Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,14
all bitten off. That’s not a common twist.” He picked up the evidence bag with the tongue and held it up as if Michael hadn’t seen it plenty last night. “I’d have to say in all my years doing this job, I’ve never run across anything similar. Bite marks, yes. I always say if you want scientific proof that we have evolved from animals, you need only look at the average rape victim.” Pete placed the tongue beside Monroe’s arm. “Bite marks were all over her breasts and shoulders. I counted at least twenty-two. It’s a base instinct, I suppose, to bite during a vicious attack. You see dogs and big cats do it in the wild.” He chuckled. “I cannot tell you how many nipples I’ve seen bitten off. Five or six instances of the clitoris being severed. One finger…” He smiled at Michael. “If only these monsters had horns. It would be so much easier finding them.”
Michael did not like the way the doctor was looking at him, and he sure as hell didn’t want to hear his opinions on sexual predators. He said, “Tell Trent I’m downstairs when he’s finished yapping on the phone.”
He left through the emergency exit, taking the steps at a full trot. His instinct was to get into his car and leave Trent with his thumb up his ass, but he wasn’t about to fuck around with the guy. Even if Greer didn’t call him on it, Michael knew better than to make an enemy of the well-dressed asshole from the GBI.
“Where’s the fire?” Leo asked. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs smoking a cigarette.
“Give me one,” Michael said.
“Thought you quit.”
“You my mother?” Michael reached into Leo’s shirt pocket and took the pack.
Leo clicked the lighter and Michael took a deep drag. They were on the garage level of the building. The odor of car exhaust and rubber was overwhelming, but the cigarette smoke burning through Michael’s nostrils cut the smell.
“So,” Leo began. “Where’s fucknuts?”
Michael let out a stream of smoke, feeling the nicotine calm him. “Upstairs with Pete.”
Leo scowled. Pete had banned him from the morgue after a predictably ill-timed joke. “I went down to Records.”
Michael squinted past the smoke. “Yeah?”
“Will Trent’s file is sealed.”
“Sealed?”
Leo nodded.
“How do you get your file sealed?”
“Got me.”
They both smoked for a minute, silent in their thoughts. Michael looked down at the floor, which was covered with cigarette butts. The building was strictly nonsmoking, but telling a bunch of cops they couldn’t do something was like telling a monkey not to throw its shit.
Michael asked, “Why’d Greer call him in? Him specifically, I mean. This SCAT team, whatever the fuck it is.”
“Greer didn’t call him.” Leo raised his eyebrows like he was enjoying the mystery. “Trent was sitting in his office when Greer got to work.”
Michael felt his heart start beating double time in his chest. The nicotine was getting to him, making him light-headed. “That’s not how it works. The state boys can’t just come in and take over a case. They have to be asked in.”
“Sounded to me last night like Greer was gonna ask him anyway. What’s the big deal how it came down?”
“Never mind.” Despite Leo’s disgusting people skills, the man knew a lot of people on the force. He had made an art out of developing contacts and could usually get the dirt on anybody.
Michael asked, “You able to find out anything about him?”
Leo shrugged, winking his eye against the smoke from his cigarette. “Sharon down in Dispatch knows a guy who dated a girl he worked with.”
“Christ,” Michael hissed. “Next you’re gonna tell me you gotta friend who knows somebody who’s gotta friend who—”
“You wanna hear or not?”
Michael bit back what he really wanted to say. “Go.”
Leo took his time, rubbing his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, taking a drag, then letting it out slow. Michael was two seconds from throttling him when Leo finally provided, “The news is that he’s a good cop. Doesn’t make a lot of friends—”
“No shit.”
“Yeah.” Leo chuckled, then coughed, then smacked his lips like he was swallowing it back down.
Michael looked at the cigarette in his hand, his stomach turning.
Leo paused, made sure he had Michael’s attention. “He’s got an eighty-nine percent clearance rate.”
Michael felt sick, but not because of the smoke. In its infinite wisdom, the Federal government had called for measuring the clearance rate—the number of solved cases—in each police agency so that some pencil pusher in Washington could