He was still looking at me with a bemused expression.
“Lopez?” I prodded.
Lost in his own thoughts, he gave a little start. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry. I had no idea that you felt that way. I mean, that you thought I had dumped you.”
“You did dump me.”
“Well, yes, I know that now.”
“How could you not know it before?” I demanded.
He made a vague gesture. “I didn’t think of it as dumping you.”
“God, I had no idea how much of a . . . guy you could be,” I said in disgust.
“Honestly, I thought of what happened as . . .” He ran his hands over his face, then he rested his chin on them as he contemplated something invisible. “I thought of it more like . . . I don’t know . . .” He shrugged as he searched for an example. “Born Free, when they decide Elsa really can’t be domesticated and they’ve got to let her go.”
“What?”
“Or A Beautiful Mind, when they realize they’ve got to lock up Russell Crowe.”
“I’m not liking the comparisons,” I said.
“It’s like wanting peanut butter so much that you eat it in your dreams. But when you’re awake, you know you’ll go into anaphylactic shock if you touch the stuff.” He gave himself a little shake and stood up. “Do you see what I’m saying?”
“Something about food allergies, mental illness, and a fear that I’ll attack livestock?”
“Exactly.”
“What the hell are you talking ab—” I gasped as he suddenly backed me against the wall and braced his hands on either side of me.
“I didn’t dump you,” he said quietly, his gaze locked with mine. “I gave you up.”
“Oh.” The word came out on a wispy breath.
“Now do you see?” His dark lashes lowered as his attention shifted to my mouth.
“Um . . .”
“And I didn’t come to Harlem at three o’clock in the morning to get you out of jail because I felt guilty.” He leaned closer to me.
“No?”
“No.” His lips hovered near mine.
My fingers curled into the fabric of his lightweight summer jacket as I closed my eyes, enjoying the soft tickle of his breath on my cheek and the anticipation of the moment.
My heartbeat got louder, drowning out everything else as he whispered, “I came because you asked me to.”
The sound of a polite cough penetrated my senses.
My eyes flew open and I looked over Lopez’s shoulder as he whirled to face the intruder. Catherine was standing a few feet away. She gestured to the staircase that we were half blocking.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said in a cool voice. “I need to get to my office.”
“Of course.” Lopez turned to me. “We should leave.”
“You two know each other, then?” Catherine raised her brows and looked at me. I suspected that my face was flushed. “You didn’t mention that when you asked me about his visit, Esther.”
Lopez gave me a sharp glance.
I decided that changing the subject immediately was my best available option. “I’m so sorry about Nelli’s behavior.” I shrugged and spread my hands. “I guess she’s never seen a snake before.”
Catherine said, “I don’t want that dog coming here again.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “I’ll speak to Max. And I’m sorry about the mess in the lobby.” However, I thought Mambo Celeste should apologize for at least half of that.
“Dr. Livingston,” Lopez said, “it’s not a good idea for a snake that size to be in an uncontrolled area with a handler who can’t manage him.”
“We weren’t expecting an attack from a vicious dog on our own premises,” she said crisply.
“Nelli isn’t vicious!” I protested. “She’s just, uh . . . high-strung.”
“A dangerous trait in a dog that size,” said Catherine.
She had a point, and Lopez’s glance warned me not to get into a fruitless argument with her about it.
“There are a lot of people roaming around this building,” he said to her. “Including kids. Do you really want to risk someone getting hurt—and the legal problems that will come with that? It would be safer for everyone, including you, if you’d just insist that Napoleon stay in his cage.”
“Thank you for your concern, detective. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a great deal of work to do. Good-bye.”
As Catherine ascended the steps, Lopez watched her with an exasperated expression. Then, as her footsteps faded, he turned to look at me. For a moment, he seemed to be running through a mental list of things he wanted to discuss, trying to decide which topic to broach first. But then he glanced upstairs again, and his expression turned sheepish.
“Sorry if I’ve embarrassed you in front of your new boss,” he said.
A sudden image entered my mind of Biko barging in on Catherine in flagrante delicto. I snorted with unexpected laughter. Then I covered my mouth, recalling that the third person in that story was dead now.
Lopez looked amused and puzzled at my reaction.
I waved away his concern about embarrassing me. “Oh, she’s in no position to be critical. After all, Biko found her and Darius having sex in her office.”
“When?” He looked suddenly alert.
“About a year ago.”
“She was having an affair with Darius Phelps?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I have a feeling it was not an affair so much as just an instance of two single colleagues, both working late, alone together at the office—or so they thought. Biko was practicing late that night, and I gather Catherine was, er, very noisy.” Lopez’s reaction made me laugh again. “No, she doesn’t really come across as someone who’d lose herself in passion, does she?”
He smiled. “People are full of surprises. Especially women.” When he looked up the stairs again, his expression was thoughtful. Then he returned his attention to me. “What do you say we get out of here?”
I nodded, tired of the atmosphere at the Livingston Foundation and eager to leave. “I’ll get my stuff.”
16
As soon as Lopez opened the foundation’s front door for me and I exited the building, a wall of heat and humidity hit me like a physical blow. “Ugh!”
“Yep.” He loosened his tie. “Violent crime is up all over the city.” He pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. “Especially domestics. Ain’t love grand?”
“Ah, how I’ve missed the small talk of a cop,” I said. “Other people just say things like, ‘It’s another scorcher today.’ ”
We moved away from the building and crossed the street, then walked beside the park. Silent and brooding behind his dark glasses, Lopez took off his light summer jacket and slung it over his shoulder, then unfastened the top couple of buttons on his short-sleeved cotton shirt. Since I had a daypack with me as well as my purse, he made a gesture offering to carry the daypack for me, and I handed it over.
Despite the smothering heat, there were kids in the Mount Morris Park playground, some Rollerbladers on the paths, and a number of people walking their dogs. It was a sunny Friday afternoon in summer, and people were determined to enjoy it even if they roasted for it. We heard music coming from inside the park and as we got closer to the sound, I saw a crowd of people gathered to watch the break-dancers who were practicing there.
We admired the dancers for a few minutes, then we moved on, walking inside the park now. The atmosphere between us was charged, thanks to the private scene which I had started and he had nearly finished before we were interrupted by Catherine.
I’d been well aware of feeling hurt and forlorn that he’d broken up with me, and I’d certainly missed him since then—even though we’d been involved too briefly for that to make much sense. But until Jeff poked the hidden sore spot with the unerring accuracy of an ex-boyfriend, I hadn’t realized that I also felt humiliated.
That pain, at least, was cured
now. Yes, Lopez had broken up with me; but he hadn’t stopped wanting to see me. For reasons which were all too human, his unguarded confirmation of this made me feel better.
On the other hand, the reasons he wouldn’t date me still hadn’t changed. And, considering the current circumstances, those reasons were still relevant, despite our mutual outburst a few minutes ago. In any case, since I had to be at work soon, I thought we should probably get started on the argument he had come here to have.
I said, “I know that Darius Phelps’ body is missing.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Who told you? Biko or Dr. Livingston?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I challenged.
“I couldn’t get hold of you,” he pointed out reasonably.
“Oh. Right.”
“So now I’m missing out on the big double-take I was hoping for, since you already know he’s gone.”
I peered at him suspiciously, but his sunglasses hid his expression. “How long has the body been missing?” I asked.
“I don’t know yet. It’s a huge cemetery and Darius apparently hasn’t had any visitors since his funeral. So no one realized he was missing until I asked them to look.” He added, “This case is making me think pretty seriously about getting cremated when my time comes.”
“And the hand we found? Was it his?”
“No.”
That surprised me. “How do you know?”
“I was right about the hand being only a few days old. And Darius Phelps has been dead for a little over three weeks.” Lopez shook his head. “So it can’t be his hand.”
Oh, if only that were true.
“Can you identify it through fingerprints?” I asked.
“No hits yet.”
That must mean that Darius had never been fingerprinted when he was alive. And I assumed the police weren’t going to attempt a DNA comparison; in their minds, nothing credible linked the days-old hand in Harlem with the weeks-old missing corpse.
Thinking about the nature of mystical zombification, I said tentatively, “What if decomposition stopped a couple of days after Darius died?”
“How?” Lopez shook his head. “He wasn’t even embalmed—and that doesn’t stop decomposition, anyhow, it just slows it down. No, wherever Darius is now, he’s still decomposing, like any other dead organism.”
“Not necessarily,” I said glumly.
Lopez lowered his head to look inquisitively at me over the top of his sunglasses.
That look made me feel unequal to the task of sharing my theory with him. So instead I said, “This means you think there’s a separate victim?”
“Actually, I think there are several victims. As soon as the director of the cemetery learned yesterday morning that Darius’ body was missing, he offered full cooperation with a thorough survey of the whole place. So far, they’ve found four other empty graves.” He caught my elbow as I stumbled. “All right?”
Max was right! Someone was raising an army of zombies! Or at least a small platoon of them.
“Yes, I’m fine.” My voice sounded breathless. “Are the other, er, victims from Harlem, too?”
“No, they lived all over the city. They’re not all African-American, either. And they died of different causes. One died of an accidental head injury, one of a chronic illness, one was shot by a drug dealer, and one punched his own ticket.”
“He did what?”
“Uh, committed suicide.”
“It sounds very random,” I said, puzzled.
“It is. I don’t think there was any connection between any of them in life.” He gestured to a park bench in the shade. “Want to sit down?”
I nodded and took a seat. He sat down beside me and removed his sunglasses, then lifted his head and closed his eyes, enjoying the momentary breeze that fluttered through the heat-soaked park and ruffled his black hair. I looked at the smooth, dark golden skin of his throat, gleaming with a faint sheen of perspiration, and thought about the moment in the lobby when he had almost kissed me.
Eyes still closed, he said, “I think the connection occurred after they died. As corpses, they all have relevant factors in common.”
“Huh?” I said, still staring at him.
He lifted the fabric of his pale shirt away from his chest and flapped the material gently a few times, inviting cooler air to touch his torso. “For starters, of course, they were all buried in the same cemetery. It seems to be the grave robber’s hunting ground.”
Lopez let go of his shirt, opened his eyes, and looked at me. I did my best to assume an intelligent facial expression.
He continued, “And in death, they all fit the same profile as Darius. That is, they died in the prime of life and within the past month.” He tugged on his tie, removed it, and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. “And they didn’t have local families, so there was no one to visit their graves or notice anything odd.”
I frowned as I thought it over. “Is the bokor finding them through their obituaries?” It seemed so . . . mundane.
“What’s the bokor?”
I realized I had been thinking aloud. “I meant the grave robber.”
“Why was Max at the Livingston Foundation today?”
I knew what Lopez was doing. The quick topic shift was intended to surprise me into an unguarded answer. This was something that I had not missed about him.
“He came to visit me,” I said.
“Why are you working at the foundation?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Imagine my surprise when I went to see Dr. Livingston yesterday and she remarked that I was asking questions similar to the ones a new employee had been asking that same day—an actress whose name she couldn’t remember.”
“I’m filling in for a workshop teacher there.”
“I won’t even bother asking how or why you tracked down Darius Phelps’ place of employment,” he said. “I probably should have seen that coming. And, once you got there, you couldn’t resist asking questions about him. Fine. But for God’s sake, when you found Biko at the foundation, why didn’t you call me?”
“Why should I have called you?” I asked blankly.
“Because he was part of whatever crazy stunt someone was playing in the dark with a severed hand the other night!”
“Oh! You think . . . ? Oh, no. No,” I said. “You’ve got it all wrong. Biko wasn’t playing tricks that night. He was looking for the creatures that I saw.”
“So he was out and about?”
Oops. I suddenly remembered that Biko’s official story about that night was that he was at home in bed. He’d be annoyed when he found out I’d blown his alibi. Oh, well. Spilled milk. Besides, Lopez hadn’t believed him anyhow.
“He was looking for the creatures that killed his dog,” I said. “The same creatures that I saw that night.”
Lopez leaned back on the bench and studied me through narrowed eyes, trying to decide if he believed me. He didn’t bother asking why Biko had lied to him about that night; he could figure that out easily. I thought he was trying to figure out whether Biko had also lied to me. After a long moment, he said, “So you found out who Darius was and where he worked, and you found the kid with the sword.”
“Yes.”
“So what are you looking for now?” he asked.
“Well, for one thing, I want to track down the creatures I fought with that night. Biko wants to find them, too. He wants to stop them before they kill any more pets—or do worse than that. And I think that’s a good ide—”
“Stop them?” he repeated. “Esther, whoever killed his dog and stole your purse needs to be locked up, not run through with a sword by a kid who thinks he’s the Count of Monte Cristo.”
“They weren’t people.”
“They sure as hell weren’t gargoyles.”
“Actually—”
“Even if your purse was taken and Biko’s dog was killed by . . . Let’s say, by a couple of very strange animals , okay?”
I nodded, since Lopez was makin
g an effort to meet me halfway.
He continued, “It’s dangerous for everyone to have a teenage boy wandering around with a weapon, looking for someone to attack.”
I decided it wouldn’t relieve Lopez’s concerns if I told him that Biko was accompanied by Max and Nelli.
After studying me for a moment, he said, “Oh, God. Please tell me you’re not out prowling the streets by night with that kid?”
“Of course not,” I said virtuously. “I wait tables at night.”
“Oh. Right. Good.” He let out his breath. “Suddenly, for the very first time, I’m glad you work in a restaurant where wiseguys keep getting whacked. At least I know where you are then.”
Hoping to get him off this subject, I asked, “What do you think is being done with the missing bodies?”
“There are a lot of possibilities, and they’re all pretty disgusting.” He returned to an earlier question. “Why have you taken a job at the foundation?”
“I wanted the work. Waiting tables isn’t as fulfilling as you might think, officer.” I added, “And I like the kids.”
He nodded, accepting that. Then he said, “Look, the bottom line is . . . I’m not thrilled about you being at the foundation.”
“Thanks to my sensitivity to your every subtle inflection, I guessed something of the sort.”
“No, seriously. I’m not sure it’s safe for you to be there.”
I looked at him again. “Oh?”
He gazed out across the park with a troubled frown on his face. “Something’s not right there. I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s like . . . like hearing a melody slightly out of tune.” He stared into the distance for a moment longer, bothered by something he couldn’t identify or pinpoint. Then he shook off his pensive mood and said again, more matter-of-factly, “Something’s not right. And until I know what it is, I’m worried about you spending time there—even apart from whatever crazy scheme Max may be dragging you into.”
“I kind of dragged him into this,” I said.
“No wonder Dr. Livingston doesn’t like you.”
“I don’t think she likes anyone,” I grumbled. “But I do agree with you that something’s not right around here.” I thought of Shondolyn and added, “And I’m a little worried about the kids who hang out at the foundation.”
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