Free Eight Days to Live by Iris Johansen Page A

pretty, Jane.”
    “I told you not to come. Do you ever pay attention to what I ask?” MacDuff said.
    “No.” She took a step closer, her gaze fixed on the body of the woman. “What did they—” She inhaled sharply. “My God.” Her stomach lurched. “What happened to her head?”
    “We haven’t discovered that yet,” MacDuff said. “But it was taken off cleanly, probably by a blow with an axe.”
    “Decapitated,” she said numbly. She couldn’t take her gaze from the headless woman.
    Blood.
    Jagged flesh, bone.
    Lord, she felt sick.
    “Seen enough?” MacDuff asked roughly. He stepped closer and spun her around to face the road. “Go back to the car. Lock the doors. We’ll keep an eye on you until you reach it. Jock and I will do a search of the woods to see if we can find her—” He stopped. “If you want to do something, call Venable and tell him to get his people out here. I’m not having you wait for the police.”
    “We shouldn’t leave her like—”
    “No,” MacDuff said. “You’re out of here.” He turned back to Jock. “Let’s do it.”
    Jane hesitated, then slowly started toward the car. Just put one foot in front of the other and don’t look back. She had no desire to stay here with that headless corpse who had once been Yvette Denarve. Somehow, that act robbed death of all dignity. No one should be allowed to do that to a human being. Life had meaning. The end of life should also have meaning.
    Then do all the things that would show respect and make Yvette’s death important.
    She got in the car, locked the doors, then leaned back and closed her eyes.
    Blood. Headless. Horror.
    Her eyes flicked open again. Would she ever be able to close her eyes without seeing Yvette’s mutilated body?
    Dammit, don’t think of yourself. Think about that poor woman. Try to do something for her.
    She reached for her phone to call Venable.
    MACDUFF AND JOCK DIDN’T COME BACK to the car for another thirty minutes.
    “No luck,” MacDuff said briefly as he got into the driver’s seat. “They must have taken her head with them. Unless they buried it. And I didn’t see any turned earth.”
    Jane had thought that Yvette’s death couldn’t be any more horrible, but she was wrong. The idea of someone’s carrying that poor woman’s head around like a trophy was beyond atrocious. “Why?” she whispered. “Why would they do that? It’s like something from the time of the barbarians.”
    “We have quite a few barbarians strolling around right now,” Jock said. “What did Venable say?”
    “He told me he’d have a team out here within the hour.” She paused. “He said that maybe we should believe that Weismann had the goods.”
    MacDuff started the car. “Weismann is a self-serving son of a bitch. But he may be able to tell us what we need to know.”
    “Like why Yvette Denarve had to die?”
    “I think we have to assume that Weismann may have been right about the reason she was targeted.”
    Total extermination. On the way here, MacDuff had told her about Weismann’s message, and she had found it as incredible aseverything else connected to this nightmare. She shook her head. “I can’t believe that.”
    “Because you’re in shock. Let it sink in, then we’ll talk about it.”
    She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to think about it. She wanted everything to do with this horror to just go away.
    And that horrible vision of Yvette Denarve’s headless corpse to fade from her memory.
    AT THE GALLERY, THEY HAD to show identification to an officer at the entrance and cross the yellow crime-scene tape.
    Marie Ressault, Celine’s assistant, came out of the office in the back. She was pale, her eyes red and swollen from weeping. “I was wondering where you were,” she said to Jane. “I thought that you’d be through talking to Yvette, and I could go over the funeral arrangements with her. Celine wanted to be cremated, you know.”
    What should I say? Jane wondered.