Read Online The Chill of Night by James Hayman - Free Book Online Page A

body. She was squatting down, shining her light at Jane Doe’s face, when she called out, ‘McCabe?’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘She’s got something in her mouth.’
    ‘Like what?’ McCabe pushed in next to Terri again and looked where her light was pointing. Jane Doe’s lips and teeth were slightly parted. Behind the teeth he could see a small flash of white he hadn’t noticed before.
    ‘Looks like paper,’ said Terri.
    ‘A gag?’ asked Maggie.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ said McCabe. ‘It’s not balled up like a gag would be. Looks folded. Maybe some kind of note? Like maybe the murderer left us a message. Can you get it out?’
    ‘I don’t know. Her jaw’s frozen in position. No more than an eighth of an inch clearance. I’ll try to thread it through the opening with forceps.’
    ‘Won’t the paper be frozen, too?’ asked Maggie.
    ‘Mouth would have to be wet for the paper to freeze, but it might have been. Possibly with saliva. Or, if decomp already started, there might be some purge fluid.’
    Terri rummaged in her bag and came out with an instrument that looked like a pair of delicate tweezers with small blunt teeth at the ends. She slipped it between Jane Doe’s parted lips, grasped the paper, and gently tugged. It didn’t move. ‘It’s frozen, alright,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can wiggle it free.’
    It took three or four minutes of carefully pulling and prodding, first one way, then the other. Finally the paper moved. ‘I think maybe I’ve freed it. Now let’s see if I can extract it without tearing it.’
    Holding Jane Doe’s frozen jaw in place with her left hand, Terri coaxed the paper through her parted teeth. Finally it was free.
    ‘Can you unfold it?’ asked McCabe. ‘Let’s see what’s written. If anything.’
    ‘Not till we warm it up a bit,’ said Terri. She was holding what looked like a standard 81/2’ by 11’ sheet of copy paper between the teeth of her forceps. The paper was folded over and over into a one- by two-inch wad. It had been discolored, probably by fluid in the mouth.
    ‘Here, Doc, put it in here.’ Bill Jacobi was holding out a small stainless steel pan. ‘We’ll warm it in the van. Then maybe we can take a look.’
    Terri dropped the folded sheet of paper into the pan. They walked back toward Jacobi’s crime scene van. It only took a minute for Bill to warm the paper enough to unfold it. He flattened it on a tray and took two shots of it, front and back, with a digital camera.
    McCabe looked down. The paper was blank except for two words printed in the center in twelve-point type in an ordinary font.
Amos. 9:10.
    ‘From the Bible?’ asked Maggie.
    ‘Yes,’ said McCabe. ‘Unfortunately. It may not be good news.’
    Maggie looked at him sharply. ‘Why? What’s it say? Who’s Amos?’
    ‘One of the minor Old Testament prophets. Book of Amos. Chapter nine. Verse ten.’ McCabe closed his eyes and let his brain take him back to sixth-grade Bible class at St Barnabas. There he was, eleven-year-old Michael, the oddity standing uncomfortably before the entire class. And there was Sister Mary Joseph, standing over him, smiling benignly down, celebrating God’s gift of eidetic memory to her young student, making him recite yet another passage from an obscure book of the Bible. Her version of Trivial Pursuit. Could she stump him? No, she couldn’t. Not even with the Book of Amos. Twenty-seven years later in the cold and dark of the Portland Fish Pier, McCabe’s mind brought the words back. ‘It seems someone was punishing our victim for her sins.’
    ‘What’s it say?’ Maggie asked again.
    ‘All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us. That’s what the Book of Amos was all about. God punishing the Israelites for their sins.’
    ‘What kinds of sins?’
    ‘The standard list. Greed, corruption, oppression of the poor.’
    ‘It did say all the sinners – so there might be