Dead Mann Walking

by Stefan Petrucha

  The library was a hike from police HQ, their Wi-Fi iffy to begin with. My best bet was the River Styx, a coffee/cybershop. It was on the way home, about six blocks west, right on the border of the Bones, where the Bohemian LBs were trying to gentrify. Cute name, Styx, the river separating the living and the dead. Here they pretty much meant it. Chakz were expected to stay on our side of the street, out of the Styx.

  By the time I got there, it wasn’t getting any cooler, but night was showing up just the same. The dress code here was more my style than the center of town. In the dark, it’d be easier for me to pass, as long as I didn’t stay long enough for someone to strike up a conversation or get a good whiff of me. Not that I had any rot, but we do smell dead.

  I got there just in time to see a familiar chak being shoved out the dark brown door. It was Jonesey, espresso in hand, heat sleeve and travel lid in place. They didn’t throw him out without serving him, which meant Jorelle was on duty as barista. Not Superman’s dad—Jorelle was an acne-faced Frenchman working his way through college. He didn’t mind where his tips came from as long as the little jar got filled.

  There was a bit of a bounce to Jonesey’s shamble, so I figured he hadn’t heard about Boyle yet. Then I noticed his other hand was full of flyers. Was he advertising for a new strip joint? I thought about asking, but the living were around. If I was going to get a seat with a computer, I had to act like I didn’t know him.

  He knew the score. As we passed, he whispered, “Keep to the back, near the AC vents.”

  I slipped among the grain-stained browns that made up the furniture, posts, and walls, got myself a cup of joe from Jorelle, and made sure to tip too much. I almost forgot to take the coffee. I don’t drink it. It was a decent crowd, easy to hide in, so I made my way toward the dark corner where they kept the older rigs. Might as well have been state-of-the-art to me.

  Right before I sat, I noticed that one of those flyers Jonesey was carrying had been pasted up on the wall, next to all the ads for local bands, massages, and house sitters. It stood out because of the sloppy handwriting. I stopped in my tracks as I read it.

  Join the Dead Man Walk!

  Rise and keep rising! Peaceful Chak Rally in

  Town Square

  Listen to the dead; we are your brothers, your sisters, your mothers, your fathers!

  A rally. So the crazy bastard was running with it. I should find him, talk some sense into him. I looked toward the door, but he was gone. By the time I turned back, someone had already torn down the poster. Maybe that problem, at least, would take care of itself, and I had other worries.

  The screen on the ancient computer flickered like the lights in a horror-film hallway. I was never much for bells and whistles, but a mouse would have been nice. A touch pad is tough if you don’t have proper hand-eye coordination. But the connection was clean. I logged in with my debit card fast as you please, and winced at the balance. I hadn’t deposited any of Turgeon’s cash yet, and only had enough in my account to pay for fifteen minutes.

  I was about to do a search on Wilson when I got a twinge. Not the muscle kind, but the what-am-I-missing kind. Aside from the usual tingles and shakes, every now and then I get this particularly annoying sensation, like an itchy spot in the flow of consciousness that I can’t scratch because my hands are outside my skull.

  I was forgetting something. I knew I was forgetting something, something I should check on besides Wilson and Boyle. It was something else. Someone from Bedtown, the hakker attack? No. I kept getting an image of a baby covered in scrambled eggs. Great.

  I checked the news pages, hoping to jog my memory. Everyone had an article on the poor dead hakkers. An editorial suggested it should be legalized as a sport, so safety regulations could be standardized.

  Nothing rang a bell, so I tried Frank Boyle. Other than today’s reports on the body, there wasn’t much about his afterlife. Never is. Even the Web, for all its porn and piano-playing cats, doesn’t care much about chakz. It wasn’t until I dug deeper, moved back a few years to when he was among the living, that I got some decent hits.

  Frank Fulton-Boyle had been an architect, and pretty involved in the community. No shocker, given what I saw at Bedland. Even zombies are creatures of habit. The tall guy I’d seen next to him in the photo was Kendrick Boyle-Fulton. I guess they did the name-swap thing, like John Lennon Ono and Yoko Ono Lennon. I didn’t find anything about the marital disputes Boyle mentioned, but I’d need a police database for that. Not likely, given my loving relationship with Booth.

  Kendrick’s murder made a big splash, though. There was even some national coverage. Domestic abuse among gay couples was a curiosity at the time, so the mass media, like a god with ADD, trained its eye on it until the next bleeding lead came along.

  I also found a memorial Facebook page. Judging from the date, it was set up shortly after Boyle’s conviction. Funny thing: It was dedicated to Kendrick and Frank. An awful lot of their close friends would not accept that Frank could beat anyone to death.

  One of the FB albums had a shot of their adopted son, Duncan, at the funeral, in black suit and tie. Gray faced with mourning, he looked even more like Ashby. A comment from a neighbor said he was to return to Russia, to live with an aunt in Kaliningrad. I thought about shooting him an e-mail, but I could always do that later, if I had a good reason. Until then, why ruin his day?

  Couldn’t find a thing about Boyle’s postmortem exoneration, but that wasn’t unusual. No surprise his loving pals didn’t get back in touch, either. Chakz don’t fit back into their former neighborhoods.

  I don’t know what I was looking for, but reading about the murder made me antsy. Different sexual preference, different job, and Lenore and I hadn’t had any children, but the beating death, the wrongful conviction cut close to home. Electric-syrup time. Nice and sticky.

  I slapped my brain around until it worked its way back to Colin Wilson. A few nanoseconds after I typed his name, I had what we called back in homicide a son-of-a-bitch moment. The first record that popped up was an article from the Fort Hammer Ledger, December 13, 2008, detailing Colin Wilson’s conviction for the “bludgeoning death” of his wife, Cathy.

  Golf club. History of domestic violence.

  Like I said, son of a bitch.

  I could hear Misty saying that the fact that I’d gotten all freaked out about Wilson in the first place could be part of the universe’s plan. Me, I knew my brain just gets stuck on things. I still wasn’t convinced the fact that the same choppers were used meant anything more than a freelance cleanup service. I had to back up a little before I laid one coincidence on top of another.

  Could there be more?

  Despite the ferals and the hakkers, there are lots of chakz. No one’s counted, probably out of embarrassment, but a big chunk are from the early days, when everyone and his uncle was giddily yanking some favorite relative back from beyond the veil, like Tommy at the morgue. So we weren’t all criminals.

  Even so, take any two chakz and the odds aren’t crazy that they were both exonerated for some kind of murder, since murder is usually what gets you executed in the first place. Figuring that eighty percent of victims know their killer, pick any two murder convictions at random, and how hard would it be to draw two who’d offed their significant others?

  It’s not fifty-fifty, more like getting a full house—unlikely, but not impossible.

  I typed in a search string for “murder AND beating AND spouse AND executed” and got 4.8 million hits. Figured.

  But that’s convictions. I had a combo here—two people exonerated for killing their spouses. Adding “exonerated” brought it down to under a million. I tried adding “brought back from dead” and “ripped” and “RAR” but got zilch. Again, for that kind of info, I’d need a police database.

  Still, it had to be rare. Hiring an attorney, getting a retrial, finding someone to pay for additional DNA testing cost time and money. If the person closest to you in the world is dead, and everyo
ne else is convinced you did it, who exactly is going to spend that time and money?

  Oh, it happens. I don’t know how it worked for Wilson, but Boyle said his father paid for retesting the DNA. For me it was dumb luck, some police brutality, and a DA just starting out. I hear he was fired right after they brought me back.

  Wait a minute. There weren’t two; there were three, and only one of us still had his head bone connected to his neck bone: me. What were the odds of that? Could it mean I was next on the hit parade?

  Son of a bitch.

  I sat there cursing like a bagman until the clock wound down and the computer disconnected. Just as well—people were starting to stare. I shoved my hat on and made for the door, rubbing my neck and wincing the whole way.

  13

  I was still rubbing my neck when I got back to the office, trying my damnedest to think things through without dwelling on the obvious.

  “Cathy, Kendrick, Lenore. Why spouse killers? Why the head?”

  Ashby kept quiet the whole time I was giving Misty the short version, but the second I mentioned Kendrick, he started in with that laugh and wouldn’t stop.

  “Heh-heh-heh.”

  I glared at him a second, then went back to pacing. “What do they do with them? Do they need them for something?”

  “Heh-heh-heh.”

  Great. I was making him nervous; he was making me nervous. What a wacky pair.

  “Quiet, Ashby! Are they making fucking lamps out of them?”

  Misty stood between us. Apparently I looked pretty angry. “Hess, maybe you shouldn’t talk about this in front of . . .”

  “Heh-heh-heh-heh.”

  I was in no shape to listen to reason. I wasn’t even interested in trying. “I know, I know! But I have to. I’ve got to figure this out. Do they collect them? Is it a cult?”

  “Heh-heh-heh.”

  “Kid, could you keep it down? Please? It’s my neck we’re talking about.”

  “Can’t help it, can’t help it. Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

  “Could you please just shut the fuck . . .”

  Before I realized it, I’d raised my fist, ready to punch the wall. Misty grabbed my hand and repeated, “He can’t help it.”

  I shrugged off her hand. “Shut up,” I said. But I said it slowly, deliberately. “Shut up. Shut up.”

  “Calm down!”

  “I am calm!” I shouted. I shivered and gave her a smile. “Sorry, Mist. I’m not talking to you or the kid. I’m talking shut up in general. As in, what if they’re taking the heads as a way to shut them up?”

  “Heads can’t talk by themselves, Hess. They . . . die.”

  “We don’t know that. ChemBet and the government have too many reasons to lie about it. D-capping sounds quick and humane. What if it just makes the ferals less dangerous for shipping? The masses wouldn’t want to hear that crushing or roasting was the only way to really end it.”

  Misty gave me a look, walked Ashby into the other room, and shut the door, muffling his voice. Now it almost sounded like a dance beat from a distant party. She came back in and shook her head. “Even if the . . . heads . . . could somehow talk, what would the killers be shutting them up about?”

  “You got me there. It’s got to be simple, whatever it is. I know it. Why can’t I get my stupid fucking head to work?” I stormed around, probably looking like I was going to punch something again.

  “Hess, Ashby’s gone. You want me to go in the other room, too? Please take a breath.”

  I stopped in my tracks and practically smiled. “You want to rephrase that?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. Calm down.”

  I sat down. “I’ll do what I can. The only obvious thing would be so they couldn’t identify the killers. But so what if they did? No one listens to chakz. Their last words would be to some cop on trash duty before they were carted off to be burned or crushed.”

  “Even some garbagemen believe in chak rights.”

  “One or two at last count. Anyone who doesn’t live in a shantytown or the Bones thinks the laws on the books are enough to protect us. Maybe they suspect the laws aren’t upheld, but no one’s really asking. If you were the killer, it wouldn’t matter, unless you were . . .” I let the sentence trail off and left my mouth half-open. Maybe if I didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be true.

  “What? Unless you were what?”

  “Unless you were someone paid to uphold those laws. If word got out, you wouldn’t do time, but you might lose your job.”

  “You mean a cop?”

  “I’m thinking worse than that. What if it’s Tom Booth?”

  “No. Hess, you always said he was a good guy.”

  “When it comes to the living. I’ve never seen anyone hate chakz as much as he does. Never met anyone who took an overturned conviction more personally. What if he decided to correct what he thought of as injustices? He started with Colin Wilson; then the hakker attack pretty much handed him Boyle.” I grabbed my neck again. “Funny, you’d think he’d start with me. Maybe he’s saving me for last. What if there are more out there and he’s planning on going after them, too?”

  Misty rushed up and buried her head in my shoulder. “Hess, if it is him, what are we going to do?”

  I shrugged, absently patting her back. “Move out of the state.”

  14

  Misty was already packing, but I couldn’t let go just yet. I was too involved. See, if Booth really loved Lenore, this could be his way of working things out. Wish he’d tried talk therapy or medication. But that made the loose ends my responsibility in more ways than one. Not only was I the one who figured it out; I was his motive.

  I couldn’t see getting any justice for Boyle and Wilson. As for Turgeon, my best guess was that he was alive, but the hired goons had put the fear of Booth into him. Sure, a fancy lawyer could tackle a chief detective in the courts, but not without the leads I’d gathered. Unless I somehow stumbled on my client as he was walking down the street, trying to find Turgeon was a dead end. Mostly I was thinking that if there were others on the hit list, I had to find and warn them. And since the only way to figure out who else was at risk meant using a police database, that meant one more trip into the lion’s den.

  I thought it best not to mention that to Misty, so while she and Ashby were busy sorting what to bring and what to leave behind, I stepped into the hall and made a call to my old partner, Jimmy Hazen. He was with Booth when they followed me back home that day. Last time I saw him, I was covered in my wife’s blood. He didn’t appear in court, but he signed a deposition describing in detail what an asshole I was.

  I had to talk fast, real fast.

  “Haze? It’s Mann. Don’t hang up.”

  He hung up. I dialed again.

  “Look, we both know what you think of me, so before you hang up again, just think for a second that it must be something pretty important. I’d need a damn good reason, right?”

  The silence that followed was achingly long, a void in the air like the gaps in my memory. Finally he answered, voice deader than any chak’s. Two words: “Go on.”

  I told him some of what I knew, leaving out any mention of Booth. I tried to make it sound like a psycho was involved, that maybe Turgeon, a liveblood, was in danger. When he didn’t cut me off immediately, I slowed down, let him fill in the blanks, but in the end he just said, “So what?”

  “Haze, let me have a terminal for an hour, anytime, day or night. One hour. I swear if it doesn’t pan out I’ll lie down and let you kick the shit out of me all day long.”

  “I wouldn’t want to get my shoes dirty, you son of a bitch.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Another pause, then: “Sign a confession. Gimme a statement saying you killed her.”

  I clamped my mouth so tightly I nearly crushed a molar. One wrong word and I’d lose him. I wanted to tell him I didn’t do it, but between the two of us, how many times had we heard that from a perp? And I didn’t even real
ly remember. I took a different tack.

  “A statement from a chak isn’t admissible in court.”

  “I know. Call it a souvenir.”

  “What about the liveblood? What about Turgeon?”

  “That’s why I’m making the offer, on the off chance you didn’t imagine the whole thing. Find something real on him, you can let me know. Right now I’ve gotta take a piss, then have a drink so I can forget we had this conversation. Do we have a deal?”

  “Fine.”

  “Back entrance, midnight. You get half an hour.” He hung up.

  Never has any idiot, alive or dead, been happier to have successfully invited himself into hell.

  15

  Unfortunately, Ashby insisted on tagging along. He’d gathered from the conversation with Misty that all the excitement had something to do with Frank, and his loyalty to Boyle trumped whatever he saw in Misty. It was as if there was a whole amusement park in his head, and all day long, all the rides were free.

  I couldn’t see Booth pulling two late nights in the same week, and I’d just been in and out of the morgue, so I figured it was as safe as it was going to get. I thought about bringing Misty, too, but she was into the packing. Besides, for all I knew there might be outstanding charges against her, and I never knew when the fact that the police didn’t connect us might come in handy. She wasn’t eager to come with, in any case.

  With so much business in Fort Hammer conducted long after dark, the buses run late. I used to think the city looked better at night because you can see less of it, but in some places what you don’t see makes it worse. There are spots along those streets where the shadows vibrate like they’re hungry, others where the inky nothing is plain sad.

  Around about Eastman Avenue, it gets even darker than that. No one’s bothered to fix the streetlights for years. Block after block, the only light came from the headlights on our bus. What didn’t shine on potholes caught the husks of empty stores and apartment buildings, the spaces between the structural supports all holding a blackness thick as tar.