Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [482]
Luc felt a nudge at the back of his leg and, without looking, he reached down for the dog to lick his hand. Only there was no lick. He glanced at Scrapple, who immediately went into his defensive stance, gripping harder on the prize he had brought to show his owner. Another bone. Luc ignored him, and his attention went back to the excitement beyond the trees.
Suddenly, it hit Luc. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He looked back at the dog working his paws to hold his large treat as he chewed on the fleshy end and tried to get his teeth around the perimeter. Luc’s knees went weak.
“Holy crap, Scrapple. Where in the world did you get that?” he said to the Jack Russell, but now everyone around him went silent as they twisted and turned to see.
Luc glanced at the girl reporter and asked, “You think that’s what it looks like?”
Instead of answering—or as if confirming it—she began vomiting on Calvin Vargus’s size-thirteen boots. Her hand went up to block the camera and in between gags she yelled, “Shut it off. For God’s sake, shut off the camera.”
CHAPTER 8
Sheriff Henry Watermeier didn’t need a forensic expert to tell him what he was looking at. The larger bone Luc Racine held out to him had enough tissue to keep the smaller bones attached. And although some of the smaller bones were missing and the flesh was now black and deteriorated, there was no question as to what the Jack Russell terrier had dug up. What Luc Racine held out in shaking hands—his palms faceup as if making an offering—was definitely a human foot.
“Where the hell did he find it?”
“Don’t know,” Luc said, stepping closer, his eyes never leaving Henry’s as if willing himself not to look at the dog’s discovery any more than necessary. “He brought it to me. But I don’t know where he found it.”
Henry waved over one of the mobile-crime guys, a tall, skinny Asian man with a name tag reading “Carl” on his blue uniform. He reminded himself that it wasn’t a bad thing he didn’t know all the mobile-crime guys by name, even if they were from up the road at Meriden’s Police Crime Lab. Just meant the really sick bastards were committing their crimes somewhere outside the boundaries of New Haven County. For the second time today, Henry found himself hoping this sick bastard didn’t seriously fuck up his own retirement plans. He had come this far with a perfect record—no unsolved mysteries during his reign—and he’d sure as hell like to keep it that way.
“That didn’t fall out of the barrel, did it?” Carl asked as he shook open a paper evidence bag, then held it under Luc’s outstretched hands, positioning it for Luc to drop the bones into the bag.
But Luc, who had seemed anxious to get rid of the thing, now only stared at Henry. He nodded at Luc to put it into the bag, and like a sleepwalker waking suddenly, Luc jerked—almost as if snapping back to reality—and he dropped the bone.
Henry kept an eye on him, studying him. Luc Racine had been one of the first people Henry had met when he and Rosie moved here. Hell, everyone knew Luc. He was the best, friendliest postal carrier in the area, making it a habit to remember his customers by name. Henry remembered a package that Luc had delivered when Henry wasn’t home, wrapping it in plastic and leaving it on Henry’s front portico with a note explaining that it had looked like rain. That wasn’t so long ago, and now Luc Racine had taken early retirement. Word was he had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
How was that possible? The man looked younger than Henry. Though his hair was silver-gray, he had a full head of it, not like Henry’s, which seemed to get thinner and thinner and receded away from his forehead more each day. Racine looked fit and trim, too, arms tanned and twisted with muscles from lifting and carrying years’ worth of junk mail. Although Henry had a bit of a paunch around the middle, he prided himself on the fact that he could still fit into his NYPD police uniform that he had worn…God, had it been thirty-some years ago?