Venom by A. W. Gray

Author:A. W. Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2015-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

16

Courtney Bedell thought that the guy should come up with a better line. She snapped, “Let’s just say I’m conducting a study,” then moved quickly away toward the barrier of crime-scene tape.

The guy followed after her. “No, I mean, what do you do for a living?” He wore a tool belt and a hardhat.

Courtney paused. He wasn’t that bad-looking, but God, hitting on a woman while hanging around a murder scene? If she gave in, he might end up by asking her to hang him, lay the whip to his ass or something. She said, “I’m in training.”

He continued to grin under his thick mustache. “Yeah? Training for what?”

“Martial arts,” Courtney said. “Breaking men’s arms when they try anything.”

“Yeah?” He looked her up and down. “Bet you could put up a tussle, huh?”

She’d had it up to here with the verbal sparring. She opened her wallet and held her shield an inch from the guy’s nose. “And I’ll bet you could put up a tussle with a jail guard. Leave me alone, I’m working here.” She walked away again.

This time the guy didn’t follow.

For a couple of hours Courtney had circulated among the onlookers at the scene where the preacher had dragged the limo driver’s body out in the open, while Gholer stayed with the CSU techs and looked over their shoulders. Neither the lieutenant nor his star witness was having any luck—other than Courtney’s getting hit on by the hard-hat guy, of course. She’d yet to spy anyone who remotely resembled the Fiddleback, and the crime-scene technicians hadn’t found a shred of usable evidence. Last night’s after-midnight deluge had turned hard dirt into mud and washed away already-sparse vegetation. The CSU workers had located a broken tree limb where they believed the body had been anchored, and had gone over the area with rakes, brooms, and handheld vacuums. Thousands of tire tracks crisscrossed among the trees, and some of the techs dutifully created molds, but so many Cowboy fans parked here on Sundays it was impossible to guess which of the tracks, if any, might belong to the Fiddleback. There’d been bits of flesh scattered about as if the victim had been mutilated, and that, plus the fact that the medical examiners had reported the limo driver’s right eye and parts of his face were tomrn away, had created a few moments’ excitement. But then one of the techs had looked up, had done a double take, and then had pointed solemnly at a buzzard perched on a nearby mesquite tree. The big bird lurked nearby as if waiting for the workers to leave so he could finish his meal.

Courtney was getting awfully bored—not bored enough to react to the hard-hat guy, but very nearly so. Gawkers came and went: delivery men, workers from the road gang resurfacing portions of I-35 a mile down the road, a guy driving a catering truck, even a couple of off-duty Irving cops who’d heard through the grapevine about last night’s find. Since she’d been on the scene, Courtney had sized up at least a hundred people.

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