Free Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain Page B

reached into her purse and felt around for her phone.
               
                She called the paper first, and 911 second.
               
                C H A P T E R 12
               
                Henry stood in the rain on the hillside with Detective Martin Ngyun, staring down at the leathery head in the mud. The ferns and brush around the head were charred and the entire area was dusted with foam from a fire extinguisher. Henry could see a soot-blackened cigarette that had been stamped deeply into the dirt.
               
                Henry peered up the hillside. The whole task force had responded. A busload of Beauty Killer tourists were standing at the top of the hill behind the crime-scene tape taking pictures. No keeping this one under wraps. They were probably tweeting as he stood there. “Who put out the fire?” Henry asked Ngyun.
               
                Ngyun had been on the task force for seven years. The only time off he’d ever taken was when the Blazers had made the finals. That hadn’t turned out well at all.
               
                “Some docent from the house,” Ngyun said, adjusting the bill of his Blazers cap against the rain. “Seventy-two years old. Jumped the fence and climbed down the hillside with a fire extinguisher.”
               
                Henry extended a hand, palm up. “It’s raining,” he said.
               
                “Hadn’t started yet,” Ngyun said.
               
                The head had been severed from its body close to the jawbone. The rain was melting the fire-extinguisher foam and Henry could see that the skull showed through in places, and the hair had thinned and was matted with dirt. It was facedown, resting against the root of a weed. Henry looked up the hillside again. “My guess is someone tossed it over the fence,” he said, his eyes following the angle of the slope. “And it rolled down here.”
               
                “Lucky it didn’t roll any farther,” Ngyun said. “Never would have found it.” He frowned at the tangle of blackberries below. “Probably dozens of heads down there.”
               
                “I’ll talk to the mayor about curfew,” Henry said. This was the new mayor. He’d taken the job two months ago, after the old mayor had blown his brains out in front of Archie.
               
                “Yeah,” Ngyun said. “Because no one gets murdered during the daytime.”
               
                “It will appease the citizenry,” Henry said. He squatted, trying to get a better look at the head’s features, but the angle of the face in the mud made it hard. “Where’s the ME?”
               
                “On his way,” Ngyun said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s eleven. They said eleven-fifteen.”
               
                Henry hesitated. He knew he’d catch hell from Robbins for moving the remains. But fuck it. He pushed the thing with the toe of his shoe, until it rolled faceup.
               
                The holes where its nose, eyes, and mouth used to be were crawling with wiggling yellow maggots. No telling if the thing had its eyes gouged out, or just lost them to worms.
               
                Claire called his name, and Henry looked up to see her standing with her hands on her hips looking down at them. Next to her, in a white Tyvek suit, was Lorenzo Robbins, of the Medical Examiner’s department.
               
                “Did you just kick my head?” Robbins said in disbelief.
               
                Henry’s phone rang. He’d never been so happy to get a phone call in his life. He