it’s okay then I’m off, but I will return by seven! Have fun with your deputy.” The sun had come out on her face again, and she gave Cameryn a knowing smile. Her voice suddenly became low, conspiratorial. “I don’t care what you say—that guy’s a definite hottie!”

And then she was gone. The saloon-type doors swung behind her as Rachel disappeared into the kitchen; the only sound was the wiper-like squeak of the hinges. There was nothing to do, Cameryn realized, but go and take the deputy’s order. She walked slowly to the bar, trying hard to convey her annoyance. She could feel him watching her. Through the corner of her eye she saw that he had on regulation khakis and that his shirt was neatly tucked. His too-long hair, though, was tousled, as though he couldn’t get the whole professional package quite right. The bangs brushed against his lashes like a dark curtain. His eyes met hers.