Chupacabra: Conner Bright Mysteries, #2

ONE

There are a lot of ways to die, some better than others. I think about this, more than I should, actually. Someone dies by your hand, or in my case, the slip of your foot, and you think about it. And I sure think about it as I stare at the corpse laid out in the desert south of Phoenix, Arizona.

He's on his back, his hands are clutched to his mouth like some teenage dweeb at a horror movie, his eyes wide and staring up at the unforgiving sun. His grey suit is cheap and dirty and his dress shoes are badly in need of a shine. There is a ragged rip in his pants over his inner right thigh and traces of blood visible on the frayed cloth.

He's got short brown hair and is maybe thirty years old. Whatever happened here, this is not a good way to die. Baking in the Arizona sun in the middle of nowhere. And the cheap suit and those shoes? God, I hope I die in my cowboy boots.

I swallow hard and try to focus. I've got the beginnings of what is going to be an epic hangover and got a whopping three hours of sleep and haven't eaten in twelve hours. It feels like there are needles behind my eyes threatening to poke through and my tongue feels like sandpaper.

There is never a good day to go see a corpse, but this is the worst day for me. An anniversary of sorts, and this guy reminds me of my best friend in high school, Tommy, who died twenty-five years ago. Today. By that aforementioned slip of my foot.

Detective Trisha Sanchez is standing about six feet away staring at me. She's got her reflective sunglasses on, her limbs held slightly bent with coiled energy like she's about ready to pounce. I wouldn't be here if she hadn't called me at 7:00 a.m. over and over until I actually picked up, telling me she had a case for me and that I had to get to the police station by nine or no more consulting work with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department.

Helen Montana, the blond-haired medical examiner and my on-again off-again girlfriend, is next to me staring at the corpse too. Her blue eyes look haunted and she's got her arms wrapped around her chest.

Something about this just isn't right.

I mean, besides my hangover and the corpse reminding me of Tommy and this being the worst day of the year for me.

The man has a sunburn but there is something else going on with his skin. It's wrinkled in a strange way like he's a third of the way to becoming a mummy. The position of his hands isn't natural, they should have fallen away when he passed out and long before he died.

And the smell... well, you get that with most any stiff. It's that deep, dark, cloying scent of blood and flesh just starting to rot.

There are three other sheriff's deputies here, searching the desert for evidence, but it is strangely quiet. I can hear the hum of the I-10, which runs from Phoenix to Tucson, in the distance, but that's the loudest sound.

Sanchez, I say, nodding toward the detective, my voice coming out a bit of a croak. Mind tellin' me what I'm doing here, mate?

It is about ten o'clock in the morning and much too early for me to be up and for my brain to be functional at all, or for all the beer and whiskey I drank in the wee hours to be completely out of my system. But I've got my bowie knife strapped to my belt, my alligator-skin boots on, a bush hat on my head covering my unwashed sandy brown hair, and my B-movie quality Australian accent up and running.

Yup, I look something like a really tall Crocodile Dundee and sound like it, even though I'm an Arizona boy. I've got a past that I do all of this to try to keep at bay, especially today of all days, and I've got to tell you that staring at the corpse and pondering the ways we die isn't helping at all. It's only years of talking this way that keeps the accent going.

Sanchez smiles her patent-pending predatorial smile that shows off her white teeth and always reminds me of a shark. Way back when, we had a good working relationship before my drinking screwed up that stakeout I was helping out on. She nods at the corpse. Ain't this weird enough for you?

Plenty weird, I'll give ya that, but... I look back at the stiff, a shudder running through my body. Why do you need my help? This looks like straight-up, old-fashioned detective work, not somethin' ya need a private eye for.

I didn't want the case. I do catch the weird cases, for sure, but I don't really like the gross ones, especially not today. I want to go buy more beer and keep drinking and get past this rather grim anniversary of mine with as few memories as possible.

Seeing this guy's hands over his mouth, his unseeing eyes open to the sun, just makes it worse. The poor guy looks like his end was terrifying.

Forget drinking, I'd settle for going to be a bouncer at the bar I work at or do one of the occasional handyman gigs I do, just trying to earn enough money to scrape by. I want to do anything but figure out why and how this poor guy died and who did it.

End of quarter, Sanchez says with her shark smile. She has on a crisp blue pantsuit with