Page 70 of Evil Bones
“Where’s that?” I’d never heard of it.
“Northeast of Uptown.”
I knew Skinny was amped when he dug a portable LED rooftop beacon from the center console and planted it on the SUV’s roof.
“Buckle up!” he barked.
I did.
Strobingred-blue-red-blue-red-blue, we raced across town,Skinny white-knuckling the wheel.Moibracing two-handed against the dash.
A google search had shown Cordelia Park as a small patch of green space not far from the Little Sugar Creek Greenway. In less than twenty minutes we screamed into its tiny, paved parking area.
After the breakneck sprint through traffic, I needed a moment to bring my heart rate back down from the stratosphere. As the thumping settled, I scanned my surroundings.
Our Trailblazer shared the small, hedge-enclosed space with four patrol cars jammed at haphazard angles, doors flung wide, radios spitting. Beyond them was a late-model sedan, undoubtedly an unmarked CMPD vehicle.
Also present was a low, sleek number that might have been a Corvette. The sort of car you herniate yourself getting into and out of.
At the unsubtle sound of our arrival, two heads had popped up inside the Vette. Quickly dropped back down out of sight.
Young love, a sappy cluster of neurons had offered. Sweet.
At ten a.m. on a Wednesday? their more practical brethren had countered. With cop cars screaming in from all directions? More like horny desperation rudely interrupted.
The moment Slidell killed the engine we both fired out.
Cordelia Park was similar to the other sites favored by our doer. Same wood chip–blanketed playground. Same swing sets, merry-go-rounds, and slides. Same picnic tables sheltered by corrugated tin roofs. Only one grill here.
Chest-high chain-link fencing separated the park and playground from the adjacent woods. A patrolman stood guard at the gate. Slidell badged him and he waved us through.
We encountered another uniform a few yards into the trees, her face ashen beneath a sheen of sweat. She straightened on seeing us but said nothing.
There was no need.
The buzzing flies gave notice enough.
Behind the cop, a half-naked man hung upside down nailed to the trunk of a large live oak. His legs were spread, his bare feet pierced by what appeared to be railroad spikes.
The man’s arms dangled limp beside his head, his right hand, purple and swollen, just a few inches short of the ground. His left hand, severed neatly at the wrist, was nowhere to be seen.
Swatting atDipteraannoyed by my presence, I stepped closer for a better look.
The man’s eyelids were stretched wide and sewn above and below his orbits. His pupils, though dilated, fixed, and opaque, seemed to register surprise in death. Glitter winked sunlight off the man’s hair and skin, and bundled feathers projected from each of his ears.
And this scene offered a macabre new twist.
Beside the human corpse, a dog’s body was suspended by its hind legs. A small one, maybe twenty pounds, with a curly black coat and eyes that had been honey-brown in life.
A decorated corpse with a missing body part. Except for the canine, the pattern was all too familiar. And there was one other new element.
A pair of letters gaped raw and ugly on the man’s forehead:PE. The eggs of energetic female flies were already whitening the borders of the incised flesh.
I shifted my focus to the dog, circling the carcass to take in a full three-sixty view. Its torso had been shaved to create a furless patch on one side. The same two letters were carved into the bluish-white rectangle of exposed skin:PE.
“What the fuck’sPE?” came from behind me.
Slidell had gone so silent I’d almost forgotten he was there.
