Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag

Author:Tami Hoag [Hoag, Tami]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

39

The search for Karly Vickers ceased to be the lead news story of the day. Word that skeletal remains had been found in the hog yard behind Gordon Sells’s salvage business shot through the media like a bolt of lightning. Mendez and Hicks had to fight through the crush of reporters and their support staff to get to the yellow-tape barrier.

The hogs were highly interested in the fuss and in the people in crime scene jumpsuits and knee-high rubber boots wading through their territory. They stood off to the side with individual members of the herd occasionally rushing toward the people, snorting bravado then rushing back to the safety of the group. Their squeals were ear-splitting.

“This smells almost as bad as the trailer,” Mendez said, wrinkling his nose.

“I’m glad I have a badge,” Hicks said, watching the crime scene techs systematically raking through the inches-deep muck of mud and feces and pig urine. “My granddad up in Sacramento used to raise hogs. When I was a kid, in the summers, I used to have to help him move them from one pen to another. You don’t shake that smell fast.”

Dixon motioned them over to a table set up along the back of a shed. The findings had been washed and laid out on a tarp: what appeared to be a human femur and several rib bones.

“What do we do now?” Mendez asked. “We have no way of knowing who these belonged to. Unless they can find a pelvis, we don’t even know if we’re looking at a male or a female.”

“The BFS team will take them,” Dixon said. “They’ll call in an anthropologist to have a look.”

Mendez picked up the femur and looked at it more closely. What appeared to be knife marks scarred both ends of the bone. “Whoever it was, Sells cut them up before he threw them out there.”

“And he did a neat job of it,” Hicks observed. “That was severed at the joint.”

“Let’s hope the victim was dead when he did it,” Dixon said. “He may not fit Leone’s profile, but we’ve definitely got ourselves a killer.”

“A killer,” Mendez said. “But is he the killer?”

“We’ve got the cars here. Now we’ve got remains here.”

“We don’t have Sells’s fingerprints on those cars yet, do we?” Mendez asked.

“The comparisons are being made,” Dixon said. “We’ll know this afternoon.”

He shook his head as he looked out at the crime scene techs raking through the shit. “The bastard has no respect for human life at all. Kills someone, cuts them up, throws them out like trash. In a hog yard.”

“You know why, right?” Hicks said.

Dixon just looked at him.

“Hogs will eat anything.”

Mendez put the femur down and walked away.

A call came from the crime scene techs. “We’ve got a skull!”

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