Valentina was a blur and then was lost from sight.
He sighed and risked taking a few steps closer to the deputies. Maybe he could do some good by listening. They didn’t turn, but Shaved Head rested his hand on his holster. Green wanted to close his eyes again, but he couldn’t watch for pointed guns if he retreated to the comforting dark.
“Alright,” Shaved Head said. “I’ll be in the car.”
“Sounds good. I’m gonna walk that little field again. I don’t like that we haven’t found any paraphernalia. Gotta be ODs, but they must have chucked their kit someplace.”
Shaved Head looked back to the tree line.
“Hey, maybe don’t. Not solo. Let forensics do their job. They already looked. The toxicology report will find whatever there is to find.”
Ponytail smirked.
“Yes, Mother.”
Green moved like the air was molasses. There was a sensation of pushing through his own disbelief, wading hip-deep through his mind’s need to reject the scene around him.
He turned and moved toward the van.
It was idling near the front steps of the little cabin.
A tired-looking woman sat in the driver’s seat, tapping at her phone.
The man in scrubs leaned over the hood, scribbling something on a clipboard.
Green rounded to the back and flinched when he registered the van’s contents.
Two gurneys. One empty. One holding a sheet-draped body.
He knew three bodies were found.
Why weren’t they taken away all at once?
Up close, the white van didn’t look very official. The back bumper had once been chrome, but rust gnawed away its shine. The broadside panel was dented in around an impact that left a scuffed crescent of missing paint. It looked like somebody hit it with a sledgehammer. Maybe the department didn’t have money for repairs or maybe this wasn’t the sort of vehicle anybody was supposed to see anyway.
Green walked up to the rear. The doors hung wide like reaching arms. A single yellowjacket crawled along the hem of a thin white sheet pouring over the edge of the occupied gurney.
In the unreality of the moment, the shrouded body seemed to be a whirlpool tugging the little ship of his attention nearer. He was there to look. He needed to look. What could be more important to see than this?
Green swallowed, teetering on the edge of the whirlpool.
Mechanically, he forced himself to step up into the back of the van. It felt twenty degrees colder inside. The yellowjacket retreated, grazing his ear with a faint whine like a distant motor.
He paused.
“Valentina?”
His voice was a hoarse whisper.
There was no answer.
He moved to the head of the body and reached for the sheet. It was tucked beneath the figure and fought with him as he worked to peel it aside.
Don’t they have body bags in the cop shows?
The sheet came away.
There was the young woman with the mint coat he’d seen at the Count and Countess station on the night he’d arrived. Her blond hair was plastered over one eye. Her lower lip protruded, frozen at an odd angle, exposing white teeth and a line of pink gums. The tops of her ears and the tip of her nose looked stained with ink.
