The Timer Game Excerpt

Copyright © 2007 by Susan Arnout Smith. All rights reserved

The interior was dark, windows covered in duct tape and sheets, and it took a moment to adjust her eyesight. A dark stain saturated a sliver of ratty carpet and spatted a nearby wall.

“Chip, don’t come near this, okay?”

She squatted down carefully out of reach of the stain and roved her flashlight beam over the wall. The drops curled like exclamation marks in a hurry, and meant that whoever was bleeding had been moving. Or blood had scattered from a weapon that was moving. Or maybe it had been an earthquake and the wall had been moving. Something had moved, and whatever it was, it meant work on her end, and a lot of it.

“Lovely.” She’d never see Katie again.

Grace stood up. Already her arms inside the Tyvek were damp as boiled hot dogs. The suit sealed her like a deli chicken. Too bad she didn’t wrap herself first in secret herbs and cellophane; she could lose six inches in an hour. She wondered if women losing inches in a spa wrap suddenly exploded like a hot sausage the instant they drank a glass of water. She had to stop thinking about food.

“Any ideas?” Lewin stood at her elbow.

“Yeah, Vince, somebody bleeding was in here once.”

“Ha ha very funny.”

She turned her attention to the rest of the living room. The floor was littered with asthma inhalers, so thick it looked like an army of oversized, hard-shelled insects. Bedding tangled across a stained mattress. A child’s dump truck climbed a hill of fertilizer. A meth pipe tilted out the toy cab of the truck. Matchbook strips, ripped down to the red phosphorus, scattered across a table, along with boxes of diet pills and stiffened coffee filters. Red as if they’d been dipped in blood.

“What do you think?” Lewin looked at Chip. His voice was tinny in the mask.

“Nazi method,” Chip said, thinking it was the same cooking the efficient Germans used during the war, to keep the troops awake and ready.

Lewin made a buzzer sound. “Wrong.” He looked at Grace.

“Red phosphorus reduction method,” Grace said. She turned to Chip, shrugging it off. “Nazi method’s Lithium and ammonia gas, it’s white powder.”

Lewin looked disappointed that she’d gotten it right. He turned toward the kitchen, motioning them to follow. Under his mask, Chip’s face was a pasty grey and dots of sweat sprouted on his upper lip.

“You okay?” She stopped walking. “Chip?”

“Claustrophobic. Always have been. Even when I was a kid.” Chip’s voice was muffled in the mask. He shrugged, embarrassed. “Don’t tell Sergeant Lewin.”

She nodded. She could tell by the way his hand kept going to it, that Chip carried a gun. Most criminalists opted against it; it was bulky and unnecessary; police controlled the scene and afforded protection, but occasionally Grace ran across a wanna be cop. They always carried.

Her booties made a snicking sound on the filthy floor and Pyrex pans littered the stove. A jug of what looked like denatured alcohol lay on the grimy table. The cabinets were empty except for lighter fluid, Drano, duct tape, and a half-opened box of Fruit Loops.

Chip was swallowing, his face shiny with sweat. “Okay to take off my mask?”

Lewin’s head shot up from inspecting residue in a pan. “You mean safe? Yeah, but—”

The rest of the sentence died as Chip tore off his mask and screamed. His eyes bulged and he shoved Lewin out of the way and raced for the paint-blistered kitchen door, yanking it open and pelting down the steps into the back yard. They could hear him taking great shuddering gasps.

“Stupid kid.” Vince said.

Grace shrugged, looking around. “He’ll learn. They don’t call it cat for nothing.”

Methamphetamine cooking smelled like cat urine, if the cat was as big as a town car and the box hadn’t been changed in months.

Outside, Chip uttered a sharp strangled cry that cut off abruptly into silence.

“I’ll check out the other rooms. Leave the sheets up. I’m going to document the spatters.”

“Have at it.” Lewin put down the search warrant, along with the Hazardous Waste forms. “I gotta go babysit.”

“Hey, Vince. He’s a chickie. Go easy on him.”

Lewin grimaced through his mask and stepped out the kitchen door. Grace looked around. It was going to cost the state a bundle getting it cleaned up. Something large slapped against the house and slid to the ground. It was a sound like a piece of rotten fruit hitting clumsily and hard. She straightened, listening. Silence. A thin reedy whistling grew in the silence, followed by a muffled moan.

She swallowed. “Vince?”

The whistling escalated, the sound wickering through the air like a broken electrical circuit and the hair on the back of her neck pricked. She moved silently to the kitchen door and down the stairs, yanking off the breathing mask and sliding it to the ground, her head light without the weight.

It was a small yard with rusted cars up on blocks, obscuring the alley. She stared blankly. There was supposed to be a uniform out back protecting them, just like there was out front, but if he was there, she couldn’t see him.

From deep in the yard came a bubbling sound. She’d only heard that rattle in ER and it didn’t sound any better now. She eased around the hulk of a car. Chip Page lay clutching his throat, his fingers slick with surging blood. He stared up at her mutely, his eyes wide and terrified, his glasses askew.

She could see into the alley now. A uniformed officer lay face down in a pool of blood, his legs at odd angles. Blocking the alley was the taco van, its motor running.

Her throat closed and she dropped to her knees. Chip’s windpipe had been sliced. His mouth opened soundlessly. Establish an airway. Make sure the victim is breathing. His eyes flicked to a spot behind her and she looked over her shoulder.

Pain exploded across her jaw as she was broadsided by a fist and yanked to her feet. It was so unexpected all she felt was a dazed terror and blinding pain behind her eyes and a shooting fire down her arm.

“You lose.”

He was taller than he’d looked in the taco van, pulsing as if he’d been hot-wired. His breath smelled minty fresh. In his other hand, he held a butcher knife.