Jupiter's Bones (19 page)

Marge stood at
the mouth of the nearly invisible driveway, a flashlight in her hand. It was a smart thing to do. Otherwise Decker would have missed the turnoff. He slowed, then stopped the unmarked: She opened the passenger door and slid inside. “You made good time.”

Decker checked his watch. Five after ten. “One hour, five minutes.”

“How fast were you going, Lieutenant?”

“None of your business. Who’s minding the store?”

“Oliver’s watching Pluto and his henchman.” She caught her breath. “Henchman in the literal sense. His name is Benton. He whacks the heads off chickens. When I met up with him, he was covered in blood. Right now, he’s cuffed to a post. With me down here, Oliver couldn’t keep watch over him and Pluto…who, by the way, is screaming about civil liberties. But there’s not much fire in his smoke.”

Gingerly, Decker pushed down the gas pedal and the car crawled forward. Gravel churned underneath the tires. “Let me see if I understood you. You were about to check out the ranch house, but you saw a pool of blood in the middle of the living room.”

“And bloody shoe tracks.”

“Recent?”

“Still sticky.”

“The thing is you don’t know if the blood’s avian or human.”

“Exactly.”

“And Benton says it’s chicken blood.”

“Naturally.” She stared out the windshield and into blackness. “And he has been killing chickens. Say I buy that he tracked some shit into the house. It’s his explanation for the puddle that’s lame.”

“Which is?”

“He was bringing the pail of blood into the house, he stumbled and part of the bucket’s contents spilled.”

Decker said, “Well, golly, it happens to me all the time.”

Marge chuckled. But her mood wasn’t humorous.

“And did he tell you
why
he was bringing a pail of
blood
into his house?”

She wrinkled her nose. “He was bringing it into the kitchen to mix it with chicken stock, which he makes fresh from chicken bones. He says it makes a nutritious base for the Order’s soups and stews.”

“Yum,” Decker said wryly. But that was his bias showing. Jewish dietary laws forbade the consumption of any type of blood. Even so, Decker ate liver, which was pretty damn sanguine.

“If he’s telling the truth I’m going to look real stupid,” Marge said. “Not to mention the fact that I ruined your evening.”

“You did the right thing to call me.”

“I sincerely
hope
I’m wrong. Who wants to be right? With that little girl missing…” She pointed into the dark. “Toward the left, Pete.”

Decker nudged the steering wheel as the auto inched up the charcoal pathway. “Tell me about Benton.”

“A big man with a blocky build. Concrete sort of guy. I think he’s mentally slow. He didn’t talk much.”

“Pluto acted as the mouthpiece?”

“You got it.”

“The guru was outraged?”

Marge considered the question. “To me, he looked surprised. I doubt that he spends any time indoors here, although he was aware that the house was a disaster zone.”

“How would he know that if he hasn’t been inside recently?”

“Maybe he knows Benton’s forte isn’t housekeeping. Because right before I went inside, he told me it was infested with rats and insects. I thought he was trying to scare me off. Remember, he was the one who protested our coming up. Still, he didn’t seem nervous when I went inside.” Marge’s voice faded. “It was a good-sized puddle…”

“Dark as sin out here,” Decker whispered. Quiet, too, but not restful. The stillness smothered gently like a down pillow. “How much farther?”

“About another half-mile. The houselights should come into view just around the bend.”

“I take it you haven’t called the locals?”

“Since you insisted on coming up even though I told you
not
to—”

“I came because I wanted to, Margie. No discredit to your professionalism.”

He sounded tense. She asked, “Everything okay at home, Pete?”

“Been better. Anyway, I’ll give the place a quick once-over. If the locals need to be called, I’ll do it.”

Rounding a curve, Decker saw lights, then a structure. The one-story ranch was
beyond
run-down. It was a shanty. As he neared it, he saw a hulking figure manacled to a slanted, square porch pillar. Next to it was a small shadow pacing back and forth. Decker parked.

Pluto was at the door before Decker was even out of the car. “If you think you can get away with this kind of blatant abrogation of civil rights—”

“Sir, do you want to wienie wag or do you want to get out of here?” Decker exited the car and loomed over the little man. “I can make this a very long evening for you, Brother Pluto. It’s up to you.”

Pluto’s eye twitched. “Lieutenant, must you keep him handcuffed? You’d treat a dog better than that!”

Decker regarded Benton’s wall-like shadow. “He’s a big guy.”

“I’ll take responsibility for him,” Pluto said.

“Nice but your responsibility won’t do squat if he lashes out.”

“Can’t we reach some kind of compromise?” The guru seemed genuinely concerned for Benton’s well-being.

Decker exhaled. “Wait here.” He stepped aside and called Oliver over. “If I assign Pluto to Marge, can you handle that one by yourself?” He cocked a thumb in Benton’s direction. The man was brick-solid.

“No problemo.”

“He’s muscle-packed, Detective. He could take you down in a snap. He could probably take me down and I got forty pounds and four inches on you.”

“I hear you. I’ll be careful.”

Again, Decker eyed the farmhand. Leaning against the post, he showed no overt signs of aggressive behavior. But how quickly that could change. “Go uncuff him. I’ll cover you just in case he turns rabid. If he behaves, bring him over.”

Without hesitation, Oliver walked over to Benton and removed the handcuffs. The farmhand shook out his hands, then massaged his wrists.

Within moments, they began to approach. Scott was walking and Benton was loping. The farmhand had a square face with cheeks roughened by beard growth. His clothes were dirty and spangled with bits of feathers and viscera. His leathery hands were calloused and streaked with blood. He kept his arms at his sides. He smelled rank.

Decker asked, “How are you doing, sir?”

Benton’s focus remained on the ground. “Better now that you got them things offa me.”

“Are your wrists okay?”

The farmhand nodded, eyes on his feet.

To Oliver, Decker said, “Go help Detective Dunn with
Brother Pluto. I want to be alone with Mr. Benton for a moment.”

Oliver gave him an official,
yes, sir
, and was off. Decker took out a pocket tape recorder and turned it on, identifying himself and Benton into the small built-in mike. “You don’t mind if I use this, do you? It’s for your protection.”

“Don’t need no protecting.”

“Do you know why I’m here, Benton?”

“Yes I do.”

“I want to look inside your house—”

“It’s not my house.”

“Well, I want to look inside that house.” Decker pointed to the hovel. “Is that okay with you?”

The farmhand shrugged. He reminded Decker of those Roger Hargreaves children’s books—the ones with the simplistic names. Hannah had a few of them:
Mr. Busy, Mr. Tall
and
Mr. Funny
. Benton would have been Mr. Square.

“Do you have any idea what I’m going to find inside?” Decker asked.

The big man’s eyes narrowed. “Yer gonna find the chicken blood. I’ve been slaughterin’ chickens. I tole the lady that. I also tole her that my pail tipped over when I tripped. But she don’t believe me.”

“No one’s saying you’re lying. But I still have to investigate.”

Silence.

Decker broke it. “So you don’t care if I go inside and poke around?”

“Suit yourself.”

“Be careful before you answer me,” Decker told him. “Because if you say the wrong thing, it’s down here on tape. It could come back to get you.”

The farmhand was quiet.

Decker said, “Like if you think you might need a lawyer, Benton, I can get one for you.”

“Don’t need no lawyer.” The ranch hand spoke defiantly. “Don’t need no lawyer ’cause I didn’t do nothin’.”

A single ceiling bulb washed the room in a bilious pall. The smell was sharp and sour. As Decker crossed the threshold, the floorboards creaked beneath his weight and were sticky under his shoes. Once inside, it was as stuffy as a gym shoe—wet and warm and fetid. Yellowed walls were streaked by dirty rainwater from an obviously leaky roof. Decker could make out the sky through some of the bigger holes. Flies and gnats buzzed overhead, circling the dusty bulb and reveling in its illumination. One got too close and was fried on the spot. It dropped like a lead pellet, Decker’s eyes following the fall. It joined its compatriots in a mass grave; dead insects had littered a floor encrusted with grime and spoiled foodstuffs. Whatever wasn’t saturated with dirt was caked with grease. In the center of the trash heap sat a brown couch belching out stuffing. In front of the sofa lay an oval floor mat of blood that faded into shoe tracks of the mahogany whirls. The queasy knot inside Decker’s gut erupted into full-blown nausea.

Marge said, “This was as far as I got. As soon as I saw that”—she pointed to the bloody pond—“I called Scott over.”

Decker spotlighted the sanguine pool. He stared at the floor for about a minute. “It’s not that big. Spill marks around the sides. See all the feathering around the perimeter? That happens when wood starts to soak liquid—in this case, the blood in the center puddle. If this had been the kill spot, we would have seen more blood, spray and vapor…some spewing onto the couch. What I’m looking at is consistent with something pouring down and splashing back up on the floor. As opposed to a live body with a pumping vessel or a dead body leaking blood onto the floor.”

“So you think Benton tripped with the bucket?”

“Depends on if the blood’s human. Then we ask what he was doing with a bucket of human blood.”

He arced the flashlight across the dung-colored walls. Repeated the sweep several times.

“Don’t see any massive blotches of bloody spray.”

Looking over his shoulder, he peered through the open door frame and into the darkness. He could make out Pluto’s pacing shadow. Oliver was leaning against one of the porch’s pillars. It was a wonder that it didn’t collapse under his weight. He had his eyes fixed on Benton, who sat on a porch step, resembling a lump of granite.

Decker was soaked in the sweat of mental and physical exhaustion. “I’ll take it from here. Go back and watch Pluto. That’ll let Oliver concentrate on Benton.”

“I won’t argue with you.” Marge raised her eyebrows. “Good luck.”

Red swirls of shoe tracks led Decker to a stuffy, humid kitchen. Strewn across the countertop were a dozen chicken carcasses—all of them fully feathered and headless, their windpipes dripping rivulets of blood that ran down the cabinet doors and onto the floor. A kitchen table held baskets of fresh eggs. A small stove held a simmering cauldron. Decker gloved his hands, walked over to the pot and lifted the lid.

A murky soup swimming with bits of chicken and bone. Globules of blood were floating on the top. He grimaced and returned the lid.

Water from the tap was pouring into the sink. Decker turned off the spigot. The basin was filled halfway with bright red liquid—the same unnatural hue found in maraschino cherries and red dye fruit punch.

The stench became stronger, almost overwhelming. Decker took out some VapoRub and dabbed it under his nostrils.

Eyeing the top cupboards. No spray marks, no drips. Opening the doors…closing them. Cans of green beans, cans of tuna fish, cans of olives. A tin of sugar and a tin of coffee. A half dozen bottles of cheap beer. A bag of
unopened pretzels. Lots of bugs—mostly dead, but some were still squiggling.

The refrigerator contained a quart of fresh milk, a couple of red apples and a half-used package of flour tortillas. An open jar of mayonnaise, a jar of salsa, an opened can of olives and a plastic tube of mustard. The freezer was frosted over and empty.

Turning his attention to the under-the-counter cabinets, Decker ran the strong intense beam from his halogen flashlight across the bottom wooden frame. Lots of recent drip marks from the bleeding chickens on the counters above, these emanating from the top and running down the full length of the cabinet door.

Again, a quick sweep of the light, across the baseboard and bottom molding.

One quick pass, then another until he stopped midway, breaking into a deep, nervous sweat. His hand started to tremble. The flashlight’s beam was focused on fainter, parallel lines that started at the bottom of the one lone cabinet and dribbled down to the baseboard.

Pale but noticeable. Older marks, but not
old
. Drier…browner. The fact that they had started at the
bottom
of the cabinet meant they had been made by something stuffed
inside
the niche.

His stomach bucking, Decker stared at the telltale discolored furrows. The cabinet was too small to hold an adult. But if a child was small enough…

He wiped perspiration from his forehead and neck.

Bending down onto his knees.

The drone of buzzing flies.

The terrifying smell of rotten meat.

He tugged open the door. Immediately, semi-clotted blood poured out onto the floor as a black cloud of insects swarmed Decker’s face. Batting them away while trying not to swallow. He jerked backward at the sight and stench. He arose in a flash, tried to stand erect, but instead swooned, holding his balance while gripping the counter, his fingers sinking into the squishy flesh of a raw chicken.

Closing his eyes, trying to find something breathable in this blanket of putrid air. It was the smell more than the body that had caused his light-headedness. The corpse was indeed grotesque. But thank God, it wasn’t the kid.

He forced himself back down, again swatting the buzzing insects. In the back of his mind, Decker knew he was looking at an adult male. But it was hard to discern exactly what was what. Someone had managed to cram the entire body inside the cabinet. But it had been done literally piecemeal.