Dead Mann Walking

18

Though my immediate prospects had much improved, my hands and ankles were still cuffed, and there was a leather strap around my neck. Reaching my cell phone was out, but I was sort of mobile. I hopped when I stood, dragged myself when I fell. After about an hour, I made it to a pay phone and punched the keys with my nose.

Though it was free and only three numbers, I sure as hell wasn’t going to try 911. They’d probably send Booth. Maybe he wasn’t out to D-cap me, but that didn’t make us friends. I could tell him about Mr. Gas Mask until I was even bluer in the face than usual, and Booth would only wonder why my legs hadn’t been broken.

To pay for a call, I had to punch in my debit card. Took six tries before I got the number right. Then I did like E.T. and phoned home. When I was finished, I leaned against a streetlamp and scanned the dark, straight line of road between the warehouses. The sedan was gone, so I didn’t expect the Mask to leap out at me, and there was no sign of Ashby. Just the same, I kept my eyes open.

It wasn’t only outside threats I had to watch for. My rich inner world had gotten pretty bad, too. In the warehouse, I’d started moaning. Street wisdom said it was only a matter of time before I went feral. Then again, if the street was so damn smart, why would it be on the street to begin with?

Half an hour later, a cab showed. The door opened. Misty’s legs slid onto the pavement, followed by the rest of her. She was so shocked when she saw me, she tripped twice running over, then wrapped her arms around me. The cabbie, who had two grisly beards, one on each chin, took one look at us, muttered something about not being into that kinky shit, and drove off.

Misty picked the handcuffs with a safety pin. Able to move my arms and legs, I checked my body, satisfied that everything was still working. She got the pole off easily enough. It just unscrewed. The padlock on the leather strap was a problem.

“It’s too narrow for the pin. I need to cut it off with some clippers or something,” she said.

I rubbed my wrists. “Could you please not use that word right now?”

I told her a little about what happened, enough for her to ask if I was okay, enough for me to say sure. I wasn’t. Yes, I was back in my body and didn’t feel a need to moan right then and there, but it’d been a real long couple of days. I didn’t know it, but it was about to get worse.

The second cab we called wouldn’t take chakz. When a third showed, Misty offered the driver an extra twenty. He was hungry enough to take it. Thank the stars for the desperate among us, for they can still be hired.

Back at the office, while Misty worked at the strap with a file and a pair of scissors, I collapsed into my desk chair. She wanted to talk. I didn’t. While she sawed away, I flicked on the set, hungry for anything except reality. I found what I was looking for. Tea with the Dead was on, one of a dozen zombie-themed shows. Most were comedies that portrayed chakz as a really lame, laughable threat, sort of like the Nazis on Hogan’s Heroes.

After a while, I heard Misty’s nails scratching, then felt the soft pads of her fingers on the back of my neck. She’d cut most of the way through the leather and was trying to tear the last inch. She grunted, strained, and I heard a sound disturbingly similar to ripping flesh. The collar came free.

“I keep thinking about poor Ashby,” she said.

“You and me both,” I told her.

“It’s so crazy. Why would anyone collect chak heads?”

I shrugged as I rubbed my neck. “Because someone’s a sick fuck, and sick fucks do fucking sick things.” After a pause and a look at her face, I got a little more introspective. “Could be a ritual thing. Psychos like to collect souvenirs, body parts. Y’know, in some primitive tribes warriors collected the heads of their enemies; gave them someone to talk to.”

Takes a lot to freak someone out when they spend all day with the dead, but she started rubbing her neck, too. “You joking?”

“I wish. I took some psych classes once, learned just enough to hurt myself. Freud wrote about some old chief who used to pull out the skull of his greatest foe, put a cigar in it, light it up for him, and have a good, long, one-sided chat—y’know, ‘Buddy, you’re the only one who understands me’ . . . that sort of thing.”

I must have shivered or something, because she started rubbing my neck and shoulders.

“Try not to break anything back there, okay?”

She slapped at my back. “You’re tougher than you think. Lucky, too.”

“Oh, yeah. My luck’s been amazing. Got one chak D-capped and another melted to the bone. Think I should buy a lottery ticket today?”

“You blame yourself for Ashby?”

“It’s not rocket science. I didn’t have to let him come with me. Could’ve forced him to stay with you. I didn’t, and he lost a lot of weight because of it.”

She shook her head, but I wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. “He’d have tried to follow, and it could’ve wound up worse for him.”

I had to laugh at that one. “You’re the best, Misty, but get a bigger shovel, will you? What could be worse?”

“I don’t know.” She stepped away, looked out the window at the beautiful alley view. A cop car rolled down the main street, flashing lights that glanced on her face through the slats in the blinds. “The police are out in force. It’s because of the riot at Bedland and the . . . gas station explosion last night. When you called I was watching TV. Some talk-show guy was going on about how they should just get it over with, round up all the chakz, put them in a pit, and take a flamethrower to the pile.”

It figured. It was the same every time chak trouble made the news. Everyone would start talking bonfires. Good for ratings. It’d always blown over before, but I winced just the same. “That doesn’t mean I did the kid a favor.”

She turned back to me. “No, I’m just saying . . . you didn’t know. We never know what’ll happen. It could have been worse for him, even if we can’t imagine it. Did you . . . did you ever, ever see anything like that before, just a skeleton walking around?”

I shook my head. “If that’s what I saw. It was dark; maybe there was more of him left than I thought. Otherwise, how could the bones move? How could he talk?”

She came over and put her hand on my shoulder again. “Hess, maybe it’s his soul.”

Ah, the spaghetti monster in the sky again. I didn’t know how to answer. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. The sitcom was over and the news came on. They were leading with a story about a chak break-in on Wealthy Street. Cara Boyle was being interviewed. She was too upset to offer a decent description of what happened. I wasn’t, not yet anyway.

I shot Misty a glance. “The riot and the fire, huh? Didn’t mention my little part in the crackdown.”

“I didn’t want to . . .”

I waved her off. “Never mind. I know what you didn’t want,” I said. “Come to think of it, shooting that liveblood at the hakker attack probably helped a lot, too. I’m a one-man excuse for . . . what would you call it? Genocide seems redundant in this case.”

“Hess, you’re just making it worse. Thinking like that won’t help you keep it together.”

She was right about that much. I grabbed the remote, thinking I’d turn off the set. Given what happened next, it was the right instinct, but before I could hit the power button, the scene switched. A new face flashed up on the screen: the butler I’d socked in the gut. Only, according to the name on the screen, he wasn’t a butler; he was the main man himself, Martin Boyle Sr., Frank’s father. The guy who’d supposedly died from cancer.

What the . . . ?

For all my mistakes, the truth rushed me like a linebacker. “Turgeon!”

He’d lied. And I believed him.

I clenched my hands so hard it felt like I was driving my fingernails into my palms. No blood, of course. I stood and looked for something to smash.

“Fucking baby-headed Turgeon. He’s the psycho. The son of a bitch played me. I led him straight to Boyle. I killed them both. I killed Frank, too.”

We’ll talk soon. It was his voice, muffled by the mask.

With nothing handy to throw, I punched myself in the head. When that proved too hard, I kicked the recliner. A loud crack filled the room. I didn’t know whether it was the chair or my leg.

“Stop it!” Misty said. She pulled me back. “You’ll break your leg!”

Electric syrup bubbled inside me. Frank Boyle and Ashby were perfectly safe until I’d led the son of a bitch psycho straight to them.

I planted myself in the recliner. From the way it bent under my weight, it was the thing that was broken. Misty looked relieved. I suppose I should’ve been, too.

“Hess . . . you couldn’t have . . .”

I held up my hand to stop her. “Don’t. I’m supposed to be a detective. I should’ve at least checked Turgeon’s story before I did anything.”

She stood there not knowing what to say, the concern making her face vibrate. Looking at her was only making it worse. I clicked the set off. “Misty, don’t take it personally, but right now I need some me-time.”

“Hess?”

“Misty.”

She bobbed her head. “Fine. Sure.”

“Shut off the lights on your way out?”

“Okay.”

She scooped up the remains of the collar and headed out, pausing at the door. The curves of the peeling paint almost matched the shape of her unkempt hair. It’d been a long day for her, too. She looked drained, ready to collapse. She narrowed her tired eyes at me.

“You didn’t kill anyone.”

“Semantics.”

“Are you going to be okay? You’re not going to be in here for more than, like, a half a day, right?”

Chakz, she knew, could get so depressed they’d go into a torpor for a week or so before finally going feral. I waved my fingers at her and pushed the recliner back.

“I’ve just got to think it through. At least I know who to look for, right?”

She didn’t believe me, but she knew me well enough to realize I had to be alone. She closed the door.

It was one of those times I wished I could still use alcohol for something other than killing germs. I lay down, leaned back, and tried to think of something that didn’t hurt. It didn’t work. It was no coincidence Turgeon had hired me to find Boyle. I was on his list. It was a way to set me up, too. I told myself that if I didn’t pull out of the funk, he’d get me, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I tried to sleep but couldn’t, not really. I drifted in and out, but my head continued to buzz. The blood on the phone probably belonged to Grandpa or Watt. Maybe it was cherry syrup.

I went through some motions. The heads, what did they mean to Turgeon? There are all kinds of people, but four kinds of serial killer. There’s the visionary, where the killer has psychotic breaks and imagines himself on a mission from God or the devil. Mission-oriented, where they believe they’re cleansing the world of some evil, like children or women. Hedonistic, which doesn’t necessarily mean they kill for the pure sicko pleasure, though it includes that, but their motive could also be money or comfort, like your Bluebeards or Black Widows. And number four, power, where the killer wants control over something. Most number fours were abused as children. They play the same game from the other side, thinking they’ve won something.

I didn’t know enough to guess which Turgeon fit. It wasn’t a chak thing. The victims were all spouse killers. Was he avenging a parent, or trying to kill the other one? Did he want to rid the world of them because they were evil, because it was fun, because he wanted control, or just because? Spinning wheels got to go ’round.

Useless, fucking useless.

I let it go, but that was a mistake. When I did, I had that drifting feeling again, like I wasn’t holding on to anything, floating away from my body and up into space. It sneaks up on you like that. I grabbed at the train of thought but couldn’t hold it. The old noggin only worked in spurts at best. Now, as it sputtered, something insectlike crawled into the gaps—bikers with chain saws, Boyle talking about the future, Ashby’s hand rising from the vat.

Lenore.

Back when I was alive and had trouble sleeping, there was a trick I used. I’d stop trying to think in words and let the pictures take over. One image leads to another, and the next thing you know you’re snoozing. This was the opposite. I tried to cling to the words, the things that worked in straight lines, but pictures kept poking in—bony hands, talking heads, laughing skulls.

Lenore again.

So much time passed I wondered why Turgeon hadn’t come for me. Misty checked in now and again, but couldn’t shake me out of it. She’d come back I don’t know how often, hour after hour, talking, yelling, but no change.

I thought I heard howls and gunshots. I didn’t know if it was from the Bones, or my ears were remembering Bedland. At some point, I wanted to get up, but the office had vanished and the floor was opening up. Below, there was a sickly green liquid. I struggled, but then gave up. They say once you’ve already said fuck it, it gets easier the second time. It certainly felt easier.

I was more than halfway gone, and nothing was pulling me back.