Whispers in the Mist Read Online Free PDF Page A

head back, pinched his nose shut, and blew two breaths into his mouth. The boy’s lips were so warm that he must be alive in there somewhere. A rush of chirping and flapping wings sailed over Danny as he proceeded to pump the boy’s chest. Birds, yes, call him back with your song. Danny grew lightheaded but he continued breathing and pumping.
    Behind him, footsteps approached at a run. “Sir? Benjy the Bagger’s here.”
    “Get him over here.” Danny was panting. “Tell him to forget his fecking cigarettes for once.”
    “Ahern,” he heard a moment later, “what the bloody hell are you doing?”
    Benjy, the state pathologist, shoved at Danny hard enough that he stumbled as he stood. He moved off, giving Benjy space to resuscitate the boy. Ten minutes later, Benjy checked his watch. “Death confirmed, 10:53 a.m.”
    Danny watched as a small flock of sparrows hopped and fluttered about on top of the mounds of fodder. In one wave they rose, leaving one to flounder with a droopy wing. It flew a few feet with a lopsided flutter, only to crash-land in the grass next to the boy’s shoulder. Its head cocked toward Danny.
    “Oh and here we are,” Benjy said, “a proper harbinger of death, this one. Sparrows carry the souls of the recently departed.”
    “And you know this how?”
    “Me sainted mother, God rest her soul.”
    Benjy grinned and made a move toward the bird—a male with a brown head, black bib, and grey belly. Danny waved Benjy away. “Leave him alone. Let him find his wings again.”
    “True or not, I swear there’s a hovering that hangs over some bodies. Sometimes I can feel it in the morgue like a lingering stain. And this victim? Worse than usual, poor soul.”
    Danny breathed deep. What little dappling effect the sun had over the landscape had disappeared. A grey envelope of cloud passed over them, sealing them into its gloominess. The boy had looked straight at him, right into the murkiest part of his soul. Danny swallowed down a rookie’s urge to vomit.
    Serious again, Benjy squinted up at him. “Sorry, Dan-o, I suspect there would have been no saving him even if an ambulance had arrived in time.”
    “I checked his pulse, but I didn’t feel anything.”
    “The carotid is a bigger pulse but it can be harder to find. And it doesn’t help that you’re wearing gloves. It’s not your fault.”
    Oh, but it was. He should have checked the boy’s wrist when he didn’t feel a pulse on his carotid. Instead, he’d assumed he was looking at what he’d been told he’d find: a potential suspicious death. He’d let lingering family concerns distract him from his job.
    “No identification, no mobile,” Benjy said.
    Danny gazed down at the victim. Tall and gangly like he, Danny, had been as a youth. And like Petey looked to be growing into.
    “He looks seventeen at most.” Danny averted his gaze once again. “A boy.”
    Besides the obvious puzzle of a city boy laid out in the middle of Blackie’s Pasture, Danny sensed that the hovering something Benjy had mentioned had already insinuated itself into local life. Into his local life.
    Danny strode away from the silage bundles, noting their expanse of shiny black plastic. There were three of them, and they sat in the pasture like entombed beasts ready to burst out of their shells. He shook the image out of his head. He didn’t like his imagination sneaking up on him like this. He’d spent too much time alone in the year since he’d moved out of the house. He had to stick with reality. A boy—a lost boy—had died in his arms.
    “Sir,” Detective Officer O’Neil called after him. “Crime scene tape all hung now.”
    “Better get started on the door-to-door,” Danny said. “And we’ll need a sketch artist too. I’d like a picture for the newspaper.”
    He continued on toward the other end of the field, nicknamed Blackie’s Pasture after a swaybacked gelding that had befriended everyone who cut across his territory. The horse was long