Free With Silent Screams by Steve McHugh

allowed his man to use the gun. I really didn’t want to have to kill a mayor and his bodyguard within twenty-four hours of arriving. It’s terribly bad form to do such a thing.
    “Thanks for your concern,” I said with a smile of my own. “I’m sure I can find those responsible and bring them to justice before long. Galahad will be happy to hear the warm welcome your lovely town has offered me during my stay.”
    The mayor straightened his blue silk tie. “Yes, of course. I’m sure the king would be more than happy to hear how you’ve been treated. I look forward to telling him how your visit went.” He nodded to Bill and then got back in his car. The bodyguard closed the door, and once he was also in the car, it drove off.
    “You don’t want to piss him off,” Bill said.
    “Bill or William?” I asked, ignoring his comment. I’d pissed off people in bigger positions of power than some mayor of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. In fact, some people would say that pissing off people in power is almost a hobby of mine. “What do you prefer?”
    “Bill,” he said. “I mean it though, pissing off the mayor isn’t a smart move. Word is he’s friends with some powerful people.”
    “I guess we know where the leak came from. Maybe some of those friends of his aren’t too keen on me being here.”
    “I’m telling you the captain didn’t sell you out.”
    “Oh, I have no doubt. I’d guess someone who works for Galahad told him. Though I have no idea why at the moment. Hopefully we can get this finished before I have to find out.”

    The mayor’s unscheduled visit had clearly left a mark on Bill, as he barely spoke while we went to the nearest clothing shop and picked me up some hiking boots and a few bits I would need. We dropped everything off at my motel room, and then he drove me over to the city morgue to see the most recent body.
    We parked outside the front door of the small building and walked inside to be greeted by a middle-aged man with a bald head, scraggly dark beard, and a faded tattoo on o ne forearm.
    “It’s military,” he said to me. “Got it a very long time ago just after Germany. You’re probably too young to even remember WW2.”
    “You’d be surprised, Doctor .… ”
    “Pierce,” he said and shook my hand. “Harold Pierce. I’m the coroner for this town. We don’t normally get a lot of deaths, so it’s usually quiet.”
    “Nathan Garrett,” I said.
    The doctor led through a reception area, where a young woman and man sat behind a desk talking; the man wore a security guard uniform. He was older than the woman, who couldn’t have been much more than thirty, whereas the man must have hit fifty a few years previous. Neither of them looked up at us as we walked past.
    “You’re not squeamish, are you?” he asked as we scrubbed our hands and arms.
    I shook my head. “Not yet, no. How bad are these bodies?”
    “You’ll see.”
    The doctor took us through a set of double doors and into an examination room. There was a body with a sheet over it in the center. Doctor Pierce folded back the sheet, exposing the battered and bruised face of a young man. The body had clearly been examined already and then stitched back up.
    “Someone beat him to death,” Doctor Pierce said. “I’ve already carried out the autopsy, but Bill said you’d want to see the body firsthand.”
    “Thanks. So what does the autopsy say?” I asked.
    “I’ll do it in layman’s terms, for Bill’s sake; some of these words are quite long.”
    “Piss off, doc,” Bill said, and the mood in the room lightened slightly.
    “Layman’s terms are fine,” I said, pulling the sheet down further to find more bruising around the clavicle, sternum, and ribs. “What the hell was he beaten with? These marks on his chest aren’t from a fist.”
    “You know your injuries,” Doctor Pierce said, sounding slightly impressed. “It was something steel … we found shards of the metal imbedded in