Heinous by Debra Webb Page A

Sheriff.”
    “On our way.” Foster winced. “Sounds like he’s a little excited.”
    “I’m certain they don’t see crime scenes like this every day.” Jess remembered her first big crime scene. Three men had robbed a bank, and then couldn’t agree on how to split the proceeds. They’d ended up killing each other.
    On the far side of the kitchen was a door that led to the back porch. Jess paused long enough to remove her shoe covers but kept the gloves on. She hurried across the porch and backyard to keep up with Hayes and Foster’s long strides. The workshop sat about thirty yards behind the house. At the door, she and Hayes donned more shoe covers though no one else bothered. It was too late to do anything about that now.
    The building appeared to be one large room. Shelves filled with the various tanning chemicals and preservatives Mooney used in his work lined one wall. Examples of his taxidermy work: a bobcat, a couple of squirrels, a rattlesnake, and a deer head were mounted on the opposite wall. A long metal worktable occupied the center of the room. On the far end of the workshop were large metal sinks, the kind used in restaurants. Next to the sink was another door. The two deputies who’d been exploring the building waited there.
    “You’re not gonna believe this.” A deputy—Woods, Jess recognized his voice—motioned to the door. A pair of bolt cutters lay on the floor alongside a lock that had been cut free. “We didn’t go inside,” Woods, said. “We just looked and... well, see for yourself.”
    Hayes led the way through the door with Jess close behind him. There was another table in the center of this room, but this one looked more like the ones found in an embalming room. On closer inspection, Jess decided it was an embalming table. More shelves lined the wall beyond the table. Glass jars of varying sizes stood on the shelves. As her brain registered what floated in those many, many jars, Jess reminded herself to breathe. Organs... body parts.
Human
. She moved toward the shelves, needing a better look to make sure what she saw was the real thing.
    Human hands, feet, hearts, ears, eyeballs... definitely real.
    “Chief.”
    Slowly, hardly able to take her eyes from the rows and rows of human parts, she turned to face Hayes. He was staring at the wall that separated this room from the rest of the building. She’d been so focused on the embalming table and then the jars, she hadn’t looked back to see what was on that wall as she entered the room.
    For one second, she stood there staring. Mounted on the wall in different poses were bodies—
human
bodies. There were three young women, one middle-aged man, and one elderly woman. All were nude and perfectly preserved.
    “Holy hell,” Foster muttered as he and his deputies came through the door to see what had captured Jess’s attention.
    “That right there,” Deputy Woods said, pointing at the older woman, “is his momma. She died last year.”
    “Do you recognize the others?” Jess asked, her voice sounding a little hollow. It had been a while since she’d run into a Norman Bates wannabe.
    “Not right off,” Foster admitted. He turned to his deputy. “We’re going to need some of those forensic fellas from Huntsville, too.”
    “Sheriff!”
    The guy who rushed into the room was a forensic tech, Jess decided. His T-shirt was emblazoned with
CSI Guys Do it Best
.
    “Did Adams find something?”
    The tech held up an evidence bag. “He pulled this note from Mooney’s mouth.”
    Jess moved toward Foster as he took the bag. He shook his head and passed it to her. She read the words handwritten by Spears.
Quite a nasty fellow, this one. He’s been keeping a little something for you, Jess
.
    Jess passed the note to Hayes for documentation before walking back to the other side of the room to inventory the jars. If Mooney was keeping something for her, she had a bad feeling it was in one of these jars.
    Something similar to a label