Read Online Rust On the Razor by Mark Richard Zubro - Free Book Online Page A

visible signs of blood, either. Obviously, he’d been killed somewhere else and brought to this spot. Why our car? To implicate me? Scott? Both of us? Or maybe every killer looks for a handy spot to plop a dead body, and our rent-a-car happened to be it.
    I didn’t see signs of a struggle. His clothes seemed to be in order, not tugged or pulled out; his gun was in its holster, his hands lay by his side, and I couldn’t see any signs of abrasions or bruising. Whoever did it either was very clever—maybe drugged him—or was powerful enough to hold him still with one hand while slitting his throat with the other. A very powerful person—or several people. Of course, there could be all kinds of signs of restraint that I missed. I ran my hand along the floor, then under and on the seat as well as under the sheriff. I found nothing.
    I looked back toward the hospital. As yet no one had emerged onto the parking lot. It was at the back of the hospital, away from the street, although I doubted if much traffic existed anywhere in Brinard in the early morning hours. Even now I heard no sound of activity. There were two other cars within a hundred feet of this one and another clump of cars closer to the street. I presumed these belonged to the hospital workers. Possibly we hadn’t been singled out. Maybe the killer or killers had simply picked this one because it was farthest from any light.
    I wished I could just get in the car, take the body, and dump it off the nearest bridge. I presumed no one had seen the murderer but half the town would be on hand to see
me try to surreptitiously slip the body into the nearest swamp.
    I sighed. There really wasn’t much else to do. I walked back into the emergency-room entrance.
    The nurse saw the blood on my clothes and jumped to her feet.
    â€œI’m fine,” I said. “The sheriff is in the backseat of a rented white Oldsmobile about two hundred feet from the front door. It probably won’t do any good, but you should send some medical personnel out there.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œHis throat has been slit.”
    She swung into action. She pressed a button with one hand and reached for a phone with the other. I stopped in a john down the hall and washed the rest of the blood off my hands. By the time I got outside, the wisps of fog were gone, and it was full daylight.
    A blue police car with white lettering saying “Brinard County” sat about ten feet from our car. The cop car had its Mars lights rotating. A blond guy, who fit his brown polyester uniform pants very nicely, stared into the backseat of my rental car. Three white-coated emergency-room workers stood in a clump about five feet from the body.
    I joined the cop. He had a lovely blond mustache and short blond hair mostly covered by a brown cap. He might have been in his mid-twenties. He wore a tan shirt that emphasized great pecs. He barely took notice of me but kept staring at the backseat of the car.
    I tapped him on the shoulder. He didn’t move.
    â€œI found the body,” I said.
    â€œWas he dead?” the cop asked.
    â€œWhen I found him? Yes.” I thought it best not to add that “I found the body” implies that it was dead when I discovered it. I was extremely tired, but I wanted to stick
with a general policy of quiet cooperation and compliance.
    He just kept staring at the body. Since the cop’s responses seemed to be limited, I strolled over to the medical people. One woman and two men.
    â€œShouldn’t we try to revive him?” one asked.
    â€œYou can tell he’s dead.”
    â€œI know he’s dead.”
    â€œWe should do something. He’s the sheriff. He can’t just be dead.”
    â€œCan’t be much deader.”
    â€œY’all see a point in attaching electrodes, starting transfusions, or inserting IVs? Blood would just flow right out again.”
    That they could recognize dead when they saw it I