Blood Price

and with the strength of both men leaning on it, it went through jacket and uniform and bone and flesh and out into toe ground.

    As the first beam of sunlight came up over the garage, Anicka Hendle kicked once more and was still.

    "Now we'll see," Roger panted, retrieving his beer.

    The sunlight moved across the yard, touched a white shoe, and gently spread out over the body. The blood against the frozen dirt burned with crimson light.

    "Nothing's happening." Bill turned to his brother, eyes wide in a parchment pale face. "She's supposed to turn to dust, Roger!"

    Roger took two steps back and was noisily sick.

Ten
    "All stand for the word of the Lord. We read today from The Gospel According to St.
    Mathew, Chapter twenty-eight, Verses one to seven."

    "Praised be the word of the Lord."

    "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. Thus endeth the lesson."

    The Gloria almost raised the roof off the church and just for that moment the faith in life everlasting as promised by the Christian God was enough to raise a shining wall between the world and the forces of darkness.

    Too bad it wouldn't last.

    * * *
    "Back up, please. Move aside."

    Hands cuffed behind them, the brothers were brought out through the police barricade and into the alley. Curious neighbors surged forward, then back, like a living sea breaking against a wall of blue uniforms. Neither man noticed the onlookers. Roger, smelling of vomit, dry retched constantly and William cried silent tears, his eyes almost closed. They were shoved, none too gently, into one of the patrol cars, shutters clicking closed in a half dozen media cameras.

    Ignoring the reporters' shouted questions, two of the constables climbed into the car and, siren hiccuping, maneuvered the crowded length of the back lane. The other two added their bulk to the living wall that blocked the view of the yard. "No one speaks to the media," the investigator in charge of the case had told them, his tone leaving no room for dissension.

    The body came out next, the bouncing of the gurney moving it in a macabre parody of life within the body bag. A dozen pairs of lungs exhaled, the shutters closed again, and over it all a television reporter droned in on-the-spot coverage. The faint antiseptic smell of the coroner's equipment left an almost visible track through the damp morning air.

    "I seen her before the cops stuffed her in the bag," confided a neighbor to an avidly listening audience. She paused, enjoying the feeling of power, and cinched her spring coat more tightly over her plaid flannel nightgown. "Her face was all bashed in and her legs were apart." Nodding sagely, she added, "You know what that means."

    Listeners echoed her nod.

    As the coroner's wagon drove away, the police barricade broke up into individual men and women who hurriedly stepped out of the way as Mike Celluci and his partner came out of the yard.

    "Get statements from anyone who saw something or who thinks they saw something,"
    Celluci ordered. At any other time he would have been amused at the reaction that invoked in the crowd as half of them preened and the other half quietly slipped away, but this morning he was far beyond amusement. The very senselessness of this killing wrapped him in a rage so cold he doubted he'd ever be warm again.

    The reporters, for whom the story had more reality than what had actually happened, surged forward, demanding some sort of statement from the police. The two homicide investigators pushed through them silently until they got to their car, a rudimentary instinct of self-preservation keeping the reporters from actually blocking their way.

    As Celluci opened his door, Dave leaned forward and murmured, "We've got to say something,