The Night Stalker_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [58]
“This is no good,” I said.
My shovel was lying on the ground. He picked it up, and tried to give it to me. I didn’t understand the gesture, and he pointed at the sky.
“Look,” he said.
I shielded my eyes with my hand, and stared upward. Hundreds of gulls were circling overhead, forming a cyclone of white.
“So what?” I asked him.
The Mexican pointed directly overhead. I had to squint, but finally saw it. A large black bird among the gulls, looking down at us.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Vulture,” the Mexican said.
I took the shovel from his hands, and went back to work. Forty-five minutes later, we discovered the first body.
PART THREE
DON’T BE CRUEL
CHAPTER THIRTY
The body was of a woman who appeared to be about five-four, with wispy black hair and a silver cross hanging around her neck. Her eyes and skin were gone, and her mouth was twisted in a horrible smile. I was no expert on pathology, but I saw no signs of bullets or knives or blunt instruments having been used, and I guessed that she’d been killed the same way Piper Stone had died.
The vulture that had been circling overhead had landed on a garbage hill no more than thirty feet away. The Mexicans had taken turns throwing bottles at it, but the bird would not leave. I turned my back on it as I called Burrell.
“You need to get up to the Pompano Beach landfill,” I said when she answered. “Tell the guard at the front gate you know me, and ask for Section P.”
There was silence on the line, and for a moment I thought we’d been disconnected.
“What did you find?” Burrell asked.
“Another victim,” I said.
I heard a sharp intake of breath.
“For the love of Christ,” she said.
I ended the call, then spent a minute petting Buster. My dog had bloodied his paws ripping through the earth, and now lay at my feet, exhausted.
Burrell arrived a half hour later. With her was Special Agent Whitley. They got out, and Burrell handed me a cup of coffee. I thanked her with a nod.
I led Burrell and Whitley to the body. I had covered it with a blanket that I’d found in the trash. I shooed the gulls away, and pulled the blanket back. Whitley took a tube of Vick’s from his pocket, and dabbed some beneath his nostrils. Burrell did the same, and offered me the tube. I shook my head.
“How can you stand the smell?” she asked.
“You get used to it,” I said.
Whitley knelt down to study the corpse. He wore a navy windbreaker with FBI printed in blazing white letters across the back. I wondered if he’d put the windbreaker on to remind me that he was still in charge of the investigation. He pointed at a number of items lying on the ground beside the body.
“Did you put these here?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Did they belong to the victim?”
The garbage bag in which I’d found the corpse had contained several personal items. These included a lipstick, some coins, and two pieces of inexpensive jewelry.
“I think so,” I said.
“How can you tell they were hers?” he asked.
“The lipstick is good, and the jewelry is wearable,” I said.
“So they’re not garbage.”
“That’s right.”
Whitley picked through the items. “Anything else you want to share?”
“She’s either a runaway or a homeless person,” I said.
“Did you ID her?”
“I didn’t have to ID her.”
“Then how do you know that for certain?”
I pointed at the victim’s feet. “She’s wearing a pair of cheap Keds. That isn’t a fashion statement. She was dirt poor.”
Whitley examined the victim’s sneakers. One of the sneakers had a slight bulge in it. Taking rubber gloves from his pocket, he snapped them on, and tugged the sneaker off the victim’s foot. Then he held the sneaker up, and gave it a shake. Out dropped a Florida driver’s license and several folded bills. He picked both up from the ground. The victim’s name was Mary McClary, and she hailed from West Palm Beach. I’d dealt with hundreds of missing persons