Deadworld

by J N Duncan

  “An asshole?” he replied with little surprise. “Even he will tell you that, Jack.”

  Jackie felt a warm flush creeping into her cheeks. Great. Just great. He’s going to suspend me this time, I know it, and Laurel won’t be bailing me out of this one. There were no excuses. “I see that, sir. I lost my cool. I apologize.”

  “And you will apologize to him, too, after I’m done with you.” He pushed away from his desk and walked around to the window. “What are you going to do next, Jack? It’s embarrassing as hell and makes us look like a bunch of goddamn, punch-happy Neanderthals to the public.” He pointed at the paper on the corner of his fastidiously clean desk. “Made the paper, even. I guess there was a reporter sitting in there having drinks when you went off.”

  Jackie cringed. Could it get any worse? “It won’t happen again, sir.”

  Belgerman gave her a pained smile. “Damnit, Jackie. At least be truthful about yourself to me. It’ll happen again. You get into shit like this all the time, Jack. It’s your nature. You’re pissed at the world. I get that. It’s part of what makes you good at what you do, but keep it out of the fucking papers. I can deal with the Pernettis of the world. I’ve put up with you for almost ten years now, and I’m still alive.” He finally relaxed a bit, leaning forward again, placing his hands on the desk. “I get paid this shitty salary to make sure you nitwits get along and still catch the bad guys, but don’t go out of your way to make it worse for me. I don’t need the ulcer.”

  Jackie stared down at the gray carpeted floor. “Yes, sir.”

  “You say ‘sir’ one more time, and I’m sending you home for the rest of the week. I’m not your father.”

  She shifted her weight back and forth from one foot to the other. “I had some… personal issues I was dealing with last night. I think it’s all squared away now.”

  He looked skeptical. “You sure?”

  No, not at all, actually, but hell if I’m going home. “Yeah. Had a little heart-to-heart with Laurel about everything. I think I’m good.”

  “Good. You should listen to her more. She’s the most stable agent in this office.”

  Apparently, I don’t listen to her close enough. “Can I ask you something, off the record?”

  Belgerman smirked. “This conversation never existed unless you decide to go beat up more agents.”

  “Did you know that Laurel is… um… actually, never mind. I’ll apologize to Pernetti first chance I get.”

  He contemplated her in silence for a moment. “Okay. I’d appreciate that. It won’t change his mind about you, of course, but you’ll have put forth the effort at least.”

  “Thank you… John. And I’m sorry. Really. I never want to embarrass you or the organization.” Jackie got up and shuffled back toward the door. “I’ll just go get ready for the meeting now.”

  “Jack?” he said, freezing her at the door.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Get this anger thing dealt with, whatever it is. It’s going to force you out early if you let it, and it’s been eating at you for a long time.”

  “I’ll be fine. I just need to deal with the Pernettis of the world a bit better.”

  “You need to deal with yourself.” The tone had an edge to it, a bit of fatherly anger. “Next time I won’t be giving you an option.”

  Jackie nodded. “Understood, sir.” She knew he was serious. Next time she would be suspended or, worse, forced to go to the damn shrink. “I’ll just go get ready for the meeting.”

  Laurel waited impatiently at her desk when she walked back. “Here. He chewed you out good, didn’t he?”

  Jackie stuffed half a croissant in her mouth and plopped down in her desk chair. “Wasn’t so bad.”

  “Your face is still red.”

  “Christ. Okay, it wasn’t great, but I’ll live. I just have to eat some crow for Pernetti.”

  “Ugh. Sorry,” she said, making a face. “Beats getting suspended though.”

  “Barely.”

  Laurel chuckled. “Okay, two things before we prepare for the morning meeting on this case.” She clicked on her computer monitor and turned it toward Jackie. “First thing is I had a little visitor last night at my house.”

  Visitor. With anyone else that might mean the local stray cat. “Great. Am I guessing correctly that you don’t mean the living sort?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Something wanted into my house pretty bad, but the spells I have in place kept it out. It left in a pretty shitty mood.”

  “Was this the same one you felt before at Anderson’s?” If they had some kind of vengeful spirit running around, that would be bad news. They had actually experienced that type on a case a few years earlier.

  “No, but it wasn’t around long enough for me to chat with. I’m not sure what it means, but I don’t like it. I’m beginning to suspect this case has multiple parties involved. Anyway, this other thing is even more interesting. Look at this.”

  Another headline from an old newspaper clipping was displayed upon Laurel’s screen. “Bayou Blood Drinker? Should I know this one? Is this the same case we looked at earlier?” The name didn’t ring a bell at all for her, but then Jackie recognized the man in the photo, or at least it looked like him. “Nick Anderson?”

  “Nicholas Rembrandt, actually. Hauser sent it over to us.”

  “What, his grandfather this time?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Hey! Is that Ms. Fontaine next to him?” Jackie studied the picture closer. It sure looked like her, but they were dressed in very old-fashioned clothing.

  “Look at the year, Jackie.”

  It took a moment for her to find it. “What the fuck? 1934?”

  Laurel nodded. “Yeah, I know. Freaky, isn’t it?”

  She studied the picture but was hard-pressed to find anything different in the appearances of this Nicholas character and the current Nick Anderson. Could three generations look that much alike? Unlikely. It dawned on Jackie then, why Laurel looked so excited by the article. “You think it’s the same guy, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “Could be. Maybe the geek squad can figure it out for us.”

  “You realize that would make Nick Anderson around a hundred years old.”

  “Or older,” she added. “I’ll bet you that’s Shelby Fontaine there, too.”

  “That’s nuts, Laur. They wouldn’t be-”

  “Human. I know. I think they’re vampires.”

  Jackie nearly snorted coffee out of her nose, coughing hard for a moment until she could regain her composure. “Can we let the geeks look at this before we jump to any conclusions like that? Vampires. That’s fucking crazy. There’s no such thing.”

  “You don’t know that, and I sent an e-mail to Hauser. He’s on his way in now to do an analysis of the pictures.”

  “We need a detailed workup on this shit. I don’t want to go into the meeting and claim we’re after a vampire. I’ve been embarrassed enough for one day, thank you very much. Maybe we should get some tails on Anderson and Fontaine and see what they’re up to. I don’t want to confront Anderson with this without some kind of empirical proof.”

  “Can I ask Ms. Fontaine?”

  It took Jackie a second to get the vague sound of interest in her voice. “Wait a sec. You think…” She paused and rolled her chair over to speak quieter. “You think she’s hot, don’t you?”

  Pink crept into Laurel’s cheeks. “No. Well, okay, kinda.”

  Jackie didn’t know what to say. This was utterly new territory between them. “That’s… Laur, she’s a suspect. You can’t be interested.”

  “Hey, interest does not mean I’m going to do anything about it. Give me a little credit.”

  She heaved a sigh of relief. “Okay, fine. That’s… fine. You really think she’s that hot?”

  Laurel nodded. “Oh, yeah. Drool worthy.”

  “Man, this is weird.” She waved off Laurel’s look of concern. “No, I’m good with it. It’ll be good. We can talk a
bout your sex life instead of mine for a change.”

  She laughed at Jackie. “I’ll have to have some first.”

  Silence fell between them. Jackie wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “Speaking of awkward conversations, where’s Pernetti at? I need to go humiliate myself.”

  “Called off.”

  “Great. We going to be ready for this meeting?”

  “Not now. We need Hauser’s analysis.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to John and see about bumping the meeting then. Short notice, but-”

  “Jack?” Belgerman had come out of his office.

  Butterflies leaped back into Jackie’s stomach. “What’s up?” “Let’s get the team together this afternoon. I’ve got Emily to give us preliminary autopsy results on the boy. She’ll see you in thirty minutes.”

  Jackie let out her held breath. “Will do. Thanks.” She turned to Laurel. “Let Hauser know to e-mail us the second he finds anything else. We need to go.”

  The coroner, one Dr. Emily Liyang, a tiny, fortyish Chinese woman with a rope of spun, black silk hanging to her waist in a simple ponytail, greeted them when they arrived. Belgerman pulled a fair bit of weight with her and could call in the occasional favor. Jackie had never heard what he had done to garner such a benefit, but it had proven beneficial on more than one occasion. Emily was hardly what one typically expected of a coroner, but then, Jackie knew she was not what one thought of as an FBI agent. That shared background had given them no small amount of mutual respect toward one another in the few times they had needed to speak.

  “My two favorite feds,” Emily said, smiling. “Haven’t seen you two in a while, and now you bring me this boy. You owe me a drink.”

  “Anytime, Emily,” Laurel piped in before Jackie could respond. “Glad you could get to it so fast. This one is bad.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. Your boss man called me this morning and asked in his friendly ‘I’m FBI, so do as I say’ sort of way to please expedite this case.” She opened up a folder that had been sitting on top of some others on her spacious, compulsively neat desk, and began to remove some photos. “I finished the prelim an hour ago, but I won’t have a tox report until this afternoon at the earliest. Did you want to see the body?”

  Jackie shook her head. “Unless you think we need to. We had our own look yesterday.”

  Dr. Liyang gave an absent shrug. “Not really. I have all the info here. No reason to subject you to that again.” She smiled at Laurel this time, fully aware of her weaker stomach. They had gone out for drinks a couple years back to celebrate the capture of a serial rapist, and Emily had sent Laurel to the bathroom with an increasingly graphic description of some of the bodies that had come through her office. Jackie had listened with half a curious ear. She found forensics intriguing but had no desire for the work. Slapping the handcuffs on the bad guys was far more rewarding.

  The photos laid out on the desk showed Archie in the various stages of autopsy, taken from a variety of angles. “Pretty straightforward, at least from the initial investigation. See here?” she said, pointing at the first picture. “The boy was bound with zip ties. You can tell by the unique marks. They go all the way around, wrists and ankles, so I’m guessing he was laid out on a table or the ground. Little evidence of struggle, and just a few bruises you might find on any typical twelve-year-old.

  Jackie studied the pictures, leaning over the desk along with Laurel, looking for signs of anything they might have missed from the day before. I was a lot more banged up than that at twelve years old, she thought, rubbing at the dull ache that appeared in her own wrists as she studied the pictures. All he’d wanted was to get away, and he’d stepped into the arms of a killer. Jackie suppressed a shudder and continued to follow Dr. Liyang’s summary.

  “Puncture wound here on the left arm is where the blood was drained out of him. Everything indicates he had been dead a good ten hours before you found him. No signs of sexual abuse. There were a few fibers we lifted off him that we’ll analyze, but other than that, he was pretty clean. I think he may have been washed, but this is the one intriguing thing I found.” She tapped at Archie’s head in a close-up picture of his face from the eyebrows up to the hairline.

  Jackie noticed right away. Without the close-up, it had not been obvious before. “He colored his hair.”

  Emily smiled at them. “Sure, if he was a zombie.”

  Laurel’s mouth formed an O of understanding. “He was already dead when this happened.”

  “Yep. At least I’m almost positive. I’ll know definitely by tomorrow and let you know, but it seems your killer wanted him to have different hair.”

  “Was it cut, too?” Jackie wondered.

  “The clothing will be gone over later today. If we find any evidence of that, I’ll call you, Jack.”

  “Thanks. Why would a perp want to do that?”

  Dr. Liyang shrugged. “That’s what you girls get paid the big bucks for.”

  Driving back to headquarters, they continued to discuss that question. Jackie sped in and around traffic, absently maintaining the speed she knew would allow her to make all the lights through that part of town.

  “Could be a fetish thing,” Laurel suggested. One hand clutched tightly on the door handle, while the other was braced against the armrest in the middle between them. “Sweet mother, Jackie! Knock it off already.”

  She backed off the pedal and was forced to brake for the next light. “Damnit. What’s the matter?”

  “Quit driving like you’re taking your expectant wife to the hospital.”

  Jackie looked at her, imagining that soft belly expanded to the size of a basketball. Laurel’s body was built for babies. The smile vanished when she realized Laurel would likely never have one.

  “I would race you to the hospital, though, if you were about to pop one out.”

  Laurel shook her head and waved at the window. “Just drive normal, please.” There was silence for moment, and she continued. “You don’t think it was a fetish thing though, do you?”

  Jackie shook her head. “No. It fits too much with the whole neat-arrangement-in-the-park scene. I think that boy was put there like he was on purpose. Someone went to some trouble to prop him up there and have him look a certain way.”

  “Okay, I can go with that,” Laurel said. “But who and why?”

  “No clue.” She drummed her fingers along the steering wheel. “Care to bet any money that Nick Anderson has an idea why?”

  “Not really,” she said. “I think I’d lose that bet.”

  “You would,” Jackie agreed. “Right now, I want to have a little sit-down with the geeks and see what else they’ve dug up. I want some proof we aren’t dealing with a recurring case of serial murders involving a hundred-year-old man.”

  “He makes a good case for dating older men.”

  Jackie glared at her and then rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. That, and drinking blood. That’s right up at the top of my list, too.”

  Chapter 16

  They found Hauser at his desk, the computer screens turned into a bank of old photos and newspaper clippings. He had pictures loaded up on three of them, two of which Jackie recognized. They were the old newspaper clippings Laurel had showed her earlier. He spun around in his chair to greet them when Jackie knocked once.

  “Hey! How are Chicago’s loveliest agents today?” He gave them a devilish smile.

  Jackie thrust her hands into her pockets. “Hungry.”

  “Got half a chicken-salad sandwich here you can have,” he said, and when it got no response, the grin faded, and he continued. “Okay, sourpuss, look here. This is some weird-ass shit I’ve found. These are the two clippings you’ve already seen, the first from 1970, the other from 1934.” He wheeled his chair over by the screens and pointed. “You can see the similarities in them, might even say they look like the same guy.”

  “They’re thirty-six years apart though,” Jackie said. She had a sinking feeling she already knew where Hause
r was heading with this.

  “Yeah, I know. How could it be the same guy, right?” He pointed at the next screen. “Here’s another photo, thirty-six years before those.”

  It was a yearbook photo from Princeton University. The name listed beneath it was Nicholas Rembrandt. The image looked slightly younger than Nick Anderson, but not by much. The skin was smoother, without the crinkle in the corners of his eyes, and he wore small, round glasses, just enough to cover the eye, but the bright glaze on them was still evident, even in a black-and-white photo.

  Jackie leaned over and scanned the page. “Hauser, this pic is one hundred and eight years old.”

  He grinned with the evil glee of a thirteen-year-old who has uncovered his dad’s secret stash of porn. “Yeah, pretty freaky, huh?”

  “You telling me it’s the same guy? Please tell me you aren’t.”

  Hauser nodded. “Had Platt take the scans and analyze them. ’Puter is ninety-eight point seven percent sure the guy in all these photos is the same guy. It is statistically impossible that relatives could look that closely alike.”

  “Great.”

  “Oh, it gets better,” he said, chuckling. He switched the third screen over to another picture. “Look at this one.”

  Laurel leaned in with her to get a close look. “Sheriff Nicholas R. Anderson and family. Is this the real guy here?”

  “So says the great god of circuitry,” he said.

  Jackie glanced at the article, which spoke of welcoming the new sheriff to the area and looking forward to his services and ability to keep the area protected. It was from some place in Wyoming Jackie had never heard of before. They looked like a typical Old West family: father, two teen sons, a young daughter, wife, and someone who looked to be a grandmother. “This is impossible, Hauser.”

  “You’d think.”

  “It’s him,” Laurel added, sounding far more sure of herself than Jackie wanted.

  “Laur?” Jackie said skeptically. “This would make Nick Anderson, like…”

  “One hundred seventy-six years old,” Hauser replied.

  “There has to be some other reason for this.” Jackie’s mind could not wrap around the implications. There were none that fit her view of the world. It just didn’t work.