Pumpkin Eater. Jeffrey Round

underfoot. He pitched backward. The misstep may have saved his life. Above him, the air parted with a swishing sound as though something hefty had been swung at his head, barely missing it. Senses heightened, Dan felt more than he saw the shadowy figure skipping nimbly away toward the entrance. Someone whose eyes were far better adjusted to the light.

      The attack had come so quickly he barely registered the adrenaline surging in his veins. Now it set off panic alarms as he lay on the floor waiting to be sure he was alone and no longer in danger of having his head bashed in. Whoever it was wanted to get away more than finish him off.

      “Darryl Hillary?” he called after the vanished figure.

      There was no way of knowing whether his would-be attacker was Hillary, or even male, though he suspected it was. If it was Hillary then he’d probably thought whoever he was running from had finally caught up with him. Whatever horrors dwelled in his head waiting to spring out at any moment, he likely felt justified taking a swing at someone calling his name in a burned-out slaughterhouse.

      Dan got to his feet and brushed himself off. It was plain stupid to be stumbling around without his flashlight. He’d been too busy congratulating himself on not being afraid of the dark, like some ten-year-old daring to walk through a haunted forest at midnight. Except in this case there’d be no one to brag to when he emerged, exhilarated, after not being eaten by goblins or ghouls or wicked stepmothers.

      Steadying himself, he felt in his pocket for the Mini Mag that accompanied him everywhere he went, the way others were married to their Swiss Army knives. He twisted the knob and aimed it dead ahead. Obscure shapes sprang forward in a silvery gloom, as though he were underwater. Everything else stayed obstinately black just outside the range of the beam.

      Something tickled his cheek. He put a hand up to brush it off, catching his fingers in the straying light.

      Red.

      Blood.

      Not mine.

      Dan swung the light overhead and a sense of revulsion overtook him. His stomach reeled. The body was trussed like a pig and hanging from a rusty meat hook.

      A sound issued from his throat, half-gurgle and half-yell. Then silence rushed in to fill the vacuum that nature was said to abhor.

      With his unbloodied hand he reached for his cellphone, keeping the flashlight trained on the monster dangling above. He punched in the three numbers. The alert voice on the other end seemed to have been awaiting his call: Ambulance, fire, or police?

      Only for what it was worth, this tip wasn’t destined to be anonymous.

      One

      Tubular Bells

      The sirens screamed long before Dan saw the stuttering lights and sleek cars arriving with their officers in fancy dress uniform. The first cruiser skidded to a stop just outside the fence — a little show of force, nothing too flashy. There wasn’t much of an audience, after all. It was followed by a fire engine with a full crew and, finally, an ambulance to complete the set. Not that there was any chance the victim was still alive, Dan knew, but until that fact had been officially established, there would be no concession even to Death.

      The second and third cruisers careened to a halt ten feet from the first, lights flashing crazily. The old police vehicles, since retired, had always reminded Dan of sharks: sleek, predatory things waiting to attack. The new twenty-first century design with its gleaming white, red, and blue motifs made him think of Crest toothpaste tubes more than anything. Slick and lean, with cavity fighting fluoride. A new breed of cop for the new millennium.

      Two officers came warily toward him. Who knew, but he could be a crazy man on a killing spree. One cop was average build, youngish, probably a family man resenting the impositions of a night shift that kept him away from home. The other was oversized and fleshy, a teddy bear with a wheeze and buggy eyes. A heart attack in the making. Badges were flashed, names tossed at him. In return, Dan identified himself as the 911 caller. The three of them headed inside.

      The other officers stayed outside, taping off the yard, diligent as prospectors mapping out a claim. Dan knew the rule of thumb was to cast your net large. You could always close down on an area later, but once the scene was under inspection it was too late to widen the scope. A final officer sat in his cruiser, probably writing up a request for the warrant that would allow them to make a thorough search of the premises.

      With their larger and more penetrating flashlights, Dan got a better look at the slaughterhouse interior. Clearly, he’d been taking his chances wandering about in the dark. He ducked under a collapsed arch and headed into the main room where the body waited. The cops followed silently, playing their beams on the ground and over the walls, looking for who knew what. On seeing the body strung up, one of the officers made a sound of disgust; the other kept his feelings to himself, if he had any.

      The corpse leered down at them. His quietus made and bare bodkin notwithstanding, the deceased’s reticence stretched around them, matching the silence of the place. Death might have taken a holiday here and slept for a century or more without being disturbed.

      “Hanging prisoners on meat hooks was a Nazi interrogation technique,” Dan said as they stood gazing up.

      Both officers turned to look at him as though he might have been directly responsible for any number of atrocities in the Second World War internment camps. For all they knew, he could have been Goebbels’ right-hand man.

      The fleshy officer scribbled something in a book then aimed his flashlight back up at the victim.

      “Looks like somebody was trying to make a statement,” he said to no one in particular, perhaps just tickling out a desire to become a murder profiler.

      Footsteps approached. The medical officer arrived, grunted an acknowledgement to the others, then reached up and felt a limply hanging wrist for a pulse.

      He shook his head: Death Acknowledged.

      “Get your pictures then take it down,” he said. “Not much I can do while it’s up there.”

      A fourth officer entered and set up a tripod. As he fiddled with the knobs, Dan told the first two cops how he’d been hired to find someone who might or might not be the man hanging overhead at that moment, describing the anonymous call that had led him here. They listened with seeming indifference. In reality, Dan knew they were trying to decide whether to consider him a “person of interest,” waiting to see if he’d say anything that might implicate himself. No one had cautioned him or advised him of his rights, so he wasn’t under oath, but anything he said could be considered a “spontaneous confession.” His profession would give his actions a modicum of credibility, but he was wary of saying anything that might flag him as suspicious. One wrong word could be the kiss of death. He was simply a missing persons investigator following the trail of a man to a burned-out slaughterhouse. Period. The fact that he was trespassing would be put aside for now. The more important fact — that he’d found a body rather than a living person — was another matter entirely. While it was unlikely that one man would kill another in such an elaborate fashion and then phone in the murder report, the police would assume nothing. At the very least, they’d let him prattle on to see if he contradicted himself or revealed anything beyond what he’d already told them. The rules of conduct in a police investigation could be as intricate as a Middle East diplomatic mission.

      Camera flares lit up the walls, animating the corpse like a haunted-house zombie on the make. By now, the officer in the cruiser would have passed Dan’s name back to the station to verify that he really was all he claimed. He would probably learn that Dan had helped solve other murders in the past, but it was up for grabs whether they would see him as an asset or as a guy who stuck his nose in police business when the chance presented itself. With luck someone would know him, maybe even back up his statements, then they’d all lighten up a bit. But it was nearly 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning and there was no telling who might be on the desk at that hour. Till then it was anybody’s guess how things would turn out.

      The forensics guys were fanning out, scouring the room for clues, the small