Page 35 of Body Count

Tip Wheeler was in my bed.He looked different in death, but people always did.His underwear was tangled around his legs, and his sprawled-out pose suggested, in a perverse way, the aftermath of sex.The cop part of my brain was already thinking, already processing—the feel of him, the temperature, the plastic give of his flesh, even the stink:he’d been dead for days.

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“Darnell?”I shouted.

Nothing.

Somehow, I got myself to move.

The house was empty; he wasn’t home.

I called my boy John-Henry first.Then I realized what I’d done, and I disconnected.

I called Peterson next.

“Don’t touch anything,” he said.

By then John-Henry was calling me back.I sent the call to voicemail.

I couldn’t go back in the bedroom.I thought about shutting the door.Then I thought about prints.I’d already touched it once, but I didn’t want to fuck things up any more.I found clean clothes in the dryer and dressed—just mesh shorts and a faded Mo State shirt.Shoes.I’d need shoes.A pair of beat-up Sauconys.I ended up at the front door, staring out through the glass at the empty street: the unrelenting gray of the asphalt that dissolved into shadows, the trembling white cone from the streetlight.The stink had crawled up my nose; I could smell it even here.I wondered how I’d ever thought it was anything else.

Tip was dead.

He was here, in my house.

And Darnell was gone.

I hadn’t thought about calling him until then, but when I tried, it went to voicemail.

“Where are you?Call me back.”

One of the cruisers pulled up first, and Yarmark and Nickels got out.Even six months after the shit hit the fan, Yarmark—who was such a nerd that I thought of him as Clark Kent—was still worshipping at the altar of Saint Somerset.He still wore his hair like John-Henry.He still talked about John-Henry.I swear to Christ, one time I heard him ask John-Henry what kind of pen was best.John-Henry had no fucking clue what to say, so I’d said,He’s using a Bic, isn’t he?And sure enough, the little dipshit had bought himself a box of Bics.Nickels, at least, had some chill.

“You okay?”Nickels asked at the front door.

I nodded.“He’s in the back bedroom.”

“Anybody else?”

“Just me.”

“Why don’t you come outside with me?”Yarmark said.“Get some air.”

I nodded again.

“Detective Dulac,” he said gently.

He held the door for me, and once I was clear, Nickels went in.Yarmark walked me to the driveway.The night had cooled considerably, and I shivered.Shock, maybe.It was hard to say.It was hard to think about anything.

When Yarmark came back from the cruiser with a Wahredua PD windbreaker, I put it on.

Peterson showed up in uniform.He stopped on the driveway long enough to ask, “How are you doing?”

I nodded.

“Darnell?”

I shook my head.

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