Dead Mann Walking

10

Fans were running, the shades were drawn, but the office was only a little cooler than a furnace. Worse, it stank like an indoor swimming pool at a morgue. Having gotten back home a lot sooner than expected, I was, as promised, helping Misty with the cutting. I couldn’t hold the knife steady enough, so I held the flashlight. I was always the one holding the flashlight. It never stopped me from giving advice.

“Christ, Misty, careful; he needs that muscle to move the arm.”

I was being a little rough on her, but I was antsy. Long day.

“Heh-heh.”

She gave me a withering look. “I’m trying to be gentle, but you know I’ve got to get it all.”

She was in a funny position, kneeling by Ashby, holding his arm up, going at the underside with a small X-Acto blade. After every scrape, she dipped the blade in an ashtray filled with bleach.

“Damn, it’s in a weird spot, nearly in his armpit. Move the ashtray closer, will you?”

“Ashby, ashtray. Heh-heh.”

“No wonder Boyle missed it,” I said.

“Frank, heh-heh.”

“Hold still, Ashby. Hess, can you tell him to hold still?”

I looked at him. “I can try, but it sounds better coming from you. I think he likes you.”

That got me another look. After a few more scrapes and grimaces, I had to ask, “How bad?”

“Not terrible,” she said, twisting her neck. “Not even an inch deep. I think I’ve almost got it all.”

She flicked the blade. A dollop of rot fell into the ashtray. When she started scraping again, she must have hit clean muscle. Ashby twitched.

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh . . .”

“Where did you go, anyway, Hess?”

I made a face. “Anything on the news about a chak breaking into a ritzy apartment in the center of town?”

She stopped working to stare at me. “No.”

“Then I don’t want to talk about it.”

She sighed and waved me closer. “That’s it. Pretty sure I’ve got it all. Hold his arm, will you? And hand me the needle and thread.”

I pulled them from the kit and forked them over. “Just don’t ask me to thread the damn thing.”

“Don’t worry; I won’t. But you have to keep him still.”

I grabbed his elbow and shoulder and held tight. Needle between her lips, Misty pinched the skin together good as I’ve ever seen a doctor do, held it with thumb and forefinger, then grabbed the needle with her free hand and sewed.

As the point disappeared, then reappeared on the other side of the skin, the kid gawked at his arm like it didn’t belong to him. It’s not good for a chak to think that way. Makes you careless. I snapped my fingers to get his attention.

“Look at something else, Ashby.”

He listened, shifting his attention to the stinky blobs of gray-green pus floating in the ashtray.

“That’s how we all wind up, pal,” I said. “Efficient fuckers, microbes.”

“At least it wasn’t maggots,” Misty said.

“Hell, yeah.”

We almost never get those, unless we try eating. We don’t need to eat, but some of us like to go through the motions, like Jonesey with his espressos. Not enough protein in black coffee to do much damage, but a chak eats a burger, he’s asking for an infestation. I’ve seen it happen. Think the living are stupid? I agree, but chakz make them look like geniuses.

“Heh-heh.”

“Hess, he’s twitching.”

“Easy, kid, you’re in good hands. The best. I’ve seen her reattach a foot with some Krazy Glue and a staple gun. Course, it didn’t stay on long.”

Ashby writhed, did his nervous laugh, and went back to watching his arm.

Misty tsked. “Did you have to tell him that last part?”

I wasn’t kidding about him liking her. Since we’d started, every time she opened her mouth, he calmed down a little. It gave me an idea.

“Kid, instead of the arm, why don’t you look at her? She’s not so bad to look at, right?”

Ashby looked at me, puzzled, then turned to Misty. An intense expression came over him, a kind of fascination, almost the same way he stared at the lights on the computer game.

“Told you he likes you.”

“Hess, you’re making me blush. Not a good idea while I’m sewing.”

“Frank never cut me.”

We both stopped and looked at him. It was the first coherent sentence out of his mouth since I’d brought him back from Bedland, subject, object, verb, everything. Misty did have a knack for bringing the human side out in people, even the walking-corpse kind. Then again, most chakz are shocked when any LB is nice to them.

She gave him a slow smile. “I’m sorry, honey, but I had to use the knife. If I left any rot in there, it’d keep growing, infect you. You could lose a lot of muscle.”

“And those boyish good looks,” I added. But it was like I wasn’t even in the room.

He kept staring at Misty, scrutinizing her as she made her last few stitches. I watched him watch her. Finally he turned his head nearly sideways and asked, “And then I’d die?”

Misty looked up at him. He waited to hear from her, but she didn’t know how to put it. “Hess, you want to answer that?”

I shook my head. “I think you should. Probably doesn’t matter what words you use. Maybe he’s remembering puberty.”

“Hess!”

“Well . . . maybe he’s remembering something.”

“Fine. No, Ashby, it won’t kill you, but it can eat away at your flesh, make you mostly bone. You don’t want that, do you?”

Her motherly tone made me wonder if she had a kid of her own out there. Misty wasn’t much for talking about her past, and I wasn’t much for asking.

He shook his head. “No, I don’t want that.”

She made a few more stitches and said, “There, all done.”

I let go. He twisted his arm, looked at the line of plastic thread, and grinned. “All done, heh-heh. Do I look okay?”

“Of course you do,” Misty said.

I nodded. “Like you’re all set for your junior prom.”

Halloween prom, maybe.

His eyes followed her movements as she stretched her arms and back, then returned the needle and thread to the little kit. I almost enjoyed watching her myself.

“Misty, you’re a real Frankenstein Nightingale. And I mean that in the nicest way.”

I pulled one of the envelopes out of the desk drawer and pulled out a few more bills.

“Wish you’d deposit that,” Misty said, screwing the cap back on the bleach bottle. “I don’t like having it around.”

“You and me both.”

“You should deposit it,” Ashby said.

“That’s right, Ashby,” Misty said. “He should. You tell him.”

She took the ashtray, dumped the contents in the small toilet off my office, and flushed. Ashby was riveted, like he was watching his favorite movie.

“You got a next move, Detective?” she asked.

I shoved the envelopes back in the drawer. “I was afraid you’d ask that. I still don’t know what happened to Turgeon. Oh. Wait a minute. Maybe I do.”

“What do you mean? You think he survived?”

With a stubby thumb and forefinger, I gingerly took out the bloody cell phone. “No.”

“Oh, my God, Hess, is that . . . ?”

I nodded. “Evidence. And my pocket isn’t exactly a sterile environment. We got a plastic bag around here somewhere?”

Exasperated, she said, “Sure, why don’t I just pull one out of my butt?”

“Probably be cleaner than my pocket.”

“Heh-heh. Heh-heh.”

She shook her head at the kid. It was me she was annoyed with, but Ashby took it personally. Surprising us yet again, he looked sheepishly at Misty and said, “Sorry, can’t help it.”

“Oh, that’s okay, honey. I know it’s not your fault,” she said. She stuck a thumb in my direction. “Him, though, I know he can keep his trap shut when he wants. I’ve seen it.”

“Hah,” he said. Just like that, a real laugh. Hah.

At first I thought of Misty only as a good way to keep him steady, but this was getting interesting. I pointed to the door. “Misty, a word in the reception area?”

The “reception area” was a gray piece of work; the only bits of color were what peeked out behind the peeling paint and looked sticky. It doubled as a storage space and Misty’s bedroom. She sat on the edge of her cot and crossed her legs. As I sat next to her, some vague half memory told me I should be looking at them. It was just a twinge, and it left as soon as it came, but it made me realize Misty had been looking healthier lately.

I whispered, “I want you to try to ask him about last night. Whatever happened, he was there. When I talked to him about it, he kept flashing back to his arrest, but you . . .”

“You really think I can focus him?”

“Looks that way so far,” I said. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

She nodded and stood. I hesitated, but then I figured, Why not? “It probably wouldn’t hurt if you sat down close and crossed your legs.”

“Hess!” she said. She slapped me playfully on the shoulder, then paused and frowned. “Really?”

I shrugged. “Worth a shot. If you don’t remind him of his mother, maybe you remind him of some teacher he wanted to screw.”

She rolled her eyes and went back in. I settled back and leaned my head against the wall. The rot smell wasn’t so strong here, and I caught a whiff of the cheap perfume she used, buys it by the quart. Big heart, Misty. Works with the bleach so much, her hands are always dried out. I keep telling her to use those big yellow gloves, but she never listens.

I heard her talking, softly, Ashby doing the nervous laugh, but I couldn’t make out any words. I put my ear against the plaster. Still no go. With no confession forthcoming from the Boyles, Turgeon was my only other link. Even if he was dead, it’d be a lot tougher to hide a liveblood body. His boss, at least, would be missing him. That was something I could follow up on.

After a while, there was more “heh-heh” than not. When she opened the door I could hear Ashby running like a lawn mower—“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

“Anything?”

“I think so. For some reason, they went back out of town. A black car cut them off and two men attacked them, one with a lot of muscle and a scar on his forehead, the other older, African-American, I think, with short white hair. They forced them to drive off the road, out into the desert. One of them pulled out a set of head clippers. Ashby says they tried to hold Frank down, but he put up enough of a fight to kick open the door and push Ashby out. Ashby thinks they chased him, but he wasn’t sure.”

I blew some dry air through pursed lips, but still couldn’t whistle. “Maybe you should be the detective.”

She sat down and rubbed her temples. “No, thanks. I don’t have the stomach.”

“I could give you mine.”

“Cute.”

I tried to picture the scene. “The goons were probably hired guns. If they were local, the descriptions might ring a bell with Jonesey. Anything about Turgeon?”

She shook her head. “Only that he and Frank had been talking about a man named Kendrick.”

“Frank Boyle’s husband. It might mean something, or maybe Turgeon was just being nosy again.”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

Misty shrugged. “Anyway, that’s when he started making that sound over and over. Maybe if I had nicer legs.”

“Your legs are fine. You could stand to eat more. But the name shouldn’t upset the kid. Kendrick wasn’t Ashby’s dad.”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.” It was coming out nonstop now, like a machine gun.

“Maybe it upset Frank and that upset Ashby?”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

It made sense, but it felt like it should make more sense, like I’d understand if I could only focus. The laugh was getting to me, though.

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

I rapped my forehead. “Okay. It doesn’t look good for Turgeon, but if Ashby survived, maybe he did, too. Misty, can you call around to the hospitals, see if he checked in?”

“Sure. What about you?”

“I’ll go check out the other possibility.”

“Meaning?”

“Do I have to spell it out? No one gives a shit about Frank Boyle, but if a liveblood turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, they take the body to the police coroner.”