Every Dead Thing

I had abandoned my Colt Delta Elite after the deaths of Susan and Jennifer. Now I had three guns in my possession. The.38 Colt Detective Special had belonged to my father, the only thing of his that I had retained. The prancing-pony badge on the left side of the rounded butt was worn and the frame was scratched and pitted, but it remained a useful weapon, light at about a pound in weight and easily concealed in an ankle holster or a belt. It was a simple, powerful revolver, and I kept it in a holster taped beneath the frame of my bed.

I had never used the Heckler amp; Koch VP70M outside a range. The 9 millimeter semiautomatic had belonged to a pusher who had died after becoming hooked on his own product. I had found him dead in his apartment after a neighbor had complained about the smell. The VP70M, a semiplastic military pistol holding eighteen rounds, lay, still unused, in its case, but I had taken the precaution of filing away the serial number.

Like the.38, it had no safety. The attraction of the gun lay in the accessory shoulder stock that the pusher had also acquired. When fitted, it made an internal adjustment to the firing mechanism that turned the weapon into a full-automatic submachine gun that could fire twenty-two hundred rounds per minute. If the Chinese ever decided to invade, I could hold them off for at least ten seconds with all the ammunition I had for it. After that, I’d have to start throwing furniture at them. I had removed the H amp;K from the compartment in the Mustang’s trunk where I usually stored it. I didn’t want anyone stumbling across it while the car was being serviced.

The third-generation Smith amp; Wesson was the only gun I carried, a 10 millimeter model specially developed for the FBI and acquired through the efforts of Woolrich. After cleaning it, I loaded it carefully and placed it in my shoulder holster. Outside, I could see the crowds making for the bars and restaurants of the East Village. I was just about to join them when the cell phone buzzed beside me, and thirty minutes later I was preparing to view the body of Stephen Barton.

Red lights flashed, bathing everything in the parking lot with the warm glow of law and order. A patch of darkness marked the nearby McCarren Park, and to the southwest, traffic passed over the Williamsburg Bridge heading for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Patrolmen lounged by cars, keeping the curious and the ghoulish behind barriers. One reached out to block my way-“Hey, gotta keep back”-when we recognized each other. Tyler, who remembered my father and would never make it beyond sergeant, withdrew his hand.

“It’s official, Jimmy. I’m with Cole.” He looked over his shoulder and Walter, who was talking with a patrolman, glanced over and nodded. The arm went up like a traffic barrier and I passed through.

Even yards from the sewer I could smell the stench. A frame had been erected around the area and a lab technician in boots was climbing out of the manhole.

“Can I go down?” I asked. Two men in neatly cut suits and London Fog raincoats had joined Cole, who barely nodded. The FBI letters weren’t visible on the backs of their coats so I assumed they were keeping a low profile. “Uncanny,” I said as I passed. “They could almost be regular people.” Walter scowled. They joined in.

I slipped on a pair of gloves and climbed down the ladder into the sewer. I gagged with my first breath, the river of filth that ran beneath the tree-lined avenues of the city forcing a taste of bile into the back of my throat. “It’s easier if you take shallow breaths,” said a sewer worker who stood at the base of the ladder. He was lying.

I didn’t step from the ladder. Instead, I pulled my Maglite from my pocket and pointed it to where a small group of maintenance workers and cops stood around an arc-lit area, their feet sloshing through stuff about which I didn’t even want to think. The cops gave me a brief glance, then returned with bored looks to watching the med guys go about their business. Stephen Barton lay about five yards from the base of the ladder in a tide of shit and waste, his blond hair moving wildly with the current. It was obvious that he had simply been dumped through the manhole at street level, his body rolling slightly when it hit the bottom.

The ME stood up and pulled the rubber gloves from his hands. A plainclothes Homicide detective, one I didn’t recognize, directed a quizzical look at him. He returned one of frustration and annoyance. “We’ll need to look at him in the lab. I can’t tell shit from shit down here.”

“Come on, give us a fucking break,” the detective whined lamely.