At The Stroke Of Madness. Alex Kava

He didn’t know. He couldn’t know.

      Breathe. He needed to breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He felt a cold sweat breaking out, and it wasn’t even midnight. The tingle began in his fingers. The chill slid down from his neck to the small of his back. He needed to stop it. Stop, stop, stop it. Stop the panic before it grabbed hold of his stomach.

      He fumbled through the duffel bag on the passenger seat, fingers searching while his eyes stayed on the road. The car in front moved too slowly. Heads still turned. Stupid gawkers. What could they see? By now they should know they couldn’t see anything beyond the trees. Assholes! Stupid assholes! Move it, move it, move it!

      Already he could feel the nausea. The panic was starting, a cramp deep in his bowel. Soon it would slice across his abdomen, a sharp knife piercing him from the inside out and slowly slitting its way along the same course. His muscles tightened, a stiff reflex to prepare for the pain, the dread, the agony. Sweat slid down his back as his fingers grew more desperate, shoving, clawing, searching.

      Finally, his fingers found and grabbed on to the plastic bottle. He wrenched it free from the bottom of the stuffed bag. He fumbled, angry with the shaking in his hands, but still he managed to twist off the child-protective cap while steering. Like a man dying of thirst, he guzzled the white chalky liquid, not bothering to stop at the recommended dose. Once the pain had begun, it was a race to squelch it. He took another swallow just for good measure, wincing at the taste. The stuff made him want to gag, and he would if he thought about it.

       Don’t think. Stop thinking.

      It was a taste he associated with childhood, with a dark stuffy bedroom, his mother’s cold hand on his forehead and her soft voice cooing, “You’ll feel better soon. I promise.”

      He put the cap back on the bottle and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. He waited. Stared at the road ahead. Stared at the flaming-red taillights of the car in front. Demon red eyes blinking as the idiots inside continued to gawk. He wanted to tap his car horn, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t draw attention to himself. He would need to wait. Stay in line and wait. He needed to stay, stay, stay put.

      Maybe it wasn’t Vargus. His mind began racing again. What about the other guy—Racine. Luc Racine. Luc with a “c” was how they had spelled it at the bottom of the TV screen. That name sounded familiar. Had he seen him before? Yes, he was sure that he had. But where? Where, where, where? Where had he seen him before? Had the old man been following him? Was he the one who got Vargus interested? What could the two of them be up to? Had they gone to the quarry digging? Digging for something … or no, digging for someone?

      But how? How could they have found out? Vargus was stupid, a brute, but that Racine guy. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he knew something. Luc Racine knew something.

      But how? He had been careful. Always very careful. Careful, careful, careful. Yes, he had been careful. Even when he used the equipment, he left everything as he found it. Nobody could know. Yes, he had been careful. Always very careful.

      It didn’t matter, though. Not now. He’d never be able to use that old quarry again. Never, never, never. The whole area was crawling with cops and reporters. And here he was, stuck in line, like one of the gawkers. This was worse than the idiots who jammed the roads every fall looking at the trees. And they would be starting up soon, within weeks. Long lines winding the byroads, gawking like they’d never seen leaves turn colors before. Stupid, stupid, stupid idiots. But he pretended to be one of them. Just this once. Just so he could see the commotion, scope things out, figure out what was going on.

      Finally he could turn off, escaping onto a side road. No one followed. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t miss any of the excitement. He made his way up the winding road, and felt the tension in his back ease. But only a little. He still had things to worry about. Things to take care of. He needed to settle down, calm himself. He couldn’t let the panic return. Couldn’t handle the pain. Not now. Not when he needed to think. That panic, that pain could paralyze him if he let it. Couldn’t let it. Couldn’t let it. That pain, the same pain from when he was a kid, could still come out of nowhere, sharp and intense stabs as if he had swallowed a pack of shingling nails or maybe even a fillet knife.

      He needed to stop thinking about it. He needed to get to work. How could he work, thinking about this? How could he function? What would he do? What could he do now that he no longer had a safe dumping ground?

      CHAPTER 12

      Adam Bonzado looked over the bits and pieces the crime-scene tech named Carl had spread out on a plastic tarp. He had already bagged and labeled some according to where they had been found and what he guessed they might be. From his preliminary once-over Adam could already tell the specimens were from at least two different corpses.

      “The dog brought this one,” Carl said, pointing to what looked to be a left foot.

      Adam picked it up carefully in double-gloved hands and examined it from all angles. Most of the phalanges were gone. The metatarsals and some of the tarsals were held together by what little tissue remained. Even the calcaneus, the heel bone, appeared to be still attached.

      “Have you found the rest of the body?”

      “Nope. And I doubt if we will. A couple of the barrels look like they rusted through. Coyotes probably helped themselves. There might be pieces scattered all over this county.”

      “How much do you need to identify a person?” Sheriff Henry Watermeier asked, looking over the assortment.

      “Depends on a lot of things. This has some tissue left,” Adam said, handing the foot back to Carl, who placed it in a brown paper sack. “We probably have enough for DNA testing. But it won’t matter if we don’t have anything to match it to.”

      “So let me see if I can remember how this works,” Watermeier said in a tone that Adam thought already sounded exhausted. “If a person is missing, we couldn’t test for DNA to see if this is that missing person unless we already had something from that person, like hair samples, to match?”

      “Exactly. You can do reverse DNA when you’re looking for someone in particular. We did it to identify some of the World Trade Center victims.”

      “What do you mean, reverse DNA?”

      “Say a person is missing, but we have nothing of his to match our DNA sample to. We could do a DNA test on one or both parents, and in some cases siblings, to see if there are enough hits. It can be a bit complicated, but it does work.”

      “So in other words,” Watermeier said, “we may never know whose fucking foot that is.”

      “If we find more parts and identify them as belonging to the same person I might be able to piecemeal a profile. You know, narrow it down to male or female. Maybe give you a ballpark age. That way you have something to check against the missing persons lists.”

      “You know how many people go missing every year, Bonzado?”

      Adam shrugged. “Yeah, okay, so you’re right. We might not ever know whose fucking foot that is.”

      Carl brought several more pieces, some Adam could tell had been buried, absorbing the soil and turning the bone reddish black. He pointed to a small white one. “I don’t think that one’s a bone.”

      “No?” Carl picked it up for a closer look. “You sure? It looks like bone.” He handed the piece to Adam.

      “There’s an easy way to tell,” Adam told them, and took the piece, lifting it to his mouth and touching it with the tip of his tongue.

      “Jesus Christ, Bonzado. What the hell are you doing?”

      “Bone, unlike rock, is porous,” Adam explained. “If it’s bone it sticks to your tongue.” He tossed the piece to the ground. “This one’s just a rock.”

      “If it’s okay with everyone else,” Carl said, still wincing from Adam’s demonstration, “I’ll just pick