The Laughing Corpse

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I smiled before I could stop it. "Go away, Zerbrowski."

  "End of the hall, last door on the left. You'll find Dolph there." He walked away into the crowd of men. There are always more people than you need at a murder scene, not the gawkers outside but uniforms, plainclothes, technicians, the guy with the video camera. A murder scene was like a bee swarm, full of frenzied movement and damn crowded.

  I threaded my way through the crowd. My plastic-coated ID badge was clipped to the collar of my navy-blue jacket. It was so the police would know I was on their side and hadn't just snuck in. It also made carrying a gun into a crowd of policemen safer.

  I squeezed past a crowd that was gathered like a traffic jam beside a door in the middle of the hall. Voices came, disjointed, "Jesus, look at the blood . . . Have they found the body yet? . . . You mean what's left of it? . . . No."

  I pushed between two uniforms. One said, "Hey!" I found a cleared space just in front of the last door on the left-hand side. I don't know how Dolph had done it but he was alone in the room. Maybe they were just finished in here.

  He knelt in the middle of the pale brown carpet. His thick hands, encased in surgical gloves, were on his thighs. His black hair was cut so short it left his ears sort of stranded on either side of a large blunt face. He saw me and stood. He was six-eight, built big like a wrestler. The canopied bed behind him suddenly looked small.

  Dolph was head of the police's newest task force, the spook squad. Official title was the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, R-P-I-T, pronounced "rip it." It handled all supernatural crime. It was a place to dump the troublemakers. I never wondered what Zerbrowski had done to get on the spook squad. His sense of humor was too strange and absolutely merciless. But Dolph. He was the perfect policeman. I had always sort of figured he had offended someone high up, offended them by being too good at his job. Now that I could believe.

  There was another sheet-covered bundle on the carpet beside him.

  "Anita." He always talks like that, one word at a time.

  "Dolph," I said.

  He knelt between the canopy bed and the blood-soaked sheet. "You ready?"

  "I know you're the silent type, Dolph, but could you tell me what I'm supposed to be looking for?"

  "I want to know what you see, not what I tell you you're supposed to see."

  For Dolph it was a speech. "Okay," I said, "let's do it."

  He pulled back the sheet. It peeled away from the bloody thing underneath. I stood and I stared and all I could see was a lump of bloody meat. It could have been from anything: a cow, horse, deer. But human? Surely not.

  My eyes saw it, but my brain refused what it was being shown. I squatted beside it, tucking my skirt under my thighs. The carpeting squeezed underfoot like rain had gotten to it, but it wasn't rain.

  "Do you have a pair of gloves I can borrow? I left my crime scene gear at the office."

  "Right jacket pocket." He lifted his hands in the air. There were blood marks on the gloves. "Help yourself. The wife hates me to get blood on the dry cleaning."

  I smiled. Amazing. A sense of humor is mandatory at times. I had to reach across the remains. I pulled out two surgical gloves; one size fits all. The gloves always felt like they had powder in them. They didn't feel like gloves at all, more like condoms for your hands.

  "Can I touch it without damaging evidence?"

  "Yes."

  I poked the side of it with two fingers. It was like poking a side of fresh beef. A nice, solid feel to it. My fingers traced the bumps of bone, ribs under the flesh. Ribs. Suddenly I knew what I was looking at. Part of the rib cage of a human being. There was the shoulder, white bone sticking out where the arm had been torn away. That was all. All there was. I stood too quickly and stumbled. The carpet squeeshed underfoot.

  The room was suddenly very hot. I turned away from the body and found myself staring at the bureau. Its mirror was splattered so heavily with blood, it looked like someone had covered it in layers of red fingernail polish. Cherry Blossom Red, Carnival Crimson, Candy Apple.

  I closed my eyes and counted very slowly to ten. When I opened them the room seemed cooler. I noticed for the first time that a ceiling fan was slowly turning. I was fine. Heap big vampire slayer. Ri-ight.

  Dolph didn't comment as I knelt by the body again. He didn't even look at me. Good man. I tried to be objective and see whatever there was to see. But it was hard. I liked the remains better when I couldn't figure out what part of the body they were. Now all I could see was the bloody remains. All I could think of was this used to be a human body. "Used to be" was the operative phrase.

  "No signs of a weapon that I can see, but the coroner will be able to tell you that." I reached out to touch it again, then stopped. "Can you help me raise it up so I can see inside the chest cavity? What's left of the chest cavity."

  Dolph dropped the sheet and helped me lift the remains. It was lighter than it looked. Raised on its side there was nothing underneath. All the vital organs that the ribs protect were gone. It looked for all the world like a side of beef ribs, except for the bones where the arm should have connected. Part of the collarbone was still attached.

  "Okay," I said. My voice sounded breathy. I stood, holding my blood-spattered hands out to my sides. "Cover it, please."

  He did, and stood. "Impressions?"

  "Violence, extreme violence. More than human strength. The body's been ripped apart by hand."

  "Why by hand?"

  "No knife marks." I laughed, but it choked me. "Hell, I'd think someone had used a saw on the body like butchering a cow, but the bones . . ." I shook my head. "Nothing mechanical was used to do this."

  "Anything else?"

  "Yeah, where is the rest of the fucking body?"

  "Down the hall, second door on the left."

  "The rest of the body?" The room was getting hot again.

  "Just go look. Tell me what you see."

  "Dammit, Dolph, I know you don't like to influence your experts, but I don't like walking in there blind."

  He just stared at me.

  "At least answer one question."

  "Maybe, what?"

  "Is it worse than this?"

  He seemed to think about that for a moment. "No, and yes."

  "Damn you."

  "You'll understand after you've seen it."

  I didn't want to understand. Bert had been thrilled that the police wanted to put me on retainer. He had told me I would gain valuable experience working with the police. All I had gained so far was a wider variety of nightmares.

  Dolph walked ahead of me to the next chamber of horrors. I didn't really want to find the rest of the body. I wanted to go home. He hesitated in front of the closed door until I stood beside him. There was a cardboard cutout of a rabbit on the door like for Easter. A needlework sign hung just below the bunny. Baby's Room.

  "Dolph," my voice sounded very quiet. The noise from the living room was muted.

  "Yes."

  "Nothing, nothing." I took a deep breath and let it out. I could do this. I could do this. Oh, God, I didn't want to do this. I whispered a prayer under my breath as the door swung inward. There are moments in life when the only way to get through is with a little grace from on high. I was betting this was going to be one of them.

  Sunlight streamed through a small window. The curtains were white with little duckies and bunnies stitched around the edges. Animal cutouts danced around the pale blue walls. There was no crib, only one of those beds with handrails halfway down. A big boy bed, wasn't that what they were called?

  There wasn't as much blood in here. Thank you, dear God. Who says prayers never get answered? But in a square of bright August sunshine sat a stuffed teddy bear. The teddy bear was candy-coated with blood. One glassy eye stared round and surprised out of the spiky fake fur.

  I knelt beside it. The carpet didn't squeeze, no blood soaked in. Why was the damn bear sitting here covered in congealing blood? There was no other blood in the e
ntire room that I could see.

  Did someone just set it here? I looked up and found myself staring at a small white chest of drawers with bunnies painted on it. When you have a motif, I guess you stick with it. On the white paint was one small, perfect handprint. I crawled towards it and held up my hand near it comparing size. My hands aren't big, small even for a woman's, but this handprint was tiny. Two, three, maybe four. Blue walls, probably a boy.

  "How old was the child?"

  "Picture in the living room has Benjamin Reynolds, age three, written on the back."

  "Benjamin," I whispered it, and stared at the bloody handprint. "There's no body in this room. No one was killed here."

  "No."

  "Why did you want me to see it?" I looked up at him, still kneeling.

  "Your opinion isn't worth anything if you don't see everything."

  "That damn bear is going to haunt me."

  "Me, too," he said.

  I stood, resisting the urge to smooth my skirt down in back. It was amazing how many times I touched my clothing without thinking and smeared blood on myself. But not today.

  "Is it the boy's body under the sheet in the living room?" As I said it, I prayed that it wasn't.

  "No," he said.

  Thank God. "Mother's body?"

  "Yes."

  "Where is the boy's body?"

  "We can't find it." He hesitated, then asked, "Could the thing have eaten the child's body completely?"

  "You mean so there wouldn't be anything left to find?"

  "Yes," he said. His face looked just the tiniest bit pale. Mine probably did, too.

  "Possible, but even the undead have a limit to what they can eat." I took a deep breath. "Did you find any signs of--regurgitation."

  "Regurgitation." He smiled. "Nice word. No, the creature didn't eat and then vomit. At least we haven't found it."

  "Then the boy's probably still around somewhere."

  "Could he be alive?" Dolph asked.

  I looked up at him. I wanted to say yes, but I knew the answer was probably no. I compromised. "I don't know."

  Dolph nodded.

  "The living room next?" I asked.

  "No." He walked out of the room without another word. I followed. What else could I do? But I didn't hurry. If he wanted to play tough, silent policeman, he could damn well wait for me to catch up.

  I followed his broad back around the corner through the living room into the kitchen. A sliding glass door led out onto a deck. Glass was everywhere. Shiny slivers of it sparkled in the light from yet another skylight. The kitchen was spotless, like a magazine ad, done in blue tile and rich light-colored wood. "Nice kitchen," I said.

  I could see men moving around the yard. The party had moved outside. The privacy fence hid them from the curious neighbors, as it had hidden the killer last night. There was just one detective standing beside the shiny sink. He was scribbling something in a notebook.

  Dolph motioned me to have a closer look. "Okay," I said. "Something crashed through the sliding glass door. It must have made a hell of a lot of noise. This much glass breaking even with the air-conditioning on . . . You'd hear it."

  "You think so?" he asked.

  "Did any of the neighbors hear anything?" I asked.

  "No one will admit to it," he said.

  I nodded. "Glass breaks, someone comes to check it out, probably the man. Some sexist stereotypes die hard."

  "What do you mean?" Dolph asked.

  "The brave hunter protecting his family," I said.

  "Okay, say it was the man, what next?"

  "Man comes in, sees whatever crashed through the window, yells for his wife. Probably tells her to get out. Take the kid and run."

  "Why not call the police?" he asked.

  "I didn't see a phone in the master bedroom." I nodded towards the phone on the kitchen wall. "This is probably the only phone. You have to get past the bogeyman to reach the phone."

  "Go on."

  I glanced behind me into the living room. The sheet-covered couch was just visible. "The thing, whatever it was, took out the man. Quick, disabled him, knocked him out, but didn't kill him."

  "Why not kill?"

  "Don't test me, Dolph. There isn't enough blood in the kitchen. He was eaten in the bedroom. Whatever did it wouldn't have dragged a dead man off to the bedroom. It chased the man into the bedroom and killed him there."

  "Not bad, want to take a shot at the living room next?"

  Not really, but I didn't say it out loud. There was more left of the woman. Her upper body was almost intact. Paper bags enveloped her hands. We had samples of something under her fingernails. I hoped it helped. Her wide brown eyes stared up at the ceiling. The pajama top clung wetly to where her waist used to be. I swallowed hard and used my index finger and thumb to raise the pajama top.

  Her spine glistened in the hard sunshine, wet and white and dangling, like a cord that had been ripped out of its socket.

  Okay. "Something tore her apart, just like the . . . man in the bedroom."

  "How do you know it's a man?"

  "Unless they had company, it has to be the man. They didn't have a visitor, did they?"

  Dolph shook his head. "Not as far as we know."

  "Then it has to be the man. Because she still has all her ribs, and both arms." I tried to swallow the anger in my voice. It wasn't Dolph's fault. "I'm not one of your cops. I wish you'd stop asking me questions that you already have the answers to."

  He nodded. "Fair enough. Sometimes I forget you're not one of the boys."

  "Thank you for that."

  "You know what I mean."

  "I do, and I even know you mean it as a compliment, but can we finish discussing this outside, please?"

  "Sure." He slipped off his bloody gloves and put them in a garbage sack that was sitting open in the kitchen. I did the same.

  The heat fastened round me like melting plastic, but it felt good, clean somehow. I breathed in great lungfuls of hot, sweating air. Ah, summer.

  "I was right though, it wasn't human?" he asked.

  There were two uniformed police officers keeping the crowd off the lawn and in the street. Children, parents, kids on bikes. It looked like a freaking circus.

  "No, it wasn't human. There was no blood on the glass that it came through."

  "I noticed. What's the significance?"

  "Most dead don't bleed, except for vampires."

  "Most?"

  "Freshly dead zombies can bleed, but vampires bleed almost like a person."

  "You don't think it was a vampire then?"

  "If it was, then it ate human flesh. Vampires can't digest solid food."

  "Ghoul?"

  "Too far from a cemetery, and there'd be more destruction of the house. Ghouls would tear up furniture like wild animals."

  "Zombie?"

  I shook my head. "I honestly don't know. There are such things as flesh-eating zombies. They're rare, but it happens."

  "You told me that there have been three reported cases. Each time the zombies stay human longer and don't rot."

  I smiled. "Good memory. That's right. Flesh-eating zombies don't rot, as long as you feed them. Or at least don't rot as quickly."

  "Are they violent?"

  "Not so far," I said.

  "Are zombies violent?" Dolph asked.

  "Only if told to be."

  "What does that mean?" he asked.

  "You can order a zombie to kill people if you're powerful enough."

  "A zombie as a murder weapon?"

  I nodded. "Something like that, yes."

  "Who could do something like that?"

  "I'm not sure that's what happened here," I said.

  "I know. But who could do it?"

  "Well, hell, I could, but I wouldn't. And nobody I know that could do it would do it."

  "Let us decide that," he said. He had gotten his little notebook out.

  "You really want me to give you names of friends so you can ask them if
they happened to have raised a zombie and sent it to kill these people?"

  "Please."

  I sighed. "I don't believe this. All right, me, Manny Rodriguez, Peter Burke, and . . ." I stopped words already forming a third name.

  "What is it?"

  "Nothing. I just remembered that I've got Burke's funeral to go to this week. He's dead so I don't think he's a suspect."

  Dolph was looking at me hard, suspicion plain on his face. "You sure this is all the names you want to give me?"

  "If I think of anyone else, I'll let you know," I said. I was at my wide-eyed most sincere. See, nothing up my sleeve.

  "You do that, Anita."

  "Sure thing."

  He smiled and shook his head. "Who are you protecting?"

  "Me," I said. He looked puzzled. "Let's just say I don't want to get someone mad at me."

  "Who?"

  I looked up into the clear August sky. "You think we'll get rain?"

  "Dammit, Anita, I need your help."

  "I've given you my help," I said.

  "The name."

  "Not yet. I'll check it out, and if it looks suspicious, I promise to share it with you."

  "Well, isn't that just generous of you?" A flush was creeping up his neck. I had never seen Dolph angry before. I feared I was about to.

  "The first death was a homeless man. We thought he'd passed out from liquor and ghouls got him. We found him right next to a cemetery. Open and shut, right?" His voice was rising just a bit with each word.

  "Next we find this couple, teenagers caught necking in the boy's car. Dead, still not too far from the cemetery. We called in an exterminator and a priest. Case closed." He lowered his voice, but it was like he had swallowed the yelling. His voice was strained and almost touchable with its anger.

  "Now this. It's the same beastie, whatever the hell it is. But we are miles from the nearest frigging cemetery. It isn't a ghoul, and maybe if I had called you in with the first or even the second case, this wouldn't have happened. But I figure I'm getting good at this supernatural crap. I've had some experience now, but it isn't enough. It isn't nearly enough." His big hands were crushing his notebook.

  "That's the longest speech I've ever heard you make," I said.

  He half laughed. "I need the name, Anita."

  "Dominga Salvador. She's the voodoo priest for the entire Midwest. But if you send police down there she won't talk to you. None of them will."

  "But they'll talk to you?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Okay, but I better hear something from you by tomorrow."

  "I don't know if I can set up a meeting that soon."