Read Immortal Bones - A Supernatural Thriller - Detective Saussure Mysteries - Book 1 Page 8

ONE MORE STOP IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH before that day would come to an end: Annette Kensington, a coroner I used to work with on some occasions. Annie hated my guts, and I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t like her much either, but she was the best I knew and the only one who, for a little money on the side, would help me. Maybe I could catch her on her way back home. She was probably leaving her office by then. Although she dealt with dead people, there was no telling when they would need help. That much I knew.

  I walked into the police station parking lot. There she was, tall and red as usual, opening her car’s door. I had parked my own vehicle round the corner. I didn’t want to call anyone’s attention, as not everyone inside that building loved me. I rushed up to her with my box of medical goodies.

  “Hi, there,” I greeted, trying to sound as amiable as possible. She turned to face me and it was not a pretty facial expression. It looked like she had just stepped on dog excrement. She was the foot and I was the...other end of that equation.

  “What do you want?” Annie blurted out while getting inside her car. She was escaping, fast.

  “Yes, the weather is lovely. Gray and humid suits you, by the way.”

  “Saussure, I just had an eighteen-hour day. Talk or I’ll run you over.”

  “Eighteen? Wow! What happened? Did you have triplets again?”

  “Yes.”

  I felt the blood draining from my head.

  About seven years before, we were working on a murder case with multiple victims. Three young men had been killed and bound together by the feet, forming a circle. Each one of them was facing out. Their hearts had been removed and placed inside the circle. No blood. Not even a drop. The bodies had been propped in a manner that made them stay on their knees. Oh, and their ears were turned in, as if someone had sucked them from inside the skull.

  Annie had performed the post mortem examination. It lasted hours. It turned out the victims were triplets, and the long scarf used to bind them together was knitted with the boys’ own hair. Many of all the medical oddities from that case were impossible to explain, even for Annie. But eventually we found the murderer, despite the missing pieces. Henry Paulson was a member of a satanic cult; he believed triplets were a source of power that had to be sacrificed to the Antichrist. Paulson had been sentenced to a life in prison a year later.

  This could not be happening again.

  “Copycat?”

  “Don’t know yet. What do you want? I need to sleep, Richard.”

  “Right, sorry. I’m just going to put this here.” I opened the back door and placed the box inside. “This is filled with medical records about a man who claims he’s over two hundred years old and can’t die. See if it all adds up, or if the records have been forged.”

  “What?”

  “Call you tomorrow!” I hastened away before she could even begin to say no. “Thank you!”