The second body of the day was at the other end of the parish, in an apartment at the opposite end of the economic spectrum from Ms. Anderson’s luxury condo.
An ambulance was parked outside next to a Sheriff’s Office car and an unmarked one that clearly belonged to a detective. A quick glance at the unit number on the marked car told me that it wasn’t Marcus’s, and I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or disappointed.
Inside the apartment the carpet was old and threadbare in spots, and none of the furniture matched, but it was absolutely neat as a pin and as spotless as it was possible to make such a place. A faint scent of biscuits hung in the air, mingled with a faint flowery scent. I looked around to see if there was a reed diffuser in this place as well, but then realized that the source of the flowery smell came from actual flowers in a ceramic pitcher on the dining room table.
Detective Roth stood by the doorway to the kitchen. “Your victim’s in here,” he said in a low voice to Derrel, stepping aside so that we could see the woman on the floor. “Sarah Jackson.” Then he nodded his head toward the living room. A twenty-something black man wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and workboots sat on the couch with his head in his hands. “That’s Drew Russell, her boyfriend. They live together, but he got in from working offshore about an hour ago and found her.” He grimaced.
Derrel gave him a grave nod and then moved to the living room. I stayed back while he spoke in soft tones to the boyfriend, but the grief on the man’s face was so stark I had to turn away.
Stepping into the kitchen, I thought for a brief, jarring instant, that the woman was simply asleep—even though I knew that couldn’t possibly be the case. Not if we were there. She was lying on her right side, left arm out in front of her, legs slightly bent as if she’d curled up to take a nap. But her eyes were open and lifeless, and when I stepped closer I could see that her right arm was twisted awkwardly beneath her.
Crouching, I tugged on gloves. The portion of the body nearest the floor was red and mottled, and I’d been on the job long enough to know that was called “lividity”—the settling of the blood in the body after the heart stopped beating. I gently poked at a spot of red on her lower arm. It didn’t change color, which meant the lividity was fixed and that she’d probably been dead for several hours, at least. At least this isn’t something where the boyfriend is responsible, I thought with a vague relief. He seemed so devastated by loss, I’d have felt cheated if it was all some sort of act.
I looked up as Derrel came into the kitchen. “Anything interesting?” he asked as he crouched beside me.
“Lividity is fixed,” I replied. “That’s as far as I got.”
He nodded, then lifted the victim’s left arm and flexed it at the elbow. “Rigor’s come and gone, though that’s a lousy way to determine time of death. No sign of pulmonary edema—that bubbly-spit thing that the last body had. That can be a sign of possible OD.”
I didn’t think this woman had overdosed, but I had nothing more than a gut feeling to back that up, so I said nothing.
“I don’t think she’s an OD,” he said in echo of my thoughts. “But Dr. Leblanc will find out for sure.”
We did a quick sweep of the apartment for meds, coming up with nothing more than some antibiotics. A neighbor came and sat with the boyfriend while Derrel gently obtained information about her legal next of kin, and then I departed with the body, leaving the emotional wreckage behind.
Dr. Leblanc was ready to start the autopsies almost as soon as I made it back with the bodies. With the first, Theresa Anderson, he performed a quick-test for drugs while I was still getting her propped up on the block. He peered at the results then sighed and set the test aside. He practically zoomed through the rest of the autopsy, doing cursory examinations of the organs while I struggled to keep up. I’d seen the quick test, and I figured he didn’t feel like wasting time on an in-depth procedure when it was obvious to anyone with eyes that the woman had died of an overdose, whether intentionally or not. Of course there was always the consideration that it could have been staged and that it was a possible homicide, but that was for the cops to figure out. The pathologist’s primary job was to determine manner and means of death.
Realistically, though, we all knew there was no foul play involved in Theresa Anderson’s death. This was senseless, not sinister.
In stark contrast to the first, Dr. Leblanc took his sweet time with the second victim, Sarah Jackson. He performed a quick test on her as well, but it came back as clean as a whistle.
“Ah, well,” he finally said, looking down at the heart that he’d carefully sliced open on his cutting board. “That explains it.”
“What?”
He gestured me over with the blood-covered scalpel, and I obediently moved to his side. “She had an abnormally small right coronary artery. Most likely caused a fatal ventricular arrhythmia. Probably never had a single symptom.” He pointed to something within the heart, but I could only take his word that whatever I was looking at was abnormal in any way.
“Wait,” I said. “She never felt bad or sick from this? She just dropped dead?”
“That’s probably what happened.”
“That’s not fair!” I blurted, then realized how dumb that sounded. But it wasn’t. The rich bitch had thrown her life away, while Sarah Jackson had been working her ass off trying to make as nice a life as possible with what she had. Then she died with no warning.
Dr. Leblanc’s eyes were shadowed as he met my gaze. He’d seen it too many times, I realized. He was used to it.
He gave me a sad smile. “Welcome to death.”
I stood in the cooler until the cold seeped into my bones, and my fingers began to grow stiff. Death wasn’t fair. Death didn’t give warning. Death hit nice people and nasty people. It didn’t give a shit.
My one-month anniversary of working here had come and gone, and nothing had happened. No one gave me a medal or certificate for good behavior. It didn’t make a difference, I realized. Nothing had changed. I was still the same thing I was a month ago.
It wasn’t until hunger began to nudge at me that I realized I was being a moron and pushing my body too far with this whole standing-in-the-cold bullshit.
After making sure I was alone in the morgue, I went through my procedure of scooping the brains into my pickle jars. I felt no qualms when I salvaged the overdose victim’s brain, but when I turned to Ms. Jackson’s bag, I hesitated. Her death had been unfair enough already. Now I was going to desecrate her by making her brain my dinner?
Hunger poked at me again. Tightening my jaw, I quickly put her brain into the jar. Yeah, death wasn’t fair. And I’m not gonna give it any more head starts.
Chapter 21
“What the hell happened to this guy?”
Detective Mike Abadie turned at my question then offered a thin smile. “Lawn mower,” he said, gesturing to the riding mower lying on its side a few feet away from the body. Not just any lawn mower, either, but one of the big tractor things usually used in yards that were measured in acres instead of feet.
And that certainly fit the bill here. We were in the front yard of what could almost be described as a mansion: a three-story white house with a broad curved driveway, on a piece of land that was at least five acres—the majority of which was mowed grass. The house itself was about a thousand feet from the road and, in bizarre contrast, was also less than half a mile from the trailer park where the drug dealer-gamer guy had been killed. Sometimes it cracked me up the way the super nice neighborhoods were smack up next to the total shit neighborhoods.
“Looks like he was trying to do some sort of repair on it,” the detective continued. “He must have had it propped up on that piece of four by four, and when it fell it smacked onto his head and pretty much crushed it.”
“Crushed the hell out of it,” I observed. Why the hell had he been underneath the damn thing? Didn’t people ever stop and think how dangerous stuff was? The guy’s head was damn near flattened, with
two deep impressions that would probably match up perfectly to the underside of the tractor. He’d probably been dead before the tractor had fully settled on him.
“So this was the lawn guy for the place or something?” I asked.
The detective shook his head. “Nope. That’s Rob Harris himself.”
I let out a whistle of surprise. Rob Harris owned a local RV dealership and was also something of a local celebrity due to a series of commercials that had run for several years and featured his numerous grandchildren. He’d passed the business on to his son recently and was supposedly enjoying his retirement.
Not so much anymore, obviously.
Stupidly annoyed at the waste, I crouched by the head and by the chunks of brain that had been squished out. Maybe, if I’d been desperate, I’d have tried to recover the bits that were on the ground, but they were so mingled with dirt and grass that I wasn’t about to go there. I wanted badly to pull some of the skull pieces off and see how much was left inside, but I knew I couldn’t do that with so many people around. There was “tough” and “hardcore,” and then there was “sick bitch.”
“Want a bite?”
I jerked my head around to see Detective Abadie standing behind me, grinning. “Hunh?” I managed, trying to not look guilty. Or hungry. Of which I was both.
He nodded his head toward the scattered chunks of brain. “That’d be a buffet for a zombie, right?”
I couldn’t move, simply continued to stare at him. He knows? How? Is he one?
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Crawford. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Dawn of the Dead, or Zombie-land . You know—” He rolled his eyes up into his head and assumed a slack-jawed expression. “Braaaaiinnnssss.”
I swallowed and struggled to control my stunned expression. “Oh. You’re talking about movies.” I managed to keep from saying “not real zombies.”
He gave me a faintly disgusted look. “No shit, Sherlock. Wow, you have no sense of humor at all. It’s not like I was asking you to really eat brains.” He shook his head and turned away. As he walked off, I heard him mutter “freak” under his breath.
I stood up, fighting the desire to laugh out loud, almost surprised to realize that I wasn’t bothered by the intended insult. Especially considering what the truth was.
Derrel came up beside me, casting a grimace down at Mr. Harris. “Damn. That tractor sure did a number on his skull.”
“Yeah.” I slid a glance to the underside of the tractor—easy to see since it was lying on its side—then cocked my head and frowned. “So, what part of the tractor do you think came down on his head to smush it like that?”
Derrel gave me a puzzled look, then followed my gaze. “That’s a damn good question, Angel,” he murmured.
“You got those two x-shaped impressions on his head,” I said. “And there’s that bit at the center of the blades that’s x-shaped, so that fits. For one of them, at least.”
“But how the hell would he get two right next to each other?” Derrel finished for me, eyes narrowed in thought. “Goddamn, Angel. Good eye.”
I smiled, but a sick nausea was beginning to twist in my belly. He was murdered. Someone dropped the tractor on his head, then dropped it down again to make sure he was dead and make sure the skull was crushed open. And it had to have been someone strong. Zombies were strong. I’d figured that much out. Not because of any sort of superpowers, but because we didn’t feel the same pain that normal people could. We could push harder, far beyond what the usual person could tolerate. Yeah, it burned us up faster. But a brain a day keeps the rotting away, I thought with a slight shudder.
I stood back while Derrel shared my observations with the detective. Abadie scowled and peered at the underside of the tractor, then muttered something vile. I almost felt sorry for him. Handling an accidental death was a walk in the park next to dealing with a possible homicide. The procedures didn’t change much, but the attention to detail went several notches up. And if he hadn’t been a dickwad I probably would’ve felt sorry for him. As it was, I allowed myself a perverse sense of satisfaction. Hey, I never claimed to be an angel.
I ended up cooling my heels for another half an hour while the area was processed in more depth by the crime scene tech, but eventually I got the signal from Derrel that I could start putting Mr. Harris into the bag.
Now was my chance to see how much brain was left in the skull, even though my zombie super senses were already telling me the answer. I carefully pulled aside a segment of skull while getting the body into the bag—completely unsurprised to see that there was no brain left inside. And there wasn’t that much on the ground. Certainly not enough to fill a skull.
Suddenly the short distance between Mr. Harris’s mansion and the trailer park didn’t seem so funny. And the place where I had my wreck was only about five miles from here.
There was a zombie on the hunt in this area. And I had a damn good idea who it was.
As soon as I had the body loaded up and in the van, I called Scott Funeral Home and asked for Kang, breathing a sigh of relief when he came on the line.
“It’s Angel, from the morgue,” I said. “I really need to talk to you.”
He was silent for several seconds. “Uh huh. Are you in a bind?”
“Yeah, but not the kind you’re thinking.” He probably thought I was low on brains and needed to bum some off him. “No, I need to talk to you about someone else in our, um, social club.”
I could hear him give a soft snort—whether of laughter or annoyance, I couldn’t tell. “All right. I get off at three today. Where would you like to meet?”
I thought fast. “Um, how about Double Ds?”
“I’ll see you there,” he said and hung up.
I scowled at my phone. “You’re an asshole, Kang,” I muttered. Unfortunately, he was an asshole I needed. Too bad I had way too many of those in my life already.
Chapter 22
Double Ds was actually the Double Dime Diner, but no one bothered to call it that, even though the nickname made it sound like a strip club. Or maybe because of that. I arrived at about a quarter ’til three, which not only allowed me to pick a table that was well away from the few other people there, but also gave me plenty of time to agonize and worry until Kang arrived. Not that I hadn’t already been doing plenty of that.
The waitress came by, and I ordered hot chocolate. It wasn’t cold outside or anything, but hot chocolate was one of my comfort foods. When it arrived I wrapped my hands around the mug and sipped slowly, forcing myself to relax as the warmth and chocolate worked their magic. At least comfort food was still comforting.
Kang walked in about five minutes after the hour. The smile on his face faded as he walked up to me. I guess my worry was showing, even though I was trying to be all casual.
“What’s the dish, Angel?” he asked as he pulled a chair out and plopped down into it.
Even though there was no one else anywhere near us, I leaned forward and kept my voice low. “I’ve picked up three bodies in the last week that were missing brains. Hell, one was missing his whole damn head.” I quickly explained the circumstances, somewhat gratified when his expression darkened with worry. At least I wasn’t being completely out-the-box paranoid. “Do you think maybe there’s umm . . . a rogue zombie killing people?” I asked, feeling a bit silly with the “rogue” thing.
But Kang merely gave a slow nod and shoved his hair out of his eyes, grimacing. “It definitely sounds like a possibility.” Then he let out a string of curses that made my eyebrows go up. “Sorry,” he said, “but shit like that makes it tough on all of us.”
I hesitated. “You know about the wreck I had, right?” He nodded, which didn’t surprise me. Everyone knew about the damn wreck. “Well, it was caused by Zeke Lyons, who used to work at—”
“Billings,” he said with a nod. “I know him. Stupid stubborn ass.” His eyes narrowed in anger. “He was trying to get the body in your van?”
I nodded. “And p
ossibly more, I think. I mean, he didn’t know I was a zombie until after he’d caused the wreck.” Then I snorted. “Hell, I didn’t even know I was a zombie until then. That was the first time I’d ever seen another one.” I fought back a shiver at the memory—the sick horror that I might become like that some day. Rotted. Desperate.
“I ended up giving him some of the stash I had with me,” I went on, swallowing back the lingering unease. “He came by the morgue, and I gave him more, but,” I grimaced, “he was a bit of a dick, and he hasn’t been back since.”
“You don’t need to fucking give your stash away, Angel,” he told me. “Zeke knows he can buy from me.”
“With what? He doesn’t have a job anymore, remember?”
Kang’s lip curled. “He should have thought of that before he screwed up the job he had.” He shrugged. “But even so, I’d be willing to work something out with him.”
I spread my hands on the table, gave a slight nod. “That’s cool. Zeke said he was set up, that he didn’t steal anything.” Were you the one who cost him his job? I thought. I didn’t want to come out and say it, though. I wasn’t quite ready to piss Kang off.
He snorted. “Of course. The guilty man is never really guilty. He was lucky they only fired him.”
“Well, maybe whoever’s doing this is someone new,” I suggested. “I mean, if I hadn’t been given this morgue job, I don’t know what I would have done.”
The scowl stayed on Kang’s face as he leaned back. “And that’s exactly why there aren’t many zombies. You don’t make one just for shits and giggles, because the next thing you know you have dozens of them, desperate for brains. And brains are pretty hard to come by without causing a fuss, as you know.”
My mouth felt dry. “So, how bad does it get? The hunger, I mean. Would any of us be driven to kill to get brains?”
I could see that Kang wanted to deny it, but I’d already seen the wince of discomfort. “It can get bad,” he admitted. “And the hungrier you get, the less control you have. You’re not . . . you’re not you.”
My Life as a White Trash Zombie Page 16
