Angel Crawford #2: Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues

  We finally passed through the door and entered a stark white hallway with lots of closed doors. No marble back here, just regular industrial white tile that made my shoes squeak. I felt a low hum of machinery and heard the occasional distant beep. The doors all had numbers on them, but no signs or labels to indicate what went on behind them. I also noted that all but a few had specialized locks that required a fob or keycard.

  “What’s the deal with all the security?” I murmured to Derrel. “Is this a government building or something?”

  “Not anymore,” he replied, keeping his voice low as well. “Used to be a NASA computer center a couple of decades back, but NuQuesCor took over the building about five years ago. They’re private, but they work on some government contracts. From what I gather they mostly do nutrition science, sports supplements, vitamins, and the like. But even though they aren’t NASA anymore, they still likely have a fair amount of proprietary information that they want to protect. Hence the security.”

  “In other words, they’re afraid of industrial espionage, that sort of thing?”

  “Exactly.”

  I gave him a doubtful look. “What could an industrial spy want in a nutrition science lab?”

  “Well, suppose they come up with low-fat low-sugar food that doesn’t taste like complete ass,” he said. “They don’t want someone else coming in and stealing it before they can patent it, right?”

  “Ahhh, gotcha. It all comes down to money.”

  He snorted softly. “It always does.”

  We came out abruptly into another two-story area that appeared to be a lunchroom. By my guess it was in the exact middle of the building to judge by the hallway entrances on all four sides. There was no “hotel lobby” look to this, either. This was more of the plain white décor. Walls, ceiling, even the staircases to my right and left were white. The only deviations from the color scheme were the tables and chairs, all made from what looked like aircraft aluminum.

  Yellow crime scene tape had been strung across each of the hallways, and I saw a number of onlookers peering toward the stairs to my left. There, crumpled at the foot of those stairs, was the body.

  I figured he was in his late fifties or maybe early sixties. Short grey hair, somewhat aged and lined face. He was dressed in a dark blue uniform that looked to be the same as the one the other security guards wore, though I saw that he was missing a shoe. A trickle of blood tracked from his ear, which I’d come to learn meant a bad head injury. But that was easy enough for me to figure out, since there was another pool of blood beneath his head. From what little I could tell, it looked like this guy had tumbled down the stairs, landing at the bottom with enough force to crack his skull open.

  Hi there, darlin’. My name is Angel, I thought. I’ll probably eat your brain sometime soon. I hope you don’t mind.

  I held back the snicker and managed to maintain a properly serious expression. I wasn’t the smartest chick in the world, but even I knew that laughing at a death scene was pretty uncool.

  In the couple of months I’d been working for the St. Edwards Parish Coroners Office I’d probably been on more than a hundred death scenes. Some were tragic and heart wrenching—which was anything that involved kids; a few were truly bizarre—such as the guy who choked to death on a sex toy; but the large majority were simply in the category of “ho hum, another person died and I get to go pick them up.”

  It wasn’t that I was jaded. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. But my views of death had certainly come a long way from the screwed up chick I used to be. I mean, I was definitely still a chick, but I wasn’t screwed up. Well, not as screwed up. Or rather, I was screwed up in different ways.

  This death scene looked like it was going to be one of the ordinary ones. No kids, no sex toys, no batshit craziness that I could see so far.

  A gangly red-haired man wearing a jacket with SEPSO Crime Scene stenciled across the back flashed us a smile. “Almost ready for y’all,” he said, lifting the camera in his hands.

  “No rush, Sean,” Derrel replied before turning to me. “I’m going to go talk to the head of security and see if I can get this guy’s personnel info.”

  “Go wild,” I said. Derrel gave me a wink and a smile before abandoning me and heading toward an unsmiling man with a walkie-talkie in his hand, who totally looked like a head of security. Hell, he practically looked like a Secret Service agent. He wore a black suit and white shirt, with a tightly knotted grey tie that had some sort of boring and forgettable pattern. Dark brown hair was buzzed short enough for the military, and good grief, if his jaw had been any more square it could have been used as a brick. All he was missing was the little ear thingy with the squiggly wire that I always saw Secret Service agents wearing in the movies. He was deep in conversation with a slim auburn-haired woman several inches shorter than he was. If he was dressed like Secret Service, she was dressed like an uptight congresswoman—maroon suit with a fitted skirt, cream blouse, and matching cream pumps that were well within the “I am a woman to be taken seriously!” height range.

  The woman walked away before Derrel reached them. I watched as Derrel spoke to the security guy, then they both headed off down yet another hallway, I assumed to get the dead guy’s personnel file.

  Which meant I was definitely at loose ends until he got back. I made myself comfortable against the wall and took in the general bustle of activity. Detectives Abadie and Roth had their heads close together and seemed to be involved in a serious discussion, though, knowing them, it had more to do with acquisition of Saints tickets than anything to do with the body. A knot of six or seven people stood in the hallway on the other side of the room, held back by the thin, yellow authority of the crime scene tape strung across the entryway. I assumed they were employees who had stayed late. Several of them wore white lab coats, and they all had ID badges clipped somewhere visible. Most of them looked upset or simply curious, but a few looked annoyed and impatient. The woman who’d been speaking to the security guy was talking on her cell phone, and she looked downright pissed. Maybe all of this was disrupting some sort of super important project? That sort of attitude didn’t really surprise me anymore. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d been out on a highway to pick up a victim from a traffic fatality and witnessed some irate driver bitching about the fact that the road was closed off while we did our work. Some people were insensitive shits, and that’s all there was to it.

  Then again, maybe she’s fighting with a husband or boyfriend, I told myself. Or maybe her purse was stolen, and she’s calling to cancel her credit cards. Sometimes people weren’t actually insensitive shits and were simply having a bad day. See, this was me trying to be open-minded and understanding.

  I looked around for Marcus and saw him near the hallway, across from where Derrel and I had entered, in conversation with a tall and slender blond woman wearing a lab coat. I felt a frown tug at my face as I watched them. This was definitely more than him talking to a possible witness, not with how close they stood or the way she occasionally touched his arm. She looked deeply upset, though, and kept glancing toward the body.

  I didn’t have much time to wonder about it before Derrel returned from his info-gathering expedition with the security chief guy. As if on cue, the crime scene tech stepped back from the body and gave a slight wave to let Derrel and me know he was ready for us to get on with our part of this whole thing. No one else was allowed to touch the body except for coroner’s office people, yet we had to wait until the crime scene folks finished doing all the stuff they did, which meant there was usually a little dance of cooperation when it came to working death scenes.

  Derrel and I stepped forward now and carefully rolled the man over so that Sean could snap pictures of the other side of the body as well as the floor beneath him. The dead man’s grey uniform shirt had been unbuttoned in the front and sticky pads dotted his torso, left over from the EMTs—the only exception to who was allowed to touch the body, since technically it
wasn’t a “body” until it was declared dead after the EMTs ran an EKG strip. They’d already come and gone, which was often the case on death scenes. Even unbuttoned the shirt looked overly large on him, and the pants were bunched up beneath his belt. He must have lost a lot of weight recently. Maybe he’d been sick? Not that it mattered now.

  “Definitely some serious skull fractures,” Derrel said as he ran his gloved fingers over the man’s head. Pieces moved underneath the scalp in unnatural ways as he carefully probed the injuries. He glanced up at the stairs, a slight frown tugging at his mouth. “He must have tripped? Somehow he came flying down and smacked his head hard. I’m not seeing any blood anywhere else on the stairs.” He glanced up at the tech for confirmation.

  “I didn’t either,” Sean said, “but I took lots of pictures anyway. One of the lab employees who was working late here walked through the room just as the guy hit the bottom. He called nine one one immediately, but…” He shrugged.

  “But this guy was probably dead within seconds,” Derrel murmured.

  Sean took one last shot of the man’s head and then stepped back. “And that’s the last of it for me. Thanks, y’all.”

  Derrel gave me the nod, and I went ahead and spread the body bag out on the concrete. The man looked like he probably weighed around one-seventy or so—more than easy enough for me to handle when I was “well fed,” but it had been about a day and a half since I last had brains, and my strength was about what one would expect from someone my size. In other words, total weakling.

  Fortunately, Derrel was willing to help without me having to ask. He grabbed the dude under the shoulders, I grabbed him under his knees, and together we got him into the bag with a minimum of fuss. A smear of blood lingered on the tile, and I saw that it had seeped into the grout, making a stain. That’d be a bitch to get out.

  Derrel tilted his clipboard toward me so that I could jot the dead guy’s info onto the toe tag—Norman Kearny, age sixty-three—and then I snapped the rubber band around the big toe of the foot that was already shoeless. I did a quick search of his body for valuables, finding only a watch; no wallet or jewelry. After removing the watch and dropping it into a property bag, I retrieved the wayward shoe from under the stairs and stuck that in the body bag as well. It was probably stupid, but I had a feeling that if the shoes were separated they’d never get paired up again, and they’d be doomed to wander the world alone forever.

  I started to zip the bag closed and paused. I was fairly brain-hungry right now. I wasn’t ravenous or anything, and I hadn’t reached the point where I was starting to smell or skin was peeling off, but my nose for brains always got better the hungrier I was. And with this guy having a fractured skull, I should’ve been able to smell his brains quite clearly. Hell, my stomach should have been yelling at me to pry the broken pieces of skull apart to fish a handful out and cram it into my mouth right this instant.

  But as far as my nose was concerned, there was nothing of interest within the man’s head. Which is probably a good thing, I decided, since treating the guy’s head like a popcorn bowl probably wouldn’t go over well.

  Hiding a smile at the thought, I finished zipping the bag closed, then got it onto the stretcher and belted into place. I felt someone come up beside me, but I didn’t need to turn to see who it was.

  “You hungry?” Deputy Ivanov murmured.

  “Fucking starving,” I replied just as quietly. “It’s been slow at the morgue, so I’m trying to go longer between meals.” My lips twitched. “And somehow last night I burned off a whole lot of brains.” I gave him a sly, knowing look, but frowned as sudden worry struck me. “Why? Do I smell?”

  He started to shake his head, then shrugged. “Nothing anyone would notice. I ate this morning, so my senses are probably being overachievers.”

  I gave him a light elbow in the ribs. “You don’t have to lie. A good zombie boyfriend tells his zombie girlfriend if she’s starting to rot. Just like you’d better tell me if I have spinach in my teeth.”

  He grinned. “Or if your skin starts peeling off?”

  “Exactly! That’d be as bad as having my skirt caught up in my underwear!”

  He leaned close. “I made a new batch of pudding this morning.”

  I gave him a sidelong look. The pudding in question was nicknamed “foreplay”—and was heavily spiked with pureed brains. “Are you hoping I’m hungry or horny?”

  “I know you’re both,” he said with a wink.

  “So, who was the blond chick you were hugging?” I asked. I think I even managed to do so without sounding jealous. Well, not too jealous.

  Amusement lit his eyes. “That was Dr. Sofia Baldwin. I’ve known her since high school.”

  “Uh huh,” I said, giving him a mild stink eye. “And did you ever date her?”

  He grinned. “Yes, and before you get too green-eyed, she dumped me.”

  I gave a sniff. “Well, either she’s an idiot, or I have yet to discover your horrifying flaws.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Or both.”

  “Hmmf. We’ll just have to see. Now get out of my way, I have a corpse.”

  He stepped aside. “I’ll call later.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll just see if I answer.”

  His low chuckle followed me as I pushed the stretcher down the hallway.

  The security guard pulled the lobby door open for me and gave me a slight dip of his chin in greeting as I passed him. I gave him an appropriately sober nod in return. The scent of his brains swirled briefly around me, accompanied by a jab of hunger that reminded me I needed to eat soon unless I wanted to start falling apart.

  I continued on outside, shoved the stretcher into the back of the van, and then climbed into the driver’s seat. Screw this whole rationing crap. Especially if there was any chance I was starting to smell. That was one thing I was super paranoid about. The bottle of brain-chocolate smoothie in my lunchbox was only partially thawed, but I went ahead and downed what I could. By the third gulp the hunger faded away to be replaced by a lovely feeling of warm energy.

  It wasn’t until after I’d put the half-full bottle back into my lunch box and started the van that it occurred to me:

  If I’d been able to smell the live guard’s brains, why hadn’t I been able to smell the dead one’s?

  Chapter 4

  The question continued to tumble through my head as I headed to the morgue. My cell phone rang, interrupting my train of thought, but I didn’t even need to look at the caller ID to know who it was.

  “I almost didn’t answer,” I said with a smile.

  I heard Marcus laugh. “You know you can’t resist my charms.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, cop-boy,” I warned.

  “Okay, how about if I remind you to be careful.”

  I sobered. “I’m being careful. I promise. And you as well.” Be Careful had become his mantra in the past couple of weeks. Both of us were hyper-aware that the threat of Ed still hung over us.

  “I am,” he said. “But that’s not the only reason I’m calling. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the scene, but my uncle’s having a get-together tomorrow, a casual cookout sort of thing, and I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.”

  “Your uncle the zombie?” Marcus’s uncle, Pietro Ivanov, had been the one who’d turned him after Marcus contracted rabies from a raccoon. The rabies had absolutely nothing to do with the zombieism, except for the fact that, apparently, rabies was almost always fatal once symptoms began to appear. Marcus hadn’t even considered that he could be at risk and hadn’t bothered to seek treatment for the rather minor bite until it was too late. Conveniently, Pietro also owned several funeral homes, allowing him to keep them both well supplied with brains.

  “That’s the one,” he said.

  “Um, sure thing,” I said.

  “You don’t sound very excited.”

  Okay, so I was pretty transparent. Either that or he already knew me damn well. Or both.

/>   I took a deep breath. “Well, you’re asking me to meet a member of your family. And that’s kinda nervous-making, y’know?” Something else occurred to me. “And on that note, who else will be there besides your zombie uncle?”

  “Just a couple of people. A family friend or three. Don’t worry about them. This is mostly for you to finally meet Pietro.”

  “Uh huh. Yeah, nothing at all to be nervous about. We’ve only been dating a couple of weeks. Shouldn’t this wait until the three-month mark or something?”

  He chuckled. “Stop it. He’ll love you.”

  “That’s not really the point,” I replied. Okay, it was kinda the point, at least to me. I really doubted that I was the kind of girl parents always dreamed their son would bring home.

  I heard him sigh. “Look,” he said, “I know it seems like things are moving really quickly, but I think it’s important that you meet my uncle, especially with all this stuff about Ed going on. I promise, he’s not going to eat you.”

  I made a face at the phone. He didn’t get why I could possibly be utterly terrified of meeting his family, even it was only his uncle. But at this point I knew I wouldn’t be able to make him understand.

  “Okay. Fine.”

  “Great! Call me when you get off work tomorrow. We’ll drive over together.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “Liar,” he said, then hung up.

  I continued on to the morgue. The Coroner’s Office building was damn near the exact opposite of NuQuesCor. Two stories, wood and brick exterior, lots of windows, and attractive yet subtle landscaping. This facility was fairly new, and one of the main goals had been that the design not be stark and scary but as warm and comfortable as possible. Made perfect sense to me. Hell, if nice carpet and neatly trimmed shrubbery helped people deal with the loss of a loved one, I was all for it.

  The morgue portion of the building was on the far back end and wasn’t quite as warm and welcoming. The general public never saw this entrance, where the bodies went in for autopsy and came out on their way to the funeral home. Just one more step in the machine of death. Even when it was necessary for next of kin to identify a loved one, the death investigators preferred to use pictures instead of having them actually see the body. Much less traumatic for everyone involved.