sign.
Frost had no way of knowing if someone had arranged the digits in that fashion or if instead the macabre gesture occurred by chance. In either case, he was not amused.
Most cops lacked a sharp sense of black humor when they entered law enforcement, but they quickly developed one as a psychological-defense mechanism. Nevertheless, Frost suspected that nothing he encountered in this house would tickle the dark side of his funnybone.
The eaten edges of the flesh had the same appearanceas the stump of the foot in the living room. Bloodless. Glazed but pitted. And the flesh was unnaturally pale.
Dagget flicked a switch, and the open staircase brightened. In a hunt, stairs were always bad, either going up or coming down. You were vulnerable from above and below, with nothing to duck behind, with nowhere to go other than straight into the line of fire, because turning your back and running was even more surely a ticket to the morgue.
Cautiously but quickly, they ascended. Dagget took the lead, back to the curved wall, attention on the head of the stairs. Frost followed six steps behind, focused on the foyer below; although they had cleared the ground floor, there might be a way someone could get behind them.
They didn’t even whisper to each other anymore. They had nothing to say. From here on, what needed to be done would be clear as events unfolded.
They didn’t find any additional scraps until they reached the upper hall, where a bloodless ear, as white as a seashell, lay on the carpet. Judging by the size and the delicacy, it must have been the ear of a young child.
Chief Jarmillo had two children.
Of all crimes, those involving violence against children most infuriated Frost. He didn’t believe in life sentences for child murderers. He believed in any kind of slow execution.
Jarmillo’s behavior on duty the previous twelve hours argued strongly for his corruption. If the chief was part of some bizarre conspiracy, then it seemed to follow that he, rather than a serial killer chancing upon them, must have murdered his wife, mother-in-law, and kids. Murdered and dismembered.
But Frost couldn’t make sense of what they had found thus far. The huge sums funneled into this town through Progress for Perfect Peace suggested a criminal enterprise vast in scale. In fact the laundered funds were so enormous that the possibility of a terrorist plot of historic dimensions could not be dismissed. A cop on the take, getting immensely rich for helping the bad guys conceal their activities, wasn’t likely to derail the money train by chopping up his family over a disagreement with the wife.
Four bedrooms, a master-suite sitting room, various closets, and two of three bathrooms offered them only two more grisly pieces of evidence. Both were in the master bedroom.
On the floor near the dresser lay a fragment of a jawbone from which protruded two molars, two bicuspids, and a single canine tooth. Something green trailed from between the molars, perhaps a sliver of skin from a bell pepper or a jalapeño. The facets of the bone that should have been shattered, where they had broken away from the rest of the jaw, instead looked … melted.
Because it was not just another bit of biological debris but an impossible construct out of a surrealist’sfantasy, the second find in the master bedroom proved more unsettling than anything they had discovered thus far. It lay at one corner of the neatly made bed, near the footboard, not as if carefully presented but as if tossed aside—or as if spat out. The thick tongue, curved and with the tip raised as though licking something, would have been repulsive and alarming if it had been nothing more than that, but instead it was like an image by Salvador Dalí inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. In the center of the fat tongue, not balanced upon it but snugly embedded in its tissue, actually growing from it, was a brown and lidless human eye.
Frost saw the monstrosity first. In the instant of
Frost had no way of knowing if someone had arranged the digits in that fashion or if instead the macabre gesture occurred by chance. In either case, he was not amused.
Most cops lacked a sharp sense of black humor when they entered law enforcement, but they quickly developed one as a psychological-defense mechanism. Nevertheless, Frost suspected that nothing he encountered in this house would tickle the dark side of his funnybone.
The eaten edges of the flesh had the same appearanceas the stump of the foot in the living room. Bloodless. Glazed but pitted. And the flesh was unnaturally pale.
Dagget flicked a switch, and the open staircase brightened. In a hunt, stairs were always bad, either going up or coming down. You were vulnerable from above and below, with nothing to duck behind, with nowhere to go other than straight into the line of fire, because turning your back and running was even more surely a ticket to the morgue.
Cautiously but quickly, they ascended. Dagget took the lead, back to the curved wall, attention on the head of the stairs. Frost followed six steps behind, focused on the foyer below; although they had cleared the ground floor, there might be a way someone could get behind them.
They didn’t even whisper to each other anymore. They had nothing to say. From here on, what needed to be done would be clear as events unfolded.
They didn’t find any additional scraps until they reached the upper hall, where a bloodless ear, as white as a seashell, lay on the carpet. Judging by the size and the delicacy, it must have been the ear of a young child.
Chief Jarmillo had two children.
Of all crimes, those involving violence against children most infuriated Frost. He didn’t believe in life sentences for child murderers. He believed in any kind of slow execution.
Jarmillo’s behavior on duty the previous twelve hours argued strongly for his corruption. If the chief was part of some bizarre conspiracy, then it seemed to follow that he, rather than a serial killer chancing upon them, must have murdered his wife, mother-in-law, and kids. Murdered and dismembered.
But Frost couldn’t make sense of what they had found thus far. The huge sums funneled into this town through Progress for Perfect Peace suggested a criminal enterprise vast in scale. In fact the laundered funds were so enormous that the possibility of a terrorist plot of historic dimensions could not be dismissed. A cop on the take, getting immensely rich for helping the bad guys conceal their activities, wasn’t likely to derail the money train by chopping up his family over a disagreement with the wife.
Four bedrooms, a master-suite sitting room, various closets, and two of three bathrooms offered them only two more grisly pieces of evidence. Both were in the master bedroom.
On the floor near the dresser lay a fragment of a jawbone from which protruded two molars, two bicuspids, and a single canine tooth. Something green trailed from between the molars, perhaps a sliver of skin from a bell pepper or a jalapeño. The facets of the bone that should have been shattered, where they had broken away from the rest of the jaw, instead looked … melted.
Because it was not just another bit of biological debris but an impossible construct out of a surrealist’sfantasy, the second find in the master bedroom proved more unsettling than anything they had discovered thus far. It lay at one corner of the neatly made bed, near the footboard, not as if carefully presented but as if tossed aside—or as if spat out. The thick tongue, curved and with the tip raised as though licking something, would have been repulsive and alarming if it had been nothing more than that, but instead it was like an image by Salvador Dalí inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. In the center of the fat tongue, not balanced upon it but snugly embedded in its tissue, actually growing from it, was a brown and lidless human eye.
Frost saw the monstrosity first. In the instant of
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