I yanked the door open, then let out a choked cry as a masked someone dressed all in black shoved me hard in the chest. I staggered and landed in a sprawl on my back as papers went everywhere. I began to scrabble back to my feet, then froze at the sight of the gun pointed at me.
“Get up,” the man holding the gun ordered.
At first I thought that my attacker was Ed. It was the fact that he didn’t instantly shoot me that gave me the first clue that it wasn’t. I was pretty sure Ed wouldn’t be giving me any more chances to get the drop on him. But then the oddness of seeing someone in a ski mask in south Louisiana threw me so badly that I damn near forgot there was a gun pointed at me and instead I mentally flailed for some logical reason he could be wearing a ski mask. Okay, so it was a little chilly, but a ski mask was a bit of overkill, wasn’t it? Or maybe it was one of those baklava thingies. No, not baklava—that’s some sort of Greek pastry. Shit. Focus, Angel!
My pulse thudded as I scrambled to my feet. About three feet separated us. Could I take him? I was somewhat well fed on brains, but not tanked all the way up and certainly not overloaded to the point where I had super zombie speed. He looked pretty well built—taller than me by a good bit and broad-shouldered. On the other hand I knew what it was like to get shot. While I was trying to stop Ed from killing Marcus and chopping off his head, Ed had shot me twice in the chest—an experience I really had no desire to repeat, ’cause, yeah, it hurt.
But if this wasn’t Ed, who was it and what the fuck was going on?
“The body,” he said, with a jerk of the gun toward the hallway. “Open the cooler and give it to me. Or I kill you,” he added, tone so even that I had zero doubt that he would.
A thousand scenarios flashed through my head of me fighting him off, but I discarded them as quickly as they crowded into my skull. I wasn’t fast enough right now to get to him before he could shoot me, or strong enough to fight him off even if I could. And while I didn’t really fear getting shot—or rather, I didn’t fear dying from being shot—it would slow me down enough that I might not be able to stop him from taking the body he was after, in which case I’d have been shot for nothing. Besides, I knew there were security cameras covering the parking lot and the door to the morgue. I didn’t have to get shot. The evidence of this guy forcing his way in would be on that tape. Or hard drive. Or whatever it was that security cameras used now. And if I did get shot, I’d have to go out to the van to get one of my brain slushies out of my cooler. That would be recorded. Plus, I’d have to clean up the blood before anyone saw it to avoid having to explain how I could be shot and yet not have any gunshot wounds. Oh, and I didn’t have a change of clothes…
Much easier to simply avoid the whole “getting shot” thing.
Taking a deep breath, I turned and walked down the hallway to the cooler, my shoulder blades prickling the entire way. After punching in my code on the touchpad, I pulled the door open and stepped back.
He didn’t take the bait. “Bring the body out,” he said in a low pleasant voice, as if he was offering to carry my groceries for me.
I couldn’t help but scowl. If he was going to steal my body, why did I have to do all the work?
“Which body?” I asked. “I picked up two tonight.”
“Kearny.”
Stepping into the cooler, I was briefly tempted to give him the wrong body, but then figured that he’d surely check. This guy was cool as ice and wouldn’t be fooled that easily. Besides, the body of the guy we scraped up out at the factory was already pretty damn smelly, and he’d be able to tell even without opening the bag.
I gave the appropriate body bag a yank and hauled it out onto one of the gurneys, then pushed it out and into the hallway. “What now? Do you want me to bring it to your car for you?” I couldn’t quite keep the obnoxious out of my voice.
He surprised me by chuckling. “Now that would be rude of me,” he said. “To the door will be sufficient.”
Scowling, I went ahead and pushed the gurney and its cargo to the door.
“That’s good enough,” he said. “Now if you’d please turn around and face the wall.”
My pulse jumped as I met his eyes. There was nothing there—no emotion or stress. If he wanted me to face the wall so that he could shoot me in the back of the head, then there was a good chance I could actually die from that, especially since there was no one around to give me enough brains to help me survive that sort of thing. No, my body would be found by Nick or whoever was coming on in the morning, and they’d assume I was dead-for-real. I’d probably be autopsied and all that shit. And, godalmighty, would I be aware of that? Or would I wake up, starving and willing to attack anyone nearby, such as Nick or, worse, Dr. Leblanc?
All of this flashed through my mind in less than a second. I shook my head, a stiff little motion. “I’d rather not,” I managed.
He let out a dry chuckle. “I’m not going to kill you. But I do need to slow you down.” With his free hand he pulled a pair of zip ties out of a back pocket.
Nope, still didn’t trust him. I had to at least try to take him out—
“Don’t try it,” he said, voice low and thick with warning as he lifted the gun and sighted it on my forehead. “Shooting you would be messy and more complicated than this needs to be. But if you force my hand, I’ll do what I have to do.”
Gulping, I nodded, then turned around. He’s not letting me see his face, I told myself. He wouldn’t do that if he’d planned on killing me. Still, I breathed in shallow pants as he pulled my arms behind me and cinched my wrists together with the zip ties.
“Down on the floor,” he ordered. I numbly complied, and a few seconds later he’d secured my ankles the same way.
With that taken care of, he ceased to pay any attention to me. With a fluid motion he picked up the body bag and slung it over his shoulder, then was out the door. I craned my head around and caught sight of a dark-colored car, but the door swung closed before I could make out any details.
Taking a deep breath I yanked hard at the zip ties holding my wrists, hissing at the flare of pain that lanced down my arms as the plastic snapped. I might not have been juiced up enough on brains for super speed, but I had no problem burning some up to get out of the zip ties. The ankle ties were no trouble either, though I saw that the plastic had cut my wrists. A thin trickle of blood made its sluggish way down my hand. For an instant I thought about hurrying out to the van to slug down enough brains to heal that crap up, then abruptly thought better of it.
No, if I had no marks, then no one would believe that I’d been tied up.
With bloody wrists and a pissy attitude, I grabbed the phone on the desk and dialed 911.
Chapter 5
“What do you mean, there’s no surveillance video?” I demanded.
The chief investigator, Allen Prejean, gave me a sour look. “We’ve been having technical problems with the system,” he said in a tone that made it sound as if it was my fault. It didn’t take a lot of smarts to figure out that he didn’t much like me. Allen was in his mid-thirties with a significant beer belly, a smoker who sneered at exercise and defiantly proclaimed his love of fried foods. Yeah, sure, I’d been well on my way to killing myself with painkillers and alcohol, but he wasn’t much better off, in my opinion.
I scowled and sat back in the seat, crossing my arms defiantly over my chest. My wrists had been bandaged but they didn’t hurt. They were mostly just numb—one nice benefit of being a zombie. On the other hand, the hunger was once again poking at me.
We were in the conference room of the coroner’s office, along with two deputies, Detectives Ben Roth and Mike Abadie, Captain Pierson, who was the head of the Sheriff’s Office Investigations Division, my partner, Derrel, and the Coroner himself, Dr. Duplessis.
Apparently the theft of a corpse by a masked gunman in an unmarked car was a big deal. Or maybe it was the fact that no one seemed to believe me.
Dr. Duplessis tugged at his bow tie as a frown touched the edges of his mouth. The bow tie was his “signature look” which, I was told, he always adopted when it came time to start campaigning. I thought it made him look sort of goofy, but for all I knew this was part of some grand strategy to make him seem approachable and interesting. Then again, now that I thought about it, that made sense. Without the bow tie, the coroner looked like pretty much every other politician—clean cut, charming smile, dark hair with a touch of grey at the temples. In other words, boring.
He gently cleared his throat. “Angel, I’m sure that whatever happened was very traumatizing. The fact that there’s no corroborating video is certainly troubling, but that simply makes it even more vital that you be as honest with us as possible about the incident. Are you absolutely certain you didn’t stop anywhere on the way back to the morgue? Perhaps you left the door unlocked?” His mouth curved into a serious frown. “If you lost the body somewhere along the way, we need to know now so that we can take the appropriate steps to recover it.”
“I am being honest!” I said, fighting back the horrid lump in my throat. Taking a deep breath, I set my hands on the table. “Look, I swear, I made it back here with both bodies safe and sound. I brought them in and put them both in the cooler. I did some work on the computer, and when I tried to leave, a guy with a gun and wearing a ski mask forced his way in and told me to give him the body or he’d shoot me. I asked him which one. He asked for the security guard by name—Kearny—and I got that body bag out for him. He tied me up with zip ties and then left with the body bag in a dark-colored car. I shimmied to the desk and managed to cut through them, then called nine one one.” I gave the coroner a pleading look. “Why can’t you just believe me?”
His lips pressed together, and I didn’t need him to answer me. I knew why he couldn’t trust me. I was a felon and former drug addict. High school dropout. My word wasn’t exactly dipped in gold. And even I could see how a story about a very polite masked gunman—and, really, what the hell was up with that?—could be somewhat beyond belief.