Dead Mann Walking (14 page)

The morgue was in the basement, open until three—I didn't even have to worry about running into the coroner, Anthony Philbrick. A round guy with a vague goatee, he had a pretty good sense of humor. He was one of the few I used to clown around with. Not someone I wanted to see, and not because I didn't like him. While I was in jail, I heard that ever since he saw Lenore's body, he hadn't cracked a grin.

The after-hours guy was a chak. I could picture him easily, but I was damned if I could remember his name. Half his abdomen was gone, but that was always covered by his clothes, so you wouldn't notice unless he bent in a weird way. His face was intact except for a missing chunk of his chin. Nothing unusual. Maybe I remembered because he didn't wear the typical chak deadpan. There was a slight look of shock haunting his face, as if all his worldly concerns had been blown away all at once, and part of him was still going, “Oh.”

Not surprising. He got the job because he was a vet. He did four tours before an IED caught him, got brought back in the early days, when people thought ripping was a good idea. His folks did it. Unlike a lot of others who tried it and ran, they stuck by him. Even Booth didn't dare stop that hire. And I couldn't remember his name.

I knelt by the basement window. There he was, running a hose on the tiled floor, steering some gunk or other toward one of the drains. I'd been hoping to play on his sympathy as a fellow chak, but that wouldn't go over big if I didn't even know what to call him. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Maybe it would come to me.

I rapped on the window, half expecting him not to remember me, half hoping he wouldn't. But when he saw me he waved. Not knowing if that was a good thing or a bad thing, I motioned with my hands for him to open the door.

A few seconds later, his ghostly face greeted me.

“Mann,” he said. Given his natural look, I didn't know whether he was surprised to see me or not.

“Hey,” I answered.

He studied my face, avoided eye contact. “You been on leave, Detective? Haven't seen you around here in a while.”

Wow. Not only did he not realize I was dead, but either he didn't remember or no one told him I'd been arrested for killing my wife. I wasn't about to tell him.

“Something like that,” I said. “Listen . . . can you help me out? Any bodies come in last night or today? Big guy named Turgeon?”

“You mean liveblood?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “Got a John Doe, but that's it.”

“Can I see him?”

He shrugged and pointed. There were three silver tables along one of the tiled walls. One had a sheet over it. The tiles were the ugliest damn yellow I'd ever seen in my life. Reflected the fluorescents and made everything look sickly.

I stepped up and pulled the sheet back. It definitely wasn't Turgeon.

“I think you meant
Jane
Doe.”

“Right,” he said. “Jane. I should change the tag.”

He spun, put the mop down, and started looking for a marker. I took another look at the body. “Looks like a car accident, if anyone wants to know. Hit and run.”

“Uh-huh.”

I covered Jane up with the sheet and looked around. “That's it?”

“Yep. Quiet week.”

The rest of the tables were empty. The log only had one entry. Then I noticed a couple of plastic bins under the dissecting table.

“What're those?”

“Chakz,” he said absently. “From the desert.”

“From the . . .” I pulled one out. There was a label on top:
Wilson
.

“Colin Wilson, like on the television?” I felt a wave of déjà vu as I said the name, like I'd been here before and didn't like it the first time.

“I guess.”

“The other one. Frank Boyle?”

“Maybe. Sounds familiar.”

I pulled the second bin out just to make sure. Yeah, it was Frank. A little shudder ran through me, my body warning me to watch it with the emotional reactions.

“Mind if I take a look?”

He stopped looking for the marker to eyeball me. “Why? What's a liveblood care?”

“I . . . I'm curious.”

“Go ahead.”

I opened the lid. Frank Boyle's arms were stacked on top, the legs below that, the torso on the bottom. I checked his pockets, but they were already emptied.

Out of a sick curiosity, I looked at Colin Wilson, too. Not what I expected, though, really, how could I expect anything? His clothes weren't as neat. He had a tattoo on his right arm, which was beefier than I'd pictured it being.

I looked from one to the other. Pieces of a man I barely knew, pieces of another I didn't know at all, but both of them haunted me.

I hadn't noticed, but the vet had walked up beside me.

“Notice anything?” he said.

I snapped my head around. “No. Why? Do you?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I told Mr. Philbrick about it, but it's just a couple of chakz, right?”

“What did you notice?”

“You're the detective; can't you see?”

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

Kind of like a mechanic showing me something obviously wrong with my car, he knelt beside me and rummaged through the parts until he had both torsos standing in their bins side by side. He nodded at the necks.

“There.”

I stared. I'd figured they'd used a hacksaw or something, but the cuts were both razor clean. “So they used choppers.”

“Yeah, but what else?”

I looked again and shrugged. “You going to tell me?”

“Spring assist makes it too easy. Street gangs started using them on one another, so choppers were made illegal, right?”

“Right, but so're a lot of guns.”

“Guns are different. I'll show you.” He stood up, opened a tall closet, and withdrew a set of choppers. Unhinging the blades, he stepped toward me.

When he got a little too close, an image of Colin Wilson's head flashed in front of me, and I fell backward to get out of the way.

“Easy!” I said.

“Sorry,” he answered. He knelt by me and pointed to the edge of the blade. “I just wanted to show you this. See? They make all the blades a little different, like a signature, so they can track them if they're ever used on livebloods.”

His gray finger graced a part of the blade. At first I thought it was jagged, but then I realized it was a pattern. “I get the idea.”

He put the blade away, then pointed at the necks again. “Those chakz were D-capped by the same set of choppers.”

What the hell?

I stared at the marks on the necks long enough to realize he knew what he was talking about. The cuts were smooth except for some very small notches grouped right next to one another, two half-circles, a triangle, a square, and another half-circle. Same on each.

Whoever killed Frank Boyle also killed Colin Wilson, or at least had access to the same clippers. What did that mean? Maybe nothing. Ashby described two goons. If they were for rent, like rat catchers bumping off pesky chakz so you don't have to, they wouldn't think twice about leaving the same calling card. Someone else might have hired them to get rid of Colin Wilson, maybe because he was hanging out on their lawn. The Boyles hired them of get rid of their inheritance problems. The rat catchers might not even have known how much money was involved.

That fit, except for one detail: the heads. Both were missing. Why? That electric syrup hit me again, flashes of disembodied heads chatting in the desert while the coyotes gnawed at them. Hard enough to keep my obsessions and the world separate; now it felt like they were crashing into each other. I groaned and twitched my own head, trying to clear it.

The vet looked at me but didn't say anything.

Proof they'd done the job?
Here's the head; where's my cash?
Maybe in the Middle Ages. A photo or fingerprints could do that just as easily, without the gore or the bother. I couldn't see Cara Boyle going for a deal that involved eyeballing her brother's body parts unless she really hated him for some reason—and nothing Frank said about them suggested that kind of rift. If anything, he seemed confused and a little hurt that they'd been left out of the will. It didn't make any sense, but in a way that made you wonder if making sense was worth it.

“Funny, huh?” the vet said; then he started packing the pieces back into the plastic bins.

“Yeah,” I said. I pulled out a twenty and stuffed it in his pocket. “For your trouble.”

He pulled it out and handed it back. “This is my job, Detective. I'm supposed to help you guys. Glad to do it when I can. Not like I'm ever going to be a cop myself, right?”

“Yeah, but neither am . . .” I hesitated. “Look, buddy, I'm sorry, but for the life of me I can't remember your name.”

“Really?” He scrunched his face and looked around. “Tommy. I think it's Tommy.”

A
t this point, it was an equation. Two and two equals four. If Boyle's attacker and Wilson's attacker were the same, who were they, and why? For the first time I was thinking maybe Boyle's siblings
weren't
responsible. If that was the case, the victims had to have something in common, other than being headless. I had to find out what it was. Given that I didn't know squat about Wilson, and Cara wasn't about to give me an interview, I figured I'd try the Internet.

The library was a hike from police HQ, their Wi-Fi iffy to begin with. My best bet was the River Styx, a coffee/cybershop. It was on the way home, about six blocks west, right on the border of the Bones, where the Bohemian LBs were trying to gentrify. Cute name, Styx, the river separating the living and the dead. Here they pretty much meant it. Chakz were expected to stay on our side of the street, out of the Styx.

By the time I got there, it wasn't getting any cooler, but night was showing up just the same. The dress code here was more my style than the center of town. In the dark, it'd be easier for me to pass, as long as I didn't stay long enough for someone to strike up a conversation or get a good whiff of me. Not that I had any rot, but we do smell dead.

I got there just in time to see a familiar chak being shoved out the dark brown door. It was Jonesey, espresso in hand, heat sleeve and travel lid in place. They didn't throw him out without serving him, which meant Jorelle was on duty as barista. Not Superman's dad—Jorelle was an acne-faced Frenchman working his way through college. He didn't mind where his tips came from as long as the little jar got filled.

There was a bit of a bounce to Jonesey's shamble, so I figured he hadn't heard about Boyle yet. Then I noticed his other hand was full of flyers. Was he advertising for a new strip joint? I thought about asking, but the living were around. If I was going to get a seat with a computer, I had to act like I didn't know him.

He knew the score. As we passed, he whispered, “Keep to the back, near the AC vents.”

I slipped among the grain-stained browns that made up the furniture, posts, and walls, got myself a cup of joe from Jorelle, and made sure to tip too much. I almost forgot to take the coffee. I don't drink it. It was a decent crowd, easy to hide in, so I made my way toward the dark corner where they kept the older rigs. Might as well have been state-of-the-art to me.

Right before I sat, I noticed that one of those flyers Jonesey was carrying had been pasted up on the wall, next to all the ads for local bands, massages, and house sitters. It stood out because of the sloppy handwriting. I stopped in my tracks as I read it.

Join the Dead Man Walk!

Rise and keep rising! Peaceful Chak Rally in

Town Square

Listen to the dead; we are your brothers, your sisters, your mothers, your fathers!

 

A rally. So the crazy bastard was running with it. I should find him, talk some sense into him. I looked toward the door, but he was gone. By the time I turned back, someone had already torn down the poster. Maybe that problem, at least, would take care of itself, and I had other worries.

The screen on the ancient computer flickered like the lights in a horror-film hallway. I was never much for bells and whistles, but a mouse would have been nice. A touch pad is tough if you don't have proper hand-eye coordination. But the connection was clean. I logged in with my debit card fast as you please, and winced at the balance. I hadn't deposited any of Turgeon's cash yet, and only had enough in my account to pay for fifteen minutes.

I was about to do a search on Wilson when I got a twinge. Not the muscle kind, but the what-am-I-missing kind. Aside from the usual tingles and shakes, every now and then I get this particularly annoying sensation, like an itchy spot in the flow of consciousness that I can't scratch because my hands are outside my skull.

I was forgetting something. I
knew
I was forgetting something, something I should check on besides Wilson and Boyle. It was something else. Someone from Bedtown, the hakker attack? No. I kept getting an image of a baby covered in scrambled eggs. Great.

I checked the news pages, hoping to jog my memory. Everyone had an article on the poor dead hakkers. An editorial suggested it should be legalized as a sport, so safety regulations could be standardized.

Nothing rang a bell, so I tried Frank Boyle. Other than today's reports on the body, there wasn't much about his afterlife. Never is. Even the Web, for all its porn and piano-playing cats, doesn't care much about chakz. It wasn't until I dug deeper, moved back a few years to when he was among the living, that I got some decent hits.

Frank Fulton-Boyle had been an architect, and pretty involved in the community. No shocker, given what I saw at Bedland. Even zombies are creatures of habit. The tall guy I'd seen next to him in the photo was Kendrick Boyle-Fulton. I guess they did the name-swap thing, like John Lennon Ono and Yoko Ono Lennon. I didn't find anything about the marital disputes Boyle mentioned, but I'd need a police database for that. Not likely, given my loving relationship with Booth.