The Corpse Whisperer

by H. R. Boldwood

The thought of Jade Chen reading that headline on the five o’clock news raced a shiver up my spine.

  Together, we reconfigured the basement as best we could for a one-man zombie apocalypse. Doc and Lloyd brought Joey ‘Fingers’ Fingerello down in the elevator and wheeled him into the center of the room.

  “Here, sign this,” Doc said, handing me a sheet of paper.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a release. I took pictures of the basement as it is now. This statement says that you are raising this corpse, against my express consent, with the intention of extracting certain information and further, that you intend to put the corpse back down, once your objective has been accomplished. You will be held responsible for any and all damages that may occur in the process. On behalf of the Coroner’s Office, I refuse to be held accountable or financially responsible.”

  “Sure, Doc.”

  I took his pen and laid the form on the counter behind me, to sign it. With my back to Doc, I crossed out my name and scrawled The City of Cincinnati in its place. Then I signed it Genghis Khan.

  “There. Happy?” I handed it back to Doc, folded in half.

  “Now go away,” I said, and walked him back to the elevator. “Igor. You stay here. We might need you.”

  “It’s Lloyd,” he said, sliding his black-framed glasses up his nose.

  “Whatever.” I pushed the elevator button and sent Doc back upstairs to the morgue.

  The basement measured around twenty by thirty—large enough for Rico, Lloyd and me to maneuver, but throwing a freshy into that mix made it feel more like a linen closet. Overhead pipes ran across the ceiling lengthwise. There were a couple of support beams, some stationary tubs, shelving units and a floor drain. Not a lot to work with.

  It was show time, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was forgetting something. I turned to find Rico holding out a family-size bag of Doritos.

  “I brought them from home,” he said. “It’s all I had.”

  Junk food for the freshy. That’s what we were missing. What a waste of perfectly good Doritos.

  Joey Fingers, snug inside a black body bag, lay on a gurney in the center of the basement.

  I put my fingers on the zipper and set the stage. “Rico, you stand across the gurney from me. Lloyd, you stand in front of the steps and block Joey if he tries to escape. Tackle him if you have to. Everybody ready?”

  I eased the zipper down and got my first peak at Joey ‘Fingers’ Fingerello. He was a short, stout, fireplug of a guy, with curly black hair and a small jagged scar on his chin. Dollars to donuts, raising this guy was going to be a real treat.

  Every corpse is different. Take Cephus, the kiddie-diddler, for example. He jumped out of his casket, ate a couple of chips, answered my questions, and then lit off like a bottle rocket across the cemetery, confused and fearful. But Fingerello, being a gangster, might wake up a lot more aggressive.

  I shrugged and put my hands over Joey. “You know the drill, De Palma. This is always a crapshoot, but I’m not expecting Al Capone here to come back with flowers and a bottle of wine. You feel me?”

  Rico raised his eyebrows. “Hold on, I’ve got an idea.”

  He rolled the gurney alongside a metal shelving unit anchored to the wall, and handcuffed Joey’s left wrist to the support bar. “There. That’s better.”

  I closed my eyes, placed my hands back over Joey’s body, and felt the familiar, searing heat rush from my chest, through my arms, and into my palms.

  Ribbons of light streamed from my fingertips, calling Joey from his eternal rest.

  When the energy blazed in a solid arc, I raised my head and called upon a higher power. “Rise, Joseph Fingerello. In the name of God, I command you to rise.”

  His eyelids flickered.

  “Joseph, hear me. You will rise.”

  He didn’t budge.

  My palms were on fire, and he hadn’t even opened his eyes. I pushed myself harder, generating more energy and transferring it into him, but he absorbed it like a sponge.

  “Nighthawk,” Rico whispered, “Your nose is bleeding.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and yelled, “Joseph Fingerello, you cannot resist. You will rise, now!”

  Joey’s body began to smoke. The unzipped body bag melted against his sides. His eyes snapped open and he flew straight off that gurney like a galvanized Pop-Tart.

  He jerked his handcuffed arm against the shelving unit and roared, then threw a right uppercut into Rico’s jaw with the opposite fist, sending him sprawling ten-feet back.

  I cleared Hawk from my holster, but Joey thrashed his free arm back around, smashing into my elbow as I squeezed the trigger. The bullet went wide, striking what turned out to be the water pipe that fed the sprinkler system. Water gushed from the rusty old pipe onto the floor and the fire alarm sounded.

  Miraculously, Joey was still handcuffed to the shelving unit.

  “Did you have Miriam killed?” I yelled over the blaring alarm.

  “No.” He growled and stared at me, eyes glazed.

  He lunged forward, nearly pulling the shelves over. I didn’t have much time. And damned if Rico hadn’t fallen on top of the Doritos.

  “Why were you in town?”

  Joey pulled against the handcuffs, rocking the shelving unit back and forth. “Scare her. Find Leo.”

  Holy Shit. Did the mob know where Leo was?

  “Joey,” I shouted above the rushing water. “Did Miriam tell you where Leo is?”

  “No,” he snapped. “She dead. Dead. Already dead.”

  Sirens from the approaching fire trucks grew louder. I sloshed through the pooling water toward Rico. He stirred as I grabbed the picture of BOLO Guy from his pocket.

  Holding it up, I asked Joey. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Joey heaved forward with a shriek, straining against the handcuffs. “Killed me! He. Killed. Me!”

  The shelving unit teetered on its front legs, and my brain shifted into overdrive. BOLO Guy killed mob guy? Who the hell was BOLO Guy, and who did he work for?

  The brain bitch blew her top, screaming a name over and over again, a name I’d tried hard to forget, for a very long time. Joey yanked the shelving unit one last time, and brought it down with a crash. I saw it coming and backed up, but not fast enough. The corner of the unit knocked Hawk out of my hand and into the drink.

  “Joey,” I yelled, stumbling backward through the rising water. “Is the man who killed you with the mob?”

  “No!” he bellowed. “Not mob. Kill him. Kill him. Now!” He dragged the shelving unit across the floor behind him, on his way toward me.

  With my Ka-Bar knife in hand, I squared off to battle one seriously pissed-off freshy.

  The sound of feet pounding down the steps caught my ear. It wasn’t likely Lloyd. He’d disappeared once Joey went airborne off the gurney.

  A blue uniform popped into view. “Stop! Police,” he yelled.

  Not that Joey cared.

  “Just shoot!” I screamed.

  One shot to the head and Joey went down. Now, there was an officer who knew how to take out a biter.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks for the assist, man. Good job.”

  “No problem, Nighthawk.”

  I knew that voice. The cop joined me at Rico’s side, and I finally realized who he was.

  “Holy shit! D-D-Donald—from the training session at City Hall. It’s you!”

  His face turned crimson. “Please. I just saved your life. Can you let that shit go?”

  I threw him a wink. “No problem, Donald. Nice shooting. Let’s get my partner to his feet.”

  I fished Hawk out of the water, and then Donald and I grabbed Rico by his shoulders and helped him up the steps, water running off us, as if we’d taken a dip in a swimming hole.

  Rico, with a massive bruise on his chin and possibly a broken jaw, did his best to get his feet back beneath him.

  Doc threw open the basement door as we neared the top of the stair
s and came out with both barrels blazing.

  “Damn it, Nighthawk! How could you possibly inflict this much damage from the freaking basement? You’re a human wrecking ball. A one-man demolition service.”

  Firemen poured through the door.

  Doc stepped out of their way and sneered at me. “Well, at least I was smart enough to have you sign that release. Thank God this clusterfuck won’t be coming out of my budget.”

  I let that go. Low-hanging fruit’s just too easy to pick.

  Doc took a deep cleansing breath and calmed himself. “You should know, Miriam’s killer, BOLO Guy, wasn’t bitten. And I didn’t find any injection site on his body, either.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. How the hell did he turn?

  I tried to sound nonchalant. “Since I haven’t heard from Sweden yet, why don’t you send a tissue sample from BOLO Guy to the CDC? Maybe they can figure out what’s going on.”

  Doc walked away, but turned and called over his shoulder, “Oh. Remember the rush order on Miriam’s test results? They’re back. She had the Z-virus in her system, but she didn’t have the genetic marker for turning.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I don’t get it, either.” Doc scratched his head. “What the hell’s going on? BOLO Guy wasn’t bitten or injected, but he turns, and Miriam was injected—didn’t have the genetic marker—and turned anyway. What do you make of all that?”

  Little Allie moaned, and my heart thrummed in my chest. “I don’t know, Doc. But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

  12

  When is a Black Lexus Just a Black Lexus?

  While police officers and firemen converged on the Coroner’s Office, I took the opportunity to clean up.

  The EMTs sat Rico down, so they could check his jaw. Although a dark angry bruise had already bloomed, his jaw didn’t appear to be broken. When they suggested an x-ray just to be sure, Rico’s only answer was the thin set of his lips and the thundercloud over his brow.

  When my phone began to ring. I didn’t need to look at the display to know who was calling, but the ringtone taunted me: Don’t be shy. Have a quick look-see. It’s only the train wreck you’ve been waiting for since your bullet punched a hole in the building’s sprinkler line.

  I pulled the phone from my pocket and took a deep breath. “Hi, Cap.”

  I held the phone several inches from my head. It was hard to know which was louder, Cap or the damned fire alarm that continued to blare in the background.

  Getting a word in edgewise wasn’t easy. “Yeah, but… Yeah, but… Yeah, but… Okay. You bet. It’s not as ba—”

  He hung up in my ear and I winced, turning toward Rico. “We’ve been summoned.”

  Bill Weston, Rico and I sat across from Cap, listening to his colorful rendition of our bone-headed fuck-ups. It was hard not to agree with him.

  He started with our stalled investigation into the zombie at the gun-range, threw in Miriam’s death (which, so far, had produced more questions than answers), then summarized the list of damages I’d “wreaked upon the city” (au contraire), before finally ending with this morning’s flood in the morgue basement.

  He didn’t take a breath until he hit the bottom of the list and for a moment, I thought he might pass out.

  But he pulled himself together and continued. “Let’s recap our findings, shall we? We determined that there were no signs of forced entry, or any unusual fingerprints at the gun-range, which led us to believe there could be a badge involved, right? Any more on that front?”

  Rico wriggled like a six-year-old and rubbed the back of his neck. “Not really. It comes down to a question of who might have had access to biters as well as a key to the walk-up.”

  “And the black Lexus that tailed you on the way to the safe house. Any leads on it?”

  “No.” Rico closed his eyes and sighed. “We couldn’t get a plate number, and we haven’t seen it since.”

  I threw some shit up on the wall, hoping it would stick. “Well, Jade Chen, the reporter from Channel Ten drives a Black Lexus. It could have been her. She’s always sniffing around for a story.”

  “You don’t know that,” Rico said. “Stop accusing her. She said it wasn’t her. Let it go.”

  Cap crossed his arms and leaned back, putting his feet on the desk. “But the car hasn’t been back. Maybe you’re both wrong. Maybe it was just a random black Lexus.”

  Neither Rico, nor I, said a word.

  “So…maybe, we have a mole,” Cap said. “Someone who knew you’d be taking a stroll through Perptown and managed to slip a biter inside the walk-up. Someone who may, or may not, have followed you on your way to the safe house. If we have a mole, who could it be?”

  I glanced at Rico. “I still say Jade. She has the means, the motive, and,” I rolled my eyes, “the opportunity.”

  Rico’s stare bored a hole through my head.

  Cap glanced back and forth between Rico and me, as if he were trying to figure out what wasn’t being said. “Is there something I should know?”

  I chewed on my fingernail and glowered at the floor while Rico twitched in his chair like a freaking freshy.

  “Has Leo’s location been compromised?” Cap asked.

  Rico waved his hand. “No. Of course not.”

  “Then what the hell’s the problem?” Cap turned to me, “Is there anything, anything at all you need to say Nighthawk? If so, now’s the time.”

  “No, Cap. I got nothing.”

  “Then, if you two are finished dancing, let’s get back to our discussion on possible moles.”

  Someone knocked at Cap’s door and without waiting for an answer, barged in. That squirrelly janitor, Ottis. He walked straight to the wastebasket, as if no one else was in the room, and started to pick it up, but Cap stopped him.

  “Not now, Ottis. We’re in the middle of something here. Come back later. And when you do, wait for me to answer your knock before you enter.”

  Ottis tilted his head and studied us like we were a new species of insect, then nodded and left.

  Weston leaned forward. “What about him? My money’s on that little weasel. He never talks. He’s always around, almost invisible, rummaging through garbage cans like a little ferret. He could have grabbed the keys to the walk-up.”

  “And he was here, in the precinct, the night Miriam was murdered,” Rico said. “Clawson told me so.”

  “Ottis?” Cap said. “Not likely, but maybe. Anybody else?” He looked at Rico.

  “I don’t know, Cap. It could be anyone with access to both the precinct and the firing range. That’s a big pool of suspects.”

  My phone rang, interrupting our little circle jerk. It was Ilse.

  “Cap I need to take this,” I said, walking out into the hall.

  “Hey, girl, give me good news.” I listened to what she had to say, at least the part I could understand between her sobs, and then had to hold back a few of my own.

  After she hung up, I leaned against the wall to collect my thoughts. After pulling myself together, I walked back into Cap’s office. His mood hadn’t improved.

  “Nice of you to rejoin us, Nighthawk. Did your Swedish contact ever get back to you with the results of his tissue samples from the European biter? Or is he out ice-fishing somewhere?”

  Goddam. I hated this job.

  “Sandy’s been missing since the night he took the samples. The lab sent a security guard to check on him yesterday. His back door had been kicked in and his home had been ransacked. The police have started working the case. His associate, Dr. Christian, stepped in to run the tests.”

  Cap glared at me. “You didn’t think I needed to know that, Nighthawk? You need to keep—”

  “Keep you posted, right?” I felt the vein in my temple pulsing. “That was Sandy’s secretary, Ilse, on the phone just now. They found Sandy stabbed and turned deadhead. No bite marks and no injection sites. They had to put him down this morning. Dr. Christian performed the tissue sample tes
ts for us since Sandy was…since Sandy wasn’t there. He found a new, previously unidentified DNA sequence in the virus. He doesn’t know its origin, but he’s working on it. What he can say is that the virus didn’t organically mutate. It was manipulated. The presence of the unidentified DNA strand confirms that. How’s that for a timely update?”

  I grabbed the edge of his desk and the picture of his wife fell over.

  Cap lightened his tone. “I’m sorry, Nighthawk. I know you were friends.”

  “I don’t need sympathy,” I said, holding back tears. “I need to find out who’s behind all this.”

  Rico motioned toward my chair. “Then sit back down and let’s start with what we know. Miriam was stabbed, injected with the Z-virus, and despite not having the marker, turned anyway. BOLO Guy killed both Miriam and the mob boss, Joey Fingerello, then somehow turned into a biter and had to be put down. We still don’t know BOLO Guy’s real name, who he worked for, or why he murdered Miriam and Joey. Nighthawk raised Joey Fingerello, who told us he was in town to lean on Miriam, so she’d give up Leo’s location, but she was already dead before he got to her. And last, but not least, we found out the Z-virus has been manipulated by…who the hell knows.”

  Weston rubbed his eyes. “Somebody give me a play book.”

  “It’s not that hard, we just need to ask the right questions,” Rico said. “Who has the ability to manipulate the Z-virus? Nighthawk, you said yourself that there are only a handful of people who know this shit. Who are they?”

  I sat back down, tilted my head, and stared at the ceiling. “Well, there’s Dr. Kimmel at the CDC, and with Sandy gone, maybe Dr. Christian at the European CDPC. There’s Dr. Sato in Japan, and Ariel Sanchez in Brazil. And all of these scientists have research assistants who might be capable of introducing a new strand of DNA to the virus. But the source of the DNA sequence is unknown. That means that they’d have to engineer the DNA first.”

  Cap snorted. “Well, somebody sure as hell knows what they’re doing, or this wouldn’t be happening.”