Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [477]
Henry took a deep breath to clear his mind, to help him think. He looked up into the cloudless blue and watched another flock of geese. Lucky bastards. Maybe he was getting old and tired. Maybe he was simply ready for that fantasy retirement of endless days fishing off the banks of the Connecticut River with a cooler full of Budweiser and a couple of smoked turkey sandwiches with salami and provolone. Yeah, a sandwich, but not just any sandwich. One with the works from Vinny’s Deli, wrapped all neat and tight in that white paper that Vinny used. He could go for one now.
He glanced at the barrel again. The flies were sneaking under the tarp, their buzzing amplified instead of muffled. Goddamn vultures. They’d be swarming the moist areas and taking up residence before the M.E. arrived. Nothing worse than flies and their fucking offspring maggots. He’d seen the damage they could do in a matter of hours. Disgusting. And here he was thinking about Vinny’s sandwiches. Well, hell, it took a lot for him to lose his appetite.
His wife, Rosie, would say it was because he had become “jaded.” Jesus! She actually talked like that, using words like jaded. Henry claimed instead that he was simply pissed dry, burned out. This short stint as New Haven County’s sheriff was supposed to help him make some sort of transition. It was supposed to help him ease his way from the head-banging stress of New York to the laid-back routine of Connecticut to finally the peace and quiet of retirement.
But this…No, he hadn’t signed up for this. He didn’t want or need a messy unsolved murder to screw up his reputation. How the hell were he and Rosie going to retire here if he had to listen to the stories, the second-guessing, the snickers behind his back?
He glanced at Arliss again. The goddamn idiot had some crime-scene tape stuck to the bottom of his shoe, a stream of it following him like toilet paper and fucking Arliss completely unaware.
No, this was definitely not the way he wanted to end his career.
CHAPTER 5
R. J. Tully watched O’Dell sort through some file folders stacked on her desk.
“So much for vacation,” she said, her good mood put on hold.
He thought her mood had changed because of the phone call from Dr. Patterson, but O’Dell seemed to be ignoring the fax machine behind her as it spit out page after page of details about Patterson’s missing patient. Instead of retrieving and examining those pages, O’Dell was searching for something already lost in her stacks. Perhaps a case she had planned on taking home with her to peruse during those backyard digging breaks. What was one more if she added Dr. Patterson’s?
Tully sank into the overstuffed chair O’Dell had managed to cram into her small but orderly office. It always amazed him. Their offices down in BSU—Behavorial Science Unit—were Cracker Jack boxes, yet hers included neatly stacked bookcases—not one errant hardcover squashed on top. Now that he had a closer look, he could see they were categorized. And alphabetized.
His office, on the other hand, looked like a storage closet with stacks of files and books and magazines—not necessarily each in separate piles—on his shelves, on his desk and guest chair and even on the floor. Some days he was lucky to find a path to his desk. And underneath his desk was a whole other matter. That’s where he kept a duffel bag of running shoes, shorts and socks, some of which—especially the dirty ones—never managed to stay put in the bag. Now that he thought about it, maybe that was the mysterious smell that had recently begun to take over the room. He missed having a window in his office. In Cleveland he had left behind a corner office