Fireproof

the bed and began flipping channels, trying to clear his mind. He breezed over a news alert on one channel and then backtracked out of curiosity.
    He didn’t recognize the setting at first. He saw the State Patrol jackets and dark woods and suspected a dead body had been found. He was relieved that it didn’t look anything like the rest area he had been to last night. But there was something familiar about the winding road. Then he saw the culvert and he knew they had found one of his after all.
    He sat on the edge of the bed, his hands on his knees, and he tried to steady himself. That’s when he noticed there was blood splattered along with river mud on his work boots. He’d spent the day working with blood on his boots.
    Damn! He was getting reckless.
    Of course, anyone else would see only the mud. He yanked the boots off. He’d have to clean them.
    He padded in his socks to the bathroom to look into the black garbage bag he’d left in the tub. A ring of blood pooled around the bottom, a pretty crimson against the white porcelain. He tugged open the plastic. The smell was no longer rancid to him. Instead, it reminded him of raw meat in various stages of spoiling.
    He was always so careful, leaving the ones he wanted found and tucking away the ones he wanted to hide. How the hell had they found the girl with the orange socks? And why now, when he just happened to be back in the area? Was his bad luck already beginning?



CHAPTER 53

    As soon as Maggie walked into the forensic anthropologist’s lab she remembered how much she hated the smell of boiled flesh. Not that burned or putrefied flesh smelled much better. Somehow it seemed more rancid when it was done on purpose like the scientists did here.
    Several pots and one huge roasting pan sat on the industrial stove’s burners. Maggie could see the rolling boil in the roaster, and whatever was inside was producing the worst aroma.
    Despite the smell, Maggie welcomed the distraction. She had been avoiding her mother’s phone calls since last night. This morning she listened to only two of her dozen or more voice messages.
    “That Jeffery Cole twisted everything I said,” her mother whined. “He made me sound so awful.”
    Of course she’d make it about the injustice done to her rather than admit she had been wrong. And forget about an apology. Odd as it seemed, Maggie would even trade listening to her mother’s pathetic excuses with the smell of boiling flesh.
    “You must be Agent O’Dell.” A small Asian woman in a white lab coat greeted her. “I’m Mia Ling.”
    She was standing over a wide stainless-steel table under ahanging fluorescent light. Her purple-gloved fingers picked at a piece of bone.
    “Detective Racine is on her way. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t shake your hand. I’m almost finished with this piece.”
    “No, of course. Please continue.”
    Maggie glanced in one of the other boiling pots as she made her way over. Maggots squirmed and rode on the greasy film. Several made it to the wall of the pan and tried to scale the metal only to die with a sizzle and a pop. Maggots were one of the few things that truly creeped Maggie out.
    During autopsies they appeared indestructible. Even freezing them only slowed them down. Once present on a corpse, they couldn’t simply be removed without also destroying valuable evidence. An autopsy with maggots became a race, the morgue’s bright lights churning them up. Sometimes they shoved each other out onto the floor, where they’d search for the closest warm, moist place, often crawling up a pant leg. She found it morbidly satisfying to see them in hot water, finally something that could destroy them.
    It only then occurred to her that Gloria Dobson’s body didn’t have any maggots, even though it had been dumped in the alley.
    “I would be doing that with your victim,” Ling said, indicating the boiling pot, “if you hadn’t been able to identify her. It’d certainly be easier to boil away the flesh than to pick at it.” She held up a bone in her fingers. “Funny how family members don’t really appreciate us cutting off a victim’s head just to figure out what happened. So I’m left to pick off the brain tissue from the bone by hand.”
    Maggie liked Mia Ling even before she added, “And my family doesn’t understand why I won’t eat meat.”
    “So this is Gloria Dobson’s?” Maggie pointed to the tray with bits of bone and what looked like several teeth.
    “Yes,