The Corruptions by Vincent Zandri

Author:Vincent Zandri [Zandri, Vincent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Polis Books
Published: 2016-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

Heading back down the stairs, I entered into the kitchen at precisely the same time Blood did. As soon as my boot soles met the old yellow linoleum, I saw the feet that belonged to a body laid out in the back pantry section of the kitchen. The double-barreled shotgun was also lying on the floor beside her. That the leather sandaled feet belonged to Maude, I had no doubt. This gentle woman gave us cookies just a short two hours ago. A sweet gesture that made her violent homicide seem all the more wrong. I almost didn’t want to look. But how could I not look?

Bridgette turned away, wiped a tear from her eye, stepped into the adjoining dining room. Together, Blood and I stood over the body. Not only had her neck been sliced from ear to ear, whoever slaughtered her thought it prudent to jam the cone-shaped paint brush handle through her left eye. Taking a knee, I picked up the shotgun, cracked open the breach. The shells were still live. She never got a shot off.

“That thing in her eye,” Blood said after a long, sad beat. “It take some strength to do that shit.”

“And a black heart,” I said. Then, standing, “The map. Anyone seen the map?”

A drafting table occupied the far corner of the dining room. A draftsman’s lamp clamped to the table was still lit up, indicating that Maude had been using it when whoever killed her intruded. I went to the table, saw that it had been ransacked. Paper towels soaked in gray paint and paint remover littered the table surface and the paint-stained wood floor.

“This is where she worked on the board,” I said. “Whoever killed her took it.”

“I’ll check upstairs just to make sure,” Bridgette said.

She ran up the stairs while Blood and I made a futile check of the downstairs and even the basement. Back in the kitchen, Bridgette shook her head.

“No board,” she said. “Whoever did this didn’t want us to get at that map.”

My mind spun like a wheel of fortune until it stopped on a clear vision of Rodney standing outside the prison cell.

“Rodney was the only one who knew we took the board,” I said.

Bridgette went for her chest-mounted radio, like she was about to call the murder in.

“Wait,” I said. “Not yet. We bust Rodney now it’s just our word against his. Plus, I’m beginning to think there’s something more to this than just two cons who wanted to jump the walls of this prison.”

The wailing…the crying…the high-pitched voices rising up from within…

“Me too,” Blood said. “There something going on inside that prison. Something bad. I can feel it.”

“Listen, Bridgette,” I said, “you take in Rodney now, they’ll whitewash whatever it is they have going on somewhere in the depths of that place.”

“Maude was my godmother, Keeper,” she said, her eyes wet, her face pale with sadness.

“I know how you feel,” I said. “But our best bet is to cut to the chase, go after Moss and Sweet now that we have at least some idea of where they are.

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