Free Mercy Falls by William Kent Krueger Page B

her uniform and she fell. Cork fought to free his legs, which had sunk deep into a bed of pine needles that held him like quicksand. The gunfire again became the cawing of the birds, and the cawing became the ringing of the phone in his bedroom as he pulled himself awake.
    “Sheriff?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Sheriff, it’s Bos.”
    Cork registered that it was Boston Swain, the night dispatcher.
    “You awake?”
    “I’m here. What time is it?”
    “Three A.M. You’re sure you’re awake.”
    Cork wiped away tears but was quite sure he was awake. “What is it, Bos?”
    “Sheriff.” She paused a moment, perhaps waiting for Cork to affirm that his eyes were open. “It looks like we’ve got a homicide.”
     
     
    He’d gone to bed to a clear sky and a moon heading toward full, and he’d thought by morning there would be frost. Clouds had moved in during the night, however, and kept the temperature up. As Cork headed away from home, a light precipitation began to fall, more mist than rain, coating everything with a wet sheen. The wipers of his old Bronco groaned intermittently across the windshield, the headlights shimmered off glazed asphalt, and the tires hissed as they rolled. The road to the overlook at Mercy Falls wound through dripping forests that, in the dark morning hours, seemed primordial and menacing.
    There were two parking lots for the overlook at Mercy Falls. The first lot was for the picnic shelter and the restroom blockhouse. The second lot, a hundred yards up the hill and hidden by a thick stand of aspen, was nearer to the falls but had no facilities. The lower lot was empty; in the upper parking lot Cork found three vehicles. Two were department cruisers. The other was a silver Lexus SUV with an Avis sticker on the bumper. Nearby, heard but unseen, Mercy Creek gushed through a narrows in slate-gray bedrock before tumbling one hundred feet into a small pool. The falls overlook was a favorite place for sightseers during the day. Officially, it closed at sunset, but at night it was a popular spot for couples to do what couples in parked cars had always done in dark, beautiful places. The deputies on night patrol would swing by occasionally, often enough to keep the local kids guessing.
    The two cruisers had been positioned so that their headlights blasted over the SUV from either side. Cork parked in back of the Lexus and left the Bronco’s headlights on. Morgan and Schilling stood in the mist, their jackets zipped against the damp chill.
    “Watch your step,” Morgan said as Cork approached.
    Cork looked down and skirted a small puddle of vomit, yellow-white on the wet pavement.
    Schilling looked pale and shaken. “On the ground, in front.” He nodded toward the Lexus.
    The man lay on his back. A Cubs ball cap was pulled down over the top half of his face, obscuring his eyes. His mouth was open in an unending yawn. Long splashes of blood, almost black now from clotting, clung to his cheeks like leeches. His shirt, a button-down light-blue oxford, was a stained, shredded mess, getting damp from the mist. His pants and black briefs had been yanked down around his ankles. His knees were spread wide, and his crotch and inner thighs looked as if someone had taken a big brush, dipped it in a bucket of blood, and painted his skin.
    Schilling said behind him, “They didn’t just kill him, Cork. They castrated him, too.”
    “You found him?”
    “Yeah.” Schilling blew into his hands and shifted on his feet as if he were freezing.
    “You touch anything?”
    “I checked him for a pulse, that’s it.”
    Cork looked back at the puddle of vomit. “His?”
    “Mine,” Schilling said. “Sorry.”
    “How’re you feeling now?”
    “I’ve been better.”
    “Okay. Nothing gets touched until Ed gets here. In the meantime, Howard,” he said to Morgan, “I want you to get on the radio and run the plate, make sure it’s a rental. Then let’s contact Avis and find out who rented it.”
    Morgan nodded and