Page 8 of D for Dead

Beside him, Angell tried to disguise her snigger with a cough.

Vic hated Sullivan, Dixie asshole. He’d transferred up from Atlanta a few years back with his cocky, laid-back attitude and stupid cowboy accent and seemed to think he could slot right in.

Vic was a firm believer that outsiders had to earn their place; it had galled him to see Sullivan settling in with that easy way of his and making himself at home on Vic’s turf.

After the hellish last few hours all he needed was to have these two idiots laughing at him and questioning every word he was telling them.

The shock of landing in the grave had been bad enough, but when he realised there was a body in there with him he had panicked, and what with scrambling around in the dark and trying to get out of the muddy and slippery hole, it had taken an eternity to get back to the car. It wasn’t until he was back there and reaching for his keys that he realised they were missing. Cold dread had crept up his spine as it dawned on him they must have fallen from his pocket when he landed in the grave. He had looked longingly at his cell phone sitting on the dashboard inside the locked car. His clothes were uncomfortably damp and heavy with dirt and God knew what else, and he couldn’t go home until he’d reported the body.

Making a spur of the moment decision, he had used his elbow to break the driver’s window and retrieve his phone. Only to find out he didn’t have a signal. Cursing loudly he had wandered up and down the road holding his cell at all different angles, praying for a couple of bars. Just one would have done.

But nothing.

Grim realisation set in. He had two choices: walk back to town or go retrieve his keys.

Had he known the second option would result in a half-an-hour mud wrestle with a corpse and still not produce any keys, he would have started the walk back to town straightaway.

But he hadn’t.

It had been nearing five, with the sun already rising, when a mud-caked Victor Boaz had finally managed to wave down a car on the road leading back into the city and raise the alarm.

When he finally got back to his apartment he promised himself a well-deserved beer and the longest, hottest shower ever.

‘It was dark,’ he pointed out to Sullivan. ‘I couldn’t see where I was going.’

‘So I see.’

‘What were you doing in a church graveyard in the middle of the night in the first place?’ Angell asked, still sounding incredulous.

Mrs Michaels answered before Vic had a chance. He was noticing she had an annoying habit of doing that.

‘Officer Boaz was in charge of setting up for this morning’s service and he decided to get here early.’

She left out that he had been planning to go home after setting up, probably because Vic hadn’t told her that bit. He had led her and the pastor to believe he had wanted to get to the church early to make sure he did a good job.

By now Angell was barely hiding her amusement at the situation. ‘I didn’t have you pegged as a churchgoer, Vic.’

He was saved further embarrassment by the pathologist, who was standing over by the open grave and now called to Angell and Sullivan.

Sullivan waved back to him before turning to Vic. ‘You stay here and munch on those cookies, okay? We’ll be back with some questions in a bit.’

Watching the detectives cross the graveyard, Vic mumbled a few choice swear words through his mouthful.

* * *

Jake’s first thought on seeing the body in the grave was that whoever had inflicted the injuries had been in a hell of a rage. It didn’t help that Boaz had messed up the crime scene by landing on the body, smearing blood and mud everywhere, but nonetheless, the stab wounds were apparent and there were a lot of them.

The kid in the grave could have been wearing a Halloween costume. Dark hair, eyes open in terror in a ghoulish face drained of colour, except for the crust of dry blood running from his left nostril down to his top lip.

The pathologist, Greg Withers, had arrived on the scene about fifteen minutes before Jake and Rebecca. A burly man, still in good shape, he was fast approaching retirement and was familiar with both detectives from numerous cases they had worked on. He filled them in on what he knew so far.

The guy was young, probably late teens, and had taken the first stab wound to the chest probably before falling into the grave. Judging from the amount of blood, the wound hadn’t been fatal, and the killer had climbed down to finish the job. The death wound had most likely been the one to the throat.

The ground underfoot was still wet, the rain having only stopped an hour or so ago, and the air was fresh with the damp fragrance of flora.

Rebecca walked round the grave. ‘Poor kid. Not a nice way to go.’

Jake thought of his own nephews back home. Cody and Travis were about the same age. He imagined his sister’s reaction if this had happened to either of them. This kid had a family