Chapter 19

It didn't take forever for me to warm up again, but I most definitely let the Blazer run for a while, and heat up the interior, before I even thought of putting it in gear. Cecelia sat silently during the operation, huddled in the POLICE jacket on the passenger side staring out the windshield. What she might be staring at I couldn't tell – the way we were facing it could have been the church building, or it could have been the apartment complex where I'd lived when we met, which was just across the street, or it could have been the little shopping center – they call 'em strip malls these days – that sits on the northeast corner of Carlisle and Montgomery. I didn't interrupt her staring, nor her thoughts, whatever they were – I had my own thoughts jumbling around in my head.

When I felt finally like I was no longer hanging in a meat locker, I backed out of the slot I was in – I gave up the haphazard parking of cops at a crime scene long ago – and pulled out onto Carlisle, and then into the left turn lane, where I waited on the light. When it changed I turned onto Montgomery, heading east. The clock on the dash said it was after 10, and the sun had still been up when we arrived, and in winter when the sun sets early too. We'd been there for hours. But the cops had been there longer, and were still there, and quite probably would be there when the sun rose again.

"I shall never forget what I saw," Cecelia said suddenly into the silence.

"Not me neither. Though I didn't have dump sites for a serial murderer in mind when I talked about it, this was the ugliness that I didn't want you to see when you first started getting interested in detecting."

"I hear the unspoken offer to let me withdraw; no, you did not make it, for you said before we went to Red Hawk that you would not, and your word is reliable. But I know you well, beloved, and I therefore discern in what you did not say a willingness to release me from my duties at the agency, if I so desire." She took a breath. "The sight of that shredded corpse will always be with me – perhaps not with the strength that my memories of looking down the barrel of a gun posses, but I shall never forget what he looked like. Nevertheless, I am sufficiently strong – or perhaps it is simple adamantine obstinacy – to resist the impulse to flee. I may be many things, Darvin, but I am no coward; at least, I believe myself not to be craven, though I would not claim conspicuous bravery."

"You're right – if you wanted out, I'd let you go and no hard feelings. I remember my first corpse. Bodies don't bother me, never have, but I still remember – and this was a natural death. This was the first time for me, too, as far as the number of wounds and amount of blood. So I know something of what's going on inside your skull right now."

I suppose she nodded – it would have been typical of her – but I didn't see, for I was watching the road and the traffic. "I suppose you do; certainly I am able to predict your reactions more frequently than I used to be able to."

"Shoot, you been a mind reader almost since I met you."

"That charge merits the Scottish verdict – unproven."

"By which you admit it without admitting it."

Her chuckle was faint, but it was a chuckle. "I had intended no such thing, but I perceive that you're correct. So allow me to return the subject to where I began; you may wander across the landscape without recollecting your starting point, but I am not so lax. I shall, I say, remember Chief's body.

"And I shall devote myself to finding the person who did that."

"This ain't his first time, you know. He's knocked over other people before this."

"I know, but I did not witness their corpses. Yes, I looked out the window on the train – and that seems much longer ago than 10 days; did I not know better, I would swear it's been a year – but seeing a body from 30 feet in the air, or perhaps only 20, a body which is so dirty that the bloodstains are not grossly apparent, is not the same as being within half a yard of a body, and seeing blood which appears to not be completely stiffened."

"You're right, it wasn't. That was a fresh dump – he had to have put the body there last night, maybe even less than 24 hours ago. And you're also right that it's different."