Light from Her Mirror (Mirrors Don't Lie Book 3) (32 page)

Madison,
however, had always found that sanity was over-rated. Ignoring the bile that
rose in her throat, she took tiny sips of air through her mouth and steeled
herself to the task that must be done.

To
keep her mind off the mutilated mass just feet away, Madison tried to
concentrate on something else. She wondered what the twins were doing. It was
still mid-morning, so they would probably be in their shared Science Lab about
now, or maybe in their respective classes of English Lit and Algebra. Didn’t
Bethani have a math test today? Madison worried that her daughter’s grades were
slipping. The move had been hard on the fifteen-year-old, especially after
losing the father she so adored. Blake seemed to be adjusting better than his
sister was, but with boys, it was often hard to tell. Not for the first time,
Madison felt the swell of insecurity wash over her, making her question herself
and her decision to move back to her hometown.

“There,
that should do it.” The firefighter’s satisfied grunt brought Madison from her
musings and back to the situation at hand.

Without
thinking, Madison glanced over at the body they protected. After so carefully
avoiding the sight since her initial discovery —and even then she had not
looked at his face— this one careless action was a brutal and cruel slap of
reality that brought Madison up short. With no chance to brace herself to the
sight before her, she was less than a foot away from the distorted flesh that
slipped from Ronny Gleason’s face. One unseeing eye stared straight up at the
ceiling; the other had been pecked out by the chickens, leaving a bloodied,
empty socket in its place. His mouth gaped open and was a festering place for
dozens of swarming flies and beetles and maggots. The skin of his neck was
ripped from a hundred sharp claws marching over it, and what was once his
Adam’s apple was now pecked clean.

Horrified,
Madison jumped to her feet and whirled around. She slipped in the wet litter
beneath her feet and went down amid the chickens. Scrabbling for traction, she
used whatever she could find —chickens, the filth she lay in, a nearby feed
line— to push herself upright and get her feet beneath her once again. She ran
for the end door, stepping over and sometimes on the hapless chickens in her
path. She wrestled with the door that stood between her and freedom, finding
even the simple doorknob too difficult to manage in her hysteria.

When
the handle finally turned, Madison burst out into the gloriously fresh air and
gobbled it in with deep, greedy gulps. The cold air collided in her airway with
remnants of her breakfast, on its way up from her queasy stomach. As Madison
choked and gagged and gasped for air, the police finally arrived on scene.

***

Brash
deCordova pulled behind the fire truck, grateful that at least the VFD had
responded to the call in a timely manner. With his crew of exactly three
officers, himself included, the police department was stretched thin across the
connecting cities of Juliet and Naomi, collectively known as The Sisters. The
Volunteer Fire Department often filled in the gaping holes.

Okay,
so maybe the term
cities
was a bit presumptuous, he acknowledged to
himself. Even thrown together, the population of the two towns barely scraped
two thousand. Admittedly, he was not chief of a thriving metropolis, but there
were plenty enough residents to keep his job interesting and his hours long.
And according to Vina, his ever-efficient clerk and the best department
coordinator he had ever known, the arrival of the area’s newest three citizens
bumped the department into a new category that qualified them for additional
state funding. The dream of having a fourth officer might finally become a
reality and take some of the workload off his over-stressed team.

Dreaming
aside, Brash had work to do. Never mind that he worked last night’s shift and
should be sleeping right now. A minor wreck along the highway tied up Officer
Perry, as well as most of the fire department. Officer Schimanski was
responding to a report of a suspicious person lurking around The Gold and
Silver Exchange. Which left him to respond to the report of an unattended death
here at Gleason’s Poultry Farm.

Just
a few hundred feet to the north
, he mused as he stepped into the dank
and putrid interior of the chicken house. Then the farm would fall under the
county’s jurisdiction. But no, last year’s re-districting of the Naomi city
limits —a blatant and obvious effort to outrank their rival town’s population—
landed the farm within his responsibilities. So much for a nap.

Even
with the lights turned up, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the
interior lighting. Over the tops of fluffy white feathers and through the haze
of dust that seemed to always inhabit the houses, Brash could see a figure at
the back of the long structure. Judging from the rig outside, his guess was
Cutter Montgomery.
A good kid
, the police chief thought,
always ready
and eager to help.
Let’s see what he found this time.

Halfway
down the house, Brash decided being an over-worked, under-paid, sleep-deprived
public servant was still a far sight better than being a chicken farmer. Even
without the smell, the noisy din of thousands of clucking birds was enough to
drive him to drinking. A few more feet, and he got a whiff of another kind of
odor. The undeniable stench of death immediately reminded him that his own
career was hardly glamorous.

“What
have we got?” he called out when he came within hearing range of the other man.

Cutter
Montgomery turned to acknowledge the officer’s presence. “Ronny Gleason. At
least, I think that’s who it is. Kind of hard to tell, considering.”

Stepping
over the fence with an easy stride, Brash deCordova crouched beside the badly
damaged body. Using the antenna of his hand-held radio, he gingerly pushed and
pulled at the dead man’s shirt, trying to determine if there were any obvious
signs of foul play. No bullet holes, but slashes from a knife could be easily
confused with slashes from chicken claws.

“I’d
say it’s definitely Ronny,” he agreed as he eyed the body. “Good idea with the
fence, by the way, even though the damage has already been done. So who found
the body?”

“New
worker.” With a thumb, he motioned toward the end door which still stood ajar.
“Losing her breakfast, as we speak.”

“Her?”

“Yeah,
but to give her credit, she hung in there longer than I expected. She’s been a
real trooper, helping me section off this area and keeping the birds away. I
know a lot of men who couldn’t have done what she did.”

“You’d
need an iron stomach, that’s for sure,” Brash muttered. He lifted his wrist to
his nose and breathed against it, hoping to dilute the reek of death laced with
ammonia and wet litter. He could not recall ever smelling something quite so
repulsive. Ignoring his own stomach’s protest, he studied the body for a few
moments longer. “As far as I know, Ronny was in good health. How old do you
figure he was?”

The
fireman shrugged. “I think he was younger than my dad, so late forties, maybe?
About your age, I’d say.”

Brash
pulled to his feet and did his best to stare down at the younger man. Given the
fact they were both within an inch of six feet tall, the attempt was not as
effective as he hoped. He resorted to a glare. “Just how old do you think I am,
boy?”

Unfazed,
the younger man grinned cockily. “Old enough to consider me a boy.”

“I
don’t even qualify for mid-forties,” Brash grumbled. Forty-two was still the
early forties, was it not?

“No,
but I could still hear your knee pop, even over all this racket,” Cutter quipped.

“Perils
of playing football.”

“I
know. My old man pops the same way.”

Brash
pretended to scowl as he stepped over the fence.
And with no popping joints
,
he was proud to note. “Don’t forget your old man can still whip your ass, boy,”
Brash informed the younger man. He felt the need to defend the great Tag
Montgomery. After all, Tag had been not only his hero, but also his mentor.
Between the two of them, they still claimed most of the standing records for
The Sisters Fighting Cotton Kings. For good measure, he threw out another
warning. “And so could I.”

Cutter
Montgomery merely laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Exerting
his authority, Brash got in the last word. “You stay with the body; I’ll go
talk to the witness.”

But
as the police chief walked away, the younger man called after him. “Fine by
me,” the fireman insisted affably. “I guess the smell doesn’t bother the
younger generation near as much as it does you old folks.”

Madison
swiped the back of her hand across her mouth as she knelt at the edge of the
white rock road. Tears stung her eyes and her stomach burned, but she thought
the worst of it was over. Surely, there was nothing left in her stomach to
heave.

She
heard the crunch of footsteps on the driveway behind her. Hurriedly wiping her
face and righting her filthy and crumbled t-shirt, she struggled to her feet.
The Montgomery boy had been more than tolerant of her so far, but she knew she
had to pull herself together. The police would be here soon, but with any luck
she would be long gone before the Chief showed up. She didn’t want to see her
high school crush for the first time in twenty years, looking like this.

“Ma’am?”
That was not Cutter Montgomery’s deep voice rumbling close behind her. “Ma’am,
I understand you were the one to find the body. Could I have a few words with
you?”

The
police must have arrived. She hadn’t heard the sirens because she was too busy
purging her body of the lining of her stomach. Remembering the peppermint in
her pants pocket, Madison slipped the morsel into her mouth as she nodded and
turned around.

She
practically choked on the mint when she saw the man standing before her. As she
sputtered and coughed ungracefully, Madison gazed into the soulful brown eyes
of none other than Brash deCordova, the boy she had loved from afar in high
school.

“Ma’am?
Are you all right?” he asked in concern.

With
her face so blotchy and red, Madison was grateful he did not recognize her.
After all, he had hardly given her a second glance in school. Three years her
senior, he was king of the high school when she schlepped in as a lowly
freshman. Why should he suddenly recognize her now, after all these years?

Madison
coughed one last time. “I will be,” she insisted, her voice coming out ragged
and hoarse.

“I’m
Chief of Police deCordova, ma’am, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.
Would you be more comfortable sitting in the patrol car?”

She
managed a stiff shake of the head. “I’m fine.”

Brash
reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small notebook. Madison could
not help but notice he had nice hands, fingers all long and lean. Always
athletic in high school, he still had a good, solid physique, with no pudginess
around the middle. His dark russet hair was as thick as ever, but there were
now a few fine strands of silver woven in here and there. It gave him a
distinguished look.
And my word!
The man was as good-looking as ever,
maybe even more so now.

“Ma’am?”
Apparently she had missed something he said, because he looked at her in
concern, waiting for her answer to the unknown question.

“I’m
sorry, what did you say?”

“I
understand that you’re a little shaken up, ma’am. I’ll try to make this as
brief as possible. Could you walk me through what happened this morning? How
did you come to find Mr. Gleason’s body?”

Madison
pushed a limp strand of hair from her forehead, inadvertently leaving a streak
of dirt or worse in its wake. Even before falling, she was covered in dust,
grime, and questionable chicken substances. After the fall, there was little
question as to what covered most of her legs from the knee down, one elbow, and
patches of her sweat-drenched shirt. Even to her own nose, she reeked. What
difference did a splatter or two of vomit matter at this point?

Yet
as horrible as her own body smelled, she feared she might never cleanse the
stench of dead flesh from her nose’s membranes. Shivering, Madison pulled her
thoughts together and began the arduous task of reliving her horrendous
morning.

“Mr.
Gleason hired me to walk houses for him while he was away this week. I came by
a couple of days last week to learn the ropes before he left. He-”

“Excuse
me. Hate to interrupt, but do you know where he was supposed to be going this
week?”

“Uhm,
deep-sea fishing. Out of Galveston, I think.”

Scribbling
in his notebook, he glanced up for only a second. “Any idea who he was going
with?”

Madison
shook her head. When she realized he had returned his gaze to the notebook, she
verbalized her answer. “No idea.”

“Okay,
so you showed up today, ready to work. You knew where to find the keys?”