I made my way carefully over the uneven ground, breathing a silent sigh of relief when I saw, through the group of people, the lower half of a body lying facedown. Definitely an adult. Damn good. I didn’t even mind that I’d have to carry him over all that ground.
Then the people moved, and I saw why the upper ranks were at the scene.
Oh, shiiiiiiit.
I moved forward toward the headless body, anger and bile filling my gut—at Zeke for not finding another way to control his hunger, and at Kang for his callous acceptance that a zombie could go rogue like this. I knew I was being pretty smug and sanctimonious, especially considering I had a fairly reliable source of brains, but even though the job had been handed to me I still worked my ass off and did what I had to do to keep it. Not like Zeke, who’d stolen from goddamn bodies. What the hell had he been thinking? Why would anyone whose existence depended on a job choose to fuck it up like that?
I shook my head. Yeah, I was fully aware of the irony of my train of thoughts. Maybe I was beginning to learn a thing or two.
“Less for you to carry again, Angel.”
I glanced up to see Detective Roth giving me a sour smile. “Yeah, but this whole losing your head thing is getting old,” I replied.
“Tell me about it.” He ran a hand through his bristly hair and grimaced.
I let my gaze sweep the surroundings. “Who found the body?”
His grimace deepened. “A couple of kids taking a shortcut to their bus stop. High school age, but still. . . .”
“That’ll give ‘em nightmares,” I said with a shudder.
“No shit.” Ben rubbed his eyes. “Fuck. And three headless bodies means we mostly likely have a serial killer, which means the rank is going nuts right now.”
I suddenly felt for him. All I had to do was pick up the body and go. He’d probably be out here all day and all night, and then likely spend a few more hours talking to everyone who lived around here in an effort to scare up any possible clue.
Maybe I could help point him in the direction of Zeke as a suspect. I had no idea how I could do that, but I needed to figure out a way, and fast. Five people were dead—that I knew of—and I had every reason to believe that there’d be more. It wasn’t as if Zeke was going to suddenly wake up one day and decide he didn’t want to eat brains any more. He could have come by the morgue at any time instead of stooping to murder.
And there was no way I could stop him on my own. But can the cops? I wondered. A shiver traced its way down my spine. Even if they found him and arrested him . . . what then? They wouldn’t be feeding him what he needed in jail. He’d rot, and get hungry, and. . . .
“You ready to turn him over?”
I pulled myself out of the spiral of my thoughts to see Derrel and the crime scene tech looking at me expectantly.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Sorry.” Tugging on the gloves, I crouched by the body, trying to position myself away from the messy stump of the neck. I didn’t want blood or anything else gross that might come out of there splorting on me. I took hold of the victim’s hip and shoulder and carefully rolled, then allowed the body to settle onto its back.
Oh Shit. Fuck. Damn.
I straightened, blood pounding in my ears as all of my carefully constructed theories came crashing down around me. White male, dressed in worn and dirty jeans and a faded New Orleans Saints T-shirt that celebrated the fact that they’d been divisions champs around a decade or so ago. Barefoot with mud on his feet and staining the bottom couple of inches of his jeans.
But I was only barely aware of those details. My attention was completely fixed on the Florida-shaped stain on the front of the shirt. Tomato and brain soup.
The crime scene tech leaned in close to photograph the front of the body. Each snap of the flash seemed to slice through me, jarring my thoughts into more disorder. The buzz of conversation between Derrel and the detectives wrapped around me. They would need to get fingerprints. The dog was searching the area for the head. They were considering calling out the dive team to search through the retention pond.
“I know who he is,” I blurted. The detectives and Derrel pivoted to me in unison as if it had been choreographed. If I hadn’t been so off-kilter I’d have probably laughed.
“Seriously?” Detective Abadie said, expression betraying nothing but doubt and impatience that I was wasting their time. “Recognize his face?” The skin around his eyes tightened as he gestured toward the body,
The feeling of being off-kilter suddenly vanished, and I straightened. Maybe a few weeks ago I’d have slunk back and mumbled an apology for wasting their time. But not this time. Now I was annoyed.
“Yeah, seriously,” I shot back. “And I don’t have to recognize his face. I ran into this guy a couple of days ago, and he was wearing the same damn clothes. But, y’know, if you want to be a cocky asstard know-it-all, that’s fine. Don’t let me waste your time.” I crossed my arms defiantly across my chest in emphasis.
I heard a low chuckle that I was pretty sure came from Derrel, but I was too busy giving Mike a death glare to confirm it.
Roth let out a bark of laughter. “Hey, Mike, she knows you pretty well!” He gave me an encouraging smile. “Miz Angel, would you please be so kind as to share any info you have with us?”
I dropped my arms and gave the burly detective a sweet smile. “Why, sugar, I’d be delighted,” I drawled. “This guy is Zeke Lyons. He used to work at Billings Funeral Home until he was fired a few weeks back for stealing jewelry off bodies. And I recognize his clothing because he came by the morgue the other day and was hassling me.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Roth asked.
“One hundred percent? No,” I said. “But I’ll go with at least ninety-nine percent sure. I recognize the stain on his shirt.” No sense explaining why I’d remember a thing like that.
“Ah, my Angel of Death comes through for me yet again,” Derrel said with a grin as he scribbled on his pad. “You are a goddess.”
Roth gave an emphatic nod. “We’ll verify with prints, but that gives us a big head start.” His lips twitched. “So to speak,” he added. Then he gave me a wink right before elbowing his partner. “C’mon, Mike, what do you say?”
Abadie gave a sour sigh. “I’m sorry I doubted you,” he said in the kind of monotone used by six-year-olds when forced to give an apology. “Thank you for saving us from tedious legwork.”
The two turned away to report this information to their superiors, and Derrel sidled up to me, amusement dancing in his eyes.
“My god, Angel,” he said in a low voice. “It was worth getting up early for that alone.” At my perplexed look he grinned. “I’ve been waiting for an excuse to call Mike a cocky asstard for ages. I loved it.”
I laughed weakly. “I didn’t exactly plan it. But sometimes it burns me the way they. . . .” I couldn’t figure out how to say what I wanted to say.
“The way they dismiss you because you’re not one of them? And in your case it doesn’t help that you’re a convicted felon, which in the eyes of idiots like Mike, puts you several levels below him.”
I flushed at the reminder of my history, and Derrel lightly thwapped me on the head with his pen. “Stop it. You’re a smart chick. The people who matter have noticed that fact. Mike’s a dick. Besides,” he jerked his head toward the body on the ground, “you saved me a bunch of work. I’m pretty cool with that.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, but I was saved by a small commotion from the south end of the pond. I looked over to see a couple of uniformed deputies along with a woman with a dog on a leash—all looking fairly pleased about something. I recognized the woman as the same dog handler who’d been at the other headless body crime scene: Marianne, Ed’s girlfriend.
“I’ll be right back, Angel,” Derrel said. “Unless you need help getting him into the bag?”
I shook my head. “I can handle this one.” I’d learned the trick of rolling bodies into bags my first week. I wouldn’t even need to use my zombie super strength.
He gave me a parting wink, then headed in the direction of the detectives. I crouched and began to wrap the stump of Zeke’s neck in the sheet. So if Zeke isn’t the rogue, who is? I wondered in uneasy frustration. Or maybe I was wrong about the whole thing. Kang said there weren’t very many zombies, so what were the chances of two zombies being hard up for brains in the same area? Then again, I had no idea what Kang meant by “not many.” Could be five, could be a hundred.
I opened the body bag, smoothly rolled the body into it, snapped the toe tag onto the right foot. Probably not a hundred, I decided. There’s no way enough people could die to support that many. I tried to do some mental math in an attempt to figure out how many zombies could live on the number of people who died in St. Edwards Parish, but gave up as soon as I realized I would need to do division in my head.
Pulling the zipper closed, I glanced up in time to see Marianne headed my way, pulled along by a very eager dog.
“You must be Angel,” the petite woman said breathlessly as the dog stopped in front of me. “Ed and Marcus have told me about you. So nice to finally meet you!”
I straightened and gave her a smile. “Hi, yeah, I’m Angel. You’re Marianne, right?”
She bobbed her head in a yes, then dipped her chin toward the dog who was sitting and staring at me intently. “And this here is Kudzu.” She frowned at the dog, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, you silly mutt. She’s not a corpse.”
I could feel the blood drain from my face, but thankfully Marianne kept right on talking and didn’t seem to notice. “She’s a cadaver dog, see? And she’s smelling the body you have in the bag, and probably your clothes as well since you wear them in the morgue, right?” I nodded but she kept on going. Damn good thing since I wasn’t quite sure if I’d recovered the ability to speak yet. “We came out to see if we could find this poor guy’s head, but instead we stumbled across a little campsite where he’s probably been living.” She shook her head. “What an awful, awful thing.” She tugged at the leash and the dog obediently returned to her side.