The Corpse Whisperer

by H. R. Boldwood

  About five minutes in, I realized it was a repeat, the only episode I’d seen all season. With nothing better to do, I sat through it, rolling my eyes at how easily their cases came together, and when it ended, I watched yet another episode. By the time the eleven o’clock news came on, I was rooted to the couch like a redwood tree.

  Rico’s eyes looked heavy. Too much burning the candle at both ends. He wouldn’t get any pity from me.

  I flicked him with a rolled-up section of newspaper. “Hey. When do you think they’ll schedule the grand jury hearing for Leo? I’m a little worried he might not make it if they hold off too long.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll have to get with Cap and see how the FBI’s investigation is going. Christ, I’m tired. I could use some caffeine.”

  “Me too.” I headed out to the kitchen to nuke us a couple cups of stale coffee and heard a thump outside.

  I drew Hawk, and turned to see Rico coming to my side, his Glock at high ready.

  “I think it came from alongside the house,” I said.

  He flipped off the lights to even the playing field.

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust. I peered out the kitchen window, into an endless blanket of pitch.

  “I can’t see a thing,” I whispered, checking the lock on the back door.

  Rico squatted below the picture window and scanned the front yard. “Same here.”

  He checked the deadbolt on the front door and then crossed to the hallway, where he opened the door that led to the second-floor dormer. We weren’t using that space. Leo had taken the bedroom on the ground level, but someone could gain access through an upstairs window.

  I stood in the darkness, letting my senses take over, every sound a warning, every movement a threat.

  Then came another thump, louder, from down the hall.

  Leo’s room.

  “Rico!” I yelled, and took off down the hall.

  I skidded to a stop in front of Leo’s room and turned the knob.

  Damn it. He’d locked the door.

  I thought about shooting off the lock, but Rico reached my side and threw his shoulder into the door. It burst from its frame and crashed against the wall.

  I went left and Rico went right.

  The room was pitch black and completely silent.

  And the window was wide open.

  “Cincinnati PD,” Rico announced. “Put your hands up.”

  No movement, no sound, just a slight breeze blowing through the room.

  I motioned to Rico, then knelt beside the bed, sucked in a breath and shined the light from my phone underneath it.

  There was Leo, covered in red, lying motionless on the floor beneath the window.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “Hit the light,” I yelled.

  Rico groped his way across the wall and flipped the switch.

  I dove across the bed and peered down at Leo, expecting the worst.

  Onion and garlic fumes from his marinara-stained shirt assaulted my nose.

  The window screen had been carefully propped against the bedroom wall, and a crumpled aluminum pan of leftover lasagna lay splattered across the floor.

  If Leo hadn’t already had one foot in the grave, I’d have killed him right then and there.

  I pulled him up by his shirt collar.

  “Now, don’t go doing anything stupid, Nighthawk. I just wanted a little lasagna. You heard me say that earlier, right? Man does not live by pizza, alone. Nonnie called, and said she was fixing me a dish to send over tomorrow. But I didn’t want to wait. For God’s sake, I’m a dying man here! All I wanted was some freaking lasagna.”

  “I thought you were dead.” I brought Hawk up, close and personal, so Leo could get a good look at him.

  “Rico! Rico, man, take that gun away from her. I think she’s going to shoot me.”

  “If she doesn’t, I might,” Rico said. “What the hell’s wrong with you? We’re trying to keep you alive and you go sneaking out your window in the middle of the night? We might have shot you as an intruder. How stupid can you get?”

  “Sorry, guys. It gets so boring here, you know? Nothing to do but think about dying.”

  He got up from the floor and hung his head. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I wasn’t thinking, that’s all.”

  He looked at the lasagna splattered across the hardwood floor. “How ‘bout a little help here, huh? Nonnie made an extra dish. She’s giving it to you tomorrow.”

  I grabbed a towel from the hallway bath and threw it at him. “You’re on your own, twinkle-toes. Make it snappy, before Powell and Ortega get here. And not a word. You hear me? Not a word.”

  That was all we needed, Cap getting wind of this little episode. That was a disturbing visual.

  An ugly thought crossed my mind: I wonder if they need corpse whisperers in Siberia.

  14

  Shit Got Real

  Powell and Ortega called to say they would be a little late. So much the better. It gave us enough time to get the house—and Leo—back under control.

  Leo cleaned up the lasagna and threw the dirty towels in the wash, while Rico lectured him about the stupidity of his great escape. By the time Powell and Ortega walked in around twelve-thirty, it was situation normal.

  Now, I needed to go home and address the other end of that escapade—Nonnie.

  When I walked in the door, most of the lights were out, and the terrible twins were sound asleep. Nonnie sat at the kitchen table with her head high and her jaw set. She clearly expected a ration of shit.

  I was happy to oblige.

  “Nonnie, you can’t drag Le…you can’t drag David away from his work. What he’s doing is very important and top secret. If you want to make him a lasagna and send it over with me, fine. But you are never to lure him away from his work again. Do you understand?”

  Nonnie arched her brow and shot me the stink-eye. “You think Nonnie can’t read below the lines? Nonnie did not just fall out of bed yesterday, you know.”

  Despite the garbled idioms, I got her drift. The jig was up, and my seventy-year-old neighbor was about to hand me my ass.

  “His name not David. Is Leo. He good man, dying, cooped up in that house like criminal. He likes me. And my lasagna.” Her cheeks blazed. “Shame, shame on you, Miss Allie, for not telling me what you do. You…you turn dead people into zumbas! Leo told me.”

  Strike two, Leo.

  Rule number five of corpse whispering, never let your neighbors know what you do. Granted, my neighbors had seen a lot of weirdness at my house over the years, and they’d have gladly paid for the moving van if I decided to leave, but they’ve never known exactly what I do—until now.

  I took a deep breath and stared her down. “What I do, this gift I have, came from God. I only raise the dead under very specific circumstances, in situations where the dead have information the living need. And I put the people I raise back down, Nonnie. I don’t leave them zumb…zombies, to wander the earth. That would be wrong. Do you understand the difference?”

  She nodded.

  “Everything Leo told you is confidential, about him and me. Do you know that word? It means secret. Leo should never have told you any of it. And you can’t tell anyone else. It would put all of us—you, me, Rico, and Leo in danger. Tell me you understand?” I took her by the shoulders. “Swear to me you will never tell another soul.”

  Nonnie’s mouth fell open, and she jerked away from me. “What kind stoolie you think Nonnie is?”

  Stoolie? I chuckled in spite of myself. “Nonnie, with all the English words you don’t know, where in the world did you pick up a word like stoolie?”

  “I married to Mortie Nussbaum, God rest him, thirty-five years before he pass. First, my name Nonnie Vitale. I’m born in Palermo, Sicily.” She waved her hand. “Where you think lasagna recipe come from?”

  Palermo, Sicily? The brain bitch went Pavarotti in my head.

  “Nonnie,” I asked, p
inching the bridge of my nose, “Do you have relatives connected to La Cosa Nostra?”

  Her gaze drifted up and to the right. “Well…there is Vitale family of Palermo. This is known. It is…possible…we are relations. But, as I say,” she smiled sweetly, “I no stoolie. Capiche?”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. Nonnie tied to a mafia family? Rico would have a meltdown. I’ll bet Leo didn’t know that little tidbit when he was busy, blabbing his business.

  “Do you involve yourself with family business?” I asked.

  “Bah, no. Men playing men’s games. Is boring. Sometimes, I hear talk from womens in family, but they yap, their mouths, how you say, Miss Allie? Run like duck’s ass.”

  “I need you to stay away from them, until this is over. Promise me, you won’t talk to them. You don’t want Leo hurt, do you?”

  “No. Of course, I not hurt Leo.” Nonnie pinched her lips together. “How long I cannot talk to family?”

  “As long as it takes.” I stared at her, waiting for an answer.

  “I promise. Nonnie no liar.”

  Next, I needed to find out if the Vitales and the Giordanos were allies or enemies. That was a Rico question—for tomorrow. It was two in the morning, and I needed to decide what to do with Nonnie.

  “You go on home, now,” I said. “It’s late. Thank you for taking care of Headbutt and Kulu. Remember, when it comes to Leo, you know nothing, and you won’t talk about what you don’t know with anyone. Right?”

  Nonnie, an amazing, lonely, old Italian-Jewish woman, who baked the best lasagna in town and whipped my pets into shape with the chutzpah of a drill sergeant, nodded her solemn vow, and plodded across the yard to her house.

  Once I saw her safely inside, I turned off the lights and crawled into bed, wondering what other surprises she might have in store for me, but quickly kicked that thought to the curb. I’d do better counting sheep than pondering the enigma that was Nonnie.

  I called Rico’s cell at eight the next morning. Who do you think answered? That bitchy she-devil, Jade.

  “Rico can’t come to the phone right now. He’s…in the shower.”

  The dig behind those words was loud and clear.

  “Any message?”

  “Tell him to call me, pronto.”

  “Something wrong?”

  I gripped the phone a little too hard. “Nice try, sweetheart. Go put some more product in your hair. Then you can twist that waist-length mop of yours into a giant strand and use it to stab more people in the back.”

  “Oh, I take it you caught my headline the other night. The ratings went through the roof.”

  I pulled the phone cord into a garrote. “Just have him call me.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I slammed the receiver down, absolutely certain that he’d never get the message.

  Surprisingly, he called me back within the next ten minutes.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “You need to come to my house. We have a…situation.”

  “Really?” Rico’s voice sounded odd.

  Jade giggled in the background. “Things are popping up everywhere today, Miss Cadaver Diver.”

  My face blazed.

  “Be there in twenty…ah…make that forty,” Rico said, hanging up with a chuckle.

  I needed to Lysol my phone.

  True to his word, Rico arrived in forty minutes, and sat at my kitchen table, scratching Headbutt’s ears, while he listened to the tale of Donna Nonnie Vitale Nussbaum—the Sicilian Godmother.

  After I relayed the entire, mind-bending clusterfuck, his head hit the table with a thud. “We are so screwed.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “Nonnie will keep her mouth shut because she doesn’t want to hurt Leo. How about you? Think you can keep Nonnie’s mob ties out of your pillow talk?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Rico’s eyes were bloodshot and puffy. “I can’t do this with you right now, Nighthawk. How about some coffee?”

  “The cups are in the cabinet. Get it yourself.” Asshat.

  While he tried to resurrect himself with copious amounts of caffeine, I spent some one-on-one time with Headbutt and Kulu (or is that one-on-two time?). No doubt, they were happy to see me, but overall, I had to admit they were much better behaved after spending time with Donna Nonnie, our apparent pack leader.

  When I returned to the kitchen, Rico was on the phone, checking into the availability of another safe house. After Leo’s antics the night before, we couldn’t afford to take chances.

  It was unlikely that his location had been compromised, but better safe than sorry. Besides, all three of us wouldn’t mind a different house. Maybe one with cable or DISH.

  I sat across from Rico, opened the onion router on my laptop, entered the web address Philipe had given me, duat.onion, and put in the password ammit.

  I held my breath and prayed.

  When the screen changed, I’d accessed a site named Legion.

  The site’s graphics were horrific, featuring the dead rising together, in some outrageous, sci-fi, rotter rapture.

  Little Allie went apeshit once she got a load of the alt-crazy rhetoric. Things like: People are sheep, walking corpses in need of a leader who will shepherd them toward a common goal. The enlightenment is coming. The course of human history will change. And I will accept the mantle of leadership.

  Damn. Was Philipe holding out on me? I thought he’d have had something more valuable than the ramblings of a madman. Nothing on the site made a direct reference to the virus, or what role the virus might play in changing the course of human history. But, on the other hand, whoever wrote this just spiraled to the top of the whacko-whisperer list. Who was he?

  If Philipe did know more than he was willing to tell me, maybe he was afraid of poking the bear—a ‘whispering’ bear who could corpsify him at will.

  Whisperers who walk the dark side do their best to fly under the radar. This nut-job might have been throwing his hat in the ring for world domination, but he wasn’t telling us who he was. Surprisingly, he had over three-thousand followers. Did those idiots simply like the site’s macabre graphics and think it was some dark, comic blog?

  The thought of a raiser like me, angling to dominate the world, made the hair on my arms stand up. There wasn’t anything in the site that clued me in to his identity. I slammed my laptop closed and then rubbed my face with my hands. With all that tradecraft and high-tech finagling, I didn’t know anything more now than I had before visiting the site.

  Rico, no longer on the phone, sat drinking his coffee.

  “Do they have another safe house for us?” I asked.

  “I told Cap we’d been on Jora for a while, and it might be smart for us to move. I didn’t tell him why. He said he’d check and get back to me.”

  There was a lull in the conversation, a good time to circle back to the issue of just how confidential Leo’s situation remained, with Jade Chen slathering herself all over Rico, seducing him with her hero worship and perfect looks. She wanted him for his body and for his inside scoops. No doubt about it. Why wouldn’t she? Rico was hot. He’d be a catch for any girl.

  I stared him down hard. “Level with me. Are you dishing details of this case to Jade?”

  Rico’s voice turned cold. “What I do or do not discuss with Jade is none of your damned business.”

  “It is when my life and Leo’s are on the line.”

  “You honestly think I would do that? Do I look that gullible?”

  “She’s got you wrapped around her little finger so tight, I have no idea what you’d do for her. She’s playing you. Can’t you see that?”

  Rico’s steely eyes skewered me from across the table. “Sounds like somebody’s jealous.”

  Oh no, he did not just say that. I could feel the burn in my cheeks. Little Allie slapped me upside my brain, screaming, hell yes, you’re jealous.

  Stupid brain bitch. Not only was she a loud-mouthed pain in the ass, she was also confused. I shoved myself b
ack from the table, balled my fist, and took a quick step toward Rico.

  Then Nonnie walked in the back door. “Good mornings. How my friends this day?”

  Rico pushed back his chair and stood with a forced smile. “Good morning, Nonnie. No unauthorized conversations with or about Leo to anyone. Got it?”

  Her cheeks turned rosy and she lowered her eyes to the floor. “I not hurt Leo, or you, for anything.”

  “Good.” Rico didn’t even glance in my direction. “C’mon. It’s time to go to the safe house.”

  I threw on my jacket. “I’ll drive myself.”

  Rico harrumphed and stomped outside.

  Nonnie shot me a knowing smile. “Ah. Mens troubles.”

  “Bite your tongue,” I said, slamming the door on my way out.

  I pulled into the driveway of the safe house, within seconds of Rico, and caught him as he walked around back. The kitchen door was ajar. We drew our weapons.

  Rico nosed the door open further. “Powell? Ortega?”

  No answer.

  I walked in behind Rico. “Leo?”

  An odd stillness filled the house. Little Allie moved to high alert.

  “Jesus, Greg!” Rico, gun at high ready, pushed into the living room where Powell lay motionless in a massive pool of blood.

  Rico stooped and felt for a pulse. When he looked back at me, the pained stare on his face told me all I needed to know.

  I bit my lip and motioned for him to move on.

  Together, we cleared the house, moving down the hallway, taking each room in succession. He went left and I went right.

  Leo’s room was at the end of the hall on the left. It seemed like an eternity until we reached the last two rooms. As I cleared the bedroom on the right, Rico let out a yell from Leo’s room.

  I raced across the hall to find Ortega’s lifeless body lying on the floor. Half of his head missing. And Leo was gone.

  15

  Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

  Doc Blanchard and the forensic team arrived within twenty minutes and began buzzing through both the grounds and the safe house itself, although I wondered what good would come of it. This house had been occupied, from time to time, over the past thirty years. It wasn’t in immaculate condition. Any number of fingerprints would surely show up. But, at least, we could run them through AFIS.