Dead Mann Walking

20

The same oak tree got us back over the fence. We dumped the bones, luz and all, into the sewer. It hadn’t rained in a while, so they landed with a low, distant clatter.

Ashby, ripped and RIP.

Alarms were beeping and clanging everywhere. Police, with their flashlights and flamethrower, rushed into the front entrance of Collin Hills. We waited, then made it back into the park.

Soon all the screams were behind us. Annie’s owners might be bereft, but for the cops it’d just be a dead dog. There’d be a few chakz dragged out of bed, more tension, more patrols, but nothing as bad as if that thing had stumbled in on some family curled around the TV laughing over Tea with the Dead.

The deeper into the park we went, the fewer working lights, leaving us to rely on what there was of the moon. We tramped through the grass, silent as zombie church mice. I kept rubbing my hands, thinking little pieces of Ashby were still on my fingers. I didn’t want to say anything to Jonesey. I especially didn’t want to tell him how I’d nearly moaned before he walked in on me, or how I wasn’t sure what was holding me together now.

But as the shapeless bushes and half-dead trees gave way to the broken-box rectangles of our beloved neighborhood, Jonesey decided to tell me what I was feeling.

“You must be pissed.”

Pissed? More like if there was a button on the wall that said, PUSH TO END WORLD, I was ready to press it. I wiped my hands on my pants and looked at him.

“I know I’m pissed,” he said. “Now, more than ever, I’m ready to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get out there and organize.” To punctuate his clichéd imagery, he slammed his fist into his hand. “And you’re going after whoever did this, right?”

Me? I said, “Yeah.”

He shook his head. “You don’t sound so sure of yourself, Hess. You have to sound sure of yourself.”

“Oh, for the love of . . .”

He stepped in front of me, stopped me in my tracks. “Say it again, Hess, but this time like you mean it.”

My sympathy only goes so far. I growled at him. “I swear, you tell me to turn my frown upside down, I’m going to rip off what’s left of your lips and feed them to the rats.”

“Good. At least now you look pissed,” he said. He grinned as if he’d accomplished something.

By the time we hit the sidewalk I figured I’d grunt something more. “I said yeah; I meant yeah. Of course I want to find him. I’m just not sure I can. I’ve been going from one horror show to another for days, and more often than not, I’m the star. This guy’s a major screwball. I don’t know why he’s doing it. I don’t even know if he knows. I’m not sure I could have found him in my best days, and those are long gone.”

He nodded sympathetically. “I hear you. But you know what I’m going to say. You gotta act as if.”

If I’d met Jonesey when he was alive, I would’ve hated him, thought him a parasite for shoveling a crappy line of shit at people, living off their hopes and dreams. But seeing that ridiculous Pollyanna expression plastered on his grayish skin was, if nothing else, funny.

I threw my hands up. “Fine. You can act like an asshole, no reason I can’t act like a detective.”

“That’s the spirit!” He slapped me on the back.

Whatever. As if. As if what? Turgeon was probably an alias, and I didn’t even have fake names for Grandpa or Watt. My only leads were the two chakz I’d found on the police database. A quick check on the recorder gave me their names—Nell Parker and Odell Jenkins.

Two chakz. Right. And here I was standing next to my own personal chak database.

“Jonesey, you know a Nell Parker?”

He went into his little mnemonic dance. “Bell . . . toll . . . death . . . Nell Parker. Oh, man, oh, man.”

“What? Believe me, at this point I’m pretty sure I can take it.”

“She’s hooked up with Colby Green. Colby Green. You don’t want to go down that route. Forget it.”

I made a face at him. “Geez, you run hot and cold. I thought you wanted me to act as if.”

“Yeah, but you should act as if you’ve still got a brain. I mean . . . Colby Green? I home-delivered some ketamine to his estate once. He has these special bug zappers set up out front. Bug gets fried, falls into a small reanimator at the bottom, then comes back, only to get fried again. And that’s what he does to bugs.”

I knew the stories. “So I take it you don’t buy the press about how he fights for chak rights?”

“Sure, he fights for our rights, but that’s just to keep his access, Mann. He runs the biggest chak-up palace in the country, as a hobby. In his basement, he’s got chakz in pens, like cattle. Some of his friends are into dead kids, you know what I’m saying? Cancer victims or whatnot whose parents brought them back in the early days, then abandoned them when they decided they were freaks. Anyone tries to press child-rape charges, Green’s lawyers argue that since they died six years ago, even though they were ten at the time, now they’re sixteen, the age of consent, so it’s legal. It doesn’t get more perverted. And Nell Parker? She’s his favorite stripper.”

“That’s a long walk. Her file said she used to be a women’s advocate.”

“Yeah, well, she walked the walk. Right now she’d be better off if your psycho got her.”

“That’s sort of what Misty said about Ashby, but I don’t see it. It’s not as though she can quit when she’s a head.”

“Funny. Stay away. You need someone to help? Fuck, help me. I’ve got maybe thirty chakz lined up for the rally, but, honestly, most can’t march in a straight line, let alone hold up a sign. I could use you. What do you say?”

He pulled out one of his flyers and handed it to me.

“Come on, at least read it.”

Crazy as life was, the rally struck me as crazier. I crumpled the flyer and stuffed it in my pocket. “Sorry, Jonesey, wrong as if. I liked your first speech better.”

Two blocks north there was a train station on a line that’d take me north to the Colby estate. It practically had its own stop. I’d missed the last one for the day, but there’d be another in the morning.

“Hess, you do this and I’ll . . . I’ll tell Misty.”

With a bit of effort, I managed to glower. “Tell her or not, I’m going. But do us all a favor and don’t. She’s got her own problems. After I’m gone, I’m sure she’ll be happy to help you paint some signs, though.” I pulled some bills out of my pocket. “For supplies, and a couple of hot meals for Misty. She likes breakfast, home fries, but make sure she eats the eggs, too.”

By the time he stopped looking at the money, I was half a block away.

“You’re nuts!” he called out.

Depends on how you kept score. Colby Green was the shit you find on the bottom of a shit pile. I could easily, real easily, wind up stuck there as one of his playthings. But I had this weird idea that someone as fascinated with chakz as he was might believe what I had to say about Turgeon. Whatever his reasons, he might even help try to stop him.

And that was worth the risk.

Back at the office, Misty looked like she was asleep, so I stepped over her. She wasn’t.

“You find Ashby?” she said in a half mumble.

“Yeah, it’s all fine now.”

Her eyes popped open. She propped herself up. “Meaning you put him down.”

“Had to, Misty. You know that.”

She slumped. “I do. You’ve got to pull yourself together and get the guy who did this, Hess; you have to.”

As if. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

She went on. “No more lying around watching the inside of your eyeballs.”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

I headed for my office, but she grabbed my arm. “Don’t act like we both don’t know how close you were. You were into that, that . . . torpor shit. And then I’m supposed to smash your head in? I can barely lift that sledgehammer. You scared me, you son of a bitch; you really scared me.”

I looked at her. “I’m back now, okay? I’m back and I’m going to try to find Turgeon, at least warn his victims.”

She let go.

It was only when I stepped into my office that I realized how tired I was. I didn’t want to sleep, but my brain insisted. I threw myself down and closed my eyes. It was the real deal. If I dreamed anything, I didn’t remember.

Judging from the shadows through the blinds, I slept the morning away. It looked like noon. If I was going to do this thing, I’d better be on my way. I took a few hundred for expenses and thought about how nice it was for Turgeon to provide the funds for his own investigation. Then I had a funny feeling.

I decided to check all the bills. I’d looked over the first wad when he handed it to me—that was legit, but not the other two. At least half were phonies, unless they elected Dumbledore president of the United States and nobody told me. Shit. By the time I finished counting, I had about a third of what I thought. So much for redecorating.

Cursing, I grabbed it all and headed out.

Misty was still lying down. “Where you going now?” she said, still half-asleep.

“To deposit the cash at an ATM, so the debit card will be good. Then I’ve got to catch a train.”

“To where?”

“A lead. For real. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Go find Jonesey. He’s got some work for you, and some money for food.”

“You couldn’t tell me that last night? I’m starving,” she said drowsily. “You sound better, like . . .”

Her eyelids fluttered. She mumbled something I couldn’t make out. Poor thing had probably been awake the whole time I was losing it. Now she was catching up. A little bit of drool slid from her half-open mouth, down to the rumpled pillowcase.

I pressed my dry tongue to the roof of my dry mouth and tried to remember what it was like to drool.