by Brenda Novak
A small woman with gray hair and cherubic cheeks stepped forward, eyes wide. She was either frightened—or star struck. “Mrs. Clay, please, tell us what you saw.”
“Why, the man was ranting—he was terrified and ranting. He kept saying that a nun did it. But the nun wasn’t alive. Poor man, whatever happened in there, it made him stark raving mad!”
Danni stared at Quinn.
“My God,” he murmured.
“Quinn…look at the hands of the thing. Look at the hands! They—is that real blood?” she asked.
She realized then that he was still on the phone. He shook his head—lest the caller hear.
“This is horrible, tragic, Colby. But, believe me, the nun isn’t on her way up the Keys to attack Kathy. She’s here; we’ve just removed her batteries. We’ll see that she’s destroyed.”
He hung up and stared at Danni.
“Blood?” he asked. Wincing, he turned to look at the mannequin, to lift the skeletal fingers.
After a moment, he said, “Smells—tinny. Yeah. I think its real blood.”
Chapter 3
It helped in their lives, wherever they went, that Quinn had maintained a good friendship—and unofficial working arrangement—with Detective Jake Larue, his ex-partner from when he’d been on the force, in New Orleans.
Quinn called Jake and Jake promised to call him right back.
Jake found a friend who knew a cop in Key West, and with a few phone calls going back and forth, he managed to finagle an interview for Quinn with the “survivor.”
The Key West cops were being close-mouthed about the interview with the man because they were claiming that he was stark raving mad. He was being held until they were certain that he wasn’t the one who had committed the murders himself—being the one seen leaving the cemetery.
Detective Ralph Mason from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office had been made lead on the case along with Office Sandy Burnett of the Key West force—Sandy had been on the scene when Kathy Kennedy had been struck by the car the night before.
Danni and Quinn agreed that reporting the zombie-nun to the police at the time would be a mistake; they’d wind up being suspects since they were in custody of the thing. They disassembled the thing completely and put it in different boxes in the shed outside behind Colby’s house.
So while they’d waited for Jake to get back to them, Quinn had spoken with Colby. He’d learned that before Colby and Tracy had taken off for the Bahamas, they’d been working with the same film people Kathy had been working with the day before. And they’d agreed—Danni would head out to Duval Street and find the bar where the film people had been hanging out after hours and see if she could learn anything from them.
Quinn would meet her there when he finished at the police department.
Detective Mason was lean, tall, gray-haired, and somber when he met Quinn at the entrance to the station, introducing him first to Officer Sandy Burnett. Officer Burnett was of medium height and build, a woman who kept her curly dark hair cropped short and wore no make-up. She had a quick, welcoming smile for him before becoming very somber again—as Detective Mason seemed to want things to be.
Detective Mason wasn’t sure why they were letting a Louisiana private investigator work with them, but, apparently, Jake Larue’s friends of friends had managed to get Quinn a good “in.” Mason might not know why he was letting Quinn in, but he’d been told to do so and he seemed to be the kind of man who then shrugged—and decided to make use of any help he had in a situation.
Quinn tried to explain quickly that he’d been called down to work privately by Colby Kennedy—the owner of the zombie-nun doll that had apparently scared Kathy into an accident and had now made an appearance in the cemetery. He didn’t mention that he’d been in Colby’s house and seen the zombie nun—he was surprised that they didn’t ask, but then he realized that neither the somber Detective Mason nor the friendlier Officer Burnett believed in the least that a zombie-nun-doll had killed the young men in the cemetery.
“And you wanted to speak with the witness?” Mason asked.
“Yes, if I may,” Quinn said.
“It won’t get you anywhere—the man is raving. He’s been given a mild sedative but we asked that he not be knocked for a loop or anything. I have officers combing the cemetery for any possible clues and we’ve warned that people stay together and be on the lookout, but…you’re got to realize you’re in the land of Pirate Days, Fantasy Fest, and more. People dress up. And they dress down—nudity isn’t publicly allowed, but, hell, during Fantasy Fest, we’re blind sometimes to the people clad only in body art—too much else to deal with.”
“What he’s trying to explain is that people dress up all the time around here and half the time, the natives walk right by them without blinking,” Burnett explained, offering him a smile.
“Yeah, but our crazy costumed people don’t usually kill,” Mason said. “Anyway, we have the witness—David Gray—in an interrogation room. He’s fine; seems happier there than out on the street.”
“I brought him a sandwich and some coffee. Poor dude lost his third job today—claims the manager was jealous. Anyway, got him thrown out of his apartment, so he has nowhere to go anyway,” Burnett told him.
Quinn thanked them both.
The station was a bevy of activity, officers on phones, running around with papers, their latest memos on tips and whatever else.
Many of them noted Quinn and nodded acknowledgments.
“I’m heading back to the cemetery,” Mason said. “Burnett will help you—and stay with you. I’m assuming you’ll want to see where the bodies were found?”
“Yes,” Quinn said. “Thank you.”
Mason nodded and left them. Burnett turned to Quinn. “This way,” she said.
A minute later he was across a table from David Gray. The man had long brown hair that was tousled and wild—as wild as the look in his hazel eyes. He was wearing a T-shirt that advertised “The Grateful Dead,” and a pair of grass-stained jeans. His fingers twitched as they curled around a Styrofoam cup. He looked at Quinn with hope.
“Maybe now someone will believe me,” he said. “I didn’t do anything. I swear to you, I would never kill anyone. In all honesty—not to speak ill of the dead—but I was sure those jerks meant to kill me. They were hunting me—hunting me down in the cemetery. They—they wanted to move tombstones around, play with the place. Vandalize it, I guess. But, look at me! I’m not exactly Hulk Hogan. I was running. Three of them! And then….”
He paused. A fierce shudder went through his body.
“I tripped. I tripped over a corpse. And then I saw—it!”
“It,” Quinn said.
The man shook his head. “You don’t believe me either. But, if you don’t believe me….”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. I need you to describe what you saw,” Quinn said. “David, I’ve got an open mind. Please, talk to me. Even if you feel you’ve said everything a dozen times already. Please.”
Davy studied Quinn as if he were afraid that he was being humored. His eyes were bloodshot and his tousled appearance suggested he’d been on a binge, but he was certainly sober as he spoke then. “No one believes…they’re going to arrest me for what happened.”
“I don’t see a speck of blood on you,” Quinn told him.
That seemed to make David Gray brighten at last. “No, no…there’s no blood on me. And there would be, wouldn’t there? God, I’m lucky, I tripped over a corpse…one of the guys, but there’s no blood on me. Maybe there is a God!”
Quinn shrugged. “I believe there is. But, whether God helped you avoid the blood or not, I don’t know. Try to tell me what happened, and what you saw, David.”
“Okay. Okay. Call me Davy. I don’t even remember to answer to David.”
“Davy, fine, thanks—and please. I’m listening.”
And so David Gray began his story—words spilling out of him. He’d been down and out—well, he was st
ill down and out—but he wasn’t a killer! He went step by step in detail for Quinn. He described what he saw.
“A walking corpse. A nun…dead. Rotten. As if she’d been dead and buried for years and then dug up and animated and…I hid. I didn’t breathe. And she went by…and I ran and ran and then…then I tripped trying to get out—I tripped over the dead man.
He winced when he was done. “Did she—it—eat anyone’s brains?” Davy asked.
“Not that I know of,” Quinn assured him.
“So what happened? What do you think happened?” Davy asked desperately when he was done.
“I don’t know yet. But, I don’t believe you did it,” Quinn assured him.
Davy offered him a wry and crooked smile. “So, a dead nun did kill them?”
“The investigation is just getting underway,” Quinn said.
Davy suddenly stood, his face going pale. “You—you can’t tell them I’m innocent. Not tonight. Please, not tonight. I have nowhere to go. I…please. I need to stay here.”
“They’ll keep you here,” Quinn promised him. He handed him a business card that had his cell number and Danni’s cell, too. “If there’s any problem, they’ll let you use a phone. Call me.”
Davy looked at him and swallowed hard and then nodded. “Thank you.”
“Sure.”
Quinn left him to discover that Office Sandy Bracken had been, naturally, watching the interview along with the captain and lieutenant and several other officers.
“Insane—hey, the Keys can do it to some people,” one officer said.
“Drunk—the Keys can do that, too,” said another.
But the captain just nodded wordlessly and left; Sandy Bracken told Quinn, “He’s impressed—you made a point. Davy hasn’t a drop of blood on him. Of course, we noted that, but you brought it up and…hey, I guess when you have murders like this, well, we all wanted to believe that we had a viable suspect, you know?”
Quinn nodded.
“You want to head to the cemetery, right?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Come on; Detective Mason is there—with a bunch of forensic people.”
The bodies had been removed when they arrived; markers showed where the three boys had been found. Despite the blaze of police lights set up to illuminate those working, there was something incredibly mournful and atmospheric about the cemetery. He glanced down the street as they arrived; Colby’s house was just a few blocks away and he couldn’t help but wonder if a zombie-nun-doll could have left the house on Elizabeth Street and walked down to the cemetery, killed three young men, and walked back to climb the steps to the attic before he and Danni had arrived that night.
He’d pulled the movie mannequin apart. There had been nothing of life to it. The fabricated thing had been created from polyurethane and fabric and rubber and plastic and paint and whatever else they’d used in the studios.
But, battery operated, it had been able to move.
Move enough to kill? Of its own free will?
Detective Mason had been walking the cemetery. No onlookers were inside—the police were seeing to that—but many people were still gathered on the sidewalks and lawns surrounding the cemetery. He wondered why they were all out so late and realized that it wasn’t so late—it had just been a long day for them. Four in the afternoon when they’d arrived in Miami, five or a little after when they’d arrived at the hospital, and just about eight—with darkness having falling—when they reached Colby’s house.
It was just eleven now. Not late at all for a town where on Duval Street, bartenders liked to keep the music going, the drinks flowing, and the party going.
And Danni out—with the party.
He didn’t like splitting up, but she’d promised she’d stay on Duval near Front Street until he joined there. Plenty of people would be about—they might be horrified by the murders and some might have even packed up to go home. But most who had come to dive or go fishing or boating—or celebrate a bachelor party or the like—weren’t going to be deterred by a few dead frat boys. And those who stayed would gather in numbers in the bars on the main party street of Old Town.
“First boy found here…not far from the monument. We have just about every kind of grave in this cemetery, in ground, mausoleum, tomb, stacked sarcophagi—you name it,” Detective Mason told him glumly. “As you can see…markers there along with the pool of blood by the praying angel, and then….” He walked a distance until they were near a giant monument to sailors who had been killed and said, “And here, the second victim, and….” This time the walk was longer. They came to a wall—but before the wall was a high-stacked tomb with funerary artistic handles—a great place for someone to scale the wall from the inside to the outside.
“Third victim right there, by the little obelisk,” Detective Mason said. “Again…you can see the spill of blood. The M.E., of course, hasn’t had time for a real report, but each boy had his throat slit. Odd, though. He doesn’t believe they were attacked from behind. He believes the killer was looking right at them and killed with a razor-sharp blade, left to right, across the throat. Blood must have spilled out of them in a gush.”
“So, Davy would have been wearing it—certainly,” Quinn murmured.
“Unless he was good at hopping back,” Mason agreed.
“You know anyone that good?” Quinn asked.
“Easier to believe that he could hop back that far than that a zombie nun did it,” the detective told him.
“But, perhaps someone used that kind of a doll.”
“A doll? There’s a new murder weapon. I guess you could bash someone’s head in with a doll,” Mason said.
“Such mannequins do exist,” Quinn told him. “They were animatronics used in a horror film.”
“So, you’re trying to tell me that someone ran around with a life-sized zombie nun doll and killed people with it?”
Quinn realized, that to Mason, the concept was beyond ridiculous. He’d let it go for now.
“Did any of them fight back?” Quinn asked.
“Not a defensive injury on one of them,” Mason said flatly. He turned away to bark at one of his officers, making sure that the force was out, that there were officers stationed all over the cemetery and that they were watching for anyone out of the ordinary on Duval Street.
“Yeah, and what is ordinary on Duval?” one of the officers muttered.
“Try a zombie-nun!” Mason snapped back. “Anything else?” he asked Quinn.
Quinn nodded. “Can I see the medical examiner?” he asked.
Mason smiled at that. “Sure. He’s in his bed, sleeping. He’ll start on our fellows first thing in the morning.”
Quinn nodded. “Okay. Thanks.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something lodged against one of the gravestones.
The cemetery was filled with people in gloves and booties—forensic teams collecting evidence. A hard task here, where tourists came daily.
But they hadn’t been to that area yet.
Mason was done with him. Quinn walked over to the grave he noted and hunched down. It was an old stone—there since the 1901, according to the remembrance on the tomb. Time had ravaged the stone and it was cracked and missing little chunks.
Right at the base, where tufts of grass were growing high against it, was a piece of cloth.
Quinn hunkered down and then reached into his pocket for a pen with which to pick it up.
It was a piece of black cotton about two inches by three inches—and jaggedly torn. He didn’t have to see the zombie-nun in boxes at Colby’s place to know it was the same as the material in the robe that had covered the mannequin.
He pictured the scene that Davy had described to him and looked around. Davy had probably been hunched down behind a nearby tomb. He had stayed there, frozen in fear, watching as the zombie-nun had gone by.
It had gone by on its own; just the nun, walking.
The jagged stone here had caught the skirt of the nun�
��s black outfit—and ripped it.
One of the corpses had been found just feet away….
And he could see the stack-tombs that had allowed Davy to escape.
He hesitated and then called to Mason and handed it to the gloved detective with the pen.
“Just might mean something,” he said. And he showed Mason the place where he’d found the fabric, where Davy had hidden—pointed out where the corpse had been found—and where Davy had escaped.
Mason offered him no thanks but reached into his jacket for an evidence bag.
“You need a ride somewhere?” he asked Quinn. “You’re welcome to look around the city for a zombie-nun. Or a real killer.”
“Right. On the ride, no, thank you. Just point me toward Duval,” Quinn said. “I’ll look for a zombie nun—or a real killer—along the way.”
Mason gave him easy directions.
Quinn exited the cemetery and moved through the onlookers and headed for Duval. Bit by bit, in the quieter area before the main street, he realized that he was more and more alone.
He watched the streets.
And the shadows.
And he wondered if someone else in the city of Key West had scored a zombie-nun animatronic when the auction had taken place. He had almost reached Duval when he heard something behind him. He paused, as if looking at his watch.
There was a shuffling sound—then silence behind him.
He walked again, and stopped abruptly, taking off a shoe, looking back. He was being followed. Beneath the shadows created by the moon and the streetlights—and encompassed by a bougainvillea—was a figure.
Watching him.
No.
Stalking him.