by C. L. Bevill
Herman turned his eyes to the list. “Everyone but him has come to ask me if I’m honoring Darren’s deals. He hasn’t been in yet.”
“Do you know anything about him?”
“Just his name and he wants a bible,” Herman said. “That isn’t uncommon, you know. Lots of people who come to Deadsville want a bible. They want a bible badly. They want to read through it and look for a loophole. I even did that when I first got here.”
Coincidences were for suckers, Tavie thought. “You’ll let me know if Patrick comes to you.”
Herman nodded uneasily. Pudd growled at him.
Tavie laughed. “My little canine enforcer.” She focused on the little skull and crossbones. Was it possible that Darren had figured out that Patrick was his nemesis and drawn that little doodle on there to remind himself?
“How about trading the papasan for the dog?” Herman ventured.
Pudd growled again and that was answer enough.
Chapter 20
Death squares all accounts – Proverb
~
“She was six feet two inches tall, and as mean as a rattlesnake. She shot some poor deadie fifty-seven times without reloading once.” – Jake on Octavia Stone
~
It seemed as if the Deadsville Jail had moved again and Tavie wondered how anyone found anything a second time there. On her way there, she saw deadies doing things she didn’t normally see deadies doing. They gathered in small groups and spent their time speaking nervously. They cast anxious glances over their shoulders and pointed at Tavie and Pudd when they caught sight of them. Since they weren’t doing anything even close to illegal she chose to ignore them for the time being.
Finally one deadie who had once died because of some kind of massive bacterial infection approached her. “Sheriff,” he said.
Tavie paused. Pudd whined as he stared at the deadie. It occurred to her that the dog could probably see just as well as she could. The red splotched appearance of the deadie with the oozing pores wasn’t his best look and would have scared off even people with a strong stomach. His cover was twentysomething worker from a convenience store, complete with paper cap. It flickered ominously as if the deadie was jumpy about something and couldn’t quite control himself.
“There are reapers all over,” he said. “Do you know what’s happening?”
Tavie looked around. She had been wondering when she might see Nica again. He’d been excluded at Thana’s, and the GOTD knew about the kiss, so Tavie had to wonder what, if anything, his punishment would be for being human for another short instant in time. Perhaps she should feel guilty about it, and perhaps she did, but it was hard to feel guilty about being human for such a short slice of time.
Abruptly there was a distant scream and someone yelled, “REAPER!”
“They don’t seem to be taking anyone,” the man with the splotches said, rapidly scanning around him. “They’re just going around, looking, like they’re looking for something. Or maybe they’re looking for someone special. Do you know what’s going on?”
“Stay calm,” Tavie said. “If they’re not looking for you, then it’s all gravy, right?”
“Right,” he agreed uncertainly. “Sausage gravy on biscuits.”
Without waiting for a response, Tavie headed in the direction of the scream and came across a reaper surging through a crowd of deadies. His scythe swung back and forth and deadies gasped as the great curving blade swung near them. It was evident that most of them were terrified of what it meant and backed away until they blocked by the crowd behind them.
“Hey!” she yelled and just about everyone in the immediate vicinity turned to look at her. Even the reaper turned its gruesome head and red eyes blazed at her.
A scalding moment of doubt coursed through Tavie. Who really wanted a reaper looking at you? Why, very few deadies really did, although Tavie liked the idea of Nica looking at her.
Tavie waded through the crowd. It wasn’t difficult. Most of them recognized her and the rest knew it as soon as someone whispered, “It’s the sheriff of Deadsville.” The crowd managed to find extra room, as if a magic wand had been waved and Tavie found herself in an empty wide area with the reaper on the other end.
Approaching the reaper, Tavie steeled herself. “Nica,” she said. “I’m so glad to see you.” She rested a hand on one of his bony, black cloak covered shoulders, and the crowd gasped loudly.
The red eyes and skull visage regarded her. “I’m not Nica,” the reaper said.
Tavie forced an imaginary lump down her throat. She should have known. She could vaguely see the person under the reaper’s façade and it wasn’t the oddly charming Romani with all kinds of baggage. Instead it was someone else with a whole bunch of other baggage being lugged. Reapers = Baggage. Tavie was going to have to write the phrase down somewhere.
“Well, isn’t that just ducky,” Tavie said with nervous bonhomie. She glanced at her hand and slowly removed it from the reaper’s shoulder.
The reaper stared at her. Tavie heard another united anticipatory gasp from the audience and it didn’t make her feel any better. “I don’t suppose you’d like a cup of coffee?” she asked the reaper.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of…coke?” the reaper asked with a light Irish brogue.
* * *
Tavie led the reaper back to Hungry Hippo Herman’s newly appointed place of business and traded the nonfunctioning watch and a non-crime related favor for a bottle of pop. It was warm, to be sure, but the reaper morphed into a thirtysomething woman with red hair and freckles and drank it right down. When she was down to the last gulp, she stopped to burp and then sighed heartily.
“I haven’t had any Coca-Cola since The Troubles started in Ireland,” the reaper muttered. “Isn’t that a long, dry spell?”
Since Tavie couldn’t remember exactly when The Troubles had started in Ireland, she couldn’t agree or disagree.
Herman and his two flunkies fled while the reaper petted Pudd and then tried to get the last few drops out of the bottle of Coke.
“What’s going on, then?” Tavie asked.
“You’re Octavia Stone,” the reaper said.
“Tavie,” she corrected. “You?”
“Sinead.”
“Irish?”
“That’s right. Once I was before I died, before I became a reaper.”
“You did something unforgivable.”
“Aye, I did.”
“Most of us have.”
“You’re not a reaper.”
“Maybe that comes later.” Tavie sighed. “I need a little help here.”
“Thana has put all the reapers in Deadsville,” Sinead said. “It’s like an army of the psychopomps. No one will be dying in the living world for the moment.”
“No one at all?”
“Of course, time won’t move in the living world,” Sinead said. “It’ll wait for us. It would be insanity if all the humans in the living world suddenly stopped dying.” She chuckled. “People would walk out of the morgue. They would walk away from deadly accidents. The ones in parts would still be talking. I almost wish I could see that.”
“Do you know Nica?”
“He’s not among us.”
Tavie’s stomach sunk at the words. “Did he…move on?”
Sinead appeared sad for a moment. “I’ve never seen a reaper move on. No, he’s vanished. Thana has us looking for him, too.”
“Vanished,” Tavie repeated. “Did Thana do something to him?”
“No, she doesn’t know where he’s at, as I’ve said,” Sinead said firmly. “It’s like a piece of her is missing, and now we’re here, where Nica is usually. There’s us and no Nica. In all the time I’ve been a reaper, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Abruptly a thought came into Tavie’s head. Someone blamed someone for something that happened in the living world. The deadies that died were all from the area of New Mexico or had been there at the time. Mrs. Patrick Byrne had died
and the responsible party had not only gotten off, she’d gone home to California where she had been murdered by someone else unrelated.
Coco had had some crappy luck. Some of it had been luck of her own making, because no one had made her steal a car and to continue driving while she was tired. But she hadn’t deserved to be strangled by her step-father and buried somewhere she wouldn’t be found.
“Did Nica reap someone from New Mexico in 1982?” Tavie asked.
“Only Thana would know that,” Sinead said.
Tavie didn’t have time for another convoluted test. She needed to find Coco and make sure Enoch was keeping her safe. Then she needed to figure out how a deadie would have taken a psychopomp prisoner, and more importantly where he would be held.
* * *
Tavie finally located the Deadsville Jail and burst inside, anxious but pleased with herself. There was a crowd of elders inside, arguing with Fritzi and Enoch about how the sheriff wasn’t immediately available to them.
A mutual sigh ensued as soon as Tavie and Pudd came into the door.
“There have been reapers everywhere,” Lillian said. “It’s like a sign of the apocalypse. The dead-o-lypse. I’m not ready to face God.”
“Really?” Tavie asked. “I saw a few. A few deadies out there might have to change their underwear.”
“What’s going on?” Maximillian asked. “Enoch was at the wall of messages, poring through them for something he wouldn’t talk about.”
Enoch came out of the back with a sheath of papers. “Great! Tavie! We found several. I think we got what you’re looking for. One of them is about…well, I expect you know. Mebe we kin wrap this up.”
“Where’s Coco?” she asked, instead of looking at the papers.
Enoch glanced over his shoulder. “She was here a minute ago. Went to the back to rest up. I reckon it’s hard bein’ a deadie teenager and all that.”
Tavie glanced at the papers. There was no guarantee that what she was looking for was there. The names were varied, as were the cities, and the causes of death. The questions ranged from the inane (“Who won the World Series?”) to the pitiful (“Does anyone know what happened to my kitten?”).
She thumbed through the papers while the other deadies grumbled quietly.
Finally, she found what she was looking for. “Patrick Byrne – Albuquerque, NM, USA – I’m looking for a deadie named Darren Tucker, who was once a doctor,” she said aloud. Everyone shut up immediately.
The next note was the same. “Patrick Byrne – Albuquerque, NM, USA – Does anyone know a deadie who used to be a lawyer in Santa Fe, NM? His name was Min (sic) Thanh.” Tavie put it next to the first one.
The last one was Coco’s. “Patrick Byrne – Albuquerque, NM, USA – Does anyone know a deadie named Coco Owens? She was strangled by her step-father while in California.”
“What does that mean?” Lillian asked solemnly.
Maximillian frowned. “But how can it be?”
The first and second notes had answers. The one about Darren said he could be found in the barter shop. The second said that Minh hung out with the Oscar Wildeians. There was nothing on Coco’s.
“You’ve said it yourself,” Tavie said. “Time doesn’t work the same here. You know that. This guy was waiting for everyone to be here at the same time before he started doing what he figured out he could do. That’s probably because once he started, someone would figure it out and possibly stop him. He was gambling that they would all be in Deadsville at the same time and not be reaped before it was accomplished. Maybe he wasn’t gambling though, he might have had a little help. He had help from the welcoming committee. Someone was telling the three I first shot about the newly dead.”
“There are many deadies who work on the welcoming committee,” Maximillian said slowly. “People get tired of telling new ones they’re dead. They get tired of all the drama that goes on. They rotate in and out. So it could be any of a couple dozen deadies.”
“And do any of you know who Patrick Byrne is?”
No one said anything.
“He did business with Darren, so Darren knew him. Minh was onto him, too, for some reason, probably because Minh had been a lawyer and was used to predators.” Tavie shook her head because no one got the joke. “Coco won’t know who it was because she was murdered by someone else too soon to have met him in the living world.”
“Are you suggesting it’s one of us?” one of the elders asked with obvious disbelief.
“None of us here are angels,” Tavie said wryly.
Enoch shrugged. “Pudd might be.”
Pudd yipped as if he was agreeing.
“Let’s ask Mr. Slit Throat,” Tavie said, indicating the door to the cells. She led the way, while keeping an eye on who was behind her. Mr. Slit Throat AKA Roy was still in his cell, staring at Tavie with ever increasing dismay. Tavie thought they could probably hear most of what was going on.
“Say, Roy,” she began.
Roy looked around the room. It was rather crowded and he didn’t have anywhere to go. Mr. Bullet Holes and Harry Radford looked on with rapt attention. Harry still had the mace in his possession. The colonel was still snoring in his tiny cell.
“I’m told you had a source of information for newbies,” Tavie said.
Roy clamped his mouth shut. He didn’t appear very cooperative. His lips turned white because he was pressing them together so hard.
“Someone who told you about newbies with stuff you might want,” Tavie added.
“I don’t know nothing,” he said quickly.
“Okay, who told you about Coco?”
“The girl with the diamond tennis bracelet?” Roy asked.
“Yes, her.”
“I don’t know her. I don’t know her diamond tennis bracelet, either.”
Tavie stared at Roy. Finally, she whistled sharply and Pudd trotted in. “Do you know what it’s like to be slowly consumed alive?” she asked, like she was asking if it might rain or not.
Roy shook his head slowly.
Tavie crouched and scratched Pudd’s jowls. Pudd adjusted his neck accordingly. “I saw a fella who had rat bites all over him earlier. It just gave me an idea.”
Roy stared at the dog. Pudd stared back. It was clear that the animal knew when he had a live one.
Tavie nearly felt sorry for Roy. He couldn’t know that the extent of Puddles A. Lott’s fierceness was a demonstrative bark and a canine flight that almost couldn’t be tracked. Pudd really was all bark, no bite, and all get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge-when-opportunity-presented-itself.
“Once Pudd got a burglar in my house,” she lied. “Poor bastard. They had to amputate that leg. It never was the same. Well, I can’t imagine how it would be if your limbs just…kept…coming…back. It would be a never-ending cycle of biting, chewing, and jerking. You can’t even die to get away from it. Strips of skin fluttering in the wind. Blood dripping on the ground. Why, I might even get sick.” She made a compulsive gulping noise and several people inhaled sharply.
Roy began to whine. Pudd’s ears perked up at the sound and he growled cuttingly.
“Of course, someone told me that there’s a group of cannibals in Deadsville,” Tavie lied some more. “I don’t have any idea why they haven’t been reaped yet. You would think that slaughtering a deadie and making them into human jerky meat would be on the top of the list of big no-no’s, but possibly it’s because the cannibals don’t believe they’re doing something wrong. It occurs to me that would be one way of handling overcrowding in Deadsville Jail.” She considered. “I wonder how long it would take to recombobulate if you got eaten by cannibals. I mean, isn’t it true that some deadies never come back exactly the same way?”
Maximillian cleared his throat and Tavie glared at him. He shut his mouth and shook his head.
“Then there’s Mistress Nightshade,” Tavie said. “I bet you remember her and her vinyl cat suit.”
Roy whined again. He sounded remarkably like Pudd.
“Sure. She loves to practice her stuff on deadies. She’s got whips, chains, and the whole works. You’d probably enjoy it at first, Roy.” Tavie nodded sincerely. “At first, but then she said something about these dohickeys that are about as big as—” she held out her arm and indicated the length from the tip of the middle finger all the way to the elbow “— and as wide as a soda bottle. That’s the liter size, mind you.”
“Where does that go?” Roy asked. His voice broke on the word that.
Tavie thought about it. “I don’t think it fits anywhere properly. It probably gets shoved in.” She paused for the information to settle in his little dead brain. “The hard way.”
A significant proportion of the deadies in the room involuntarily crossed their legs.
“I’LL TALK!” Roy suddenly yelled. “It was the guy with the hair! He wanted us to keep an eye on HER! That girl with the bracelet! We thought we could just take the bracelet and whatever else she had! WE WERE STUPID!”
“What guy with the hair?” Tavie snapped.
“BERNIE!”
There was another round of gasps. Tavie thought she might have accidentally wandered onto the set of a soap opera. All of the elders glanced around frantically, looking for the indicated party.
Lillian said, “He’s not here!”
Tavie looked around. “Who’s Bernie?” It abruptly dawned on her. Bernie could be something someone might call someone named Byrne, specifically someone named Patrick Byrne.
“He’s the one you first talked to on the welcoming committee,” Maximillian said. “I can’t believe he’s the one.”
Sternstein. He was the one who lied about how he had died. He’d committed suicide instead of being poisoned by his much younger and attractive wife. Maybe it really was true that being murdered in Deadsville had more prestige, or perhaps a certain GOTD had warned Sternstein to keep it on the down low, knowing that eventually Thana would send in a ringer. It was even possible that the deadie believed that one of his victims might recognize some facts about him if he told the truth.
“Is he Catholic?” Tavie asked.
