The Sheep Look Up Read Online Free

and his eyes were the dilute blue of shallow water. Peg found him more tolerable than the rest of the morgue staff. He was devoid of emotion-either that, or absolutely homosexual-and never plagued her with the jocular passes most of his colleagues indulged in.
    Shit. Maybe I should take a wash in vitriol!
    She was beautiful: slim, five-six, with satin skin, huge dark eyes, a mouth juicier than peaches. Especially modern peaches. But she hated it because it meant she was forever being hounded by men collecting pubic scalps. Coming on butch was no help; it was that much more of a challenge to men and started the ki-ki types after her as well. Without make-up, perfume or jewelry, in a deliberately unflattering brown coat and drab shoes, she still felt like a pot of honey surrounded by noisy flies.
    Poised to unzip if she so much as smiled.
    To distract herself she said, "A murder case?"
    "No, that suit someone filed in Orange County. Accused a fruit grower of using an illegal spray." Eyes roaming the numbered doors.
    "Ah, here we are."
    But he didn't open the compartment at once.
    "He isn't pretty, you know," he said after a pause. "The car splattered his brains all over everywhere."
    Peg buried her hands in the pockets of her coat so that he couldn't see how pale her knuckles were. It might, just conceivably might be a thief who'd stolen his ID…
    "Go ahead," she said.
    And it wasn't a thief.
    The whole right-hand side of the dark head was-well, soft. Also the lower eyelid had been torn away and only roughly laid back where it belonged, so the underside of the eyeball was exposed. A graze clotted with blood rasped from the level of the mouth down and out of sight beneath the chin. And the crown was so badly smashed, they'd put a kind of Saran sack around it, to hold it together.
    But it was pointless to pretend this wasn't Decimus.
    "Well?" Stanway said at length.
    "Yes, put him away."
    He complied. Turning to lead her to the entrance again, he said,
    "How did you hear about this? And what makes the guy so important?"
    "Oh…People call the paper, you know. Like ambulance-drivers.
    We give them a few bucks for tipping us off."
    As though floating ahead of her like a horrible sick-joke balloon on a string: the softened face. She swallowed hard against nausea.
    "And he's-I mean he was-one of Austin Train's top men."
    Stanway turned his head sharply. "No wonder you're interested, then! Local guy, was he? I heard Trainites were out in force again today."
    "No, from Colorado. Runs-ran-a wat near Denver."
    They had come to the end of the corridor between the anti-ovens.
    With the formal politeness due to her sex, which she ordinarily detested but could accept from this man on a host-and-guest basis, Stanway held the door for her to pass through ahead of him and noticed her properly for the first time since her arrival.
    "Say! Would you like to-uh…?" A poor communicator, this Stanway, at least where women were concerned. "Would you like to sit down? You're kind of green.
    "No thanks!" Over-forcefully. Peg hated to display any sign of weakness for fear it might be interpreted as "feminine." She relented fractionally a second later. Of all the men she knew she suspected this one least of hoping to exploit chinks in her guard.
    "You see," she admitted, "I knew him."
    "Ah." Satisfied. "A close friend?"
    There was another corridor here, floored with soft green resilient composition and wallpapered with drifts of monotonous Muzak. A girl came out of a gilt-lettered door bearing a tray of coffee-cups. Peg scented fragrant steam.
    "Yes…Have the police sent anyone to check on him?"
    "Not yet. I hear they're kind of overloaded. The demonstration, I guess."
    "Did they take his belongings from the car?"
    "I guess they must have. We didn't even get his ID-just one of those forms they fill out at the scene of the accident." Dealing with Christ knew how many such per day, Stanway displayed no particular interest. "Way I read it, though, they'd