Carnage: Short Story Read Online Free PDF

Listen—”
    “I’m chief of police Alfonso Desoto, and my office was given this number to call by an anonymous source. A nutcase, we figured, until we went where the caller directed us.”
    “Oh, Jesus!” Quinn said again, under his breath. “Where are you, Chief?”
    “Number 7 Jacaranda, off of Main,” Desoto said. “It’s a green frame house with a lot of flowers out front. A trellis of roses near the driveway. About a block off the beach.”
    “I’m on my way,” Quinn said.
    “We’ll be waiting out back. You won’t have any trouble finding us. It’s the house with the woman’s body in the pool.”
     
     
    The house on Jacaranda was just as Desoto had described, only he hadn’t mentioned the bees buzzing around the flowers out front. Fedderman made a wide detour to get to the backyard. Quinn took a straight line and was somehow unnoticed by the bees.
    A uniformed Del Moray cop stood by a swimming pool with his arms crossed. An almost ridiculously handsome Latin man in a lightweight tailored suit stood near him, watching the two detectives approach. He had on a white shirt and blue tie, amazingly dry and unwrinkled by the heat. His shoes were two tones of tan with a high gloss.
    Quinn nodded to the uniform, then to the clotheshorse.
    “Quinn?” asked the clotheshorse.
    Quinn introduced himself and Fedderman. The clotheshorse said he was Chief Desoto, and that the uniform’s name was Beckle.
    Quinn wasn’t looking at either one of them. About five feet from where Beckle stood was what appeared to be Pearl’s beach bag. Beyond it, in the pool, floated a nude blond woman. She was facedown, and unmoving except with the slight play of water in the breeze.
    As he swallowed his heart and moved toward the pool, Quinn saw that the beach bag was open. Pearl’s ID and Glock were visible.
    Desoto clutched Quinn’s upper arm with surprising strength.
    But it was something else that slowed Quinn. Something about the dead woman.
    Beckle used a long hook pole to move the body closer to the edge of the pool. Quinn saw the expected cigarette burns and knife cuts. Then Beckle bent down and turned the dead woman’s head so Quinn could see her face.
    The first thing he noticed was D.O.A. carved in her forehead.
    The second thing was that she wasn’t Pearl.
    Quinn let out a long breath. He realized he was sweating so that his clothes were soaked.
    “You okay?” Desoto asked. “You know this Pearl?”
    “It isn’t Pearl,” Quinn said. Not a religious man, he still felt like crossing himself. God must get a lot of that, he thought. Pleas for mercy . . . gushing gratitude. Or crushing depression.
    Desoto looked at the beach bag, looked at Quinn. “We didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure.”
    “You can be sure now.”
    “Then the unlucky one in the pool is the woman who goes with this address,” he said. “Audrey Simmons. Twenty-seven, single, lives—lived—alone.”
    “Everything fits the victim profile,” Quinn said, glancing back at the pool.
    Desoto nodded. “We know about the D.O.A. killer. Didn’t think he’d visit Del Moray, though. You’ve been tracking the bastard, and probably know more about him than we do.” He moved an arm of the well-cut suit to take in the pool with its floating corpse. A silver cuff link winked in the sun. “What you see is what we got. That and a few more nuggets of info on the victim.”
    “I want it,” Quinn said. “Even if we already have it.”
    Desoto cocked his head toward where a metal table with four webbed chairs sat beneath an oversized umbrella. The umbrella had fringe that the breeze occasionally ruffled.
    “You’ve probably got more to tell me than I’ve got to tell you,” Desoto said. “Let’s sit there in the shade and have a talk.”

10
    Desoto took it all in, and then informed Quinn that Audrey Simmons was divorced and a third-grade schoolteacher. She was a runner and took part in local marathons to raise money for charity. There was