Alien Taste by Wen Spencer Read Free Book Online

theorized that the mink cousin had licked the bags clean, but there wasn’t any sign of saliva.
    So someone had dumped the bags of their contents, washed them well, and then sealed animals inside. Yeah, like that made sense!
    Mystified, he studied the room. The first true sign of blood was two feet in front of the vital organ table. It belonged to the coroner—he assumed, then caught himself. It didn’t belong to Dr. Janet Haze. The subject had been male, black, and mature, so maybe it did belong to the coroner. There were faint traces of drugs in the blood, ones he recognized from experience to be heart medication.
    More blood of the same type splattered the floor in increasing amounts, leading to the coroner’s body.
    The coroner had died slumped against a wall, knocking a ventilation grate askew with his last struggles. His feet almost touched the table where Dr. Janet Haze would have lain, cut open and gutted. In metal trays were the dissection tools: large knives, bone saws, and one small circular saw to cut open the skull. In a steel bowl were two twisted lumps of .45-caliber bullets.
    He found countless little footprints in the pool of congealing blood, trampling over each other until they had become a blur. Here and there, though, he could pick out individual prints. He used his pinkie to measure the prints. Five. Six. Maybe seven individual animals. Over and around the body they had gone, tearing and eating. But where had they gone? They had to have gone somewhere. He felt the hair on the back of his neck lift slightly; the whole situation was creepy. He ran a hand across the apparently clean section of the floor, hoping to hit a blood trail too faint to see.
    Agent Zheng walked over and placed a foot in front of his searching hand. “Is this some version of good cop, bad cop? Talkative PI, silent PI?”
    He leaned back on his haunches to look up at her. The foot had been a firm “stop it,” but there was no anger in her face or body. “I don’t talk much.”
    They regarded each other. She had a strong face, sharp lines, and hard angles, tightly composed to neutrality. Only her large eyes were slightly readable, and they seemed narrowed in vague suspicion. What had she and Max been talking about? Ukiah reviewed their conversation and found that someone had also broken into police evidence and stolen everything held there. Their recording from his headcamera was the only shred of evidence left on the case, and she was concerned whether it was safe from theft too.
    â€œI was told,” she said, “that you left your hospital bed sometime after two A . M . Since I was already here at the morgue at 2:15, it’s doubtful you had anything to do with this murder.”
    â€œI can’t believe you’re considering my partner as a suspect!” Max snarled behind Ukiah. “We were called in by the police without a clue as to what was going on. Mr. Oregon was almost killed by your top-secret scientist, and was confirmed in the hospital when this murder happened. How dare you try to stick the blame on him?”
    â€œThe facts remain,” Agent Zheng replied quietly, “he killed Dr. Janet Haze and he left the hospital in the middle of the night.”
    â€œHe’s got seventeen stitches in his left arm and five in his neck! The shooting was self-defense. And what if he did leave? There’s no law that says you have to stay in the hospital once checked in.”
    Agent Zheng ignored him. “Mr. Oregon, will you please explain to me yourself why you left the hospital?”
    He considered what to tell her. At least part of the truth seemed safe enough. “There was a man and a woman in Schenley Park. The man was at the crime scene before my backup arrived—they stepped onto his footprints, not vice versa. He didn’t actually come close enough to touch either one of us, but he did walk around our bodies. Then he moved off and was joined by