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But I’d never known anything different. I’d grown up on Heresy Road, in an old Victorian that had been filled with miserable memories and rotting wood. When Jack and I had married, I’d moved two miles down the road to his place. The memories were much better and there was no rotting wood in sight. It had been a long time since the river had risen so high that we couldn’t cross the bridge to get home. It had maybe happened twice in my lifetime. I was hoping this wasn’t going to be a third.
All the parking spots were filled in front of the sheriff’s office, including Jack’s, and I had to park across the street at the courthouse. I grabbed my bag, double-checked to make sure the evidence was safely tucked inside, and I hurried across the street.
My speed didn’t matter much. It seemed I was going to live in a constant state of damp this spring. I squeezed between police cars and up the front steps to the big glass double doors emblazoned with King George County Sheriff’s Office in neat white letters.
The lobby area and waiting room were filled with people, all talking at various degrees of volume. It was pure chaos. There were deputies stationed by the interior doors that led to the bullpen and holding areas, and then there was Sergeant Hill sitting behind the Plexiglass partition, not ruffled by anything and as stoic as ever. His bushy mustache hardly twitched as he processed people in and took names for those waiting to make reports.
“Busy night,” I said, waving to Hill as I waited for the deputy to let me into the inner sanctum.
“Full moon,” he said. “We haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Comforting,” I said, thanking the deputy.
I walked down the short corridor that led to the bullpen and Jack’s office. It wasn’t any quieter in this part of the station, but the sounds were different. The phones were constantly ringing, cops were taking statements, and others were grabbing their coats and heading for the exit.
“Hey, Doc,” Durrant called out. “Crazy day, huh?”
“Hill says we haven’t seen anything yet,” I said.
“He should know,” Durrant said. “Hill’s dad is a priest and his mom is a voodoo priestess. He’s got the sight.”
“That would explain a lot about Hill,” I said.
“I think he gets the mustache from his mom,” Durrant said.
I grinned and detoured my way to the opposite end of the room where forensics was located. There was a gray door with a frosted-glass window, and across the window was the word FORENSICS in black block letters, only the O was slightly out of alignment and it always made me a little cross eyed to look at it.
I was hoping my favorite lab tech was on duty, but the forensics guys were kind of like mole people—they lived in the dark, came out at weird times of day, and people generally forgot they were there unless they needed them for something.
I stepped inside the cave and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. It smelled like burnt coffee, corn chips, and pineapple.
“Is Cheney in?” I asked.
There was a pale man hunched over a desk, looking at fingerprint samples. He was short and stocky and had a mop of black curly hair on top of his head. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. I didn’t know all of the crime scene techs, but I recognized most of them on sight. The forensics teams weren’t cops, so only a few of them were licensed to carry weapons. Which was probably a good thing.
“She’s back at her desk,” he said. “But she’s in a mood.”
“Everyone is today,” I said. “Why does it smell like pineapple?”
“Wojcinski likes pineapple on her pizza,” he said. “But Cheney made her go to the big breakroom instead of ours cause she said only communists eat pineapple on pizza and communists aren’t allowed in the forensics lab.”
“Good to know the rules,” I said, heading down to Cheney’s office.
Cindy Cheney reminded me of SpongeBob SquarePants. She was perfectly rectangular. Her mousy brown hair looked like it had been given a home haircut and her lips were pinched tight as she looked through a microscope.
I knocked on the frame of her door and she grunted. “I’ve got some things for you,” I said.
“If some of those things don’t include dinner for two at Patrizio’s and an ultimate spa day filled with sexual favors, then make an appointment for some time next week.”
“I can do Patrizio’s and a massage,” I told her. “You’ll have to ask Martinez about the sexual favors. That’s not my wheelhouse.”
“Wouldn’t matter anyway,” she said, pushing away from her desk. “I usually fall asleep during a massage anyway. I’m too old for all that other crap. Heard you caught the Hargrove case. That’s a shame he went out like that. My daughter had him in high school. He was a good man.”
This was high praise coming from Cheney. She wasn’t one to be overly complimentary.
“That’s what I want you to look at,” I said, handing over the labeled bag with the red flecks. “Found these embedded in parts of his skull. Lily thought they might have been scraped up by accident when they collected the rest of him from the scene.”
“I’ll take a look,” she said. “What’s all this other crap?”
