"Did anyone ever tell you that you can be very abrupt?"
"Yes, now what's up?"
He sat up straighter, all professional and client-worthy again. "I need you to hear me out before you get upset."
"Wow, Bert, I can hardly wait for the rest of this little talk."
He frowned at me. "I turned the job down, because I knew you wouldn't take it."
"If you turned it down, why are we discussing it?"
"They doubled your consultation fee."
"Bert," I said.
"No," he put a hand up, "I turned it down."
I looked at him and knew my face said clearly, I didn't believe him. "I've never known you to turn down that much, Bert."
"You gave me a list of cases that you wouldn't handle. Since you gave me the list, have I sent anything your way that was on it?"
I thought about it for a second, then shook my head. "No, but you're about to."
"They won't believe me."
"They won't believe what?" I said.
"They insist that if you'd only see them, you'd do what they want. I told them you wouldn't, but they offered fifteen thousand dollars for an hour of your time. Even if you refuse, the money belongs to Animators, Inc."
When I said we worked like a law firm, I meant it. That meant that this money went into the kitty for everybody. The more we made, the more everyone made, though some of us got a higher or lower percentage of our fees. We'd based it on seniority. So my turning down money didn't just hurt me or insult Bert anymore, it affected the bottom line for everybody. Most of those everybodys had families, kids. They'd actually come to me en masse and asked for me to be more flexible on my consulting fees, i.e., take more of them. Manny had a daughter about to enter a very expensive college, and Jamison was paying alimony to three ex-wives. Sob stories, but most of them, except for Larry, had more overhead than I did. So I'd started being nicer about at least talking to people when they offered outrageous sums of money. Sometimes.
"What's the job?" I asked. I didn't sound happy, but I asked.
Bert was all smiles. Sometimes I suspected that he'd been behind that en masse meeting, but Manny and Charles swore up and down he hadn't been. Jamison I wouldn't have believed either way, so I didn't ask.
"The Browns' son died about three years ago. They want you to raise him and ask some questions."
My eyes were unfriendly slits. "Tell me all of it, Bert, so far I wouldn't have turned it down."
He cleared his throat and fidgeted. Bert didn't fidget much. "Well, the son was murdered."
I threw my hands into the air. "Damn it, Bert, I can't raise a murder victim. None of us here can. I gave you a list that you were supposed to refuse for all of us, for legal reasons, and that was one of them."
"You used to do it."
"Yeah, before I found out what happens when you raise a murder vic as a zombie, and that was before the new laws went into effect. A murdered person rises from the grave and goes after their murderer, no ifs, ands, or buts. They will tear through anyone and anything that tries to stop them. I had it happen twice, Bert. The zombies don't answer questions about who killed them, they just go rampaging off and try to find who did it."
"Couldn't the police just follow them, sort of like they do bloodhounds?"
"These bloodhounds will tear people's arms off and crash through houses. Zombies do a very straight line to their murderers. And the way the law reads now, the animator that raised the zombie would be liable for all the damage, including the deaths. If one of us raised this boy and he killed anyone, even his own murderer, we'd be charged with murder. Murder with magical malfeasance. That's an automatic death sentence. So no, I can't do it, and neither can anybody else."
He looked sad, probably about the money. "I told them you'd explain it to them."
"You should have explained it to them yourself, Bert. I've told you all this before."
"They asked me if I was an animator, when I said no, they wouldn't believe me. They said if they could just meet with Ms. Blake, they're sure they could change your mind."
"Jesus, Bert, this is really unfair. It can't be done, and watching their son rise from the grave as a shambling murderous zombie is not going to help them heal."
He raised eyebrows at that. "Well, I can't say I put it as well as you just did, but I swear to you that I did tell them no."
"But I'm meeting with them anyway, because they offered fifteen grand for an hour of my time."
"I could have gotten them to twenty grand. They're desperate. I could smell it on them. If we turn them down flat, they're going to try to find someone less reputable, less legal."
I closed my eyes and let the air out in a long slow sigh. I hated that he was right, but he was. When people get to a certain level of desperation, they'll do stupid things. Stupid, foolish, horrible things. We were the only animating firm in the Midwest. There was one in New Orleans and one in California, but they wouldn't take this job for the same reason we wouldn't. The new laws. I could say it was to save the clients pain, but in all honesty the idea that you could raise a murder victim from the grave and just ask them who killed them was so tempting that several of us had tried to do it. We'd thought it hadn't worked because of the trauma of the murder, or that the animators doing it weren't powerful enough, but that wasn't it. If you were murdered, you rose with only one thought in your dead brain: revenge. Until you got that revenge, you wouldn't listen to anyone's orders, not even the animator or voodoo priest or priestess that raised you from the grave.
But just because none of the reputable people would do it, didn't mean that a disreputable person wouldn't do it. There were people here and there across the country that had the talent without the morals. None of them worked for the professional companies because they'd either been fired as a liability, or they'd never been hired. Some because they didn't want to be hired, but most because what they did was secret and rarely something they wanted the authorities to know about. They kept a low profile, and didn't advertise much, but if you started waving twenty grand around, they'd come out of the woodwork. The Browns would find someone willing to do what they asked, if they were willing to pay for it. Someone who would give them a false name, raise the kid, and run with their money, and leave the bereaved parents to clean up the mess and explain things to the police. There was a test case in New England at state supreme court level that was seeking the death penalty for the person who paid a magical practitioner to kill someone by magic. I didn't know how it would go, and it would probably get to the Supreme Court before all was said and done. I'd never forgive myself if the Browns found someone less reputable and ended up on death row for it. I mean, that would just suck, especially if I could prevent it here and now.
I gave Bert the look he deserved. The one that said he was a greedy son of a bitch, and I knew he'd turned down their money for something other than humanitarian reasons. He just sat back and smiled at me, because he knew what that particular look meant. It meant I would do it, even if I hated it.
29
Mrs. Barbara Brown was blond, and Mr. Steve Brown was brunette with gray coming in at the temples. He's was taller than she was by about five inches, but other than that, they matched. You could still see the pretty round-faced cheerleader she'd been in high school. The handsome football player was still there in his shoulders and the edges of his face, but the extra weight and the extra years and the grief had covered over who they'd been. Their eyes were bright, but it was an unnatural brightness, almost shocky. She spoke too fast, and he spoke too slowly, as if he had to think about each word before he said it. She spoke as if talking about her son was something she had to do, or she'd explode, or break down.
"He was a straight A student, Ms. Blake, and here's the last picture he painted. It was a water color of his youngest sister. He had such talent." She held up the picture, which they'd brought in one of those art carriers that looks like a thin briefcase.
I dutifully looked at the painting. It
was a very soft picture, all watery blues and delicate yellows, and the child's curls were almost white. The little girl was laughing, and the artist had caught a shine in her eyes that usually required a camera to capture. It was good. For a junior in high school, it was spectacular.
"It's a wonderful painting, Mrs. Brown."
"Steve didn't want me to bring it. He said that you didn't need to see it, but I thought if you saw what kind of person he was, that you'd be willing to do what we want."
"I don't think that seeing Steve's paintings will influence Ms. Blake, that's all, Barbara." He patted her hand as he finished, and she didn't react to it at all. It was almost as if he hadn't touched her. I began to understand who was the driving force behind this tragic farce. Because it was a farce. She wasn't talking like she wanted her son brought back as a zombie so he could say who'd murdered him. She was talking like she was trying to persuade me to do a Lazarus on him, to really bring him back. Had Bert heard that in her voice and ignored it, or had she saved it for me?
"He was a track star, and on the football team." She opened the yearbook to appropriate places, and I looked at Stevie Brown running in shorts with a baton in his hand, head thrown back, a look of utter concentration on his face. His hair was dark and not long. Stevie Brown kneeling on the ground in full football gear, helmet on the ground by his hand. He was grinning out at the camera, his bangs spilling over his eyes. He had his father's hair, and a thinner, younger, brighter version of his mother's face, except for the lips and the eyes, which, again, were his father's.
I saw a picture of him on the yearbook staff, bent over a layout table, face very serious. He looked like someone that would run track, thin, muscled, but not much bulk. I wouldn't have picked him for football, not beefy enough. But who knew if he might have filled out in the summer between junior and senior year. But he never got the chance.
Prom night, he and his senior girlfriend had been crowned king and queen. There was a picture of them in front of a background of fake silver stars and too many sequins. He was beaming into the camera. He'd cut his hair and styled it so it was neat and thick and flattered his face more than the way it had when he ran track. His shoulders were a little broader than in the yearbook or track photos. He looked taller in his white tux. The girl was blond and looked like a thinner, taller version of his mother. The girl looked confident and lovely, with a smile that was more mysterious than Stevie's had been. Looking at their pictures, it was obvious they didn't know that in less than six hours they'd be dead.
"Cathy and Stevie had been dating for almost two years. High school sweethearts, just like Steve and me." She leaned forward as she said it, her lips half parted, her tongue moistened them as if she was having trouble keeping her mouth from drying out.
Her husband kept patting her hand and looked at me out of his fine dark eyes, which were so like his dead son's. He told me with those eyes, and his so-tired face, that he was sorry. Sorry I had to see this, hear this, be here now.
I wasn't up to the subtle eye message thing, the best I could do was nod sympathetically and give him more eye contact than I gave her. He gave a small nod where Barbara couldn't see him. There, we'd had our moment, a very guy moment. I see you, I see you, too. I understand what you mean, I understand what you mean, too. If I'd been a better girl, I'd have said something out loud to be sure.
"He sounds like he was a wonderful person," I said.
She leaned forward a little more, she had a small photo album in her hands, one of those thick ones that grandmothers carry in their purses. She fumbled it open, and I was staring at pictures of a dark-haired baby, toddler, grade-schooler.
I put my hand over hers, stopped her from turning the pages. "Mrs. Brown, Barbara..."
She wouldn't look at me. Her eyes were getting shinier.
"Mrs. Brown, you don't need to prove to me that your son was a good kid. I believe you."
Mr. Brown stood up and tried to help her put the photo album back in her purse. She didn't want to do it, and he wouldn't fight her. He stood there, sort of helplessly, with his big hands hanging at his sides.
She leaned into the desk again and turned a page. "Here he is winning the fifth grade science fair."
I didn't know how to stop this without being cruel. I leaned back in my chair and stopped looking at the pictures. I made eye contact with Steve, and his eyes had grown shinier, too. If they both started crying I was going to leave. If I could have helped them, I would have, but I couldn't. And truthfully, I didn't think Barbara Brown had come to me to produce a zombie.
I looked back down at a picture of Stevie in eighth grade, his first year on the football team. That surprised me, I'd have thought his father would have put him in peewee league. It made me think better of Steve that he'd waited until his son wanted to play.
I covered her hands and the book with my hands. I pressed down enough that she had to finally look up at me. Her eyes were wild, as if tears were the least of our worries. There was something almost violent in that look.
I changed what I'd been going to say, because she wasn't ready to hear me say, Leave, I can't help you. "You told me that it happened on prom night, but you didn't give me any details." I didn't really want details, but anything to stop the pictures and the desperate flow of memories. Murder I could handle. The trip down memory lane was getting on my nerves.
Her eyes flicked right, then left, and she leaned back, leaving the album in my hands. I left it open to his thirteenth birthday party. The smiling faces of him and his friends clustered around a cake.
Her breath came out in a long, slow rattle. Not a sound that you hear out of the living much. She swallowed convulsively and reached for her husband's hand. He was still standing. His face relaxed a little just because she'd reached for him.
"They found Stevie's car off the road, as if they'd been run into the ditch. The police think that they were picked up trying to hitchhike," he said.
"Stevie wouldn't have gotten into a car with strangers," Barbara said firmly, "and neither would Cathy." Her eyes were a little less wild. "They were good kids."
"I'm sure they were, Mrs. Brown." People seemed to want to make saints of the dead, as if their very goodness should have protected them. Purity was not a shield against violence, in fact sometimes ignorance got you killed faster.
"I'm not saying they weren't good kids," Steve said.
She ignored him, and she'd taken her hand back. Both her hands were clasped around her purse, clutching it in her lap, as if she had to hold on to something, and his hand wasn't enough.
"They wouldn't have gotten in a car with strangers. Stevie was very protective of Cathy. He wouldn't have done it." She was so certain that there was nothing else to say about that particular speculation.
"Then did they know the people that gave them a ride?" I asked.
That seemed to throw her. She frowned, and her eyes darted from side to side, like something trapped. "No one we know would have harmed Stevie, or Cathy."
She'd been sure about the stranger thing, but she wasn't really sure about this one. Somewhere in her was enough logic to know that either they got into a car with strangers or they got into a car with people they knew. There were no other choices.
"The police think that they might have been forced into another car, maybe with a weapon," Steve said.
She was shaking her head over and over. "I can't bear the thought of someone pointing a gun at them. I just can't think who would have done such a thing."
He patted her shoulder. "Barb, maybe you better wait out in the other room, while I finish talking to Ms. Blake, here."
She was still shaking her head. "No, no, she's going to help us. She's going to bring Stevie back, and he can tell us who did this to him and to Cathy, and it'll be all better. We need to know who could do such a horrible thing." She looked up at me, and her eyes cleared for a moment. "Stevie and Cathy would not have gotten into a car with strangers. We'd talked about it. He knew that if someone pointe
d a gun at him and tried to force him into a car that they wouldn't let him live. We've talked about that since he was a little boy." Her breath caught, but she didn't cry, not yet. "I know he would have done what I'd told him to do. He would have grabbed Cathy and run into the woods. The car was parked right next to the woods. They could have hidden in there. It had to be someone he knew, or she knew. It had to be someone we know, Ms. Blake," she said, changing her tune from a minute ago. "Our beautiful boy was taken away by one of the people that have been over to our house, eating our food, giving us flowers. Someone we know is a monster and we didn't know it." There, that was the true horror. Not just that her son and his girlfriend had been murdered, but the murderer had to be someone Barbara and Steve Brown knew.
What must it be like to stare into the faces of your friends, your children's friends, and wonder, was it you? Or you? Which one of you did it?
I couldn't even argue with her, because you are more than 80 percent more likely to be killed by someone you know than by a stranger. An ugly statistic, but true.
"You say 'monster.' Do you mean just that they could kill your son, or something about how it was done?" Maybe it had been something supernatural. Maybe there was more than one reason they'd come to me. I could hope there was something I could do for them.
She put her hands over her face and started to cry, not quietly either.
Steve Brown spoke over her sobs, as if he'd heard them before. "What was done to them, Ms. Blake, what was done to them was monstrous." He didn't look like a man who'd had to say monstrous a lot in his life. I didn't think it was a word he'd chosen lightly.
Barbara Brown was rocking back and forth, back and forth, while she wept. Her sobs must have been as loud as I thought they were, because the phone on my desk rang.
I jumped, but got it. It was Mary, our very good secretary. "Is everything alright?"
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