Free Name of the Devil by Andrew Mayne Page A

stains on the floor in front ofit. “Maybe Mrs. Alsop. Now we have two people saying the same thing. Both of them alive long enough to tell us something.”
    â€œYet none of them said, ‘Jessup’?” I ask.
    â€œNope. Kind of odd. Even Mitchum realizes that now.”
    There’s a small victory for me she’ll never acknowledge. At least not in a positive way. “Where’s the forensics on Alsop? Any bite marks?”
    â€œGerald, we got the live feed from the forensics lab?”
    Gerald turns the screen to a live view of one of our new autopsy rooms in DC headquarters. Two robot arms move over the body of what looks like Reverend Curtis. A separate window shows the super high-resolution images the cameras on the arm are capturing. At this magnification, the wrinkles on Curtis’s skin resemble vast canyons. Hairs shoot out like black tree trunks. Each pore is a pit that fades into the earth.
    â€œWe’re building a 3-D model of each victim,” explains Ailes. “We’re also capturing infrared so we can see the kind of blood vessel rupturing. The abrasions might tell us another story. It’s time-consuming.”
    â€œYou’re scanning the body?”
    Gerald points to the skin detail. “We’re making a 3-D map.”
    Ailes nods. “So far, cause of death appears to be our missing sheriff.”
    â€œBut nobody thought to implicate him in their last dying breath? Instead, they name a demon?”
    Ailes shrugs. He’s still trying to figure things out too. “That sums it up. You wanted weird, you got weird.”
    â€œWhat I wanted was a nice tidy case I didn’t have to be involved in. What we got was inconvenient reality. What about this ‘Azazel’? Any other meaning besides a demon?”
    â€œHe’s a popular character in fantasy literature and gaming,” replies Gerald. He pauses for a moment. “Also one of the members of the Brotherhood of Mutants.”
    â€œ G REAT, JUST PUT an APB out for Magneto. Case closed.”
    Gerald gives me a smile, appreciating the reference.
    â€œHow’d your interviews go in Hawkton?” asks Ailes.
    â€œThe town is more eccentric than you can imagine. I even got a souvenir.” I set Black Nick’s blade on the table.
    Ailes picks it up and looks at the unfinished handle. “Nice fulgurite.”
    Of course he’d know what it was called. I’d had to Wikipedia it. “That’s from Black Nick.”
    â€œAh,” replies Ailes. He gives it a tap. “Iron? That’s rare.” He hands it back to me. “Careful with that edge. I read the local reports on him. You think he figures into this?”
    â€œI don’t know. He seems pretty harmless. He wasn’t wearing shoes when I met him. I also don’t think he climbed up any trees. I doubt he’d be able to get the bodies up there without a pulley, unless his crows helped him.”
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œNever mind. With enough patience, he’d be worth talking to again if we have more questions. I suggest someone with a gentle touch. He’s real backwoods.”
    â€œWhat was his assessment?”
    â€œHe says the devil was involved, but not the instigator. He took pity on Jessup. He thinks the sheriff wasn’t under his own control.”
    â€œInteresting . . .” Ailes’s eyes drift up to the side as he starts to think about something.
    â€œHow interesting?”
    He slides his open laptop over. “Our sheriff took quite a few bites of McKnight,” he says, pulling up an autopsy photo on the screen of McKnight’s mangled neck. “In one of those bites, he managed to chew into the side of his own mouth. We found his DNA.”
    â€œI can tell you that hurts.” I touch my cheek, more than one bad memory resurfacing.
    Ailes zooms into the wound. “We pulled separated tissue out and ran it through a dozen different