The Hundredth Man Read Free Page A

caught up with Harry at the entrance to the park, guarded by a young patrolman. He gave me a look.
    â€œYou’re Carson Ryder, aren’t you?”
    I looked down and mumbled something that could have gone either way. As we passed by, the patrolman pointed at his uniform and asked Harry, “How do I get out of this as fast as Ryder did?”
    â€œBe damned good or damned crazy,” Harry called over his shoulder.
    â€œWhich one’s Ryder?” the young cop asked. “Good or crazy?”
    â€œDamned if he ain’t a little of both,” Harry yelled. Then to me, “Hurry.”

C HAPTER 2
    T he scene techs brought portable lights with enough wattage to guide in a 757, all focused at a twenty-by-twenty area spiked with head-high bushes. Trees surrounded us and blotted most of the stars. Dog shit lurked beneath every step. Two dozen feet away a sinuous concrete path bisected the park. A growing audience pressed against the fence where the park met the street, including an old woman twisting a handkerchief, a young couple holding hands, and a half-dozen sweat-soaked runners dancing foot to foot.
    Two criminalists worked inside the taped-off area, one kneeling over the victim, the other picking at the base of a tree. Harry trotted toward the onlookers to check for witnesses. I stopped at the yellow tape and studied the scene from a dozen feet away. The body lay supine in the grass as if napping, legs slightly apart, arms at its sides. It seemed surreal in the uncompromising light, the colors too bright and edges too sharp, a man incompletely scissored from another world and pasted to this one. The clothing was spring-night casual: beltless jeans, brown deck shoes without socks, white tee with an Old Navy logo. The shirt was drawn up to the nipples, the jeans unzipped.
    Bending over the body was the senior criminalist on the scene, Wayne Hembree. Black, thirty-five, thin as poor-folk’s broth, Hembree had a moon face and a sides-and-back fringing of hair. He satback on his heels and shrugged kinks from his shoulders. His forehead sparkled with sweat.
    â€œOkay walking here, Bree?” I called, gesturing a line between my shoes and the body. I didn’t want to stick my feet into something important. Dog shit either. Hembree nodded, and I slipped under the tape.
    An old street cop who’d seen everything this side of downtown hell once told me, “Find a head without a body, Ryder, and it’s weird, but there’s something whole about it. Find a body without a head and it’s creepy and sad at the same time—just so alone, y’know?” When I looked down on that body, I understood. In four years with the MPD I’ve seen shot bodies, stabbed bodies, drowned bodies, bodies mangled from car crashes, a body with a pile of intestines squirted beside it, but never one without a head. The old cop nailed it: that body was as alone as the first day of creation. I shivered and hoped no one saw.
    â€œKilled here?” I asked Hembree.
    He shrugged. “Don’t know. I can tell you he was decapitated where he’s laying. ME folks thinking two or three hours back. Puts time of death between eight and ten.”
    â€œWho called it in?”
    â€œKids, teenagers. Came back here to make out and—”
    Footsteps behind me; Captain Squill and his hulking, omnipresent shadow, Sergeant Earl Burlew. Burlew was chewing paper as usual. He kept a page of the Mobile Register in his pocket and fed torn pieces between his doll-sized lips. I always wanted to ask was there a difference between sections, Sports tasting gamier than Editorials, maybe. Or did they all taste like chicken? Then I’d look into Burlew’s tiny, oyster-colored eyes and think maybe I’d ask some other time.
    Burlew said, “Look who’s here, Captain: Folgers instant detective. Just add headlines and stir.” He swiped his hand down his sweating face. Burlew’s centered