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17

I finished ain French toast, maple syrup, coffee Protein, fiber, carbohydrates And caffeine All the essential food groups, except nicotine, but I had already quit by then I put my silverware down and said, "There&039;s really only one obvious way to cut a woman&039;s throat You stand behind her and use one hand in her hair to pull her head back Or you hook your fingers in her eye sockets, or if you&039;re sure your hands are steady you could use your palm under her chin But whichever, you expose her throat and you put soet busy with the blade You&039;re taught to expect major resistance to the cut, because there&039;s soht to start an inch earlier and finish an inch later than you think is really necessary Just to be absolutely sure"

Deveraux said, "I&039; that&039;s exactly what happened in the alley But suddenly, I hope So it was over before she realized it was happening at all"

I said, "It didn&039;t happen in the alley It can&039;t have"

"Why not?"

"One of the side benefits of doing it froet covered in blood And there&039;s a lot of blood You&039;re talking about carotids and jugulars, and a young healthy person suddenly agitated and struggling,sky high"

"I know there&039;s a lot of blood I saw it There was a huge pool of it She was all bled out As white as a sheet I assu the pool was It looked like a gallon or more"

"You ever cut a throat?"

"No"

"You ever seen it done?"

She shook her head

"No," she said

"The blood doesn&039;t just seep out like you slit your wrists in the bathtub It comes out like a fire hose It sprays everywhere, ten feet orall over the place I&039;ve seen it on ceilings, even Crazy patterns, like souy, Jackson Pollock The painter"

Deveraux said nothing

I said, "There would have been blood all over the alley On the loan office&039;s wall, for sure And on the bar&039;s wall, and maybe on the pharmacy&039;s wall On the floor, too, yards away Crazy thin patterns Not a neat pool right underneath her That&039;s just not possible She wasn&039;t killed there"

Deveraux linked her hands on the table and bowed her head over the I had never seen a person do before Not literally She was hanging her head She breathed in, breathed out, and five seconds later she looked up again and said, "I&039;m an idiot I suppose I must have known all that, but I didn&039;t remember it I just didn&039;t see it"

"Don&039;t feel bad," I said "You never saw it happen, so you don&039;t have anything to remember"

"No, it&039;s basic," she said "I&039;ets worse," I said "There&039;s more"

She didn&039;t want to hear about how it got worse She didn&039;t wantherself up forwith the blood I had seen that kind of reaction many times I had had that kind of reactiono Because mistakes of a certain type have the kind of consequences that people with consciences don&039;t like to live with

She frowned and ground her teeth and growled at herself for a minute, and then she shook her head and stopped and carimmer than her normal sunny radiance She said, "OK, tell ets worse But not in here I have to eat here three times a day I don&039;t want the associations"

So we paid for our breakfasts and stepped out to the sidewalk We stood there for a longI could tell by her body language she wasn&039;t going to invite me to her office She didn&039;t want me near the Sheriff&039;s Department This wasn&039;t a deo back to the hotel We can use the lounge We&039;re guaranteed privacy there, after all Since we&039;re the only two guests"

We walked back down the street, and up the shaky steps, and across the old veranda We went in and used the door on the left of the lobby I sht before In the daylight the humped shapes I had seen in the dark turned out to be arrouped in various combinations, twos and fours We took a matched pair, either side of a cold fireplace

I asked her, "Why do you live here?"

"Good question," she said "I thought it would be a month or two But it extended"

"What about your old man&039;s house?"

"Rented," she said "The lease died with him"

"You could rent another one Or buy one Isn&039;t that what people do?"

She nodded "I looked at soer Have you seen the houses around here?"

I said, "Some of them look OK"

"Not to me," she said "I wasn&039;t ready, anyway I hadn&039;t decided how long I was going to stay Still haven&039;t, really No doubt it will turn out to be the rest of uess I don&039;t want to admit that to myself I&039;d rather let it creep up on ht about my pal Stan Lowrey, and his want ads There was a lota job There were houses, and cars, and clothes There were a hundred strange, unknown details, like the custo, and never fully understood

Deveraux said, "So let&039;s hear it"

I said, "Her throat was cut, right? We&039;re clear on that?"

"Definitely Unmistakably"

"And that was the only wound?"

"The doctor says so"

"So somewhere there&039;s blood all over the place Wherever it was actually done In a room, maybe, or out in the woods It&039;s impossible to clean up properly Literally i for you"

"I can&039;t search the base They won&039;t let "

"You don&039;t know for sure it happened on the base"

"She was raped on the base"

"It&039;s not impossible she was raped on the base That&039;s not quite the sa"

"I can&039;t search five hundred square miles of Mississippi, either"

"So zoom in on the perpetrator Narrow it down"

"How?"

"No woman can bleed out twice," I said "Her throat was cut in some unknown location, blood sprayed everywhere, she died, and that&039;s all she wrote Then she was du in? Not her own, because she&039;d left it all back in the unknown location"

"Oh, God," Deveraux said "Don&039;t tell ht it with him"

"Possible," I said "But a little unlikely It would be tricky to cut so around with a bucket, trying to catch the spray"

"There could have been two guys"

"Possible," I said again "But still unlikely It&039;s like a fire hose, flipping all around Here, there, and everywhere The second guy would be lucky to gather a pint"

"So what are you saying? Whose blood was it?"

"An anihtered, but not quite fresh enough There was soallon of liquid blood would have spreadhere blood is concerned"

"A hunter?"

"That&039;s uess"

"Based on not very much You didn&039;t see the blood You didn&039;t test it It could have been fake blood froht have figured out a way to collect it Just because you can&039;t see a way doesn&039;t mean a way doesn&039;t exist Or they could have bled her out first and then cut her throat afterward"

"Still a hunter," I said

"Why?"

"There&039;s et worse"

18

At that point the old lady I had seen in the diner stuck her head in the door The hotel&039;s co-owner She asked if she could bring us anything Elizabeth Deveraux shook her head I asked for coffee The old lady said sorry, she didn&039;t have any She said I could get it to go from the diner, if I really needed it I wondered what exactly she was offering, therefore, if anything But I didn&039;t ask The old lady left again, and Deveraux said, "Why are you fixated on hunters?"

"Pellegrino told ht out, as neat as a pin, just lying there on her back in a pool of blood Those were his words Is that a fair summary?"

Deveraux nodded "That&039;s exactly what I saw Pellegrino is an idiot, but a reliable one"

"That&039;s more proof she wasn&039;t killed there She would have fallen forward on her face, not on her back"

"Yes, I missed that too Don&039;t rub it in"

"What was she wearing?"

"A dark blue sheath dress with a lohite collar Underwear and pantyhose Dark blue shoes with spike heels"

"Clothes in disarray?"

"No They looked neat as a pin Like Pellegrino told you"

"So she wasn&039;t put into those clothes posto on a corpse just right Especially not pantyhose So she was still dressed when she was killed"

"I accept that"

"Was there blood on the white collar? At the front?"

Deveraux closed her eyes, presumably to recall the scene She said, "No, it was immaculate"

"Was there blood anywhere on her front?"

"No"

"OK," I said "So her throat was cut in an unknown location, while she was dressed in those clothes But she had gotten no blood on her, until she was dumped on her back in a pool that was separately transported Tell me how that isn&039;t a hunter"

"Tell me how it is If you can You can help the army all you want, but you don&039;t have to believe your own bullshit"

"I&039; the army Soldiers can be hunters too Many of them are"

"Why is it a hunter at all?"

"Tella drop of blood on her front"

"I don&039;t kno"

"You string her up on a deer trestle That&039;s how By her ankles Upside down You tie her hands behind her You haul her arms up until her back is arched and her throat is presented as the lowest point"

We sat in the shadowed silence for athe scene I sure was A clearing in the woods somewhere, remote and lonely, or a room far from anywhere, with improvised equipment, or a hut or a shack with roof bea upside down, her hands hauled up behind her back, toward her feet, her shoulders straining, her back curving painfully She was probably gagged, too, the gag tied to a third rope looped over the trestle&039;s top rail That third ropeher head up and back, keeping it well out of the way, leaving her throat completely accessible

I asked, "How did she wear her hair?"

"Short," Deveraux said "It wouldn&039;t have gotten in the way"

I said nothing

Deveraux asked, "Do you really think that&039;s hoas done?"

I nodded "Any other method, she wouldn&039;t have bled out all the way Not white as a sheet She would have died, and her heart would have stopped pu left inside her Two, three pints,upside down that finished the job Gravity, plain and simple"

"The ropes would have left marks, wouldn&039;t they?"

"What did the medical examiner say? Have you had his report?"

"We don&039;t have a medical examiner Just the local doctor One step up fro step"

Not a deo take a look for yourself"

She said, "Will you come with me?"

We walked back to the diner and took Deveraux&039;s car from the curb and U-turned and headed back down Main Street, past the hotel again, past the pharmacy and the hardware store, and onward to where Main Street turned into a wandering rural route The doctor&039;s place was half a ular clapboard house, painted white, set in a large untidy yard, with a shingle next to the le was Merriale of white paint that was brighter and newer than the surrounding surface A new arrival, not long in town, new to the coiven over to theroom, and the back room here patients were exa paperwork He was a florid man close to sixty New in town, perhaps, but not new to doctoring His greeting was languid and his pace was slow I got the i position as se-city practice I didn&039;t like hiood as any other kind

Deveraux told the guy anted to see and he got up slowly and led us through the house to what ht once have been a kitchen It was now tiled in cold white, and it had no-nonsense medical-style sinks and cupboards all over it In the center of the floor it had a stainless steel ht over it was bright