Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 (Mad Dog & Englishman Series) Read Online Free Page A

face of a bloodhound. His big ears stood out from the side of his nearly bald head and his jowls drooped so heavily that they pulled down the corners of his mouth in the perpetual frown of disapproval he brought to any occasion that required his presence.
    The sheriff met him at the door to his ten-year-old Buick station wagon, which sometimes doubled as hearse or ambulance, as the doctor parked beside the even older Benteen County Sheriff’s black and white. The patrol car’s light bar broadcast an invitation to anyone who hadn’t yet joined the throng milling about the edge of Veteran’s Memorial Park. Its driver, Deputy Wynn, known to friends and enemies as “Wynn some, lose some,” was the only person in full uniform. He was making an effort at crowd control, keeping people back from the restroom by providing grisly descriptions of what was still lying there to those who would listen. Most citizens would, and were.
    “This for real, Sheriff?” Doc waved at the crowd as he pulled his house-call bag out of the vehicle. “You really got a homicide here?”
    “That, or the most determined suicide I ever heard of.”
    “Be damned,” the doctor muttered as the sheriff led him toward the facility. “Been coroner in Benteen County seventeen years and this is my first homicide. Thought I was going to have to retire before I got one.”
    “Guess you lucked out, Doc.”
    “Don’t get sarcastic on me. I’m not glad somebody got themselves murdered. I’m just interested in the challenge. Want to see if I’m up to finding a cause of death, narrowing down the time, giving you the clues you need to bag the killer. It’ll be a hell of a lot more interesting than flu or VD or hemorrhoids, or sewing up some drunk who picked wrong from among the several roads he was seeing as he drove home. Where is it?”
    The sheriff pointed at the door, still ajar and filled with flies.
    “Who puked in the weeds?” Doc advanced as eagerly as a teenager shopping for his first car.
    “Mad Dog. Mine’s over behind those trees.”
    “Yours? Sheriff, I’m surprised at you. You’ve pulled more than one kid out of a hot rod that needed kingpins instead of twin carbs.” He paused before the door. “Mad Dog didn’t do this.” The way he said it made it about half statement and half question.
    “Don’t think so,” the sheriff said. “He found the body and came and got me after he stopped heaving his guts out. But he was here before dawn, probably about the time this happened. I haven’t ruled anybody out yet. Hell, I’m not even sure who’s in there.”
    “Good,” Doc Jones stated. “The mystery is what makes this challenging. Not much fun in just corroborating a confession. You or Mad Dog touch anything?”
    “Just the door…at least me. Unless Mad Dog did it, I don’t think he touched anything else either.”
    Doc smiled, straightening out the crescent of his mouth. He slipped through the curtain of flies, then came right back out again, several shades paler. “Jesus Christ!” he said, imploring the same deity addressed earlier by Reverend Simms, then by Mad Dog. Doc Jones did manage to avoid losing his breakfast, however. The arrival of a premature baby had kept him from eating it. Doc braced himself against the door frame, mouth hanging open, inviting flies.
    The sheriff refrained from making a wisecrack. What lay in there in a pool of congealing blood and excrement remained too vivid in his mind. “Any idea who he is?”.
    “Shit, all that cutting, I’m not even sure it’s a he yet.” Jones shook his head and swatted at the flies, regaining self-control. “You want to take some pictures of the crime scene, get it done. I’m going to take the deceased’s temperature and check for rigor. Maybe look for lividity too, though with all that blood loss I may not find much, Then we’ll move the corpse over to Klausen’s funeral parlor. I need some place cool that doesn’t smell like an abattoir where I can work