where they were until the crime scene techs arrived from the West Virginia State Police Forensic Laboratory.
Make it soon, Bell thought. For God’s sake, make it soon.
Small communities such as Acker’s Gap had no facilities, no personnel – and at the root of it all, no budget – to perform the kind of sophisticated, high-tech analysis that was standard procedure in modern forensics. They had to rely on the state. Which meant waiting their turn. Not even Buster Crutchfield, Raythune County coroner, could get down to business until the forensics team had signed off on it. This was a crime scene, and things had to be done the right way. Delicate sensibilities be damned.
One victim was sprawled across the tabletop. Another was faceup on the floor. Each head was angled in a small lake of blood and brain tissue.
A third man was trapped in his little plastic seat. He looked as if he were in the middle of a clumsy, halfhearted jumping jack, arms and legs spread, body caught in an improvised X. The upper half of his head was a red scramble. His jaw was slack, his mouth hanging open like a ladle on a peg.
Bell saw three knocked-over cardboard cups.
She smelled fresh coffee, stale grease, vomit, the astringent nose-prick of urine.
And she was aware, all over again, of how a violent act changes the atmosphere. She could even taste it: a hard, metallic tang brushed the back of her tongue. An extra pressure registered on her skin.
‘Mrs Elkins,’ a deputy said.
He nodded to her. He and two of his colleagues had arranged themselves in a ragged inadequate circle around the bodies, thumbs tucked into their heavy black belts. The deputies, two men and one woman, identical in their chocolate brown polyester uniforms and flat-brimmed hats, had no visible reaction to the horror that bloomed just inches from their shiny black boots. They had been trained well. They knew they could not so much as place a napkin over a victim’s ruined face, could not close a pair of staring eyes or pull down a rucked-up shirtfront, or the crime scene would be compromised. Everything had to be kept exactly as it was, which meant the dead men would have to remain on display, frozen in their last ghastly moment, for a while longer.
A man’s voice, clipped, stern, businesslike, order-dispensing, climbed above the other sounds. As she moved toward her daughter, Bell’s eyes shifted briefly in that direction. The uniformed man, clearly in charge of things, stood by the tall glass wall. His left hand was cupped around the back of his neck. His right hand was raised to a point level with his mouth. Talking sharply into the radio lodged in his big curved palm was Sheriff Nick Fogelsong.
Bell nodded at him. He nodded back.
Just before Bell had arrived, Carla Elkins found herself shuffling, zombielike, along with the pack being gently prodded by the deputies, her right thigh bumping against the rounded edge of each little beige table as she moved. She felt as if she were in shock – not the dangerous medical kind where they have to slap you or give you a shot, but the kind in which everything . . . slows . . . down . . . and noises come bouncing at you in big round soft blobs, like colored balloons. Yellow and green and purple and orange. And red. Plenty of red.
She had never heard a grown man scream before, and so she kept sneaking glances at the guy with the goatee who shuffled along beside her. He was hunched over, shoulders shaking, head bobbing, and his screams were like squeals. Animal squeals. His hands were thrust out in front of him and fluttering wildly, with evident desperation, as if the fingers didn’t actually belong to him and he was trying to fling them away, one by one, the way you’d want to get rid of something disgusting. Carla was fascinated, and a little appalled.
Then she’d noticed that the gaudy decoration on Mr Goatee’s white cotton sweater was actually blood spray, with bits of what had to be brain – pinkish-gray stuff, like chopped-up chunks of pencil eraser – stuck there, too. He’d been sitting at a table right next to the one where the old guys sat, sucking on a chocolate shake, when it happened. He’d caught a chestful.
Well, Carla thought sheepishly, in that case, guess I’d be screaming, too.
She shivered. Then she heard a commotion at the door. One