Angel Crawford #2: Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues (11 page)

“Since when are you the expert on relationships?” he said. He clamped his lips shut and shook his head. “Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry—”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” I replied, fumbling for the latch on the truck door. “Fuck you, Marcus. Just because my last relationship was shit doesn’t mean I don’t know what a good one should be like. I don’t deserve this.” I managed to get the door open and practically slid out of the truck. I started toward my car, but a second later Marcus was out of the truck and in front of me.

“Angel, I’m sorry. Don’t go like this.”

“Get out of my way, Marcus.”

He lifted his hands but didn’t step aside just yet. “Angel, please. I shouldn’t have brought your ex up. It was shitty of me. Now please, come on inside.”

“I need to go home and check on my dad,” I said, then took a deep breath. “Look, I’ve had a really horrible couple of days. I don’t want to fight or anything anymore. Please let me go home, okay?”

He sighed and stepped out of my way. I started to move past him, then paused and quickly kissed him on the cheek. “I like you. I do. But I want you to like me too, and I’m not sure you even know who I am.”

“Angel—”

“We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” I said, cutting him off.

His eyes were shadowed as he nodded. He turned away and headed to his front door while I continued to my car. As I drove off, I checked my rear view mirror and saw that he was watching me leave. But for the first time in ages I didn’t feel shitty or guilty about leaving someone I cared about behind.

Now if I only knew what that meant about me.

Dad wasn’t home when I got there, and I sure as hell wasn’t in the mood to go looking for him. I
was
in the mood to go straight to bed and try and forget the past couple of days and, shockingly, I actually fell dead asleep about three seconds after I climbed under the covers.

I woke up sometime after nine in the morning, and even though I hadn’t managed to develop amnesia to block out the last forty-eight hours, at least I didn’t feel like hammered shit. After checking the driveway to make sure that my dad had come home at some point during the night, I took a quick shower, pulled on my work clothes and a jacket, then slipped out and headed on in to work. I stopped at an XpressMart for a fine, nutritious breakfast of Coke and a cherry Hubig Pie—because every morning should start with deep-fried pastry. But while I was on my way out, I paused to take a closer look at the newspapers for sale by the door. Once again there
was an article on the front page about the body theft, and a quick skim confirmed that I was still being painted as a completely worthless human being who was clearly far too irresponsible to be trusted with such an important job, and why hadn’t the coroner fired me already?

I didn’t purchase the paper. I had no desire to read any more of it. I continued out to my car and, as I drove, did my best to soothe my soul with the classic goodness of a Hubig Pie.

My phone beeped with a text message when I was less than a mile from the office. Anxiety slashed through me, and for an instant I was absolutely certain that I’d been fired and this was the office letting me know I didn’t need to bother coming in today.

But no, it was just Derrel texting me an address and asking me to hurry and get the van. Stupid relief swam through me.
They wouldn’t fire me with a text message
, I scolded myself. At least I hoped not.

I made short work of exchanging my car for the van and continued to the address of the death scene as quickly as I could without breaking any laws. The address seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t immediately place why. The most logical reason was that I’d picked up another dead body somewhere around there, but even so, there was something about this particular subdivision that nagged at me. At any rate, it distracted me from thinking about my growing “fame.”

The cars lined up along the street told me that this was a crime scene—and not just a “might possibly be one” either. Two crime scene vans, three marked police cars, and at least that many unmarked…yeah, this was something big.

Derrel was waiting for me as I got out of the van. “Murder?” I asked him as I walked to the back and pulled the doors open.

“Yeah,” he said, his tone oddly subdued.

I paused with my hand on the stretcher. Derrel didn’t get upset easily. Or rather, he didn’t show it very often. “Is it a kid?” I asked. “Please tell me it’s not a kid.”

“No.” Pain filled his eyes. “No, it’s Marianne.”

It took me a few seconds for my brain to click into gear and figure out who the heck Marianne was, but when the sound of the barking dog finally penetrated…

“Oh, god,” I breathed, all thoughts of the stupid newspaper article flying out of my head. Marianne, who ran the cadaver search dog whenever we needed help finding a body. Marianne, girlfriend of Ed Quinn. He’d used that dog’s ability to help him locate the zombies that he would later hunt down and kill. That’s why the address had seemed familiar. I knew this neighborhood because one of Ed’s victims had been found only a couple of streets away.

“How?” I breathed. “Do they think it was Ed?”

Grief had carved furrows into Derrel’s face, and I realized that he’d quite possibly been working with Marianne for as long as he’d been an investigator. “He’s the primary suspect,” he said, voice gravelly. “Though there aren’t any witnesses at this time.” He exhaled. “Anyway, I just wanted to prepare you. I know that you and Marcus and Ed had all been friends for a while before…”

I nodded, not feeling a need to finish his sentence,
before Ed inexplicably disappeared during a hunting trip with his best friend, Marcus.
It hadn’t been at all inexplicable to me, mostly because I’d been the one who’d told
him that if he didn’t run I would kill him and eat him. Not necessarily in that order. To my credit, this had been after he’d shot me and Marcus with the intent of then chopping our heads off. I wasn’t
that
much of a meanie pants.

But why would he come back and kill Marianne?
I pulled the stretcher out and maneuvered it up to the house, past the unusually somber paramedics and cops. Marianne might not have been a cop or EMT, but she’d worked with them for long enough that she was definitely considered one of them. In fact, the law enforcement and rescue community had rallied around her in a touching and awesome display of support after Ed’s shocking flight.

She was lying on her back in the middle of her living room, arms and legs splayed as if she’d tripped and fallen backward. Her eyes were open, and her face seemed calm, but a thin line of blood tracked from the bullet hole almost perfectly centered in her forehead. I swept a glance around the room, oddly puzzled. The house was neat and clean, comfortably furnished with a few knick-knacks on high shelves. An upright piano rested against one wall. A vase on a side table was filled with flowers. Nothing seemed out of place. No sign of struggle. Then again, if it had been Ed, she’d have let him in, right? But why would he kill her?

Detective Abadie had his head down while he made notes in a steno pad. He glanced up as I entered and gave me a slight nod—a far cry from his usual lip curl coupled with mild disdain.

Sean and another crime scene tech were still taking pictures of the body, so I positioned myself by the wall near Abadie.

“Do you think Ed did it?” I asked him under my breath.

His mouth tightened. “We have no suspects at this time,” was his gruff reply, but the grim set of his eyes told me all I needed to know.

I swallowed. “Does Marcus know?”

Abadie gave a short nod. “He’s on his way, though he won’t be allowed behind the tape.” That made sense considering how close he and Ed had been. Abadie gave me a sudden narrow-eyed look as if wondering if it was wise to have me picking up the body since I knew both the victim and Ed. But then he must have realized that pretty much everyone here knew them, so tossing me out would be pointless.

The crime scene techs finished their pictures. Derrel and I moved forward together as if we’d choreographed it and carefully turned Marianne over so that Sean could photograph the back of her head and the other side of her body. Derrel slipped paper bags over Marianne’s hands and taped them around her wrists with surgical tape, just in case she had any evidence on her hands or under her nails that could lead to a suspect. Finally we picked her up and placed her in the body bag. I zipped it closed, clasped the buckles of the straps that held the bag in place, and clenched my jaw against a wave of utter helplessness. Why her? Why the hell would anyone want to kill Marianne?

I began to wheel the stretcher out when Abadie stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Angel…”

I gave him a questioning look.

“I don’t know if you read the newspaper,” he said, “but—”

“I saw it,” I said with a sour twist of my mouth.

“It’s bullshit. Try not to let it get to you too badly. They’re only writing crap like that because it’s election season, and they’re trying to stir up some controversy.”

I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it. Then tried again. “I thought you hated me.”

His lip curled with mild disdain. “I don’t
hate
you. I just don’t like you. Big difference. But I do hate assholes, and that reporter is an asshole. Airing your shit in the paper like that is bullshit.”

I fought for a smile, but it wasn’t happening, so I settled for a nod. “Thanks.” And then, because I had absolutely no idea how the hell else to respond to all that, I simply nodded again and continued on out with the stretcher.

Marcus pulled up as I reached the van. I yanked the back doors open and slid the stretcher in, then turned to him as he leaped out of his car and jogged up to me, agony written across his features. “Angel, it is true? Is Marianne…?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s her. I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else I could say that could get rid of the grief on his face. And I didn’t know how much was for Marianne or for the thought that Ed had done this.

He gave a shuddering sigh and sank to sit on the curb, burying his head in his hands. “God damn Ed,” he said hoarsely. “I swear I’ll kill him if I ever see him again. She didn’t deserve this.”

I slowly closed the van doors, then leaned back against them. “Why do you think it was Ed?”

He lifted his head, gave me a perplexed look. “What are you talking about? Angel, who the hell else could it have been? We know Ed went off the deep end.”

I frowned but didn’t argue the point. Marcus wasn’t in any state of mind to listen to anything right now. But for some reason I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Ed had “gone off the deep end,” at least not to such a degree that he would start killing non-zombies. And a single gunshot to the head? If he’d killed her because he was crazy, wouldn’t it have been a lot more violent? Wouldn’t there have been a fight, or struggle, or something?

But those arguments could be raised another time when the emotional wound wasn’t quite so raw. For now I kept my mouth shut, sat down on the curb beside him, and put my arms around him while he wept on my shoulder.

The autopsy of Marianne was brutal. Not the actual procedure, but the general mood of the room. There was none of the usual joking or conversation that usually helped lighten the atmosphere. The humor that we used as a self-defense against the horror of what we had to do was gone. In some ways it was worse than when we had a kid come through.

Also, we had several observers, which further dampened the mood. Detective Abadie was present since it was his case, but Captain Pierson was also there, silently watching from a discreet distance away while Sean, the crime scene tech, took numerous pictures.

I’d been working with Dr. Leblanc, the parish forensic pathologist, for about two months now, and I prided myself on the fact that I was getting to the point where I could almost anticipate his needs, like a well-trained surgeon’s assistant, or some shit like that. Not that I knew
crap about surgery—only what I’d seen on TV—but in those shows there was always some nurse or whatever standing right beside the doctor while he snapped out things like, “clamp!” or “scalpel!” Of course, considering how much the reality of police work and death investigation varied from what I’d seen on TV, there was every chance that the medical shows I watched were just as inaccurate.

I didn’t hand instruments to him or anything, but I knew his routine—which helped keep me from dropping things or doing anything equally idiotic with people watching.

“Why are they all here?” I murmured to Dr. Leblanc at one point.

He breathed a soft sigh. “It’s going to be rather high profile since the number one suspect is her boyfriend—”

“—Who also happens to be the number one suspect in the beheading murders,” I finished for him.

He nodded gravely and bent back to his examination. Together we removed the bags from Marianne’s hands and allowed Sean to take detailed pictures of them. I didn’t see any sign that she’d clawed or scratched anyone, but Dr. Leblanc still took scrapings from beneath the nails, and then clipped the nails and collected them in a small paper envelope. I assumed it would be sent to the DNA lab to be compared to whatever suspect they came up with. Ed most likely. Did they even have his DNA to compare it to? I worried over that for several minutes until I finally realized it was a stupid thing to worry about. Let the detectives figure out how to handle that detail.

It was my job to cut the heads open on bodies, but Dr.
Leblanc assisted on this one since Marianne had been shot in the head. My respect and admiration for him soared as he carefully walked me through the process of doing it in a way that preserved the evidence of the bullet wounds in the skull. I was insanely aware of the presence of watchers, but somehow Dr. Leblanc made it seem as if I was doing him a favor and completely in control, instead of having to be, essentially, told step by step what to do. It didn’t even bother me that I kept having to pause so that Sean could take pictures of the wounds.

I gently tipped the brain out and set it in the bed of the scale, then returned to the now-empty skull.