Undead and Unreturnable (22 page)

"Then let's go get him! Right now!"

"She wants to go after the bad guy," I told Laura.

"Of course she does! It's Mrs. Robinson, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, let's go!"

"Wait
wait
wait
." Cathie, halfway through the wall, backed up and looked at me. Laura, halfway to the door, also stopped. "Where are you guys going? Do you know where he lives? All Cathie knows is that she got conked in her driveway—that's not exactly news. And she has a vague idea of being in 'some old house' and then she woke up dead. We have to tell Nick all this stuff—"

"How?" Laura asked. "Of course, you're right, we must tell the law, but how will we explain our knowledge?"

"We could say we got an anonymous letter or something."

"Which he will then wish to see." Laura sounded apologetic to be thinking up problems. "At least, I know I would."

"A phone call?"

"Why would they call you? Or me, for that matter?"

"Because Jessica's going out with him?"

"You could pretend to be a victim who got away," Laura suggested, "and then tell them everything the ghost tells you."

"That's not bad," Cathie said, "but there's no damn
time
. Don't you get it? He doesn't keep us very long; he's scared."

"Scared of getting caught?" I asked,
so
far over my head.

"No, scared of us. The victims. He'll kill her tonight and dump her in some awful public parking lot where everyone will see her naked and laugh and point."

"Nobody—" I began, shocked.

"No, that's what
he
thinks. It's what he wants. Now can we come up with how to explain it
later
? At least let's go drive to where I remember the house!"

"An address, anything?"

"No, but at least we can get in the area. Maybe I'll remember more. It's worth doing,
goddammit
!"

"You're right," I said, after I'd told Laura everything that had been said. "It's worth doing."

"Now, now,
right now
!"

"She's right," Laura said, and I assumed it was in response to what I had said, not because she could hear Cathie. "It's worth doing. Let's go at once."

"Bad
bad
bad
bad
bad
bad
bad
bad
bad
BAD
idea," I said again.

"Take a left," Cathie commanded from the back. "And enough complaining. I'm sick to death of the complaining."

"We're not cops! Okay? In this car is a secretary, a college student, and a part-time horse trainer."

"It would have been full-time," Cathie said, "but now that I'm dead, that bum Gerry's
gonna
snake the slot right out from under me."

"We should have told Nick the whole thing and let him come into the neighborhood with about nine SWAT teams."

"Never mind how difficult that would be to explain," Laura began.

"Right, and scare the killer off with a bunch of uniforms running around!" Cathie snapped. "No, we have to catch that jerk. Driveway Killer… Driveway Asshole is more like it. Left!"

"Does anything look familiar to her?" Laura asked.

"No," Cathie said. "But I won't forget the smell in a hurry. It stank like nothing else has."

"He stank?"

"No, the neighborhood. Something chemical, something like—"

"The Glazier Refinery?" I read off the sign as we passed it. There were about two hundred smokestacks in the air, and they were all pouring out smoke that smelled like fake pizza.

Cathie retched in my backseat. Could ghosts puke? I tried to stay focused. "I guess this is the area."

"God, that smell! How could the cops not smell it on my—
goddammit
, because he strips them and then dumps them."

"Still, you'd think there'd be some clues," I said doubtfully.

"This isn't
CSI
," Laura said, watching out the window. "Not that I watch the show—an hour of people finding new and interesting ways to kill each other? No thank you. But this is real life, not television. And it's a big metro area. Millions of people, doing millions of things, over a large square area. I've lived out here all my life, and I've never even heard of this place. I think when we catch him, it will be obvious what he was doing and where he was taking them, but we have to get him first."

"Whoa, whoa! You guys, I think we agreed—"

"I didn't agree to anything," Cathie said.

"—that this is a fact-finding mission. We're not here to bust the guy. We need something concrete to take back to Nick and then
they
can come get him. We're just nosing around for clues."

"And if we find him standing over a woman with a big butcher knife?" Laura asked.

"Actually," Cathie piped up helpfully, "he strangles us. With his belt."

I shuddered. "If worse comes to worst, we'll catch him. Don't sweat it, Cathie, Laura and I are totally capable of knocking a guy out and calling the cops. I'll distract him by letting him stab me multiple times and then Laura will kick the shit out of him. We'll just use a nearby phone and do the anonymous tip thing. If Mrs.—uh—"

"
Scoman
. You really are terrible with names," Laura chided me gently.

"I know. Anyway, if she needs to go to the hospital, we'll take her. We'll—look, we're putting the cart ahead of the horse, here. Let's see if we can find the damn house first."

"He took off his belt, and he strangled me until I shit myself." I was shocked to see Cathie had scooted way over and was whispering in Laura's ear. "He did it because he's weak and because he's afraid of women. And after I was dead, he took off all my clothes and made fun of my boobs."

"Cathie! I mean, jeez, I'm not saying you don't have a right, but cripes!"

"What?" Cathie was smack in my rearview mirror again. "I didn't say anything. I'm looking at houses."

"I heard her that time!" Laura said, excited. "Talking about her boobs and such. I think I'm getting a new power!"

"No," I said, kicking myself for ever thinking things were as bad as they could get. "I think your mother's here."

"What?"

"Surprise," Cathie said, and smiled.

"Mother!" Laura had twisted around in her seat and was glaring at the devil. "I can do this without your help!"

"I'm sure you can," the devil went on in Cathie's voice, smirking with Cathie's face. "But it seemed for a moment like you were going to take the coward's way out. Knocking him out and waiting for the police…" The devil rolled her eyes. "That's just sad."

"Go to Hell," Laura said through gritted teeth, and—I'm not sure how she did this from the passenger seat of a Dodge Stratus—pulled out her sword and stabbed Cathie with it.

Who promptly cried, "What the hell do you think you're doing, you morbid bitch?"

Laura looked at me. "Is she talking again?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Good." The sword disappeared. Laura turned back around. Nobody said a word for five miles.

"Your sword disrupts magic," I began, because somebody had to say something.

"Yes."

"So why didn't it 'kill' Cathie?"

"I don't know. I've only ever killed vampires with it. I tried to kill a werewolf once, but it just made her change back into a woman. She was so startled she ran away from me, and I never saw her again."

"There are werewolves?" Cathie asked. "For real?"

"You
gotta
be kidding me, werewolves. Like I don't have enough to deal with?" I bitched.

"It was only the one time," Laura said defensively. "I'm sure you'll never have to meet one. They're rarer than vampires, I bet."

"Let's for
cripe's
sake hope so. Cathie, is any of this looking familiar?"

"I only saw the house from the inside," she said apologetically. "I remember what the inside looked like… and the smell of the place. I remember that."

"Oh, it's that one." Laura pointed to a nondescript split-level on the end of the block. It was tan with dark-brown trim. The driveway and sidewalks had been neatly shoveled.

"It is?" Cathie whispered, leaning forward so that her head popped through the seat between us.

"How do you know? Cathie, does anything ring a bell?"

"Just the smell. How does she know?"

Laura sighed, a dreadful sound, and looked at the nice little split-level the way I would look at a child abuser. "Is it a black house? All black, even the sidewalks? Even the snow around it?"

"No," Cathie and I said in unison.

"It looks black to me," Laura said simply.

"Hi, Eric? It's Betsy. Listen, don't freak out, but Laura and Cathie—never mind, long story—anyway, we think we've found where the Driveway Killer lives, so we're going to check it out. It's

"Are you happy now?" Cathie bitched. "Can you please get off your ass and help me, or do you have more calls to make?"

"Hey, you've seen the horror movies. The heroine never tells anyone where she's going—it's maddening. Or if she does remember she has a cell phone, it's always dead. Or she can't get a signal."

"Or her fiancé is on the other line and doesn't answer the call," Laura prompted helpfully.

"You shut up. And keep that thing put away unless we need it."

"We'd better not need it," she said as we parked a few blocks away and got out of the car. "It only disrupts magic; it doesn't do squat on regular people. Well, humans, I mean."

"Oh."

"I've been meaning to ask," she whispered as we snuck up on the split-level and Cathie ran through (literally through)
snowbanks
ahead imploring us to hurry, hurry, hurry! "I thank God every night that I didn't hurt you, but, uh,
why
didn't my sword hurt you? It should have killed you."