The Buried (The Apostles) by Shelley Coriell Read Free Book Online Page B

thing across the room, when he saw the number. Damn. “Holt,” he said around a tongue that was two sizes too big.
    “Hey, Tuck,” his boss, Henderson Rhodes, said. “We need you at Collier’s Holler. Got a double.”
    Not only was his tongue too big, it was wearing a woolen sock that scratched the roof of his mouth. “A double?”
    “Collier’s bird dog found two bodies in the holler this evening.”
    Two bodies? He was too hung over to take on two bodies. Hell, he was too hung over to take to his own two feet. “Call Wilkinson.”
    “He’s on vacation. Alaskan cruise with the missus.”
    “Greggs.”
    Henderson cleared his throat. “Tuck, I’m going to make this as clear as possible, because you need clarity in the form of a slap upside that head of yours. Get your nose out of the bottle and back into your work. You lost your house, your wife, and your kids. One more fucked-up case, and you’ll lose your job. See you in the holler.”
    Tucker jammed his thumb against the side of the phone and the line went dead. For a moment he wished he could flick a similar switch on the side of his head. Tucker was a screwup and a drunk. The two were intertwined. He drank, he screwed up. He screwed up, he drank. He threw the phone on the nightstand where it slammed into a photo frame that toppled over and crashed to the floor. Dragging himself to the edge of the bed, he winced at the splintered glass spidering across Hannah’s chubby cheeks and Jackson’s toothless grin.
    “Can you fix it, Daddy?” Hannah would have asked.
    “Daddy can fix anything,” Jackson would have said with the unwavering conviction of a six-year-old who hadn’t yet learned how fucked up the world really was.
    He picked up the photo, staring at the faces of his kids who, no matter how bad he screwed up, thought he could fix the world. Setting the photo on the nightstand, he dragged his hand across his face. Henderson was wrong. He hadn’t lost his kids. Mara, his soon-to-be ex, had filed for full custody, but she hadn’t won. Not yet.
    With a groan, he dragged his ass out of bed, the bells clanging with every step he took toward an ice-cold shower.
    Thirty minutes later the bells still clanged as he climbed out of his police cruiser, the one marked Detective Unit. He slipped on his aviator glasses, but they did little to block out the sharp lances of sun needling his pickled skull. An officer led him through the thick woodlands toward a ravine.
    “Collier’s dogs spotted up on ’em an hour ago,” the patrol officer said. “Older couple, man and a woman, dressed in hiking gear. By the looks of the bodies, they’ve been here a few days.”
    “Any reports of missing tourists?” Tucker asked as he ducked under the crime scene tape.
    “Nope, and no locals MIA, either.”
    Tucker grabbed a huckleberry branch and lowered himself into the holler. Already he could smell the obscene sweetness. He swatted a cloud of no-see-ums and picked his way through the steamy, tangled brush, hoping like hell this would be a simple tag and bag.
    This time of year they got plenty of day hikers and bird watchers in the northern Kentucky woodlands. Beautiful country. Beautiful place to raise a family. He drew up before the first set of flags. Beautiful place to die.
    Pushing aside a thistle bush, he spotted two legs with springy gray hair sticking out from khaki hiking shorts. The bloating body wore cross trainers and a fanny pack. He swatted at another branch, and a cloud of flies swarmed from the upper body. He swallowed a drunken chunkiness as he studied what was left of the old man’s face, bone and cartilage bleached and dried by the sun. A grainy white powder clung to a few remaining strips of flesh hanging from the temples and neck. Likewise, the white, grainy powder had eaten away the flesh on the fingertips.
    “The woman’s over there.” The officer pointed past a downed log where Tucker could make out a single white tennis shoe and veiny calf.