metal.
âIâll bet dollars to doughnuts this is somebodyâs idea of a great April Foolâs joke,â he said. âWanna bet?â
âNo bet,â I agreed. âSounds suspicious to me.â
We went straight there, not with lights and sirens, but without stopping for coffee along the way, either. We didnât call the medical examiner. We didnât call for the Homicide squad or notify the crime lab because we thought it was a joke. Except it turned out it wasnât a joke at all.
We located the two kids, carrot-Âtopped, freckle-Âfaced twin brothers Frankie and Donnie Dodd, waiting next to a pay phone at the Elliott Bay Marina where they had called 911. They looked to be eleven or twelve years old. The fact that they were both still a little green around the gills made me begin to wonder if maybe Mac and I were wrong about the possibility of this being an April Foolâs joke.
âYou wonât tell our mom, will you?â the kid named Donnie asked warily. âWeâre not supposed to be down by the tracks. Sheâll kill us if she finds out.â
âWhere do you live?â I asked.
âOn Twenty-Âthird West,â he said, pointing to the top of the bluff. âUp on Magnolia.â
âAnd where does your mother think the two of you are?â I asked.
Frankie, who may have been the ringleader, made a face at his brother, warning Donnie not to answer, but he did anyway.
âShe dropped us off at the Cinerama to see Charlotte âs Web. We tried to tell her thatâs a kidsâ movie, but she didnât listen. So after she drove away, we caught a bus and came back here to look around. Weâve found some good stuff hereâÂa broken watch, a jackknife, a pair of false teeth.â
Nodding, Frankie added his bit. âHalfway up the hill we found a barrel. We thought there might be some kind of treasure in it. Thatâs why we opened it.â
âIt smelled real bad,â Donnie said, holding his nose and finishing his brotherâs thought. âI thought I was going to puke.â
âHow do you know a body was inside?â I asked.
âWe pushed it away from us. When it rolled the rest of the way down the hill, she fell out. She wasnât wearing any clothes.â
âThatâs why we couldnât tell our mother,â Donnie concluded, âand thatâs when we went to the marina to call for help.â
âHow about if you show us,â Mac suggested.
We let the two kids into the back of the patrol car. They were good kids, and the whole idea of getting into our car excited them. Kids who have had run-Âins with cops are not thrilled to be given rides in patrol cars. Following their pointed directions, we followed an access road on the far side of Pier 91. There were no gates, no barriers, just a series of NO TRESPASSING signs that they had obviously ignored, and so did we.
The road intersected with the path the barrel had taken on its downhill plunge. Its route was still clearly visible where a gray, greasy film left a trail through the hillsideâs carpet of newly sprung springtime weeds and across the dirt track in front of us. What looked like a bright yellow fifty-Âgallon drum had come to a stop some fifteen yards farther on at the bottom of the steep incline. The torso of a naked female rested half inside and half outside the barrel. The body was covered in a grayish-brown ooze that I couldnât immediately identify. The instantly recognizable odor of death wafted into the air, but there was another underlying odor as well. While my nicotine-Âdulled nostrils struggled to make olfactory sense of that second odor, Mac beat me to the punch.
âCooking grease,â he explained. âWhoever killed her must have shoved her feet-Âfirst into a restaurant-Âsize vat of used grease. Restaurants keep the drums out on their loading docks. Once theyâre full, they haul
Aubrianna Hunter
B.C.CHASE
Piper Davenport
Leah Ashton
Michael Nicholson
Marteeka Karland
Simon Brown
Jean Plaidy
Jennifer Erin Valent
Nick Lake