Krewe of Hunters Series, Volume 5

by Heather Graham

  He led the way to the office behind the classroom, rapping at the door as they entered to herald their arrival. Dr. Amory was busy at his computer while Cathy was sorting through a stack of files. They both looked up, smiled pleasantly and stopped their work to meet Meg.

  “Glad to have you here,” Dr. Amory said to Meg, standing to shake her hand. “And if you want any information on dolphins, come by any time.”

  “Seriously, any time,” Cathy said. She was in her mid to late thirties, thin, and she wore wire-rimmed glasses and a very studious expression. She explained that she kept medical records on the dolphins and other inhabitants of Sea Life.

  “I just love to talk about sea mammals. They’re so incredible. Dolphins’ life spans vary,” Cathy said. “In the wild, luck is a huge factor. Everything depends on how pristine their environment is, the availability of food and whether they run into a predator—or a motorboat. Here, where we can control the environment and provide medical care when necessary, two of our dolphins are in their late forties. In the wild, twenty to twenty-five years is pretty much the norm, and only about one percent of the entire population anywhere makes it to fifty.”

  Lara thanked Cathy for talking to them about the dolphins and then said that they had to move on so Meg could meet the rest of the staff. They said their thank-yous, then headed over to the café, where Frank Pilaf was at the grill, and Juan Jimenez and Rosa Estancia were taking orders, bringing out food and picking up after those who didn’t pick up after themselves. Rosa, a warm and effusive woman, greeted Meg with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Meg looked a little surprised, but then Juan and Frank did the same. Rosa refused to let them leave until they were armed with bottles of ice-cold water.

  “That was quite a welcome,” Meg said once they were out of earshot.

  “You get used to that down here,” Lara said. “It’s the Latin influence. Everyone hugs and kisses everyone else.”

  They paused for a minute at the front enclosure, where Adrianna and Rick were hosting the afternoon show and three of the dolphins were doing a synchronized leap out of the water, delighting the crowd of campers and other visitors. After a minute Lara nudged Meg, and they walked over to the showers and storage area on the far side of the left-hand lagoon. Sue Crane and Justin Villiers were there, collecting the towels the trainers used after their swims.

  Sue was in her late twenties, Justin somewhere around thirty. They both had brown hair, but Sue was tiny with a perfect little gamine face, while Justin was very tall and skinny; they made quite a pair when working together.

  “Good to have security around,” Sue said after Meg had been introduced.

  That made Justin frown. “You don’t think we’re really in danger here, do you?” he asked Sue.

  “I wasn’t suggesting we’re in danger—except from Lara stealing our jobs. You’re amazing with Cocoa,” Sue said, shaking her head.

  “No fear there—I’m much better with words. And Cocoa’s the only one of the dolphins who even seems to notice me,” Lara said.

  “Dolphins are really a lot like dogs,” Justin said. “You know how dogs seem to know if a person is okay or not? Well, dolphins are the same way. So, Lara, if Cocoa says you’re good people, we’ll keep you.”

  After Sue and Justin left to handle the dolphins for the next encounter, Lara turned to Meg. “That’s it for full-time staff. We have local college and high school students who come in as volunteers to help out sometimes, but they’re not here on an everyday basis, and there’s a vet who comes when we call him.”

  “Everyone seems terrific, and this is a great work environment,” Meg said.

  “I think so,” Lara said. “Were you expecting otherwise? There’s no suspicion that anyone from here is involved in what happened.”

  “It’s still good to know who everyone is.” Meg paused, then asked, “Now, what about Miguel? When am I going to meet him?”

  Lara tilted her head questioningly. “Miguel Gomez? Meg, I’m still not sure I really saw a ghost. And even if I did see him, I have no idea how to introduce you to him.”

  “You saw him in your office doorway, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then, let’s head back there. He probably won’t show when there are so many other people around, but you’re one of the last to leave, right?”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “We’ll make sure that you are tonight,” Meg said, then shrugged. “And if he doesn’t show up here, maybe he’ll come to the house again tonight. If he does, we won’t be calling the police on him.”

  * * *

  The Diaz-Douglas Mortuary Chapel on Bird Road had been around as long as Brett could remember; Diego also knew the place well, since his great-uncle’s wake had recently been held there.

  While he and Diego were heading to the funeral home, Matt Bosworth was on his way to the cemetery where they had exhumed Randy Nicholson’s empty coffin that morning. He was going to begin interviewing the employees. Someone, somewhere, had to know something, and the cemetery was a convenient place to start.

  “It’s a pretty smart deal they’ve got going,” Diego told Brett. “When people want their service slanted toward the Anglo side, Douglas handles arrangements. When they speak Spanish, Diaz steps in.”

  They’d done their homework on the business. It had been founded in 1940 by the current Douglas’s grandfather, then passed to his father. When the current Douglas had taken the reins, he’d joined up with Diaz, whose family had been in the funeral business in Cuba before coming to the United States.

  The parking lot was almost completely empty, but it was early for viewing hours. The outer reception area was furnished tastefully in beiges and browns, with comfortable couches and chairs offering places for mourners to sit. The end tables all held large boxes of tissues, and there were three stations dispensing bottled water in sight.

  As they stood for minute, letting their eyes adapt from the bright daylight to the dimmer artificial light in the room, a very pretty Latino woman in a blue high-button suit approached them and immediately offered her hand, “Geneva Diaz,” she said, and then, without waiting for them to introduce themselves in turn, went on. “Let me bring you right to my husband and Mr. Douglas. We received a call from your office, advising us that you were on the way.”

  Signs along the hall told mourners whose wake was being held in each room. They passed by a door that said Staff Only. When they’d come in, Brett had noticed a sign pointing toward the “receiving entry,” and he was pretty sure that this door led to the embalming room.

  Geneva Diaz rapped on the office door before entering. The room held two desks, one for each partner. A nameplate identified the desk to the left as belonging to Richard Diaz, while the second belonged to Jonathan Douglas.

  “Gentlemen, we’ve already been apprised of this strange situation,” Douglas said, stepping forward. He was a tall man who seemed somehow colored by his occupation, gray in color from his hair to his skin. His face had bloodhound cheeks and wrinkles, and he looked as if he wore a perpetual mask of sympathy and sadness. “We’ve gathered everything we have for you. I can’t tell you how appalled we are.”

  Diaz was a younger, shorter man, with bronzed skin, sharp dark eyes and handsome features.

  “We can’t begin to tell you how upset we are by this situation. We have a reputation for providing exceptionally fine service at a family’s most terrible time, and this is just…unheard of. Sit down, please.”

  He indicated two chairs in front of Douglas’s desk, then perched on the edge of it while Douglas returned to his seat.

  Brett lifted his hands. “We’re aware of your sterling reputation, gentlemen,” he said. “So how could this have happened?”

  Douglas indicated a file. “Here are our records. We made arrangements for pickup from the hospital. When Mr. Nicholson a
rrived, I met him at Receiving myself and had him brought straight to the embalming room.”

  “So he was embalmed?” Diego asked.

  Diaz glanced over at Douglas, and it looked as if he were uncomfortable. “The family requested that he not be.” He sighed. “There are laws that deal with embalming, but generally, in a case such as this, the family has a right to refuse. Sometimes funeral directors won’t even tell you that—especially if there will be an open casket at the viewing, but Mr. Nicholson’s casket was closed.” He shrugged uneasily. “Strange, we still call it a viewing when the casket is closed. Wake. I guess that’s the right word. Or visitation. At any rate, his service was held here the night Mr. Nicholson arrived, and he was buried the next day.”

  “So no embalming and no open casket. Interesting. Where was the body held overnight?” Brett asked.

  “It was refrigerated. But I can assure you, the body was in that casket when it was taken for storage after the viewing.”

  “Can you explain how we opened an empty coffin, then?” Brett asked.

  Both men stared back at Brett, looking both embarrassed and baffled.

  “No,” Douglas said at last. “I accepted the body, so I know it arrived. He was bathed and dressed in the clothing the family gave us. Then he was placed in his casket and we closed the lid. The entire coffin was kept in what we call the cool room overnight. At ten the next morning, he was transported via the cemetery’s hearse to the cemetery and lowered into the ground.”

  “No one saw the body after it was placed in the coffin on his day of the arrival and the lid was closed?” Diego asked.

  “No. There was no reason to open it,” Diaz said. “But we are willing to accept responsibility if we are found negligent in any way.”

  “Except that we weren’t,” Douglas said. “Whatever happened must have happened at the cemetery or on the way to it.”

  “But wasn’t the coffin sealed then?” Brett asked.

  “The coffin was sealed at that point. But burial practices at the family’s cemetery of choice—as in most local cemeteries these days—require the coffin to be placed in a cement container before burial. That way, if a coffin breaks and there’s any leakage of…well, leakage, it’s contained by the cement. But that sarcophagus isn’t added until later, once the family is gone, so for some period of time the casket was available to someone looking to…steal the body. As I said, the cemetery sent a vehicle to pick it up—no motorcade, again at the family’s request—so anything could have happened along the way.” He paused, shaking his head. “However it disappeared, I’m certain that it didn’t happen here,” he said. He pushed the file folder toward Brett. “All our records, including the names and numbers of all our employees, are here. You’ve met with the family already, I understand. They are, naturally, threatening to sue us, so I’m hoping, as you can imagine, that you’ll be able to discover just what happened.”

  “How is your security?” Brett asked.

  “Well, we have the usual alarms, of course. Customarily, Carl Sage, our head mortician, is here until quite late, sometimes as late as midnight. I haven’t embalmed a body in years. Jill Hudson is our best cosmetician, and she works from ten until six. Whoever leaves last at night checks the locks and sets the alarm. Either Richard or I come in sometime between seven and eight the next morning.”

  “How many keys to the facility?” Diego asked.

  “Five,” Diaz answered. “Jonathan and I have keys, as does my wife, Geneva, whom you met. And then Jill Hudson and Carl Sage have keys, as well.”

  “Security tapes?” Brett asked.

  “Only in the viewing rooms,” Diaz said. “And Mr. Nicholson’s coffin was never open in the viewing room,” he added regretfully.

  “We’d like you to arrange to for us to see everyone who works here tomorrow morning at ten,” Brett said, rising.

  Douglas was upset as he also stood. “Agent, let me assure you again, we work to impeccable standards here. Whatever happened to Mr. Nicholson’s body, it happened after his body arrived at the cemetery. You need to investigate and find out what went on.”

  “Mr. Douglas, if you truly want us to find out the truth and, I hope, clear your establishment, you’ll help in any way you can.”

  “Of course, of course,” Diaz said, standing, as well. “We’ll have our people here, as you asked.”

  As he drove out of the parking lot a few minutes later, Brett turned to Diego and asked, “Well?”

  “Funeral homes have been in trouble before, but the cases I’ve heard about had to do with dumping the bodies to use the coffins again. We found Mr. Nicholson’s coffin in perfect shape.”

  “What about Douglas and Diaz?” Brett asked. “What’s your impression of them?”

  “We’ve learned a lot about how to spot a liar, and they both seemed to be telling the truth,” Diego said. “What about you?”

  “I think they’re telling the truth, too,” Brett said. “But…there are all their employees.”

  “Okay, say one or more of the employees are creating zombies,” Diego mused. “How would that connect to Miguel Gomez walking into a warehouse that went up in flames—and somehow getting out alive?”

  “Maybe they’re not creating zombies, just supplying a body when one is needed,” Brett said. “Okay, so here’s my theory so far. It’s not much, but it fits the facts. This isn’t about drug cartels, crime lords or anything else we customarily deal with. Someone out there wants to play God, wants to push every boundary and find out just what he’s capable of doing. The Barillo family may be involved—because someone died in that warehouse, and we know it wasn’t Miguel Gomez. But Gomez worked for Barillo, and Gomez showed up after his supposed death, behaving strangely, the night his wife was killed. So whoever was involved in reanimating Randy Nicholson’s undead body was almost certainly also involved with the reanimation of Miguel Gomez’s body, which means he may also be involved with the Barillo family.

  “Okay, what else do we know? We know that Nicholson made it to the mortuary from the hospital, because Jonathan Douglas just said that he saw the body. So now we’re looking for someone with the connections and the ability to reanimate the supposedly dead. I just wish it was as easy to find him as it was to figure out he exists.”

  “It really does sound as if we’re looking for a mad scientist,” Diego said gravely.

  Brett frowned. He wanted to disagree, but he really couldn’t.

  * * *

  Grady Miller left that afternoon for a meeting with an association of marine-mammal-park owners. Cathy Barkley had left early for a dental appointment, and Nelson Amory and Myles Dawson left at exactly five. A few minutes after that, even the café staff were gone and the gift shop had closed. By six that night the trainers—other than Rick and Adrianna—had cleaned up and taken off for their homes. Lara knew, because she watched them all go from her office window. Rick checked in with her before going out to lock the gate.

  “Meg and I are here for a while, Rick,” Lara told him. “Some of the other agents are headed back here to meet up with us. I’ll come and tell you when we’re going to leave.”

  “Sounds good, but I’ll still lock up for now.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Meg, who was curled in a chair, looked up and thanked Rick, too.

  When he was gone, Lara—who had picked up one of the books they had bought that afternoon—looked over at Meg and said, “Did you know that Papa Doc is estimated to have killed over thirty thousand people?” She set the book aside and rose to stretch. “I’ve read enough history to make my flesh crawl, but I haven’t found anything resembling a recipe for creating a zombie.”

  “I’m not sure there is one,” Meg said. “I think it’s a combination of factors, starting with someone who has a suggestible mind. The toxin is part of it, but mind control through
fear, that’s a part of it, too. And Haiti, especially under Papa Doc, was the perfect cauldron, poor and with a dominant religion that already focuses on the use of herbal substances to put people in a trance, and erase the boundaries between dreams and reality. The thing is, from everything I’ve read, if puffer fish toxin is used, even if the dead come back, before long they die. The interesting thing is, Randy Nicholson supposedly died months ago, but stayed ‘alive’ long enough to commit a murder after the more recently dead Miguel Gomez killed his wife.”

  “Well, Miguel did die,” Lara reminded her. “And I imagine Randy Nicholson will die, too. Unless he’s dead already.”

  “Right,” Meg said. “The thing is, will they ever find his body? Or has the killer improved his methods and made sure that we’ll never find him?”

  Lara shook her head. “I don’t know. Did you find out anything from Matt?”

  Meg grimaced. “Yeah, I found out that so far no one has found out anything.” She forced a smile. “It’s all right to go down to the water, isn’t it?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you’re not supposed to go jumping in to frolic with the dolphins, right?”

  “No, not without their trainers and permission and all that,” Lara said. “But we’re certainly welcome to sit out on the docks, and it’s beautiful this time of evening.”

  “Right when day turns into night,” Meg told her.

  They headed out and wandered down to the docks. Cocoa immediately came to the water’s edge, clicking out a welcome. Lara slipped out of her shoes and hurried out to the dock, where she could sit and stroke the dolphin when she went by.

  Meg stayed back, sitting on one of the benches where visitors sat to watch the shows. As Cocoa went back and forth, entertaining her at first and then just hanging around near her, Lara took in her surroundings. It was still light, since they were on daylight savings time, but there was a different feel to this time of day. The dead heat of the sun had slipped away, especially by the water. The air was cool at last, and that night a soft, sweet breeze was blowing. Looking out, she saw that the water was as calm and smooth as glass. The sky had gone a soft blue, with puffs of clouds that moved along like dancers in a show.