Helix: Plague of Ghouls (4 page)

Two-Trees lowered the window. “You scared the living Christ out of me.” Rain splashed off the man’s hood into Two-Trees’ truck. “Hector Two-Trees, forensic anthropologist. I received a call asking me to come to Halo County.” He was tired and aching. He’d been in Sault Ste. Marie, giving a lecture, and he’d left shortly after lunch. Six and a half hours later, he was not at his sharpest.

“Can I see your identification?”

Two-Trees opened his wallet and showed his special investigator’s identification and his driver’s license. The hooded man shone his flashlight on the documents and handed them back, damp.

“We weren’t expecting you at the scene, Doctor,” he said. “We were told to wait until the medical examiner brought the body in.”

“Yeah, I know. But I was on my way into town when I saw the line-up of cars. Figured I could swing by before heading to the hotel. You mind if I examine the body
in situ
?”

The officer thought about it for a while. Then he placed a phone call from speed dial, spoke in shorthand, then closed the call. “I’ll take you.”

“I’ll be right out.”
As soon as I’ve checked for shit-stains.
He raised his window.

The hooded face disappeared. A wobbling stick of light pierced the rain and shone on gravel a few steps ahead of the truck’s engine. Thunder rumbled.

“Could have taken the cruise,” Two-Trees said to himself. “Could have gone to someplace warm, someplace sunny. But no, it’s only October, you said. If you go now, you said, what are you going to do when it really gets cold? So you stay. And what do you get?”

At this time of year, he kept a small umbrella, a snow brush, and a folding shovel stacked between the driver’s seat and door. He wasn’t particularly north of anything, and it was the middle of fall, but in Halo County, if it was shorts and t-shirts one day in October, it was snow and misery the next. That night, it was a mix of everything: a late season thunderstorm with too much rain and the warning of an overnight frost to follow. Two-Trees opened the driver’s side door and poked the umbrella’s launch button with his thumb. The umbrella bloomed, and Two-Trees breathed a chute of grey air into what felt like a foggy night. Rain drummed on the umbrella.

He breathed in the scent of wet sumac, grass, old cornfield, and gravel.
Smells like home.

A uniformed officer ran up to the hooded man with the flashlight, who delivered orders in a tight, loud voice, reminding her that it wasn’t a detective’s job to reroute traffic from a crime scene. He made it clear to her that if one more person pulled over to the side of the road, the crime scene would be compromised, and it’d be her fault. The constable said
yes sir
throughout the rant, and at the end of it, she returned to her duties.

“What a shit-show,” the man said, as Two-Trees caught up. He adjusted the hood of his raincoat and aimed the flashlight on the gravel between them. Glasses reflected the light without betraying the eyes behind them. “Sorry about the weather.”

“Why?” Two-Trees asked. “Is it your fault?”

The other man laughed.

“Good, then I know who to send my dry cleaning bill to. Which way?”

“Up the hill, next to the ditch.” The detective shone the flashlight in the direction he proposed, and dead tail lights reflected the beam. There were half a dozen vehicles parked along the side of the road, and Two-Trees’ borrowed truck was the last in the line. At the head of the convoy was a white camper on loan from the local OPP detachment, which acted as the official CSI-mobile.

“Hell of a scene to try and keep dry,” said the man in the raincoat. “We’ve got the evidence tent set up already, but it’d been raining two hours before responding officers arrived on scene.”

“I can imagine,” Two-Trees said. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Detective Sergeant Gregor Buckle, OPP, out of Halo County.” They shook on it.

“You’re the lead detective?”

“No, that would be DS Palmer, Richard Palmer.”

“Seriously?” Two-Trees asked. “Richard Palmer?”

“And no, he doesn’t go by Dick.”

“That’s not what I meant. I used to work with a Richard Palmer when I was with the OPP, way back in the day. Gave up on that. Went to the Mounties. Gave up on that. Went freelance and got fat. Never looked back.”

“Cut your teeth in the OPP? Is that right, eh? Which detachment?”

There was something frank and good-humoured in the man’s voice, and Two-Trees didn’t see any reason to keep a secret. “Here. I was based out of Halo County almost as soon as I graduated out of Aylmer. This is probably the same head Dick I’ve dealt with in the past. If not, it’s his son.”

“No kidding. I thought your face was familiar.”

“I was here back in the early ’80s. Palmer’s the reason why I jumped ship.” Two-Trees shuddered against the cold and gloom. “And let me tell you, I’m having all sorts of déjà vu right now.”

Buckle looked confused and sceptical. “I’ve only been working here the last eight years. You been back since joining the Mounties?”

Two-Trees felt his heart trip.
Questions left unanswered beg more questions
, he thought. If he tried to keep it a secret, and if Buckle figured it out on his own, he’d assume Two-Trees had something to hide. Two-Trees would need allies. People who trusted him. People who’d open up to him.

“You remember the Pritchard Park murder?” Two-Trees asked. “About six years ago?”

Buckle raised his chin. “Oh that. You were called in to identify the . . . remains.”

What Two-Trees had seen at the lakeside park were remains, all right. There wasn’t enough left behind to be called a “body” or a “corpse.” And he’d been called in to do much more than identify the victim.

“Only bones by that point, what with the fire and all,” Two-Trees said.

Buckle nodded.

“What do we know about this victim?” Two-Trees asked, before Buckle could lead him further down memory lane.

“Not much so far.”

“Just the one victim?”

“We’re not a hundred percent sure of that either.”

“Mother of God.”

“You’ll see what I mean in a minute,” said Buckle. “But why leave the Mounties?”

“Better pay, whenever I do get paid,” Two-Trees answered, “but I miss the benefits.”

“Health and dental?”

“Vacations,” Two-Trees said. His companion said
ah
and nodded rainwater from his hood.

“Could’ve gotten tenure at a university, no?” Buckle asked.

“And wipe undergrad asses all day? Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Something to be said about being your own boss, though,” Buckle said. He pointed at Two-Trees’ ponytail, as if chiding him for abandoning the Mountie dress code. “For one, if you don’t feel like working one day or the other, you don’t have to.”

“You serious? You’ve never been self-employed.”

“Nope.”

“Forensic anthropology isn’t something you want to have a lot of business in. You don’t get called into work until one or more people have died. And usually they die in bulk, five minutes after you’ve booked your all-inclusive. But until they die in a miserable, horrible fashion, you can’t pay the damned rent. It’s a hell of a way to live.”

“Well, all the same,” Buckle said, “we’re glad to have you around. We’re usually pretty self-sufficient, but this one . . .” Buckle shook his head. He pointed to the evidence tent, which was illuminated from within by spotlights. “God, I wish this wasn’t my first X-File type case. I was assigned to Pritchard Park, too. You’re not the only one suffering déjà vu today. ” He pointed to a slick-looking pair of wooden planks that were supposed to serve as a bridge over the ditch. Black rainwater galloped over the bent weeds. If he trusted his own tread, Two-Trees would have leapt the water and saved himself the risk of embarrassment from sliding off plywood into ass-deep ice water. “I mean, I’ve seen a hell of a lot in my career, but this one takes the cake.”

With his umbrella held high, Two-Trees crossed the plywood like a tight-rope walker. “What, you think it’s aliens?” he joked.

“I don’t know what else to call it.”

“A suspicious death.”

“Suspicious!” Buckle scoffed. He was slightly shorter than Two-Trees, though an easy fifty pounds lighter. Two-Trees was well over six feet tall, and the broad-shouldered physique of his youth had been bloated by a steady diet of soft, sugary, gas station food. Buckle seemed to have a nervous energy that burned away fat and kept his reflexes jerky. When Buckle approached the tent flap, shafts of light shone on high cheekbones, sunken but scalpel-sharp eyes, a pinched nose, and lofty eyebrows arched over his wire-framed glasses. He held open the flap for Two-Trees, and pointed the way with the lit flashlight. “You go in and tell me how suspicious it is.”

They’d covered a large surface area, maybe ten paces in all directions, and under the tent they’d kept the stained ground more or less sheltered from the storm outside. Two-Trees collapsed his umbrella and stood at the very perimeter of the tent, taking in the whole scene before setting a foot onto potential evidence. Spotlights warmed the humid air, and Buckle’s glasses quickly steamed up; he took them off and put them in his suit jacket pocket. He had a slightly Asian look about his eyes, which were as black as hematite, and they had a habit of flicking from view to view, as if he was taking a thousand close-up snapshots of the environment and of the people around him.
This is a man who knows what to look for in a crime scene, and how to look for it.
“Watch your step,” Buckle said. “This area’s already been trampled by witnesses and the responding officers.” Buckle took Two-Trees’ umbrella out of courtesy, allowing Two-Trees to free up both hands.

In the centre of the scene, there was a mound covered in a white cloth. Near the far left corner, there was another. Near Two-Trees’ shoe, there was a third. Near the right tent wall was a technician dressed in a flimsy-looking white hazmat jumpsuit. She was fixing the sheet over a fourth form.

Two-Trees sniffed back the dew forming in his nostrils, and immediately regretted it. Whatever he was looking at hadn’t been decomposing for long, but it was definitely dead, and it was definitely wet. “Which one am I looking at?” He had to raise his voice over the sound of rain on the thick, rip-stop plastic of the tent tarp.

“Depends on where you want to start.” Buckle signalled to the crime scene technician, who came over obligingly. “How about we start in the middle?” The technician in the hazmat suit followed Buckle’s line of sight, and she lifted the corresponding sheet for them.

There were four deep gouges in the earth, drawn down toward the body. They were tracks made by desperate fingers. The fingers were still in the grooves, attached to a muddy, bruised, swollen right hand. The left hand had been flung far forward, and those fingers were hooked into the earth as desperately as those of the right. It was as if the headless, legless torso had died while crawling away.

Two-Trees tilted his head and carefully stepped to one side.
Horror movie special effects,
he thought. His startle reflex may have been tweaked too high, but when it came to a gross-out, he could deal with it.
Sausage casings filled with stained foam chips,
he imagined.
Some ballistics gel, red dye, and body paint on a latex dummy.
Most times, his mental fake-out worked. If he looked at a crime scene, believing it was a Hollywood re-enactment, he was in the clear.

Two-Trees was accustomed to the smell of spilled blood, but it was the smell of rotting pork and evacuated bowels that made him nauseated. It was a stink that would stick to everything, rain or no rain.

This was no dummy nor prop. It was a human torso, decapitated, severed at the waist, and from the rib cage down, the intestines had fallen out, and they were clogged with partially digested food.

I wonder how far away the scavengers are.

“You all right?” Buckle asked.

“I’ve smelled worse.”

“Yeah, but have you
seen
worse?”

“You mean, since Pritchard Park? Actually . . . yes. But not often.”

The biceps and triceps of the cadaver had been shredded to the point of allowing broken bones to show through. The forearms were bruised and sliced, but not to the same extent as the upper arms. The torso had been lying chest down, and the neck was nothing but a bloody, boneless tube of loose skin.

In that moment, Two-Trees swore he’d never stuff another turkey.

“Where’s the head?” Two-Trees asked. His voice was half an octave too high.

“That’s the only part unaccounted for,” Buckle replied. With the flashlight, he pointed at the bundle in the far left corner. “Remains of the left leg. Right leg is there by your foot. Pelvis over there.”

The intestines had been strung out behind the torso, as if they’d either been teased out when the pelvis and hips were removed, or as if the victim had left them behind while he crawled.

“Sex of the victim?”

“Male, we figure. Jury’s out.”

“Age? Wallet, license, library card, any identifying marks?”