Still Waters by Alex Gabriel

Author:Alex Gabriel [Gabriel, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-08-15T16:00:00+00:00

~~~~~

Thomas Baker was no longer frozen solid, but the thawing process hadn’t made him any more interesting. Drakjan looked him over once, took note of the grayish-blue cast of the dead flesh and its odd consistency— not pale and bloated like a corpse floating in water, but still noticeable— and then found his mind wandering.

“He’s still frozen at the core,” the medical examiner said. He was handing Hraban a gleaming instrument that Hraban promptly used to poke around in the body. He felt around the dead man’s sparse hair, inspected his eyes, ears and mouth, and then asked the examiner for help in turning him over.

The back view was no more inspiring than the front, in Drakjan’s opinion. He suppressed a sigh and turned aimlessly, casting about the white room for something— anything— of interest.

The sheriff left the other two to their examining and came over to him, pulling him aside to stand between a massive sink and a clear-fronted refrigeration unit. “Who exactly is he?”

“That’s Ben,” Drakjan repeated. Judging by the sheriff’s expression, she did not consider this a satisfactory reply. There wasn’t much else he could say, though, so he just gave her a small shrug. “I told you, this is what he does. He’s a policeman too, where he comes from.”

“Where you both come from.”

“Yeah. We go way back.” In a way, that was even true.

Emotions flew over her face too quickly for Drakjan to catch. After a moment, she snorted and rocked back on her heels, crossing her arms over her chest to give him an oddly appraising look. “Julian. In all the years I have known you, you have never once—”

“What’s this?” The sharp note in Hraban’s voice caught Drakjan’s attention, drawing him back over to the laid-out corpse. The hunter was examining the dead man’s hand, turning the spotlight over the table to provide an even more blinding brightness. “Andrew, look at his fingers.”

The medical examiner— who was presumably named Andrew— bent forward to look. “Oh yes, the burns. Good eye there, I almost missed them at first. They’re only first degree, very light, and inflicted antemortem. He probably burned himself lighting up his cigarette.”

Hraban stiffened almost unnoticeably, the lines of his back and shoulders straightening. “Are there photos of how he was found?”

There were. They showed the frozen wolf in a well-tended front yard, looking like a statue that had toppled sideways into a flowerbed. He’d been frozen solid while standing up, hands cupped in front of his face. In the close-up his mouth was puckered, lips pursed slightly in a way that made him resemble a startled trout. It looked rather amusing, but Drakjan politely refrained from smiling.

Hraban turned abruptly, and Drakjan found himself struck all over again by the way the color of his eyes evoked the lake, even here in this mercilessly bright, white-and-steel room.

The dead man’s belongings were laid out on a second table. There were clothes, shoes, a wallet, a set of keys, and a crumpled tissue. Nothing

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