“And those boyish good looks,” I added. But it was like I wasn’t even in the room.
He kept staring at Misty, scrutinizing her as she made her last few stitches. I watched him watch her. Finally he turned his head nearly sideways and asked, “And then I’d die?”
Misty looked up at him. He waited to hear from her, but she didn’t know how to put it. “Hess, you want to answer that?”
I shook my head. “I think you should. Probably doesn’t matter what words you use. Maybe he’s remembering puberty.”
“Hess!”
“Well . . . maybe he’s remembering something.”
“Fine. No, Ashby, it won’t kill you, but it can eat away at your flesh, make you mostly bone. You don’t want that, do you?”
Her motherly tone made me wonder if she had a kid of her own out there. Misty wasn’t much for talking about her past, and I wasn’t much for asking.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t want that.”
She made a few more stitches and said, “There, all done.”
I let go. He twisted his arm, looked at the line of plastic thread, and grinned. “All done, heh-heh. Do I look okay?”
“Of course you do,” Misty said.
I nodded. “Like you’re all set for your junior prom.”
Halloween prom, maybe.
His eyes followed her movements as she stretched her arms and back, then returned the needle and thread to the little kit. I almost enjoyed watching her myself.
“Misty, you’re a real Frankenstein Nightingale. And I mean that in the nicest way.”
I pulled one of the envelopes out of the desk drawer and pulled out a few more bills.
“Wish you’d deposit that,” Misty said, screwing the cap back on the bleach bottle. “I don’t like having it around.”
“You and me both.”
“You should deposit it,” Ashby said.
“That’s right, Ashby,” Misty said. “He should. You tell him.”
She took the ashtray, dumped the contents in the small toilet off my office, and flushed. Ashby was riveted, like he was watching his favorite movie.
“You got a next move, Detective?” she asked.
I shoved the envelopes back in the drawer. “I was afraid you’d ask that. I still don’t know what happened to Turgeon. Oh. Wait a minute. Maybe I do.”
“What do you mean? You think he survived?”
With a stubby thumb and forefinger, I gingerly took out the bloody cell phone. “No.”
“Oh, my God, Hess, is that . . . ?”
I nodded. “Evidence. And my pocket isn’t exactly a sterile environment. We got a plastic bag around here somewhere?”
Exasperated, she said, “Sure, why don’t I just pull one out of my butt?”
“Probably be cleaner than my pocket.”
“Heh-heh. Heh-heh.”
She shook her head at the kid. It was me she was annoyed with, but Ashby took it personally. Surprising us yet again, he looked sheepishly at Misty and said, “Sorry, can’t help it.”
“Oh, that’s okay, honey. I know it’s not your fault,” she said. She stuck a thumb in my direction. “Him, though, I know he can keep his trap shut when he wants. I’ve seen it.”
“Hah,” he said. Just like that, a real laugh. Hah.
At first I thought of Misty only as a good way to keep him steady, but this was getting interesting. I pointed to the door. “Misty, a word in the reception area?”
The “reception area” was a gray piece of work; the only bits of color were what peeked out behind the peeling paint and looked sticky. It doubled as a storage space and Misty’s bedroom. She sat on the edge of her cot and crossed her legs. As I sat next to her, some vague half memory told me I should be looking at them. It was just a twinge, and it left as soon as it came, but it made me realize Misty had been looking healthier lately.
I whispered, “I want you to try to ask him about last night. Whatever happened, he was there. When I talked to him about it, he kept flashing back to his arrest, but you . . .”
“You really think I can focus him?”
“Looks that way so far,” I said. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
She nodded and stood. I hesitated, but then I figured, Why not? “It probably wouldn’t hurt if you sat down close and crossed your legs.”
“Hess!” she said. She slapped me playfully on the shoulder, then paused and frowned. “Really?”
I shrugged. “Worth a shot. If you don’t remind him of his mother, maybe you remind him of some teacher he wanted to screw.”
She rolled her eyes and went back in. I settled back and leaned my head against the wall. The rot smell wasn’t so strong here, and I caught a whiff of the cheap perfume she used, buys it by the quart. Big heart, Misty. Works with the bleach so much, her hands are always dried out. I keep telling her to use those big yellow gloves, but she never listens.
I heard her talking, softly, Ashby doing the nervous laugh, but I couldn’t make out any words. I put my ear against the plaster. Still no go. With no confession forthcoming from the Boyles, Turgeon was my only other link. Even if he was dead, it’d be a lot tougher to hide a liveblood body. His boss, at least, would be missing him. That was something I could follow up on.
After a while, there was more “heh-heh” than not. When she opened the door I could hear Ashby running like a lawn mower—“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”
“Anything?”
“I think so. For some reason, they went back out of town. A black car cut them off and two men attacked them, one with a lot of muscle and a scar on his forehead, the other older, African-American, I think, with short white hair. They forced them to drive off the road, out into the desert. One of them pulled out a set of head clippers. Ashby says they tried to hold Frank down, but he put up enough of a fight to kick open the door and push Ashby out. Ashby thinks they chased him, but he wasn’t sure.”
I blew some dry air through pursed lips, but still couldn’t whistle. “Maybe you should be the detective.”
She sat down and rubbed her temples. “No, thanks. I don’t have the stomach.”
“I could give you mine.”
“Cute.”
I tried to picture the scene. “The goons were probably hired guns. If they were local, the descriptions might ring a bell with Jonesey. Anything about Turgeon?”
She shook her head. “Only that he and Frank had been talking about a man named Kendrick.”
“Frank Boyle’s husband. It might mean something, or maybe Turgeon was just being nosy again.”
“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”
Misty shrugged. “Anyway, that’s when he started making that sound over and over. Maybe if I had nicer legs.”
“Your legs are fine. You could stand to eat more. But the name shouldn’t upset the kid. Kendrick wasn’t Ashby’s dad.”
“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.” It was coming out nonstop now, like a machine gun.
“Maybe it upset Frank and that upset Ashby?”
“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”
It made sense, but it felt like it should make more sense, like I’d understand if I could only focus. The laugh was getting to me, though.
“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”
I rapped my forehead. “Okay. It doesn’t look good for Turgeon, but if Ashby survived, maybe he did, too. Misty, can you call around to the hospitals, see if he checked in?”
“Sure. What about you?”
“I’ll go check out the other possibility.”
“Meaning?”
“Do I have to spell it out? No one gives a shit about Frank Boyle, but if a liveblood turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, they take the body to the police coroner.”
11
Fort Hammer’s police station was an old building in a city full of them. It’d been renovated a few times, when the economy was good. Built in the 1920s, it had an art deco look, the craze that swept the nation when archaeologists found Tut’s tomb. Everything looked like ancient Egypt f
or a while—worshipers of the dead. In the 1980s they added a new wing devoted to holding cells, designed to match.
To me, it was different things: office, library, dungeon. When my photographic memory went, it took a lot of the picture albums with it. I could no longer recognize the exact spot on the wall where I’d rammed a perp’s head into the fine stonework, or exactly where I’d leaned back for a smoke while the rest of the department was laughing over a job well-done or hooting over some woman’s rack. I got tingles, though, feelings like I should remember.
I did know where the rear entrance was, and I was smart enough to head there fast. If any of my former coworkers saw me, I didn’t doubt I’d be buried so deep I could crawl down into China. Funny. Boyle wouldn’t even get that burial. Then again, Booth wouldn’t bother to D-cap me first.
The morgue was in the basement, open until three—I didn’t even have to worry about running into the coroner, Anthony Philbrick. A round guy with a vague goatee, he had a pretty good sense of humor. He was one of the few I used to clown around with. Not someone I wanted to see, and not because I didn’t like him. While I was in jail, I heard that ever since he saw Lenore’s body, he hadn’t cracked a grin.
The after-hours guy was a chak. I could picture him easily, but I was damned if I could remember his name. Half his abdomen was gone, but that was always covered by his clothes, so you wouldn’t notice unless he bent in a weird way. His face was intact except for a missing chunk of his chin. Nothing unusual. Maybe I remembered because he didn’t wear the typical chak deadpan. There was a slight look of shock haunting his face, as if all his worldly concerns had been blown away all at once, and part of him was still going, “Oh.”
Not surprising. He got the job because he was a vet. He did four tours before an IED caught him, got brought back in the early days, when people thought ripping was a good idea. His folks did it. Unlike a lot of others who tried it and ran, they stuck by him. Even Booth didn’t dare stop that hire. And I couldn’t remember his name.
I knelt by the basement window. There he was, running a hose on the tiled floor, steering some gunk or other toward one of the drains. I’d been hoping to play on his sympathy as a fellow chak, but that wouldn’t go over big if I didn’t even know what to call him. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Maybe it would come to me.
I rapped on the window, half expecting him not to remember me, half hoping he wouldn’t. But when he saw me he waved. Not knowing if that was a good thing or a bad thing, I motioned with my hands for him to open the door.
A few seconds later, his ghostly face greeted me.
“Mann,” he said. Given his natural look, I didn’t know whether he was surprised to see me or not.
“Hey,” I answered.
He studied my face, avoided eye contact. “You been on leave, Detective? Haven’t seen you around here in a while.”
Wow. Not only did he not realize I was dead, but either he didn’t remember or no one told him I’d been arrested for killing my wife. I wasn’t about to tell him.
“Something like that,” I said. “Listen . . . can you help me out? Any bodies come in last night or today? Big guy named Turgeon?”
“You mean liveblood?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head. “Got a John Doe, but that’s it.”
“Can I see him?”
He shrugged and pointed. There were three silver tables along one of the tiled walls. One had a sheet over it. The tiles were the ugliest damn yellow I’d ever seen in my life. Reflected the fluorescents and made everything look sickly.
I stepped up and pulled the sheet back. It definitely wasn’t Turgeon.
“I think you meant Jane Doe.”
“Right,” he said. “Jane. I should change the tag.”
He spun, put the mop down, and started looking for a marker. I took another look at the body. “Looks like a car accident, if anyone wants to know. Hit and run.”
“Uh-huh.”
I covered Jane up with the sheet and looked around. “That’s it?”
“Yep. Quiet week.”
The rest of the tables were empty. The log only had one entry. Then I noticed a couple of plastic bins under the dissecting table.
“What’re those?”
“Chakz,” he said absently. “From the desert.”
“From the . . .” I pulled one out. There was a label on top: Wilson.
“Colin Wilson, like on the television?” I felt a wave of déjà vu as I said the name, like I’d been here before and didn’t like it the first time.
“I guess.”
“The other one. Frank Boyle?”
“Maybe. Sounds familiar.”
I pulled the second bin out just to make sure. Yeah, it was Frank. A little shudder ran through me, my body warning me to watch it with the emotional reactions.
“Mind if I take a look?”
He stopped looking for the marker to eyeball me. “Why? What’s a liveblood care?”
“I . . . I’m curious.”
“Go ahead.”
I opened the lid. Frank Boyle’s arms were stacked on top, the legs below that, the torso on the bottom. I checked his pockets, but they were already emptied.
Out of a sick curiosity, I looked at Colin Wilson, too. Not what I expected, though, really, how could I expect anything? His clothes weren’t as neat. He had a tattoo on his right arm, which was beefier than I’d pictured it being.
I looked from one to the other. Pieces of a man I barely knew, pieces of another I didn’t know at all, but both of them haunted me.
I hadn’t noticed, but the vet had walked up beside me.
“Notice anything?” he said.
I snapped my head around. “No. Why? Do you?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I told Mr. Philbrick about it, but it’s just a couple of chakz, right?”
“What did you notice?”
“You’re the detective; can’t you see?”
I shook my head. “Sorry.”
Kind of like a mechanic showing me something obviously wrong with my car, he knelt beside me and rummaged through the parts until he had both torsos standing in their bins side by side. He nodded at the necks.
“There.”
I stared. I’d figured they’d used a hacksaw or something, but the cuts were both razor clean. “So they used choppers.”
“Yeah, but what else?”
I looked again and shrugged. “You going to tell me?”
“Spring assist makes it too easy. Street gangs started using them on one another, so choppers were made illegal, right?”
“Right, but so’re a lot of guns.”
“Guns are different. I’ll show you.” He stood up, opened a tall closet, and withdrew a set of choppers. Unhinging the blades, he stepped toward me.
When he got a little too close, an image of Colin Wilson’s head flashed in front of me, and I fell backward to get out of the way.
“Easy!” I said.
“Sorry,” he answered. He knelt by me and pointed to the edge of the blade. “I just wanted to show you this. See? They make all the blades a little different, like a signature, so they can track them if they’re ever used on livebloods.”
His gray finger graced a part of the blade. At first I thought it was jagged, but then I realized it was a pattern. “I get the idea.”
He put the blade away, then pointed at the necks again. “Those chakz were D-capped by the same set of choppers.”
What the hell?
I stared at the marks on the necks long enough to realize he knew what he was talking about. The cuts were smooth except for some very small notches grouped right next to one another, two half-circles, a triangle, a square, and another half-circle. Same on each.
Whoever killed Frank Boyle also killed Colin Wilson, or at least had access to the same clippers. What did that mean? Maybe nothing. Ashby described two goons. If they were for rent, like rat catchers bumping off pesky chakz so you don’t have to, they wouldn’t think twi
ce about leaving the same calling card. Someone else might have hired them to get rid of Colin Wilson, maybe because he was hanging out on their lawn. The Boyles hired them of get rid of their inheritance problems. The rat catchers might not even have known how much money was involved.
That fit, except for one detail: the heads. Both were missing. Why? That electric syrup hit me again, flashes of disembodied heads chatting in the desert while the coyotes gnawed at them. Hard enough to keep my obsessions and the world separate; now it felt like they were crashing into each other. I groaned and twitched my own head, trying to clear it.
The vet looked at me but didn’t say anything.
Proof they’d done the job? Here’s the head; where’s my cash? Maybe in the Middle Ages. A photo or fingerprints could do that just as easily, without the gore or the bother. I couldn’t see Cara Boyle going for a deal that involved eyeballing her brother’s body parts unless she really hated him for some reason—and nothing Frank said about them suggested that kind of rift. If anything, he seemed confused and a little hurt that they’d been left out of the will. It didn’t make any sense, but in a way that made you wonder if making sense was worth it.
“Funny, huh?” the vet said; then he started packing the pieces back into the plastic bins.
“Yeah,” I said. I pulled out a twenty and stuffed it in his pocket. “For your trouble.”
He pulled it out and handed it back. “This is my job, Detective. I’m supposed to help you guys. Glad to do it when I can. Not like I’m ever going to be a cop myself, right?”
“Yeah, but neither am . . .” I hesitated. “Look, buddy, I’m sorry, but for the life of me I can’t remember your name.”
“Really?” He scrunched his face and looked around. “Tommy. I think it’s Tommy.”
12
At this point, it was an equation. Two and two equals four. If Boyle’s attacker and Wilson’s attacker were the same, who were they, and why? For the first time I was thinking maybe Boyle’s siblings weren’t responsible. If that was the case, the victims had to have something in common, other than being headless. I had to find out what it was. Given that I didn’t know squat about Wilson, and Cara wasn’t about to give me an interview, I figured I’d try the Internet.
Dead Mann Walking Page 10