Skull Duggery Read Online Free Page A

out.
    Bustamente bridled. “I don”t think, I know.” He crooked a bony finger at the police chief. “Come over here,” he commanded and led him to the sink. “Look at this.” When Sandoval realized he was looking at a man’s chest just sitting there in the sink like a slab of raw-hide, his insides started gurgling again.
    Wordlessly, Bustamente stuck his finger into a dark hole not far from the middle of the slab. “You see?”
    “From a bullet?” Sandoval asked. If he squeezed his eyelids together, leaving just a slit, he could see it without really seeing it.
    “Without question.” He removed his finger. “You see how the borders of the perforation appear to have been eroded or eaten away? So that the hole is ‘cratered,’ as we might say?”
    “Yes,” said Sandoval queasily, although all he could make out through his squint was a roundish hole with blackened edges. There was no denying, though, that it was the right size for a bullet hole. He had shot enough rabbits to know as much.
    “This eroded area is what we refer to as an ‘abrasion collar,’ ” Bustamente continued, in the manner of a teacher talking to a not-too-bright pupil. “It is the result of scraping from the rotating motion of the bullet as it penetrates the skin. Being unique to gunshot wounds, it leaves no doubt as to the source of the penetration. Judging from the size of the hole, I would guess the bullet was. 32 caliber, but I leave that to the experts.”
    “I see. And it would have killed him?”
    Bustamente uttered a croaking, incredulous laugh. “Certainly, it would have killed him. Imagine if it had happened to you.” To illustrate, he jabbed a bony forefinger into Sandoval’s chest at about the same spot. “It would have exploded your heart, devastated it.”
    “Ah,” said Sandoval, whose heart was, in fact, feeling more than a little devastated. Murder. Tumult. Inconvenience. The State Procuraduria de Justicia taking over his office, taking over the whole municipal building, all four rooms of it. The policia ministerial giving him orders, making clear their contempt for him, swaggering and bullying their way through the village. Detectives… judges…
    It was only what he’d expected, he thought with a resigned sigh. Expect the worst, his stern, cheerless father had counseled him on many an occasion, and you will get what you expect. Only it will be worse. Sandoval had quoted it to one or two people and they had laughed. But his father hadn’t meant it as a joke, and the message had sunk in.
    “And if by a miracle that were not enough,” continued Bustamente, “the fall would have finished the job.”
    “He had a fall too?”
    “A long one. There are many broken ribs. Was he perhaps found at the foot of a cliff or mountain, a height of some kind?”
    “Yes.”
    Bustamente was pleased. “You see?”
    Sandoval heaved a forlorn sigh. “This means I will have to report the matter to the policia ministerial, doesn’t it?” he said glumly, already knowing the answer.
    “The sooner the better, I would say. I would not waste any time. They don’t like delays.”
    “And what happens to the body? Do you take it away with you?”
    “Not me!” exclaimed Bustamente. “”I submit my own report. That’s the end of my responsibility.”
    “So what do I do with him? We can’t just leave him here.”
    “I suggest that is precisely what you do. Lock the place up securely and await the attentions of the policia, who will not be long in coming, I promise you.”
    Sandoval nodded soberly. If only old Nacho had stayed on the regular paths like anyone else. Or if he had to stray sometime, couldn’t he have waited a few measly weeks longer? Sandoval would no longer have been the jefe by then; he would have been safely, agreeably, delightfully engaged in the administration of the village council’s affairs, with no responsibility for corpses or murders or “You have a problem on your hands, Chief Sandoval,”