by E. A. Copen
I pulled the original paper out of the fax machine and trudged back to my office. With or without help, I still had to solve this case and do it quickly. I didn’t have any more time to sit in conference rooms making analogies. I had to hit the streets and start getting answers. I needed to know what I was hunting.
There were a few people in Concho County who could help. Sal was a healer and a helper by nature, bound by the healer’s oath not to dabble in the dark arts. He and Chanter had a lot of combined knowledge concerning the world of spirits and supernatural bad things. But Chanter’s cancer had made him so weak I didn’t want to burden him with work for my sake.
Mara could help, I thought, and then dismissed the thought. Mara was a spirit sensitive, able to let spirits possess and speak through her. If there was some kind of rogue spirit running around, killing things, I didn’t want her on its radar. While her abilities were useful, they didn’t translate to fieldwork. She didn’t have the chops yet to defend herself from anything nasty. I’d seen her get a nosebleed from trying to read auras on her own.
Kim has to be involved somehow. It did seem odd she’d pulled all her staff from the club the night of the attack. It was suspicious, if nothing else. And, as a co-owner of the club, she’d had opportunity. The only thing I didn’t see her having was motive. Unless it has something to do with the debt she’s been paying off. Desperate people, desperate things and all that.
I dropped the paper on my desk and checked the clock on my cell phone. It was edging toward midday. Daytime would be when any vampire was at their weakest and the safest time to challenge one. Still, I’d have to be careful with my questioning now since her dad had endorsed Tindall for sheriff. I didn’t want him filing a complaint with the department.
After checking my files for an address and printing out a set of directions, I picked up my desk phone and dialed the number I had on file for Kim Kelley. A pleasant, masculine voice answered the phone. “Kelley residence. How may I direct your call?”
“This is Special Agent Judah Black with BSI,” I said. “I’m looking into the murders at Aisling, and I was hoping to arrange a time to meet with the co-owner, Kim Kelley.”
“I’m sorry,” replied the man. “Mistress Kelley’s schedule is full this afternoon.”
“Clear it,” I demanded. “Or I can get a subpoena, and we can do this downtown after I call the press.”
There was a brief pause on the other end. “Hold, please,” said the male secretary, and there was a click. Elevator music came over the line. I waited, tapping my fingers on the top of my desk. After a moment, he came back on. “Mistress Kelley is more than happy to meet with you over lunch, Agent Black. Is one o’clock too late?”
I looked back at the clock. I had two hours to kill, and I hadn’t been out to the morgue yet. If traffic was with me, I could make that time without any trouble. “One is fine.”
“She’d like to know if you’d like her to send a car or if you’ll be providing your own transportation?”
“I can drive there just fine, provided all the addresses in her file are up to date.”
“Of course. We’ll be expecting you.”
I hung up without saying goodbye and reached for my keys, accidentally knocking them off the corner of my desk. With a sigh, I bent over to pick them up, pausing as my eyes fell on the lock of the top drawer. There was more than one way to get information out of the evidence in there. If I knew anything about vampires, I knew they prided themselves on being well informed. And it was Marcus Kelley who had supposedly moved several roadblocks out of my way in my quest to take down LeDuc. There was no reason to assume his daughter wouldn’t help as well. After all, everyone did say nothing happened in Concho County without going through the Kelleys first.
On a whim, I picked up the keys, unlocked the drawer, retrieved the evidence baggie, and thrust it into my purse before heading out the door.
To call the privately owned, for-profit Eden Memorial Medical Facility a hospital would be an understatement. Ten stories high and taking up a whole city block, the place was attached to one of the most up and coming research hospitals in the nation. It was the only hospital I knew of equipped to deal with the unique emergency needs of supernaturals, which meant it enjoyed a whole slew of extra government grants. It was also the only morgue in the tri-county area.
I eased my old car into the parking garage and drove up six dark and dusty levels before I found any parking. Then, I took the garage elevator into the hospital proper. The reception floor was covered in modern circles of pastel tile breaking up the sea of blue between the smiling receptionist at the desk labeled Welcome Center and me.
“Howdy, there,” said the blonde. “Can I direct you somewhere?”
Her smile didn’t crack in the least when I showed her my badge and asked for the morgue.
“Sure thing, sweetie. You’re going to follow the green tiles to elevator B. That’ll take you to corridor G, where you’ll need to follow the orange path to the service elevator. You’ll want to ride that down to the sub-basement. That’s level BB. You can follow the signs from there.”
I stared at her. Then, I looked around at the colored circles on the floor, trying to find a string of green ones and coming up empty. “Say what now?”
I wound up with a map and got turned around three times before I finally found the damn service elevator. Hospitals should never be bigger than shopping malls.
I’d rather be in a graveyard than a morgue any day of the week. Graveyards are peaceful. Even though I knew I was walking around on top of decay, there was comfort in knowing death was feeding life. Birds chirped. Wind blew. Somewhere off in the distance, someone was mowing grass or playing a stereo. When walking through a graveyard, I could maintain the illusion of life even though I was very much aware of death.
Not so in a morgue. Morgues are dark, cramped little places with low ceilings. More often than not, they’re in basements or sub-basements where the ambient air is ten to fifteen degrees cooler. The air smells rotten but sweet with a chemical-clean stink underneath. Aside from the sound of my footsteps echoing across the linoleum floor once I stepped out of the elevator and through the swinging doors into the morgue proper, the only sound was coming from the large refrigerator units on either wall. They looked like giant stainless-steel filing cabinets. Lives here were reduced to pathologies, weights, and measures. Mortuaries didn’t look at people. They looked at bodies.
“Oh, I was wondering when I’d see you again.”
I turned my head and saw the ME from the crime scene sitting at a desk in the corner bent over a computer.
“Doctor Kalma, right?” I asked, hoping I got the name right.
“That’s me.”
I walked casually over to her desk, trying to ignore the body on the stainless-steel table. She’d placed a sheet over it, but it didn’t hide the fact that it wasn’t Jane Doe. This body was much too small. It was child-sized. I tried hard not to think about the other body while we spoke. “I was wondering what you had on Jane Doe. Did she ever freeze solid?”
Doctor Kalma got up from her desk and walked over to the refrigerated cabinet, searching for Jane’s drawer. “The reaction finally stopped, evening out around thirty degrees, but only after I got her here. I was just about to get started on that one. I know you guys are in a hurry and this is a high-profile case, but I’m just swamped at the moment.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Ah, here it is.”
She opened the drawer, slid over a gurney, and yanked on the metal tray holding the body, heaving to get it onto the gurney. I offered to help but she waved me away, preferring to fight with Jane’s weight. Once on the gurney, she wheeled the whole thing over to the secondary table, lifted the tray and placed it on the morgue table. Finished, she let out a deep breath and rested her hands on either side of the table. “I don’t remember her being so heavy the first time. Give me a minute.”
“Take your time.”
“Any leads?”
I shrugged and glanced over at the other body for just a moment before forcing my eyes away. “Not really. Not anything solid yet, anyway.”
Doctor Kalma nodded, unzipped the body bag, and started pulling it away. Jane looked even worse now. Her face and fingers were blue and the rest of her was a waxy off-white. At the sight of her, all the images from the crime scene came back and I thought I would throw up again.
The ME was busy cutting off Jane’s clothes and chatting into one of those medical recording devices, while I tried to think of a good way to excuse myself. She worked the scissors through the fabric of the corset with no trouble, carefully avoiding so much as bumping the hole in Jane’s chest. When she had the fabric split in two, the stiff garment fell open and I felt a whole new wave of nausea at what I saw.
At the scene, both the doc and I had observed the black, spidery veins resting just under the surface of her skin. They’d extended a few inches away from the hole in Jane’s chest. Now, they went all the way from her chest to under her arms, up into her neck and down below her navel.
“What the hell?” muttered the doctor.
I leaned in closer, my nausea replaced by curiosity. “How is it possible that it spread if she’s dead? And what is it?”
A small sound escaped from Jane’s mouth, and I jumped back with a curse.
Doctor Kalma shrugged it off. “Happens all the time. Trapped air gets dislodged sometimes when you’re moving bodies around. Nothing to be alarmed at.”
“What about that?” I swallowed and pointed to Jane’s eyes as they slid open, the pupils dilated behind a cloudy white haze.
Before the doctor could respond, Jane started moving her jaw. A strange, sucking groan sound came out of her mouth. She turned her head and stared straight at me. These weren’t the muscle spasms of rigor mortis. No, this was an intentional and deliberate act.
In a flash of movement, Jane sat up and lunged for me. I dove out of the way and into a table holding surgical instruments. The scalpels and bone saws clattered to the floor around me as I raised an arm to defend myself. Jane barreled into me, grabbing at my arm with her fingers. And damn were her fingers cold. I know dead people aren’t supposed to be warm, but touching them doesn’t normally feel like grabbing liquid nitrogen. Everywhere she touched immediately prickled and went numb. Jane sucked the warmth out of the air around her. Even though I was fighting, my teeth were chattering.
Jane clicked her teeth and made a high-pitched sucking screech. My fingers swept across the floor, searching for something, anything I could use as a weapon, and I came up with…a tiny pair of forceps. Great. Just my luck. I didn’t have time to grab for another weapon, though, as Jane jumped on top of me, jaws snapping toward my face. I managed to hold her back, but only barely. For a dead girl, she sure was strong.
“A little help here!” I called to the doc who stood, wide-eyed, pressed against the refrigerated drawers. That snapped her out of it but, instead of running to my aid, she made a panicked rush for her desk. I was on my own. “Dammit,” I grunted, holding the girl back with my hands on her shoulders. “Why’s it always me who has to put down the scary monster?”
I tried to swing the end of the forceps at her eye and grazed her cheek instead, slashing her face open. She didn’t even notice. All I managed to do was to lose ground in keeping her from biting my face off. She was so close I could feel the air moving when she snapped her teeth at me. Worse, my palms had gone numb and my hands were slipping. In mere moments, Jane was going to sink her undead teeth right into my face. I turned my head, offering up my good side, and awaited the inevitable.
A deafening boom echoed through the morgue. My head was suddenly wet and covered in chunks. Jane’s body went limp against my hands. I cracked open an eye to see Doctor Kalma pointing a .40 caliber revolver at me through a hole in Jane Doe’s head.
Once the shock wore off, I pushed the body aside and scrambled up from the floor. The doctor came to stand beside me, her gun still trained on Jane Doe. “Were you bit?” she asked me.
I glared at her. Real zombies are made with magick, not by being bitten or scratched. Then again, whatever Jane Doe had been didn’t look or act like any zombie I’d ever seen.
“No,” I answered and wiped off my face. “Nice shootin’, doc.”
“Holy shit,” she breathed and lowered the gun. She looked at me as if I could offer her an explanation. “You think I should double-tap it? You know…just in case?”
I handed her the forceps and picked a big red chunk off of my shirt. Then I put a hand on her shoulder and, in my best Bones McCoy voice, I said, “It’s dead, Jim.” Doctor Kalma turned and gave me a confused stare, so I elaborated. “No, I think you’re good.”
She nodded and lowered the gun. “Now, what?”
I looked back at the body lying limp on the floor. The struggle had tainted anything useful we could have gotten from the autopsy. Any prints or trace evidence was ruined, and the cause of death—or a second, more final death, as it were—was obvious. I mean, zombie or not, Jane wasn’t living without a heart. The best lead we had for identifying her would come from my next stop, which was lucky since the gunshot had torn apart her face and jaw. Even if we did identify her, we were going to have a hard time explaining to the family why she had a posthumous gunshot wound to the head. As far as evidence for the investigation went, Jane’s body was useless, as any good defense lawyer would poke holes in any evidence from the body.
But it wasn’t a total loss. There was one person in particular who could get me something useful out of Jane’s body.
I pulled out my cell and scrolled through my contacts. “Think you can get her back on the table?”
The doc nodded slowly and then frowned as she looked down at the mess on the floor. “But I’m not ready to put my hands anywhere near that again. Why?”
“Because it just so happens I know someone who’s an expert on zombies.”
Chapter Nine
Doctor Eugene Ramis had been introduced to me as the world’s most foremost expert in the field science of weird dead things. Based on my experience with the afro-sporting stick of a white guy, it was true. The man was a medical genius. More importantly, Doc was the keeper of about half a dozen zombies.
He pulled up behind the service exit of the morgue in his RV and then inched forward so the solar panels on it were in direct sunlight. Doctor Kalma stood beside me, tapping her foot. She arched a chiseled eyebrow as she read one of Doc’s bumper stickers out loud. “I brake for zombies?”
“He’s an expert,” I assured her.
The passenger side RV door snapped open, and Doc all but fell out. Hair and eyes wild, he stumbled over to me, grabbed me by the shirt and said, “Tell me you didn’t kill her!”
“She was about to eat my face,” I answered, picking his fingers off of me. “I thought I made that clear when I called.”
He snapped his head back and forth. “The only two words I heard before I was out the door were zombie and stripper.” Doctor Kalma cleared her throat. He looked at her, blinked once, and then explained, “If she’s a stripper, she can dance. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a decent dancer.”
“Sorry, Doc.”
He sucked in a deep breath and his shoulders slumped. “I suppose it can’t be helped. You said something about black veins?”
“Thought you said all you heard was zombie stripper before you dropped the phone and ran?” Doctor Kalma pointed out.
“Yes, well…” He pushed his thick, black-rimmed glasses up his nose. “I may have listened a little further.”
I gestured to the door behind me. The three of us went back into the morgue, Doctor Kalma leading the way and me bringing up the rear. In the time it took Doc to get there, Doctor Kalma and I had cleaned up the mess. And by that, I mean I let the trained professional handle all the body parts while I changed into a spare set of nursing scrubs and washed my face and arms off in a sink. Jane’s body was now
the only one out, displayed on a table. Doc stopped to wash his hands in the same sink I’d used before slapping on a pair of extra-large rubber gloves and a facial mask. Then, he went over to the table.
“Oh, rats.”
I leaned in closer, thinking he’d noticed something on the body I had missed. “What?”
“I know her.”
“What?” I uncrossed my arms.
“Oh, Annie…” he shook his head. “Annie Cox. At least, that’s how she billed herself at Aisling.”
My jaw was practically on the floor. “I didn’t figure you for the clubbing type, Doc.”
“I make house calls,” he explained quickly after clearing his throat. “Few doctors do these days, just like not so many take cash. I only know her as a patient.”
“What were you treating her for?”
Doc’s mouth opened and closed. Then, he lifted his chin a little. “If I don’t tell you, you’ll get a warrant, won’t you?”
I crossed my arms. “Are you going to make me, Doc?”
He turned back to the body, a deep frown set on his face. “Anxiety and depression. She’d been having anxiety attacks. For a public performer, that kind of thing can be debilitating.”
“What about the black veins?” I asked, pointing to them. “Ever seen those before?”
Doc poked at them with a gloved finger. My stomach turned as the black veins rolled under the surface of Annie’s skin. “No,” he said, his voice taking on a curious air. “Never. I’d like to draw some samples and take them back to the lab for some tests.”
“Poke, prod, and sample away,” I said, glancing down at my watch. “I’m late for a very important date. Keep me in the loop?”
Doc gave a grunt in reply. He was already absorbed in poking at his new project. Oy, scientists. And I thought vampires were creepy.