Third You Die (Kevin Connor Mystery) by Sherman Scott

Author:Sherman, Scott [Sherman, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp
Published: 2012-09-25T07:00:00+00:00

23

Flesh and Blood

I stood up slowly and felt the dripping down my back.

Yuck. So gross.

Good.

I turned around slowly. Now that I’d shown off my chest, this was the next reveal.

“Oh my god,” I heard Mason whisper, “that is . . . oh.”

While the job Steven Austen did applying the scar to my chest was masterful, the disfigurement he applied to my back was nothing less than horrific. A mess of pimples, boils, and welts scattered across me like the ugliest constellation in the universe. He’d even filled some of them with a viscous white liquid designed to “pop” when pressure was applied—an effect I achieved when I sat down with my back against the headboard.

As I gave Mason a few moments to process the train wreck in front of him, I reached into my pocket and took out what appeared to be a tube of ChapStick. It was actually a tube of Vicks VapoRub, which I applied under each nostril. To Mason and Pierce, though, it should have looked as if I was using lip balm.

I tucked it back into my pants. While my hand was in my pocket, I unscrewed the other vial in there and let the liquid contents seep out.

“Uh, Kevin,” Mason said, trying to keep his voice steady. “It looks like you have some kind of . . . rash.”

“I do?” I said, aping surprise. I craned my neck trying to see. “Really? I don’t see . . .” I twisted a shoulder as far as it could go. “Aw, crap,” I said. “It’s back.”

“It?” Mason asked. He sounded ready to run screaming out of the room into the nearest decontamination chamber.

“After my operation—the one on my chest that left the big scar,” I clarified, just to make sure they remembered how bad I looked from the front, “I had to take some immunosuppressive drugs to keep my body from rejecting the new valve they put in my heart. Annnnyway . . .” I drawled Valley Girl style, “the doctors warned me it could lead to breakouts.”

I took a few steps backward, getting closer to Mason. “It happened once before, but it wasn’t too bad. How does it look now?”

Mason instinctively backed up, too, the reptile part of his brain directing him to flee in case my condition was catching. “It looks . . .” He stopped, but not because he couldn’t find the words. I heard him take a cautious sniff. “What is that smell?”

After the third time I’d found a tube of VapoRub in Tony’s work pants, I’d asked him why he always carried it when he was working.

“In case I have to attend an autopsy,” he’d explained, “or an especially grisly crime scene. A little menthol under the nose blocks out the worst of the stink.”

Even through its protective mask, though, I could make out the sickening scent of the ethanethiol I’d poured out a few moments ago.

Steven Austen wasn’t the only one of my co-workers who’d assisted me today. Oliver, the maintenance

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