The back parking lot was empty except for my piece of crap little Honda parked on the far side of the small lot. I glanced at my watch. Nine p.m. Marcus’s warning remained foremost in my mind. I made sure to do a careful scan of my surroundings before I parked the van as close to the building as I could. My nerves hovered on a knife’s edge as I pulled the stretcher out and swiped my ID card at the door, and I didn’t relax until I got myself and both bodies safely inside with the door closed behind me.
The scent of the morgue surrounded me like an old friend. An old, dead friend who’d been steeped in formalin and cleaning products. I wasted no time getting the bodies into the cooler and properly logged in, as well as the property from the security guard recorded and deposited into the small safe. Then I breathed a sigh of relief, returned to the outer office, and plopped myself down at the computer. Yeah, some people might think it was weird that I enjoyed the peace and quiet of the morgue, but I was probably the last person to be freaked out at the thought of sharing a room with dead people. Besides, I didn’t have a computer at home, and this was a helluva lot easier than trying to use a computer at the library. Most of theirs were ancient and slow, plus I hated having to wait my turn and then having my time limited.
I could use the morgue computer 24/7, and all I had to do was put up with the way the place smelled.
I diddled around for a little while looking at funny pictures and reading some local news online, then got down to the business at hand: figuring out what I had to do to take, and pass, the GED. After about half an hour I had the information I needed as far as how to schedule a test, but I also had a fairly solid idea of what sort of stuff was on it—and how much of it I didn’t know. But unless I want to spend the rest of my life on probation, I don’t have much choice, do I?
With reckless disregard of Coroner’s Office resources, I printed off stacks of practice tests and study guides, gathered it all up and then headed for the door. I knew how I’d be spending the rest of my free time.
I yanked the door open, then let out a choked cry as a masked someone dressed all in black shoved me hard in the chest. I staggered and landed in a sprawl on my back as papers went everywhere. I began to scrabble back to my feet, then froze at the sight of the gun pointed at me.
“Get up,” the man holding the gun ordered.
At first I thought that my attacker was Ed. It was the fact that he didn’t instantly shoot me that gave me the first clue that it wasn’t. I was pretty sure Ed wouldn’t be giving me any more chances to get the drop on him. But then the oddness of seeing someone in a ski mask in south Louisiana threw me so badly that I damn near forgot there was a gun pointed at me and instead I mentally flailed for some logical reason he could be wearing a ski mask. Okay, so it was a little chilly, but a ski mask was a bit of overkill, wasn’t it? Or maybe it was one of those baklava thingies. No, not baklava—that’s some sort of Greek pastry. Shit. Focus, Angel!
My pulse thudded as I scrambled to my feet. About three feet separated us. Could I take him? I was somewhat well fed on brains, but not tanked all the way up and certainly not overloaded to the point where I had super zombie speed. He looked pretty well built—taller than me by a good bit and broad-shouldered. On the other hand I knew what it was like to get shot. While I was trying to stop Ed from killing Marcus and chopping off his head, Ed had shot me twice in the chest—an experience I really had no desire to repeat, ’cause, yeah, it hurt.
But if this wasn’t Ed, who was it and what the fuck was going on?
“The body,” he said, with a jerk of the gun toward the hallway. “Open the cooler and give it to me. Or I kill you,” he added, tone so even that I had zero doubt that he would.
A thousand scenarios flashed through my head of me fighting him off, but I discarded them as quickly as they crowded into my skull. I wasn’t fast enough right now to get to him before he could shoot me, or strong enough to fight him off even if I could. And while I didn’t really fear getting shot—or rather, I didn’t fear dying from being shot—it would slow me down enough that I might not be able to stop him from taking the body he was after, in which case I’d have been shot for nothing. Besides, I knew there were security cameras covering the parking lot and the door to the morgue. I didn’t have to get shot. The evidence of this guy forcing his way in would be on that tape. Or hard drive. Or whatever it was that security cameras used now. And if I did get shot, I’d have to go out to the van to get one of my brain slushies out of my cooler. That would be recorded. Plus, I’d have to clean up the blood before anyone saw it to avoid having to explain how I could be shot and yet not have any gunshot wounds. Oh, and I didn’t have a change of clothes…
Much easier to simply avoid the whole “getting shot” thing.
Taking a deep breath, I turned and walked down the hallway to the cooler, my shoulder blades prickling the entire way. After punching in my code on the touchpad, I pulled the door open and stepped back.
He didn’t take the bait. “Bring the body out,” he said in a low pleasant voice, as if he was offering to carry my groceries for me.
I couldn’t help but scowl. If he was going to steal my body, why did I have to do all the work?
“Which body?” I asked. “I picked up two tonight.”
“Kearny.”
Stepping into the cooler, I was briefly tempted to give him the wrong body, but then figured that he’d surely check. This guy was cool as ice and wouldn’t be fooled that easily. Besides, the body of the guy we scraped up out at the factory was already pretty damn smelly, and he’d be able to tell even without opening the bag.
I gave the appropriate body bag a yank and hauled it out onto one of the gurneys, then pushed it out and into the hallway. “What now? Do you want me to bring it to your car for you?” I couldn’t quite keep the obnoxious out of my voice.
He surprised me by chuckling. “Now that would be rude of me,” he said. “To the door will be sufficient.”
Scowling, I went ahead and pushed the gurney and its cargo to the door.
“That’s good enough,” he said. “Now if you’d please turn around and face the wall.”
My pulse jumped as I met his eyes. There was nothing there—no emotion or stress. If he wanted me to face the wall so that he could shoot me in the back of the head, then there was a good chance I could actually die from that, especially since there was no one around to give me enough brains to help me survive that sort of thing. No, my body would be found by Nick or whoever was coming on in the morning, and they’d assume I was dead-for-real. I’d probably be autopsied and all that shit. And, godalmighty, would I be aware of that? Or would I wake up, starving and willing to attack anyone nearby, such as Nick or, worse, Dr. Leblanc?
All of this flashed through my mind in less than a second. I shook my head, a stiff little motion. “I’d rather not,” I managed.
He let out a dry chuckle. “I’m not going to kill you. But I do need to slow you down.” With his free hand he pulled a pair of zip ties out of a back pocket.
Nope, still didn’t trust him. I had to at least try to take him out—
“Don’t try it,” he said, voice low and thick with warning as he lifted the gun and sighted it on my forehead. “Shooting you would be messy and more complicated than this needs to be. But if you force my hand, I’ll do what I have to do.”
Gulping, I nodded, then turned around. He’s not letting me see his face, I told myself. He wouldn’t do that if he’d planned on killing me. Still, I breathed in shallow pants as he pulled my arms behind me and cinched my wrists together with the zip ties.
“Down on the floor,” he ordered. I numbly complied, and a few seconds later he’d secured my ankles the same way.
With that taken care of, he ceased to pay any attention to me. With a fluid motion he picked up the body bag and slung it over his shoulder, then was out the door. I craned my head around and caught sight of a dark-colored car, but the door swung closed before I could make out any details.
Taking a deep breath I yanked hard at the zip ties holding my wrists, hissing at the flare of pain that lanced down my arms as the plastic snapped. I might not have been juiced up enough on brains for super speed, but I had no problem burning some up to get out of the zip ties. The ankle ties were no trouble either, though I saw that the plastic had cut my wrists. A thin trickle of blood made its sluggish way down my hand. For an instant I thought about hurrying out to the van to slug down enough brains to heal that crap up, then abruptly thought better of it.
No, if I had no marks, then no one would believe that I’d been tied up.
With bloody wrists and a pissy attitude, I grabbed the phone on the desk and dialed 911.
Chapter 5
“What do you mean, there’s no surveillance video?” I demanded.
The chief investigator, Allen Prejean, gave me a sour look. “We’ve been having technical problems with the system,” he said in a tone that made it sound as if it was my fault. It didn’t take a lot of smarts to figure out that he didn’t much like me. Allen was in his mid-thirties with a significant beer belly, a smoker who sneered at exercise and defiantly proclaimed his love of fried foods. Yeah, sure, I’d been well on my way to killing myself with painkillers and alcohol, but he wasn’t much better off, in my opinion.
I scowled and sat back in the seat, crossing my arms defiantly over my chest. My wrists had been bandaged but they didn’t hurt. They were mostly just numb—one nice benefit of being a zombie. On the other hand, the hunger was once again poking at me.
We were in the conference room of the coroner’s office, along with two deputies, Detectives Ben Roth and Mike Abadie, Captain Pierson, who was the head of the Sheriff’s Office Investigations Division, my partner, Derrel, and the Coroner himself, Dr. Duplessis.
Apparently the theft of a corpse by a masked gunman in an unmarked car was a big deal. Or maybe it was the fact that no one seemed to believe me.
Dr. Duplessis tugged at his bow tie as a frown touched the edges of his mouth. The bow tie was his “signature look” which, I was told, he always adopted when it came time to start campaigning. I thought it made him look sort of goofy, but for all I knew this was part of some grand strategy to make him seem approachable and interesting. Then again, now that I thought about it, that made sense. Without the bow tie, the coroner looked like pretty much every other politician—clean cut, charming smile, dark hair with a touch of grey at the temples. In other words, boring.
He gently cleared his throat. “Angel, I’m sure that whatever happened was very traumatizing. The fact that there’s no corroborating video is certainly troubling, but that simply makes it even more vital that you be as honest with us as possible about the incident. Are you absolutely certain you didn’t stop anywhere on the way back to the morgue? Perhaps you left the door unlocked?” His mouth curved into a serious frown. “If you lost the body somewhere along the way, we need to know now so that we can take the appropriate steps to recover it.”
“I am being honest!” I said, fighting back the horrid lump in my throat. Taking a deep breath, I set my hands on the table. “Look, I swear, I made it back here with both bodies safe and sound. I brought them in and put them both in the cooler. I did some work on the computer, and when I tried to leave, a guy with a gun and wearing a ski mask forced his way in and told me to give him the body or he’d shoot me. I asked him which one. He asked for the security guard by name—Kearny—and I got that body bag out for him. He tied me up with zip ties and then left with the body bag in a dark-colored car. I shimmied to the desk and managed to cut through them, then called nine one one.” I gave the coroner a pleading look. “Why can’t you just believe me?”
His lips pressed together, and I didn’t need him to answer me. I knew why he couldn’t trust me. I was a felon and former drug addict. High school dropout. My word wasn’t exactly dipped in gold. And even I could see how a story about a very polite masked gunman—and, really, what the hell was up with that?—could be somewhat beyond belief.
I swallowed hard, then fixed Allen with a hard look. “How long has the surveillance been messed up?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “A couple of days, to judge by the recorded data.”
“And how many people know about this?”
He flicked a glance around the room. “Probably no one. I do only because we tried to access the recording from tonight and couldn’t.”
A tiny bit of tension left my body. “Then why the hell would I make up a story like this if I knew that the surveillance video would prove me wrong?”
The sour expression on Allen’s face deepened, but I could see I’d scored a point. And to judge by the nods of others in the room, I wasn’t the only one. The mood in the room seemed to shift, to my intense relief.
Ben cleared his throat. “Angel’s not stupid. And right now we have no other information. I say we go on her statement unless and until we get any reason to think otherwise.”
I shot him a look loaded with gratitude. A hint of a reassuring smile twitched the corner of his mouth, just for an instant.
Dr. Duplessis sighed and sat in the chair at the head of the table. “This whole situation is distressing. After consideration, I’m inclined to believe that Angel was the victim of a prank—some sort of frat boy hijinks—since I find it hard to believe that there could be any nefarious purpose to stealing the body of an elderly security guard.” He shook his head while I gritted my teeth. Frat boy hijinks? There wasn’t a university within fifty miles of Tucker Point.
“Right now, I’m grateful that no one was hurt,” he continued, giving me what was probably meant to be a warm and caring smile. And perhaps it really was, but I was too wound up at the moment to believe it.
Captain Pierson gave me a measured look. “How about if Detective Roth and I speak to Miss Crawford on our own for a few moments.” He glanced to the coroner. “To get a coherent statement without so many onlookers, you understand.”
Dr. Duplessis seemed only too pleased to be given an excuse to leave. “Yes, of course. Let’s all clear out and let the police do their job.”
Within a minute the room had emptied—with Derrel giving my shoulder a comforting squeeze and a worried look on the way out—leaving only the three of us. I trusted Ben, but the captain scared the crap out of me, and not only because I had no doubt that he knew my criminal history. He had ice-blue eyes that seemed to take in everything, and I had a feeling he wasn’t the type who could be misled easily, if at all.
He took a seat across from me and laced his fingers together on the table. “Miss Crawford, I want you to tell your story again, please. With your permission, I’d like to record your statement.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Ben pulled out a small digital recorder and set it on the table. “S-E-P-S-O case number twelve dash four nine six three one,” Ben rattled the words out. “Detective Ben Roth and Captain Jeffrey Pierson interviewing Angel Crawford.” He gave me another slight smile, then sat back.
“Miss Crawford,” Pierson said, “please tell us in your own words what happened tonight.”
I did. Again. Detailed the whole goddamn thing, the whole three minutes of it—or however long it lasted. And then Pierson asked me to go through it again, but this time he kept stopping me and asking me to clarify points, or he’d repeat parts back to me to make sure he had it right. Sometimes I had to correct him. By the fourth or fifth time I went through it, I was absolutely certain that I’d changed my story or was starting to imagine parts of it. And I was hungry. Oh fucking lord, was I ever hungry. Why the hell hadn’t I chugged some brains before calling 911? Why on earth had it mattered that I not heal up the cuts? It sure hadn’t helped them believe my story. I kept my hands clasped in my lap since I was terrified that my fingernails would start falling off, just from the stress.
“Look,” I finally said, “I think it’s important that this whole thing seemed…professional.”
Pierson lifted an eyebrow at me. “Professio
nal bodysnatchers?”
I fought back the urge to scowl at him. “No. I mean, the guy wasn’t nervous at all. He was calm and cool, and the whole thing seemed almost rehearsed. I mean, with how smoothly he pulled it off.” I shrugged. “He was waiting for me, and if the fucking cameras had been working you could have seen that. I came straight from the death scene, so somehow he knew I was heading here with the body. He didn’t have long to prepare, and it was fucking flawless.”
Ben tapped his chin. “Tell us again what he said.”
God. This would be like the fourth or fifth time. “He said, ‘The body. Open the cooler and give it to me or I’ll kill you.’ But he said it super calm-like. I mean, like he was asking about the weather.”
“Did he have any sort of accent?” Pierson asked.
I thought for a second. “No. No accent at all.”
Ben let out a soft snort. “Well, that in itself tells us a lot in these parts.”
“Right,” I said, straightening. “He didn’t sound like he was from around here.”
Ben jotted some notes onto the pad in front of him. “You said he wore a mask, but is there anything else you can tell us about him? How tall was he? Eye color? Build?”
I rubbed at my eyes. “Um, his eyes were dark. I mean, not blue. I guess brown or dark hazel? And he was taller than me, but that doesn’t take a whole lot. Well built. I mean, like definitely in shape. Not pudgy.”
Ben scraped his chair back and stood and motioned to me to do the same. I complied, and he stuck his finger out in a fake gun. “About my height? Or taller?”
“Taller, definitely.”
Ben looked over to the Captain, who stood without asking. He was at least a head taller than Ben. “His height?”
Angel Crawford #2: Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues Page 4