Free The Last Town (Book 4): Fighting the Dead by Stephen Knight Page A

indicated direction. He saw flashlight beams sweeping the scrub.
    “Good,” Corbett said. “Walt, call in some of the guys. They should take direction from”—he looked back at Santoro for a long moment, then at Victor—“Tribal Police Chief Kuruk. Have them bring the dogs.”
    “That means we’ll have to pull bodies off the construction details,” Lennon said. “The guys who are off will need a bit to get spooled up before they can step off. And it’ll take some time to get the dogs down here.”
    “Understood,” Corbett said. “Do what you can, when you can.”
    “Mister Corbett, this is a police matter, and I think I’ll be making the decisions,” Santoro said, though without a great amount of confidence in his voice.
    “I think you’ll have some degree of input, Officer Santoro, but no one’s made you chief of police just yet. Vic, do you have enough time to walk me through the Cliff’s Notes version of what happened?”
    “Sure. But important matters first—you don’t happen to have any of your revered flasks on hand, do you?”
    Corbett started to respond with a needling remark about Indians and firewater, but Victor did look like hell. His hands were trembling, and his face had that cast to it which was a combination of numb shell-shock and nervous jitters. Corbett figured anything that might have knocked Victor’s carefully cultured stoic aura off balance was probably nothing but bad news.
    He reached into his jacket and pulled out a silver flask. He unscrewed the lid, and held it out to Victor. “It’s only Hennessey, nothing to get too excited about.”
    Santoro looked on in distaste as Victor took the vessel without comment, took a long pull, then handed it back. Corbett recapped the flask and slipped it back inside his jacket. “More when you need it,” he said. He noticed for the first time the knuckles on Victor’s right hand were bloody, and he pointed them out. “Fisticuffs? At your age?”
    “Grady turned into a zombie,” Victor blurted out.
    “Damn, Vic, does liquor always work that quickly on you?” Norton asked, speaking for the first time since arriving.
    Corbett looked past Victor at Estelle Garcia’s neat little house. In the flashing lights, he saw Mike Hailey and another officer standing by the open door that led into the house. Suzy Kuruk was there as well, panning the beam of her flashlight around the carport floor.
    “Is he in the house?” he asked.
    Victor nodded. “Yes.”
    “Can you go back inside with me?”
    “Yes.”
    Santoro held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, no one’s going inside,” he said. “It’s a murder scene under active investigation. We have to collect forensic evidence—”
    “Oh, Wilbur. Shut the hell up,” Corbett said before he started walking up the short driveway.
     
    ###
     
    The scene inside the little house was gruesome, but Corbett had seen much, much worse during his time in Vietnam. He was nevertheless saddened to see Chief Grady’s cooling corpse spread out across the kitchen floor, his face and skull severely disfigured from both a convict’s shotgun blast and a shot from one of his own officer’s pistol. There was not a great deal of blood, which to Corbett meant that the man had already been dead when the fatal shot had been delivered.
    “Oh, wow.” Gary Norton’s voice was strangled, and when Corbett turned to him, he saw the producer’s tanned, handsome face was wrinkled in disgust and horror. “I mean ... Jesus.”
    “You’ve never seen anyone killed before, Gary?” Corbett asked.
    “Not like this. Not someone I actually knew.”
    Corbett nodded. He noticed Danielle was hanging back in the carport, standing next to Suzy Kuruk. Danielle looked at the dead man sprawled across the bright linoleum tile floor, and there was a great sadness in her eyes. Corbett didn’t like that. He looked at the smaller woman beside her. Suzy Kuruk looked much the same way Danielle did, but she’d had the presence of mind