Read Online Coven by David Barnett - Free Book Online Page A

Shit, Peerce! She’s makin’
us look like fools !”
    “ Well, sir, I—”
    “ Shut up! What else that
stuck up priss find that you missed?”
    “ Plenty,” Lydia said at the
door. Stuck up priss? “The weapon was probably an ax with an unusually
long, flat blade. I got several impactations that look the same.
The back fence was cut with it, and so was the entrance door and
the phone lines. One thing I’m sure of, though. Someone died in
there.”
    “ How do you know someone
died?” White protested.
    “ I followed the bloodfall.
No one could lose as much blood as I found at the exit and live.
Only problem is there’s no body.”
    White conjectured this and scoffed. “I don’t
believe someone was murdered.”
    “ You just don’t want to
believe that someone was murdered in your juris.”
    White glared. “You got a lot of nerve,
girl.”
    “ Just being honest, Chief.
Question. Was Sladder packing?”
    “ No,” White said. “Only
supervisors carry guns. Why?”
    “ I also found six spent
casings. Remington .25s.”
    “ Shit!” White’s fist
slammed the desk. “What the fuck’s my campus turned
into?”
    A slaughterhouse, Lydia thought, almost with a smile. But the smile
drained when she remembered the blood. She wished for her daily
Marlboro. “I can stand here and speculate all day, Chief. But it’d
just be a waste of time.”
    White’s voice lost its edge. An unsolved
murder could make the papers, smear the school, get him fired. “I
can’t stall this, Prentiss. This shit’s gotta be solved, and I mean
by us, not some outside agency. We’ll be closed out once the state
gets here.”
    “ State? The agro site’s
part of the campus. It’s ours.”
    “ No, it ain’t, not really.
All them animals are licensed through the state department of
agriculture. Health inspectors will be wantin’ to know if some
disease killed the animals. We’ll be up to our butts in state by
late afternoon.”
    Late afternoon? “That’s no time for me to do a workup,” Lydia
complained. “I’ll have to get started right now. I need you to get
the power back on, I need lights to sweep for prints. And I’ll need
cold storage, I’ll need lab space, I’ll need—”
    “ I’ll get you everything
you need,” White interrupted. “You say you can do this kind of
shit, then get to it. I’m puttin’ my trust in you, Prentiss, but
hear this. If you fuck up and make me look like a damn fool, I’ll
make sure you’re checkin’ parking meters for the next twenty years.
You got that?”
    “ I’m touched by your
confidence,” Lydia said.

    —

    CHAPTER 7

    Jervis knew he’d fooled no one last night at
the inn. Pretending to have put Sarah behind him was an act he’d
never pull off, like a corpse pretending not to be dead. Wade had
seen right through him; Tom too, probably.
    The bar was called Andre’s, a redneck hole
in the wall ten miles off campus. A Deep South chant played softly
from the juke, swamp guitar and a tale of broken promises and
broken hearts. A mob of bikers stood around a pool table throwing
back shots and making frequent use of scatological verbs.
    Jervis waited in a darkened
booth. The equal darkness of his mind sedated him. Like a corpse pretending not to be dead, he thought again. But what would summon such an
image? He ordered three Heinekens from a chubby, lank haired
blonde whose frayed cutoffs showed the bottoms of her cheeks. “You
drinkin’ these all by yourself, cutie?” she asked.
    “ Just two of them. I’m
expecting someone.”
    Her belly button peeked from a fleshy gap.
“You all right?”
    “ I’m fine,” he lied. He
tipped her a fin.
    “ Gee, thanks,
cutie.”
    “ Don’t mention it.” Just leave me alone.
    Eventually his guest arrived, a sleazy
shadow sliding into the booth. Slim fingers gripped a clean manila
envelope.
    “ Good evening, Mr. Czanek,”
Jervis said.
    “ Good evening, Mr. Smith.
Or is it Jones?”
    Jervis slid him a beer. “It’s Tull.