"I understand a neighbor called this in?" Mike asked.
"Right," Pete said. "The old lady upstairs heard a disturbance. When the cruiser arrived, the deputy found him like this."
Mike leaned in for a closer look at the bloody side of Austin's head. "Have you found the ear?"
Pete shook his head and rose upright. "No."
"You think this is a Slicer victim?" Mike stood up.
"Yes," Pete said with a nod.
"Except that the Slicer never took body parts as trophies before."
"Yeah, but what are the chances that this tiny town has more than one killer who likes to slash throats?"
True. This was the same perp, but he was evolving.
"Murder weapon?"
Pete reached into his kit and withdrew a plastic evidence bag and then handed it to Mike. "Looks like a steak knife from the block in the kitchen. Other than the obvious blood, there appears to be traces of soil on the handle and more on the floor where we found it.”
“Anything else?”
“We found a black bandana. It’s bloody. Probably the vic. But we’re sending it for DNA analysis.”
"Get me results on the soil and the DNA as soon as possible," Mike said before glancing around. "Where's the first deputy on the scene?"
"Outside," Pete replied, with one arched eyebrow and a grimace. "He needed a smoke."
Probably the guy's first murder victim, Mike thought. "Anybody heard from Frank Jackson today?"
"I called him just before you but no answer."
"Yeah. I tried him and got voicemail." Mike frowned. Frank not answering his phone 24/7? Frank not being on duty before his shift? Just wasn't like him.
Outside, Mike found a deputy outside the tape, puffing on a cigarette. Three crushed butts lay on the sidewalk at his feet.
"You the first on the scene?" he asked.
Not meeting Mike's eye, the deputy nodded and took another drag of the cigarette.
"What time did the call come in?" Mike asked.
The deputy glanced up at him with glassy eyes. "Call?"
"The call from the neighbor."
"I don't..." The deputy threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped on the butt. He then patted at his pockets as if searching for something.
"Keep it together, Deputy," Mike said sternly.
The deputy reached into his back pants pocket and retrieved a notepad. After flipping through the pages, he settled on one. "I got the call to respond at 9:57 a.m."
"What time did dispatch get the call?"
"I don't know."
Mike huffed. "Did you talk to the neighbor?"
The deputy's gaze fell to the ground. "No."
A voice from over Mike's shoulder piped in. "I did."
A female deputy stepped forward, her notepad in hand. "The neighbor, a Mrs. Erma Flagstaff, seventy-eight, reported hearing a disturbance at 9:50 a.m."
"Good job," Mike said. "Did this neighbor see anything? Maybe someone leaving the building."
Smiling, the female deputy replied, "Mrs. Flagstaff heard some crashing and yelling. She didn't see anyone actually leaving this house, but she did see someone on the sidewalk next to the street. She said it was possible this person had come from the house."
"Don't keep me in suspense, Deputy. Did she recognize this someone?"
"Yes. Jonah Morrison."
* * * * *
Derek hovered next to the desk concentrating all his energy on a dusty old radio. Manipulating the controls took quite a bit of practice and time.
Sir Fluffybottom sat nearby on a pile of papers with all four legs folded under him, looking on.
"Why doesn't that geek have a computer or iPod?" Derek groused to the cat. "Woulda made things so much easier. Jonah must be technology phobic or something.”
In reply, the cat merely blinked.
By the time Derek managed to turn it on and tune into a pop music station, he'd drained himself of a lot of energy. But once Pharrel's Happy began he couldn't help dancing. Derek found not being encumbered by a physical body actually improved his moves and shooting about the room felt fantastic.
He flew over to the desk and hung in the air there for a second. "Happy, happy, happy," he sang.
Sir Fluffybottom rolled over onto his back and batted at the air as if playing with Derek.
After landing on the floor in front of the desk, Derek belted out, "I'm happy." His voice cracked on the last part of the note.
The cat started and sprang up on to all four feet and, with back arched and hair standing on end, he hissed.
"My singing isn't that bad, is it?" Derek chuckled.
A lilting voice spoke from behind him. "Let's put it this way. You won't be winning a Grammy anytime soon, and not just because your dead."
Jessica.
As Derek whirled around. Sir Fluffybottom hissed, leaped from the desk and then scrambled away and out the open window.
This was Jessica, but not as he'd ever seen her. Even in the casket while Jonah had performed the ritual, she had been pristine and beautiful. Now, this blood-soaked, dirt- covered, grey-skinned being gazed at him with cataract-covered eyes like something out of Night of the Living Dead.
"Awww. I think the furball doesn't like me. I'm crushed." Jessica placed a hand on the back of her head. "Literally."
"You're not...not...not..." Derek stammered.
"A ghost? Dead? Trapped in a coffin? Happy?" Jessica strolled past him and scanned Jonah's bulletin board. "The answers to your non-questions are: No, yes, no, and no. In that order."
"You're..."
"Not pretty anymore?" Jessica answered. "Yes. I know. I freaked out a couple I passed on the way here."
"A couple?"
She waved her hands in a flourish. "I told them all this was makeup for a student film."
"Film?" Derek knew he made no sense, but for fuck's sake who could make sense at a time like this?
“Don't worry. They're alive." Jessica laughed as she plucked an item from the board. Several others fell to the surface of the desk. "One can't kill everyone in town now can one? But speaking of killing, where's Jonah?"
Chapter Eight
His mind still mired in the grief for the loss of Belinda—or his parents—or both, Jonah trudged up the path to his caretaker's cottage. He'd almost reached the door when he noticed the strange stillness around him. Usually, the cemetery teemed with life during the sunlight hours. Today, no birds chirped, no insects buzzed. No movement at all.
For a moment Jonah stood on the threshold with his hand on the doorknob, a tingling painful tightness clutching his stomach.
You're being ridiculous, he thought. Go in!
Twisting the knob, he pushed and the door swung inward.
"Derek?"
Hushed silence.
Jonah scanned the interior. Some of the items on the bulletin board had been disturbed; otherwise the cottage seemed the same except...
No movement.
"Sir Fluffybottom? Here kitty."
The cat might be out playing mighty hunter of the neighborhood, but Derek? He couldn't go far.
His friend's class ring still lay in the open box on the desk. However, the ornament was nowhere to be seen. Jonah knew he'd left it next to the box. Had it fallen? It could have broken.
Dropping to the floor, Jonah crawled beneath the desk and found nothing.
"Derek!"
The ghost didn't appear. Jonah dashed into the kitchen. Nothing. Bathroom. Nothing. Bedroom. The last possible place was the bedroom closet. Jonah tugged open the door and there, curled in a ball on the floor, and hiding his face in his knees, was Derek. His ornament lay beside him, glowing and intact.
"You scared the shit out of me," Jonah screamed.
Derek's head jerked up. His eyes went from wide to relieved.
"What the hell are you doing in there?" Jonah demanded.
"I'm impersonating the Cowardly Lion. What does it look like?" Derek popped to his feet. "Is she still out
there?"
"She who?" Jonah glanced around. "There's nobody in the cottage."
"Jessica."
"Her ghost is still around? Impossible." Jonah shook his head. "I sent her on."
"Not quite, buddy. 'Cause her reanimated dead body walked in here as if she owned the place, pawing through your stuff."
"Her body?”
Jonah ran outside and, with his stomach lodged firmly against his Adam's apple, and made his way to the grave. Just a few feet away, he tripped and fell headlong to the grass. He searched behind him and saw that he'd stumbled over a gun. Unable to stand, his legs shaking so bad, Jonah crawled the rest of the way. Once there, he knelt and dug at the soil with both hands.
After three scooping motions he uncovered a hand...a black male's hand, its fingers locked and frozen.
Rigor mortis?
No. He couldn't believe his eyes. Jessica had to still be here. Derek had to be wrong.
Continuing to burrow, Jonah gradually uncovered more and more of the arm before finally reaching the head of the GBI guy—Frank Jackson. Not until he actually looked into the face, with its lifeless eyes and mouth open in a death scream and saw the throat ripped out, did Jonah believe.
He scrambled, crablike, backward until stopped by the barrier of a nearby upright headstone.
"Oh God." Jonah held his head in his hands. "No. No. No."
What had Derek said? Something about Jessica going through his things.
Jonah sprang to his feet and dashed back into the cottage. "Tell me exactly what she did in here."
"She messed with your stuff," Derek said, waving in a sweeping motion indicating the area of the desk. "Then she started on the threats."
Glancing over the items that had fallen from the bulletin board to the desk and the board itself, Jonah knew something was missing.
"She took something off the bulletin board?"
"Yeah, but I didn't see what."
"And she made threats."
"Yeah. Like she's gonna kill you, she's gonna suck my soul, she's gonna make you sorry you were born before she kills you, yada, blah, blah. Generally, bad shit's gonna happen." Derek's flippant tone lacked conviction. He'd obviously been wigged out by Jessica. But then, why wouldn't he be? She'd murdered him.
And as he thought about threats, Jonah knew that Jessica could only have one option that truly had the power to destroy him: Belinda.
"The driver's license." Jonah frantically searched the desk, feeling as if every ounce of blood dropped into the soles of his feet and then shot back up to the top of his head. "It's not here."
"That must be what that zombified bitch took."
"I've got to get to Belinda before Jessica does," Jonah whispered, rushing to the door.
"Don't leave me here," Derek said, stopping him at the threshold. "Jessica could come back here and she's pretty convincing about that soul sucking thing."
"She can't hurt you. You're a ghost."
"Are you as sure about that as you were that she was gone for good?"
"You've got a point," Jonah said, grabbing his backpack and stuffing the ornament and ring inside. "Let's move."
* * * * *
Every second of the way to the diner tortured Jonah. Once there, he ran headlong through the door almost barreling over an exiting customer. He scanned the interior at the lunchtime crowd, but didn't see the one person he desperately needed.
Kerilynn approached him, coffee pot in one hand, and then planted the other on her hip. "Rocco said I could refuse you service. So consider yourself banned," she said with a sneer.
"Where's Belinda?" Jonah said, starting to step around Kerilynn.
She moved to block him. "I'm sure you know this already, but the Slicer's struck again."
The words hit Jonah; his world went from color to black-and-white. He staggered back a step, choking out, "Not...Belinda!"
Kerilynn's sneer abruptly softened into lines of sympathy and she reached out a hand. "I'm sorry—”
Sorry? What did sorry matter now? Belinda's death could never be put right. And he'd been the instrument as surely as if he'd killed her himself. He couldn't live with that. The thought that she'd never be in his life had devastated him just yesterday, but this was so much worse. At least if he could imagine her happy somewhere enjoying her life his own existence, no matter how bleak, could be tolerated. Belinda dead meant Jonah died too. His body just hadn't caught up to reality yet.
The kitchen door swung outward and Belinda emerged carrying a tray of clean glasses.
Relief sucked the air from Jonah's chest and knocked his legs out from under him. Jonah sank to his knees and his eyes drifted shut. "I thought...Kerilynn said... Thank God."
The diner fell silent.
No sense of time existed. Jonah knew nothing until he felt soft hands on either side of his face.
Jonah opened his eyes to see Belinda kneeling before him, her brown eyes wide with concern. He enfolded her in a tight embrace, his hands clutching at her. When his lips met hers in a devouring kiss, she returned it with equal fervor.
Belinda's real. She's alive.
Unlike the movies, no one applauded. Instead an angry shout came from Rocco, "What the hell, Belinda? I pay you to waitress, not put on a floor show like this is some kinky sex club."
Jonah pulled back, but his gaze remained locked on Belinda. He couldn't help feeling that if he looked away she'd disappear. Belinda didn't look away either, she merely stared at him and gingerly placed fingertips to her lips.
"Relax, Rocco," Kerilynn said. "If anybody starts making it rain dollar bills, we'll give you a cut."
* * * * *
Eliza Devoe stormed into her house, not bothering to close the front door behind her. The screen door spring shut with a whack. The frustration of waiting in vain all morning at the sheriff's office for someone to update her on the Slicer investigation burned like nitroglycerin in her veins. Still no progress on putting the killer behind bars, let alone strapping him to the lethal injection gurney.
She sank to her knees before the coffee table altar. After lighting the candles, Eliza flicked the burning match into a pail of sand beneath the table. With its glass reflecting the tiny candle flames, Derek's face smiling from the framed photograph seemed to taunt her.
Tears pooled and then overflowed down her cheeks. "Why hasn't my son's killer been brought to justice? I've called on the gods—Christian and ancient—using white magic and black.” Dashing at the tears, she then unwrapped her bandaged arm, revealing the angry red cut beneath and then thrust her arm to the ceiling. "Blood has been offered. The curse is complete. I demand my son's killer."
The screen door whacked shut again. "You called for me?”
Rising, Eliza turned. The walking corpse didn't shock her as much as did its identity. "Jessica Bundy? You murdered my son?"
The corpse glanced at the altar before turning a death clouded glare on Eliza. "And you are the bitch who turned me to road kill with this voodoo stuff!”
Exultation filled Eliza and a smile crept across her lips. "Yes. Praise the gods."
The corpse lunged forward making a grab at her, but Eliza evaded the clutching hands. Jessica bumped the coffee table and the photo fell, followed by two of the candles. The altar cloth began to smolder and then flame.
Eliza caught the flicker of fear that rippled briefly across Jessica's features before the corpse took up the bucket and dumped its contents on the flames. Derek's mother sprang toward the fireplace and managed to keep one eye on the approaching zombie while fumbling for the box of long matches she knew were on the mantle. Managing to find them and light one, Eliza held it out in front of her as if defending herself with a dagger.
"Do you thing the prospect of that small flame can frighten me?" Jessica asked with a chuckle. Nevertheless, she took a step back and held up her rotting hands. "Let's not argue. I took something from you and you retaliated. I respect that. In fact, I feel we can work together."
The flame race
d down the matchstick toward her fingers. Eliza threw one down and pulled another from the box—only two left. She then struck the match to flame as quickly as she could.
"You can put that away. I'm not going to harm you." Jessica sat down on the sofa.
"Who did this? Who raised you?"
"We'll get to that, but not just yet. You're not asking the right questions," the corpse replied calmly crossing her legs.
Trying to suppress the fear that screamed in her, Eliza threw down the spent match and lit another. Only one left. This thing appeared to be something Eliza had never seen even in the zombie ceremonies she'd attended as a teen. "Who are you?"
"I'm the one who can return your son to you.”
The words seemed to echo in Eliza's ears for long seconds as she weighed them in her mind. Finally, she blew out the match flame. "What do I have to do?"
* * * * *
When Belinda pushed through to the alley beside the diner, the door flew open and banged against the outer wall. The noise startled her stray cat sitting on the lid of a Dumpster. After a hiss and swipe of its paw, the cat jumped down and ran off out of sight.
Jonah followed her into the alley, his eyes focused on his feet and hands jammed in his pockets.
Belinda turned on him, throwing her hands into the air. "Now see what you've done? You chased away my cat."
Defiant eyes rose to meet hers and Jonah shook his head.
"What are you doing here?" Belinda demanded. "I thought you agreed to stay away from me."
"You said to stay away outside the diner. I came to see you at the diner."
Dammit. She had left that small opening.
"Ooooooo." Belinda stomped a foot. "You're exasperating."
Jonah's voice held a quiet intensity when he spoke. "Why don't you tell me what you're really pissed at me about, Bunny? And don't try to tell me it's really the cat."
"Where do I begin?" she said with an exaggerated huff as she began a list of transgressions she could cite for Jonah. "I...I..."
Conflicting emotions battled for control inside her. When she'd walked into the diner’s main room and seen Jonah kneeling on the floor with pain etched into every feature, any icy reserve she'd managed to build had instantly melted as if touched by a lava flow. She could barely remember why she should be angry with him.
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