Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [94]
Knock it off. This isn’t helping.
The traversable area narrowed considerably. Unless I wanted to duck-walk or limbo through the equipment to get to the other side, I needed to return to my truck.
Screw it. This was a stupid idea. I’d proven myself right, and now it was time to trot on home.
As I spun in the opposite direction, I caught a glimpse of the top of a white truck cab.
Far too pristine a white for this car jungle.
Goddammit. When I wanted my eyesight to fail me, it never did.
In my haste to get closer, I stepped on a hubcap, losing my balance when my boot slid into a shadowed oil slick. As I righted myself, I whacked my knee into the jagged grille of a 1970s gas-guzzler.
Knee smarting, I limped past my truck toward the vehicle parked in the clearing. Not camouflaged, but sticking out like a white thumb. Someone wanted this truck found. Lucky me to once again draw the short straw.
I approached the vehicle with my weapon drawn. “Victor?” I felt stupid saying it, but I repeated his name anyway. “Victor? You in there?”
No reply. No surprise. Didn’t stop my heart from thudding erratically or perspiration from geysering out of my pores. I flashed back to the times early in the war, when we checked abandoned vehicles in Iraq when the bomb squad specialists were shorthanded. I had the same sense of panic. Of dread. Of the certainty of my own mortality.
Breathe.
But the instant I inhaled, the odor of decay assaulted me. I’d been around the putrid scent of decomposing flesh enough times to recognize it—nothing else smelled like death.
My gaze swept the vehicle, and I noticed the blood spatters on the inside windows of the cab.
On the driver’s side, I used my shirt to hold on to the handle with one hand while I stepped up onto the running board and peered in.
Victor was sprawled across the bench seat. Half his head blown across the tweed seat covers, the windshield, the back window, the side window, even the slate-blue console. In addition to the blood sprayed everywhere, his body was puffed like a toad’s. I didn’t know enough about time of death and all that medical/CSI jargon to discern how long he’d been a corpse. All I knew was he was dead, bloated, and stinking to high heaven.
The window hadn’t been shattered to make the kill shot. This hadn’t been a robbery attempt because the keys still dangled from the ignition. So Victor had opened the door to whoever had killed him. But the killer hadn’t been satisfied with almost taking Victor’s head off; he or she had also sliced Victor’s abdomen from side to side, practically cutting him in half.
Another whiff of rotting meat set off my gag reflex. I barely made it to the fence before the contents of my breakfast spewed out my mouth and hung on the dried stems of the bromegrass. Even Poopy would’ve been impressed with my projectile vomiting. Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I tried to maintain my composure as everything inside me urged me to flee. I couldn’t just “discover” another body. I might as well change my name to Jessica Fletcher in this county.
Yet, as much of a piece of shit as Victor Bad Wound was, I couldn’t leave him moldering in his vehicle. I held my ground against the wind, the spitting rain, and my own nausea as I dug for my cell phone and dialed.
“This is Deputy Moore.”
“Kiki? It’s Mercy.”
“Hey, Mercy. If this is about the campaign, it’ll have to wait until I’m off duty.”
“It’s not. Can you talk without anyone overhearing you?”
“I’m alone in my patrol car. Why?”
“How far are you from Mulligan’s?”
“Twenty minutes. Why, what’s going on?”
I looked over at the pickup, my mind flashing to the grisly sight of what remained of Victor Bad Wound’s face. And the deep gash across his lower belly where his blood had dried his jeans and shirt to his bloated form. “I found a dead body.”
Silence. Then a terse, “At Mulligan’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“Victor Bad Wound.”
“Jesus, Mercy. How the hell did you—”
“Look, he’s been missing. Cherelle Dupris