The Undead World (Book 12): The Body [An Undead World Expansion]

by Meredith, Peter

  And then she was left alone with the corpses and regret. She started to run down the unlikely events of the past day, but it was all confusion and pain. Why had she killed Kevin? Why poison Jonathan? Why had the Corsairs picked that day to come to Bainbridge? Had they come any other day, she’d be in bed right at that moment, staring at the ceiling, consumed with just guilt.

  “At least I’d be warm,” she muttered, finally slipping from beneath the blanket. The first thing she noticed was that she was not alone. The tide was shifting to the west, while the wind had died. This was bringing together a great deal of the far-flung leftovers from the failed rescue mission.

  Along Ted’s partially eaten corpse, and Willy’s riddled one, there were three blackened ones that she could not bring herself to look at. The shotgun floatie was there as well. She went to it, and for a moment, she simply held onto it, practically cuddling it. The moment couldn’t last. A zombie’s moan brought her back to her unreal reality.

  17

  The fires and gun blasts were a spectacle that drew the untrained eye and now that they were over, it was the far off Corsair ships that did so. The people manning the searchlights were incompetent. They saw no danger up close or to the north.

  With her blanket, Jillybean would’ve been difficult to spot one way or another, but they made it easy for her to work her way back to her culvert. Although she had struck a blow against the Corsairs, she didn’t think she was anyone’s hero. The two men she’d tried to rescue were just as dead as if the Corsairs had slit their throats.

  “Or stabbed a dozen times,” she said, the bloody image of Kevin Dunlap flashing through her mind.

  No, it was best if she just went home and forgot the night ever happened. Only she couldn’t. There was Jonathan she had to worry about, and she couldn’t go to the clinic looking like she had just crawled out of the Sound. Fortunately, she had an entire wardrobe worth of clothes at her school.

  The building was dark just as it should have been, but now it had a brooding quality to it that made it feel foreign, and she slipped in as if she were the intruder. Right away, she saw that it had been searched again. This time there was an almost frantic feel to flung doors and lockers.

  Seeing the rows of little metal doors canted at every angle, gave her the shivers. She kept her spare clothes in three of the lockers closest to the offices. These had been opened but the clothes inside were untouched, and why would they have been? A body would’ve been obvious.

  In typical Jillybean fashion, the lockers were arranged: under garments, locker one; shirts, locker two and pants in the last. The layers even matched. The top three were all black. Pink was the following layer, which made the chrome of the watch stand out. It was a man’s watch sitting neatly on a pink blouse.

  A smear of blood disfigured the face.

  “Someone planted this,” she said, without thinking. It was a knee-jerk response that made no sense. Who would plant a body and a watch? And was she going to pretend that the bloody dress she’d been wearing and the knife had been planted as well?

  No. The watch was something else entirely. “A trophy.” The thought was entirely unnerving. She ran the watch to the nearest water fountain and washed away the blood. “Eve! You can’t do this. It’s wrong on a whole new level.”

  There was no answer from within. Not that any would do. Even a denial, like her earlier ones, would’ve been better than silence. The denials allowed Jillybean to hang onto the thinnest of straws: what if she really hadn’t done it? Or what if it had been an accident? What if it had been a crime of passion…”

  “No.” The blow to the head had been debilitating. It would’ve left him unconscious. Eve would’ve wanted him awake so she could take her time, to hear him scream. “That’s her idea of passion.” Jillybean knew her own. Her mind flashed to Dorg and the elegant wounds she had inflicted. They had been almost dainty.

  “No. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about any of it.” She threw on the black clothes and hurried from the building, the watch tucked into a pocket. On the way to the clinic, she paused to tie her shoe and as she fiddled, she buried the watch under an inch of dirt.

  Without it, she felt twenty pounds lighter, right up until she slipped through the front doors and found far too many people in the clinic waiting room. Her first thought was of her patient.

  “Is it Mr. Dunnam? Is he okay?”

  “I think he’s the same,” Deanna said. She and Neil were looking at her, tight-lipped with worry.

  Sheriff Perkins eyed her narrowly. “What happened to you? You look…damp.”

  Jillybean touched her hair and swallowed loudly. “Damp?” What lie could cover such a simple question?

  As she began to stammer, Neil declared, “She’s not on trial here. And I’m sure she wants to take a look at Jonathan.”

  “He’s sleeping,” Linda Diaz said, from the corner. She’d been bored all night but was now alert and excited; this was the closest thing there was to one of her mysteries. “Here’s his chart. Everything’s been trending down again.”

  Jillybean slipped on a lab coat and stared down at the chart, knowing precisely what it would show her, but needing an excuse and to turn away from the sheriff. A sigh escaped her. The dialysis had saved his kidneys, but his liver was failing, and there was nothing she could do.

  “I heard the screams from out on the water,” she said, still staring at the chart. “And I ran to see what was going on. And I tripped and got muddy. So I showered at the school. There are showers there.”

  “Is that right?” Perkins answered. “The two deputies I have watching the place said you went in forty minutes ago.”

  People had been watching the school? Why? The answer was obvious: they wanted to catch her disposing of a body. And they likely would have had it not been for the Corsairs. Jillybean could imagine them heading to the Sound along with everyone else when the screams had started hours before “The, uh tripping, when I tripped was before and the showering was now.”

  “Perhaps. So, between the tripping and the showering, what were you doing for three hours? Why weren’t you here, caring for Jonathan? It’s a question people have been asking.”

  “What people?” The only people who would be concerned were in the room with her.

  “The governor, for one. Angela Lenna for two. She’s been insisting that I treat Kevin Dunlap as more than just a missing person and as Kevin was A.W.O.L. from the muster this afternoon, the governor thinks so too. I bet you can guess what I found out behind Kevin’s place.”

  She knew it wasn’t a body or the murder weapon. “Blood?”

  “Why would you guess that?” Neil wanted to step in again, but the sheriff raised a hand. “She doesn’t need help answering these questions if she has the truth on her side. Which I doubt.”

  “Logic,” Jillybean answered. “I know by logic. Mr. Dunlap wouldn’t be a missing person if you had found him.”

  “That’s right. Very smart. You know some smart people think that just because you don’t have a body, you can’t try someone for murder. But ya can, and tomorrow the governor is going to convene the council and bring you up on formal charges. What are we going to find when we go through your school inch by inch?”

  Jillybean had a running list of her questionable activities. Luckily, the most egregious of them were in the initial phases and still had conventional uses. They could be explained. “Just my ‘speariments.”

  “We’ll see,” Perkins said, ominously. “In the meantime. Stay away from the school. It’s being treated as a crime scene. Have a good night.” She left a stunned room behind. After a strained silence, Linda slipped out, muttering something about labs.

  “What are they going to find?” Neil asked in a whisper.

  Hadn’t they already looked? Jillybean could only shrug. “Just my ‘speariments, like I said.” Unless Eve kept another trophy…but why would she. One made some sense, but a second would be weird.

  Deanna let out a long s
igh. “I need you to come clean with us. Did Kevin threaten you? Did he try to rape you? Was it anything more than how he treated you at the meeting?”

  “I don’t remember. I mean, I remember the meeting but not anything after.”

  Neil blew out through puffed cheeks and Deanna shook her head saying, “That’s no kind of defense. If they find anything in your school, I won’t be able to help you.”

  “What if there was something balancing out a suspicious death?” Neil wondered. “You were out on the bay tonight, weren’t you? You did all that.”

  I disposed of the body of a man I murdered and managed to get two innocent people killed. That was the truth. She shook her head, adding another lie to her list of that night’s misdeeds.

  Deanna clearly didn’t believe her. “What about Ted and Willy? Are they still alive?” Jillybean couldn’t look up. She didn’t want them to see her face; it would give away everything. After a few moments, Deanna sighed tiredly and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was after two. “Well, if Willy and Ted are dead, the governor won’t be put to the test which will strengthen her, but if the Corsairs showing up isn’t a clarion call for a wall, I don’t know what is.”

  “We’ll strategize in the morning,” Neil said. “At the moment we have to worry about Jillybean.”

  She didn’t want anyone worrying about her, at least not right then. She needed time to figure out what had happened. There were so many unanswered questions that it boggled even her mind.

  “At the moment, I gotta figure out how to help Mr. Dunnam,” Jillybean said, adding yet another lie on top of a growing mountain. She had done all she could for the man. “I’m gonna have to stay with him.” It was her hint for Neil and Deanna to go home. As Deanna had Emily to take care of and Neil was yawning out tears, it was enough and they both left.

  For form’s sake, Jillybean went in to see Jonathan. The yellow sheen to him had progressed and she had to resist the urge to draw more blood. It was better to let him sleep. Going to her little office, she found Linda in a chair with a book on her lap.

  “All this is like one of the mysteries we read,” Linda said. “You know, for our book club?”

  Jillybean remembered half-listening to Linda go on about a book she and a number of others had been reading. As her childhood had been cut terribly short, Jillybean had never gotten into reading for “fun.” She read for survival. She read to be indispensable. Her idea of a fun read was one that allowed her to conquer new subject matter.

  “It’s like a mash-up,” Linda went on. “It’s got everything rolled into one: a poisoning, a missing person, a relentless detective hot on a trail, clues all over the place…it even has pirates.”

  As a detective, Sheriff Perkins was not very impressive. How had it taken this long for her to find Kevin’s blood? The man had been stabbed multiple times…the words: A crime of passion echoed through her mind. She wanted to get caught up in the thought but she pushed it away.

  “And do the good guys always win in your books?” she asked, hopefully.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Linda replied, guardedly, making it clear she didn’t think Jillybean was a good guy. “But you never know who the true bad guy is until the end.”

  “Do they always find out?”

  Linda read guilt on the little girl’s face. “Always. Killers always leave clues that lead to them in the end. Sure, they might send out false trails, but in the end, there are always enough real ones to catch the bad guy.” Linda grinned. She wasn’t a bad person, but it was nice, for once, to see the kid genius brought down a peg and she enjoyed watching Jillybean squirm.

  “Frequently, the answer’s right in front of you,” Linda said, raising an eyebrow. “Who had motive to kill? Is public humiliation enough to kill? I think most people would say yes. Did the killer have opportunity? Was she able to slip away into the night and do the deed? Was she able to…”

  Something stuck with Jillybean suddenly. “Why do you keep saying she?”

  “Because women are poisoners. Men shoot each other or use knives.”

  “And you think Kevin was poisoned?”

  In answer, Linda shrugged causing Jillybean’s face to cloud over. The older woman nodded sagely. “There are circles within circles. Each thread has to be tracked down and unraveled.”

  What happens when the threads create the Gordian Knot? Eve would undoubtedly solve it as Alexander the Great had: with a sword. Jillybean thanked the woman and left the clinic, ignoring Linda’s raised eyebrows.

  The little girl walked aimlessly, sinking deeper and deeper into a blue funk. “They’re going to find out I did it…but how? How will they, when I don’t even know?” She frowned as her mind zipped over the clues: the body, bonked on the head and stabbed. The knife in her bed, the bloody dress and sheet. The hidden watch. The confrontational meeting. It all pointed to Jillybean.

  “Except women are poisoners.” She had the murder of General Johnston hanging over her head as proof. “But I didn’t poison Jonathan. I don’t remember last night, but I remember yesterday just fine. I never went to his house and I never picked mushrooms. I guess a Death Cap could’ve gotten into the normal ones by mistake.” If so, it was a terrible mistake that came at the worst possible time.

  “If not, why would any woman, and Jillybean in particular, want to poison Mr. Dunnam? It doesn’t make sense. Not even Eve would want to kill him. It has to be an accident.”

  Why weren’t you here, caring for Jonathan? It’s a question people have been asking.

  “What people?” Sure, the governor made sense, but Jonathan wasn’t a man with many close friends. “Or any.” No one had visited the man except Angela and she had been entirely focused on finding Kevin. “Not entirely. She had been the first to bring up the word poison. And the first person to accuse me. Had she talked to the sheriff? Is that why Perkins was so gung-ho?”

  Jillybean stopped, thinking that Perkins never had valid evidentiary reason to suspect Jillybean of poisoning Jonathan or murdering Kevin. “She never found any evidence,” Jillybean corrected. The body had been right there for all to see. “But not the watch. That would’ve taken a much more in-depth search…which will happen tomorrow.”

  What are they going to find when they search the school?

  “Nothing. All the evidence is gone. There’s nothing that’ll link me to Mr. Dunlap.”

  What are they going to find when they search the school?

  Her heart sank because she suddenly knew what would be found. “Mushrooms,” she said. She turned and stared across the island, picturing her school and the one refrigerator in use in the break room. That’s where they’d find the Death Caps. “Circles within circles,” she whispered. She had been walking slowly, her steps weighed down by exhaustion and stress. Now she picked up the pace and moved quickly. Time was against her.

  18

  The culvert again. She needed another series of power outages, and the timing was critical. Getting in and out of the school without her thermal scope and without triggering an actual patrol by the deputies would mean the lights couldn’t be off for more than thirty seconds at a time.

  And the brown-outs couldn’t focus squarely on the school. They had to be purposefully sporadic. Easy-peasy.

  At exactly three in the morning, the lights went down around the school and she ghosted from behind a car, through the shadows and through the west side door, shutting it a second before the lights came back on fifteen seconds early! There was a glitch in her glitch, meaning she couldn’t count on the lights to go back down when she needed them to.

  She was trapped.

  Somehow, her terribly unlucky day was just getting worse. Jillybean had already known she could be tried for murder without a body being found. It would be a trial based on circumstantial evidence and getting caught in the school after being warned not to go in, was just another strike against her.

  Killers always leave clues that lead to them in the end.

  “But I didn’t do it
,” she whispered. If that were true, why was she there in search of mushrooms? “Because they’re here.” She stole away from the door, creeping down the dark hallway, her Keds making no noise. “Mr. Dunnam wasn’t poisoned on accident. That would be a one in a million chance. And to be poisoned on today of all days would be one in a hundred million.”

  She was at the break room, staring at the refrigerator. It had been growing mold inside when she first found it. Now it was pristine. Inside were carefully marked and packaged experiments; these included rows of labeled blood vials, tissue samples and various fluids that would turn a man’s stomach if they knew what they were and where they had come from.

  Set aside on the top shelf were pill bottles. Most of these were medicines that needed refrigeration or faced degradation. She grabbed the first on the right and shook it. The pills rattled inside. She grabbed the second and heard the same except that it was a muted sound. She didn’t need to open it to know the mushrooms were inside.

  A cold shiver struck her as she pulled out a plastic baggy containing the folded remains of two large mushrooms and the stalk of a third. That headless stalk begged the question: where’s the rest of it?

  “It’s in Mr. Dunnam.” The answer was obvious. “Even the sheriff would make the connection, which is the point. She’s being led by the nose…and that’s a good thing.” Jillybean had always suspected Perkins of lacking the intelligence needed to be a proper detective, and clearly the true murderer felt the same way.

  The true murderer? It was Sadie. She was just a ghost of her true self. A ghost of a ghost. It wasn’t Eve?

  “No. She’s been quiet for weeks and weeks. You all have.” Although Jillybean hated Eve and the terrible things she would do and say, she also missed Sadie and Ipes so badly that it hurt. “And she would never have gone to this much trouble.”