So sure of death Read Online Free PDF Page B

blinked at it, trying to focus. It was a homemade knife, she thought numbly, carved from antler, or maybe bone. She couldn't bring herself to look more closely to determine which.
    The sight and the smell suddenly became too much to be borne and she stumbled outside and a few steps beyond McLynn, bending forward, hands on her thighs, drawing in great gulps of air.
    A few minutes or an hour later, she heard McLynn getting to his feet. Making a great effort, she stood upright and turned to face him.
    His face had regained its usual choleric color, and he looked furious. “You know what this means, don't you?
    She knew what it meant, all right.
    “It means we'll have to suspend the dig! Years of planning and preparation, years of begging for grants, all lost! Policemen and reporters scrambling around, disturbing the site, who knows what will be destroyed! It means we've lost this summer's work!
    She stared at him, incapable as yet of speech, and the sight seemed to enrage him still further. “It means he bellowed, “it means that I'm fucked, is what it means!
    Wy suffered her own realization. No. That wasn't what this meant.
    Or it wasn't all it meant.
    It meant she was going to have to call Liam.
    THREE

    Once you have smelled the odor of burned flesh, there is no mistaking it for any other. Liam had once had a case in which the perp had killed his wife, wrapped her in Saran Wrap, put her under their trailer and over the next three months doused her body with Clorox whenever the smell interfered withMonday Night Football.Clorox might be hell on wine stains on linen napkins, but it didn't do much to hide the smell of decay; a neighbor had reported it and the smell had led the responding officers directly to the body. All this time the guy had been sleeping in this same trailer, eating in it, showering in it, sitting on his ass and scratching it in his trailer. He had to have been among the olfactorily challenged, a new minority group invented on the spot by the crime scene techs.
    Still, that smell wasn't as bad as this one. He heard a sound next to him and turned to see Trooper Prince's pale face going even paler. He didn't bother asking if she was okay. She had to be.
    So did he. He took a shallow breath, stiffened his spine and opened the door to the smoke-stained cabin.
    It looked like one of the rings of hell in Dante'sInferno.It seemed as if there were charred bodies everywhere he looked, on the floor, fallen forward across the galley table, at least one under it.
    He pulled his head out and took a deep gulp of air. “Go get the body bags, he told Prince.
    Her head snapped up and color returned to her face with a rush. “I'm fine, sir, I
    “I know you are, he said. “We still need the bags.
    She hesitated. He pulled a pair of rubber gloves from a pocket, pausing to raise an eyebrow in her direction that said clearly,And you were waiting around forwhat, exactly?She turned and stepped to the float, her boot heels echoing against the metal grating. The set of her shoulders looked stiff, as if she were holding them straight by sheer effort of will.
    Liam took two steps and leaned one hand against the mast, unmindful of the soot smearing his palm.
    He'd been a trooper for almost twelve years now, and he had seen his share of carnage. There was the time Norman Murdy shot five people at a holiday camp on the Tonsina River, and then shot a trooper pursuing him in a helicopter. Ray Doucet had ambushed a husband and wife goldpanning on the Telaquana, had shot the husband and raped and murdered the wife. Billy Svenson had taken his father's AK-47 to Tok Middle School for a show-and-tell that resulted in the death of two students, one teacher and the principal and the wounding of nine others.
    He had responded to all of those scenes and more, and contrary to popular belief, the emotions inflicted on the people who saw such things first did not, over time, diminish in any way, shape or form. Time numbed your reactions, allowing