The Voodoo Killings

by Kristi Charish

  “Kincaid, these events have been beyond my control.”

  I sighed. Yelling would make me feel a hell of a lot better, but it wouldn’t get me closer to a fix. “All right, so who murdered him? Maybe I can figure out a way to broach this with Aaron so that neither of us ends up in jail.”

  “The ghosts are foggy on the details. Whether by coercion or otherwise, I am not sure. I need more time.”

  “Not what I want to hear!”

  “I do not know what Cameron’s killer wants, but I do know that he or she has not exposed Cameron’s death.”

  Yet being the operative word.

  Max hurried on. “It is possible they do not understand what Cameron has become. I doubt the killer will show himself to you—there are always people around you. But I live in the middle of nowhere. Cameron is safest with you.”

  That made sense, but now I was covering up a murder. “I never thought I’d say this, Max, but you need to call Aaron. We’ll tell him—I don’t know what we’ll tell him, but we need to fill him in.”

  “Give me until tomorrow morning, please.”

  “No, you need police protection—I need police protection.”

  “Kincaid?”

  I turned to see Aaron standing on the back porch, frowning at me.

  I swore under my breath. “Look, Max, I need to go. But we are going to talk about this.”

  “Tomorrow morning, sunrise,” he said.

  “No fucking way—” The line clicked. “Max?” The dial tone cut in. He’d hung up on me. Again. Like hell was I letting him get away with this. I hit Redial.

  “Something wrong?”

  I hit End Call, took a deep breath and turned around. Aaron was a few feet away, studying me.

  “That depends,” I said. I shoved the phone back into my pocket.

  “On?” Aaron said.

  I pointed to the tree. “On what you think about a serial killer using Otherside to try to make an undead mythical monster.”

  —

  I edged closer to the door as the coroner pulled a second body out of the cooler. I figured Dr. Heathcliff Blanc had to be in his late thirties to early forties. He was tall, almost as tall as Cameron, but carried himself awkwardly, as if he’d never quite caught up with his teenage growth spurt. He tended to hunch over everything, which made him appear more quirky than he really was. He’d been with the Seattle coroner’s office well before I’d started, but I’d for the most part managed to avoid him. Dr. Blanc had an unsettling interest in the undead.

  I shouldn’t be one to talk. I work with the dead, I talk to the dead, I raise the dead—hell, I even hang out with the dead. You’d think a coroner would be right up my alley.

  Think again.

  I swear it’s the smell of formaldehyde and bleach. I felt like a pet going into the vet’s office. And Dr. Blanc wouldn’t stop talking….Aaron and Sarah had both ducked out. Damn them.

  “Huh?” I’d missed whatever it was Dr. Blanc had said.

  “I was saying this is a fascinating case, Ms. Strange.”

  He opened two metal fridge doors and slid out two bodies: Marjorie, whom I’d known, and the person whose home I’d just been in, a paler and older version of the woman in the picture. The only obvious marks on either body were from the autopsy cuts.

  Okay, a zombie dying, sure, unique. But fascinating?

  The doctor continued. “This woman—the zombie—beautiful preservation by the way, a completely intact and functioning nervous system. Not something I see every day, and I consider myself somewhat of an animated-dead expert. Her cause of death is unique—”

  “I’m sorry, did you just call yourself an animated-dead expert?”

  He broke into a smile. “Yes. My research thesis was on the effects of long-term animation on the body.” He turned back to Marjorie, pointing. “You can see where she was restrained, here and here.”

  I peered at the white depressions on Marjorie’s wrists and ankles.

  “She’d been running the coffee house for years, no one ever the wiser she was a zombie, a seamless integration. In fact, when the police did some checking, they found she’d owned the place since 1898. She disappeared every few decades, left a family member in charge. She kept in close contact with her nieces and nephews. They had to be aware of her condition. I wonder how many families have a similar relationship with an undead relative?”

  And people wonder why the undead stay hidden? “Marjorie,” I said.

  He gave me a blank stare.

  “The zombie on the table? Her name was Marjorie.”

  The realization hit, but maybe not the right one. “You’ll have to forgive me. The detectives mentioned you were acquainted with the victim.” Dr. Blanc moved around the table and carried on. “On first inspection, although the zombie and human victims were both restrained, there is no other superficial trauma.”

  I knew I shouldn’t tap Otherside again so soon, but I was impatient. I tapped the barrier and focused through the nausea until traces of hazy Otherside gold appeared on Marjorie’s body. Her bindings hadn’t been removed, they’d been massacred; not even a single gold thread remained intact. I glanced at the human victim, Rachel McCay. Even though there’d been no bindings to undo, the same hazy Otherside glow encompassed her as well.

  Dr. Blanc was watching me intently. I dropped my globe and nodded at the bodies. “Marjorie died because her bindings were ripped off. The same method seems to have been used on the human victim as well.”

  He inclined his head. “I will defer to your expertise on the zombie—I mean, on Marjorie. But I’m afraid I have to disagree with you on cause of death of the second victim. She was most definitely drowned.”

  Dr. Blanc brought over a metal tray and showed me two lungs, not pink, as they would be in a living person, but an in-between white. They were filled with water.

  “When I determined Ms. McCay had been drowned and considered the similarities between both scenes, I moved Marjorie’s autopsy up on my list of priority cases. Though I doubt that was the cause of her ceased animation, she too had been submerged long enough for her lungs to fill with water.”

  Had Lou overlooked drowning in his thirteen victims, all found near water?

  “Ms. Kincaid?”

  I glanced up from Marjorie’s lungs to Dr. Blanc. “Otherside might not have killed her,” I said, nodding at Rachel McCay, “but whoever killed her used the same Otherside signature that was used on Marjorie. Thanks for your time, doctor.”

  I turned to leave, but Dr. Blanc stopped me. “Ms. Kincaid?”

  I turned to face him.

  “Don’t mistake my enthusiasm for what I discovered in the autopsy as an insult to Marjorie. My profession is the dead, and I take it very seriously. If I don’t know my zombies and ghouls, what kind of a doctor of the dead am I? Too many people come through here too young, too sick or having been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He shook his head. “I’d be happy to see all of them get up and walk off these tables.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you come off a little creepy?”

  He smiled. “Frequently.”

  Before he could say anything more, Aaron came in to retrieve me.

  “You ditched me in there on purpose,” I said as we exited the morgue through the side entrance, the one that led into the hidden back parking lot. There was no sign of Sarah.

  “You should have seen how excited he was when I said I was bringing you in.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, I’ll bet. At least Sarah had the good sense not to come back. You, on the other hand, forget I know exactly how you work.”

  “Really?”

  I smiled. “Along the lines of ‘I’ll bring the practitioner in to see you if you move my zombie autopsy up.’ ”

  “Is that how it is?”

  “Yup,” I said, and headed for the car.

  Aaron grabbed my hand and spun me around until I faced him.

  “Aaron,” I warned.

  “I thought
you knew exactly how I worked.”

  The heat rose in my face as I realized we were alone for the first time since my apartment….A familiar smile played on Aaron’s face, his hand warm as it held mine.

  My body responded in spite of myself. Just the two of us here right now, with no one else in the world watching or judging…

  I wrapped my hands around Aaron’s neck and pulled his face down to mine.

  He kissed me with the ferocity I’d forgotten. His hands slid under my jacket and I sighed as their warmth radiated up my back and along the skin under my breasts. My god, I needed the warmth. I had been so cold the last three months….

  Aaron’s mouth moved on to my throat, finally settling on the spot below my ear. He bit it lightly, making me gasp. I was the one who kissed him this time, then pushed him back against the wall, keeping him at arm’s-length. Aaron waited for what would or would not happen next, watching me, his expression unguarded, full of longing.

  It had been so long, and I wanted, no, needed this….

  “Aaron, take me back to your place before I change my mind.”

  CHAPTER 18

  GHOSTS

  I edged myself down the gravel path, grabbing the wet grass to stop myself sliding down to the beach…well, rocks more than beach…Why can’t the ghosts I need to talk to ever hang out in easy-to-reach places? Like an old bar, or the park? No, they hang out in condemned buildings and under the pier. The lengths I’d go to solve a murder worried me.

  One hour with Aaron had turned into two. I guess that’s what happens when you avoid someone you are physically attracted to for three months. Why is it that brief moments of weakness always lead to the big mistakes?…Or was it a mistake? That was maybe the part I couldn’t wrap my head around. Aaron hadn’t pressured me for anything afterwards. I’d told him what I knew about the Jinn, and what I thought our killer was trying to do. When I’d asked him to drop me off in the square, he hadn’t even argued. Then again, I hadn’t told him what I planned to do next.

  The fact that a fine drizzle had made everything slippery wasn’t helping. I probably could have gone straight to the docks and climbed down one of the ladders, since very few people were out in this weather. But better safe than sorry when contacting ghosts….The last thing they need is an audience—derails the conversation too much.

  First I’d tried the ruins of the Oriental Hotel in the underground city, but it had been a complete bust. That area smelled bad; it was full of rats and who knew what else after dark….I’d made contact with one of the crib girls and one of the three murdered prostitutes. After I’d flashed a bottle of laudanum, which I keep handy for dealing with turn-of-the-century ghosts, they’d been more than happy to tell me what they remembered. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much, only a handful of images seared into their minds right before they died. But they both mentioned the same smell: a chemical odour that had burned their noses and throats.

  Chloroform? Formaldehyde? I couldn’t imagine a situation where they’d be exposed to enough of that without suffering burns on their skin. Ether? More questions than answers.

  There was no way I was going to contact Anna Bell, the whore Lee had worked with. Rumour was she’d become a poltergeist. Lou had noted a witness to two of the murders in his notes—luckily for me, someone who had died shortly afterwards of drowning. For whatever reason, drowning ups the chance you become a ghost—something about the act of dying in water. Anyway, that’s who I was hoping to contact: one Tom Jones.

  Shit. Loose gravel slid out from under my feet and I started to slide down the beach….I grabbed for a low-growing shrub and only managed to uproot it. I hit the high-tide mark of shale, broken shells and barnacles ass first. I scrambled up and grabbed my backpack, which had rolled a few feet away, and started to walk towards the piers, where the old city dock used to be before the fire. I worked my way across a patch of beach that was more mud and seaweed than shale, and finally reached relative shelter under the pier.

  I strained my ears, but the drizzle and wind drowned out any voices from above. Which meant no one was going to hear me either. The air temperature dropped and I froze.

  The fog coalesced beside me and Nate appeared. I’d forgotten that this close to the ocean he could pop through the barrier easily, especially in the rain. “Nate, what the hell? You’re supposed to be watching Cameron.”

  “K, calling ghosts here is dangerous.”

  “I call up ghosts all the time. Thieves, scam artists, murderers—you.”

  He ignored the jibe. “This place is different.” He lowered his voice. “What if she hears you? It’s fucking poltergeist territory, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I’m not calling her directly, I’m calling a witness.”

  “To ask about someone who killed her.”

  “Trust me, I’ll be fine.”

  “K, she was a body dealer who killed people, here, and you’re calling up someone who could easily have been one of her victims to ask about the killer who got her. If this isn’t stupid, I don’t know what is.”

  I frowned. “Nate! Stop it. That’s the part I’m trying very hard to forget right now.”

  That Anna Bell became a poltergeist when she died shocked absolutely no one. Poltergeists by definition are malevolent spirits, but from there it’s a sliding scale. Doing something really horrible while you’re alive doesn’t guarantee you’ll end up a poltergeist; it’s the complete lack of empathy and conscience that nets you that kind of power in the afterlife. Anna Bell was a breed all on her own. She’d killed a lot of people in the body-dealing trade, and she’d liked it.

  “Nate, if you have a problem with me being here, go back to watching Cameron, which is what you’re supposed to be doing.”

  “He’s fine. No one’s getting in his building. Come on, K, let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

  I shook my head. “The docks give you the creeps—what kind of ghost are you?”

  “A smart one who doesn’t fuck around with poltergeists!” He wrapped his arms around his body in a very alive gesture and glanced around. “Besides, it’s weird around here. If I lose my concentration for a sec, I start to slip back through.”

  “Look, just stand over there and keep quiet.”

  Nate muttered something less than complimentary but moved a few feet away.

  I pulled out my waterproof china marker. I’d had too many errant waves wash away my painstakingly drawn symbols to mess around. Out here you didn’t need a mirror; drawing a symbol on wood or metal then placing it under water worked just as well, if not better.

  I sketched the first symbol, an Egyptian one, on the sheet of metal I carried around in my backpack for just such occasions. The old Egyptian symbol for broadcasting someone’s name worked best in water and was easy to draw, too: a basket with an ibis on either side. Above the basket I wrote Tom Jones, hoping the ghost could read, and then walked to the water’s edge and held the sheet just under the surface.

  I took a deep breath then tapped the Otherside and pushed it into the metal sheet. It charged fast, draining Otherside through me like a funnel. Hot damn, I’d forgotten just how effective salt water is as a catalyst. Yes it hurt, but there was a rush laced through it. It was as if a beacon shot out through the water and all of a sudden I became the centre of attention for a thousand and one eyes.

  I cleared my throat. “Tom Jones, died 1888 by drowning. Are you out there?”

  A minute passed….

  “Tom? You out there?” I called again, and felt the submerged metal reverberate through the Otherside.

  A few breaths later, a grey fog coalesced above the water in front of me into a figure….No, wait, make that three figures, in varying stages of undress.

  The ghost on the left had managed to form a pair of suspenders and boots, and that was it. The middle ghost had done a better job, achieving a cowboy hat and flannel shirt. The last ghost wore a pair of red long johns. That could have been what he died in.

  No
ne of them had well-defined facial features; think of a blurred composite through a shaky camera. Ghosts from the turn of the century, unless they’d been very vain and/or upper-class, don’t have a good grasp of their own facial features. It’s the ghost’s memory that has to do that work, after all, manifesting what they figured they looked like.

  I felt the touch of cold again at my shoulder and ear. “Nate! I said back off.”

  “Didn’t want to miss this. Jackpot, K. You got three.”

  “Shut up,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. Then I addressed the ghosts. “You can’t all possibly be Tom Jones.”

  They looked at each other, then back at me, and all three gave a slow nod.

  “Who died in Seattle, 1888, by drowning?”

  Again, the three ghosts nodded.

  Nate snorted with laughter.

  I shot him a dirty look. “Not helping.” I looked back up at my trio of ghosts. “Okay, which one of you was murdered, probably tied to the pier while you were unconscious? Raise your hand if that was you.”

  Slowly but surely, all three raised a hand.

  Nate howled with laughter.

  “All right, so who died in June? Come on, guys, the beginning of summer?”

  All three hands stayed up.

  “Oh, for crying out loud…”

  Nate couldn’t stop snickering.

  “Nate, knock it off—”

  “Oh, come on, Kincaid. You can’t tell me this isn’t funny. I mean, what are the odds?”

  “What happened to being scared of poltergeists?”

  He sighed. “Fine.” He vanished.

  I turned back to my shambling lineup of Tom Joneses. “So, just so we’re all clear, all three of you are named Tom Jones and were drugged and tied to the pier and drowned in the month of June, 1888?”

  Again, all three nodded, floating over the water with their feet trailing on the glass surface. I’d never run into this problem before: multiple ghosts who fit the same description—or claimed to.

  “All right, boys. Since you all claim to be Tom Jones, I need to know which one of you witnessed a murder—”

  The ghost in suspenders spoke. “This man, called himself Dr. Green, said he wanted to be my friend and bought me a drink.”