Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues

Chapter 10

It was tempting to sit back and consider Dr. Leblanc’s words to me and daydream about doing more with my life, but right now finding out about the stolen body was a shitload more important. As dorky as it sounded, my fucking honor was at stake, and unless I got this shit figured out I was going to have a helluva hard time having any sort of decent future.

Therefore, I headed straight for the investigator’s office. Derrel was there, painstakingly pecking out a report on the computer. He gave me an absent-minded wave with barely a glance up from the screen.

“Angel, why can’t you be more like Nick?” Derrel said with a black scowl.

I could only stare at him for several breaths before I found my voice. “Wh-what? Why do you say that?”

He gave a hmmphing sound. “Because Nick is a godawful fast typist, and Allen has managed to convince the little shit that if he types up all of Allen’s reports it’ll improve his chances of getting a promotion.” He lifted his head and grinned at me.

I returned the grin with relief. “Well, I can’t type, but I can be more of a suck-up if you want.”

Derrel shuddered. “No, please don’t change a damn thing. I’ve already had to fight off a hostile takeover from Monica.”

“A what?”

“Monica wanted to change the shifts so that she was paired with you. I told her to back the hell off. You’re stuck with me, chick.”

I plopped into a chair. “I’m glad to know you love me so much. Now I need you to prove your love by helping me out with something.”

Derrel clicked on something on his screen, then gave me his full attention. “You want to know everything there is to know about the victim from the lab.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Nah. I just know how I’d feel if someone pulled that shit on me.” He gave a rude snort, shook his head. “Frat prank? I don’t know about that.”

“It wasn’t a frat prank,” I said. “Derrel, that was no college punk. I know the cops have no reason to believe me, but I’m not making this up.”

“I don’t believe for one second that you’re making any of this up.”

“I know, and you have no idea how much that means to me,” I said earnestly. “Here’s what I was thinking: The dude who wrote that damn article was getting off on how horrible it was for the family when the remains of their loved ones weren’t cared for and guarded properly. But…has the next of kin for poor Mr. Norman Kearny shown up?”

He leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head. “Y’know, funny thing, that. I’ve been trying to track them down, and it’s looking more and more like Mr. Kearny didn’t have any. Next of kin, that is. Widower, no kids as far as I can tell. Not a peep from any of his coworkers, either.”

“There’s something weird about this whole thing,” I insisted. “There has to be a reason that asshole stole that body.”

“I’m with you, Angel, but I don’t think there’s much doubt that this victim was simply a security guard who tripped on some stairs. I have all of the background checks and info that the lab had on file, and it all says that this guy really was Norman Kearny.”

“Well, what if the personnel file was tampered with?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You don’t think that’s veering hard into conspiracy-theory territory?”

I made a sour face. “I know how it sounds, but I think that there has to be some sort of thing going on for it to be worth holding me up at gunpoint to steal the body.”

Derrel grimaced. “True. Unfortunately I have no idea how we could find out if the personnel file was altered. If we still had the body we could run the prints or check dental records, but…” He spread his hands and shrugged.

I sat up straight. “Derrel, I’m fucking brilliant.”

He gave me an amused smile. “Well, I’ve known that for a while, but what makes you think so?”

“I put his watch in the property safe,” I said with a grin. “We can have that fingerprinted.”

He nodded slowly, an approving gleam in his eye. “That could work, since we don’t have the actual body to verify the prints.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. Two p.m. “I have court in half an hour, but I’ll talk to the folks in Investigations in the morning.”

“I could take the watch over there now,” I said, probably too eagerly.

He smiled. “Impatient much?”

I didn’t smile back. “Derrel, there are people who think I was involved. My name is plastered all over the paper, and I’m really afraid I’m going to lose my job.” I gulped. “And I really need this job.” My voice cracked on the last part, and I wasn’t even trying to be dramatic.

His expression softened. “I know you do. And I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this. I just…I don’t want you to get your hopes up too far about that watch suddenly answering all the questions.”

I nodded stiffly. “I know. But it’s worth a shot, right?”

“Right.” He gave me a kind smile. “I’ll go get that watch out of the safe for you. Let me know what you find out.”

Derrel retrieved the watch in its plastic bag for me, then left to go to court. I sat in the office, dithering and angsting for several minutes while I wondered whether I was truly being an overly paranoid idiot with my conspiracy theory. Finally I sighed, picked up the phone and put in a call to Detective Ben Roth, relieved that it was his case. At least he consistently treated me like a person—unlike some of the other detectives at the sheriff’s office. If this had been Abadie’s case, I’d have probably chickened out.

“Detective Roth,” came the gruff answer a few seconds later.

“Hi, Ben,” I said, “It’s Angel Crawford. From the Coroner’s Office,” I added, suddenly paranoid that I was totally imagining any sort of rapport we might have had.

“Hiya, Angel!” His gruff tone shifted to something much brighter. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m wondering if you can humor me on something.”

“Only if it’s naughty,” he replied with a laugh.

“Not in the way you probably want,” I said, also with a laugh. “Can I come by your office? This may take some explaining. It has to do with the body theft.”

“Yeah, sure thing.” He gave me some quick directions to where his office was, and then I hung up and drove the van the half mile or so to the building that housed the Sheriff’s Office.

His door was open when I arrived. His office was the size of a broom closet, barely big enough for a desk, a filing cabinet, and an extra chair. The desk itself had a computer and a phone on it, and every other square inch was covered with stacks of paper and files. A cork board on the wall behind him had a picture of Ben and a blond-haired man holding several speckled trout, as well as another of him with the same man, arms around each other’s shoulders and holding up beers. Around the edge of the corkboard were a number of newspaper clippings of what I assumed were cases that he’d closed. A framed photograph was wedged between a pile of papers and his computer monitor, again of the two men.

I tapped lightly on the doorframe to get his attention. He pulled his gaze from his computer and gave me a wide smile. “Angel of Death!” He chuckled and motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “Come on in, have a seat.”

I closed the door behind me, then sat. His eyes flicked briefly to the closed door, but he didn’t comment on it. I fidgeted for a few seconds while I tried to think of how to explain my theory. “Is that your brother?” I asked with a nod toward the framed photo, seizing on the first piece of conversation I could think of.

Ben smiled, shook his head. “Nope. My boyfriend.”

I blinked in surprise. “Oh!” I paused, fumbled for something to say that wouldn’t make me sound like a jackass. “You’re, um…No one gives you shit about that around here?”

He chuckled. “They’re welcome to try. I’m sure some shit is said behind my back, but no one’s been dumb enough to say anything to my face or to Neil. I bring him to all of the departmental gatherings that spouses or girlfriends are welcome at, and so far everyone’s been cool.”

I found myself grinning. Ben might have a teddy bear exterior, but there was a hard glint in his eye right now that told me he would seriously fuck up the first person who dared mess with someone he cared about. “I’d like to meet him someday,” I said.

Ben gave a slight nod. “That can be arranged. So, what’s going on?”

“Okay, here’s the thing,” I began. “I know there are people who think the loss of that body was some sort of fuck up on my part—”

“I don’t believe that,” he interrupted, eyes narrowing.

I gave him a weak smile. “Thanks. But the other theory is that it was some sort of stupid prank, and I honestly can’t believe that it was anything of the sort.”

He leaned back in his chair, nodded. “I can tell this is bugging the shit out of you.”

“It is, and not just because my name is being dragged through the mud,” I said. “Look, there’s something weird about the guy who died. I know that on paper he looks like a nobody, but there has to be something else about him.” I set the bag with the watch on his desk. “I took this off the body when I first bagged him up. I was hoping to see if it could be fingerprinted…to see if the dead guy really was this nobody security guard everyone thinks he is.”

Ben picked up the bag and peered at the contents. To my surprise a grin spread across his face. “I love it. A goddamn conspiracy theory.” He looked back up to me. “I’ll take it over to the lab right now.” He stood up. “Wanna come with me?”

“Sure!” I said. I loved forensics and CSI and all that shit. There was no way I was going to turn down a chance to see the inside of a crime lab.

The crime lab was in a building adjacent to the Investigations Division, joined by a covered walkway. Upon entering I found myself in a cramped room with a single desk covered in piles of paperwork and one other door that had the kind of key card lock that we used at the coroner’s office. A middle-aged Asian woman with hair cut in a short pixie style sat behind the desk. She gave Ben a nod of greeting and me a somewhat inquisitive look. I could see her taking note of the coroner’s office insignia on my shirt and some of the doubt in her eyes faded.

“Morning, Tracie,” Ben said. “Is there anyone around who isn’t too busy and could do a quick processing of a piece of evidence for fingerprints?”

“No such thing as a ‘quick processing,’” she admonished. “And there’s also no such thing as ‘isn’t too busy’ around here. We do have a backlog of cases to work, you know.”

He gave her a placating smile. “Sure, but I’m always super nice to y’all, and deserve to be bumped ahead of those other rude bastards.”

She snorted, but went ahead and picked up her phone and punched a button. “Hey, Detective Roth is here and wants to kiss your ass because he needs something done right damn now. You want me to tell him to get screwed?”

I blinked in surprise, but Tracie caught my eye and winked. “Gotcha,” she said into the phone, then hung up. “Sean said you’ll owe him lunch,” she told Ben, “but he’ll come do it.”

“Perfect,” he said. “He can put it on my tab.”

Less than a minute later the red-haired tech opened the secured door. “Oh, hi there, Angel. Hi, Ben. Come on in. This is just one item, right?” He gave Ben a look filled with distrust. “Not like the time that you had fifty-three beer cans?”

Ben groaned. “I swear, that wasn’t my fault.”

“Of course not,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “Come on in and let me take a look at what you have.”

We dutifully followed him through the lab and, much like my first tour of the coroner’s office, I was disappointed to see that there was no neon or chrome or anything else cool and slick. Nothing but cramped offices and aging lab equipment. We eventually came to a large room that had four large tables in it, all covered with a ridiculous number of bags or boxes with “Evidence” stickers on them. Sean stopped at a table that actually had some clear space on it, then yanked a pair of latex gloves from a box near the edge and tugged them on. Ben set the bag with the watch in front of him, and I watched impatiently as Sean carefully opened the bag and peered inside.

“Okay, I’ll stick it in the fuming chamber, and we’ll see what we come up with,” he said.

“Fuming chamber? What’s that?” I asked. I knew I risked looking like an idiot, but I was also wildly curious about how all of this forensic stuff worked. Even if there wasn’t any chrome or neon.

Luckily Sean didn’t seem to think it was a dumb question. “Superglue fuming. All you need is an airtight tank, some heat, and a few drops of Superglue.” He lifted the watch with a gloved hand. “See, fingerprints leave stuff behind—traces of amino acids, proteins, fatty acids. That stuff reacts to the fumes produced when Superglue is heated, and a sticky, white material forms that clings to the ridges of fingerprints, making them visible.” He turned and started walking. “Here, I’ll show you.”

I followed him eagerly into an adjacent room. A metal table dominated the center of the room and along one wall were a series of glass-doored chambers of varying sizes, from about a foot high to stretching from floor to ceiling.

“These are fuming chambers,” he explained, carefully opening the door of one that was only about a foot high. He carefully hung the watch from a metal hook, then opened a small plastic tube and squeezed the contents into a metal tray at the bottom of the chamber. After closing the door of the chamber and locking it, he punched some buttons on the front. “Now the chamber will heat up to release the fumes, which will settle on any fingerprints that might be on the watch,” he explained. “And when it’s done the chamber will vent the fumes safely away.” He gave me a wry smile. “That’s a vast improvement over the technique we used to have to use, which was basically a fish tank.”

I watched, fascinated as a mist slowly filled the chamber. “How long does it take?”

“About five minutes, but then you have to wait for it to vent. Like I said, much better than the fish tank method, where we basically had to yank the cover off and run to keep from inhaling toxic fumes.”

A short while later the lights turned green, and Sean carefully removed the watch. He peered at it through a magnifying glass, nodding.

“Well, there’s a beautiful print on the watch,” he said, to my delight. “I can definitely run that through AFIS.”

I watched in rapt fascination as Sean proceeded to powder the print, pull it off with a piece of sticky paper that I learned was called a lifter, photograph the print that came off onto the lifter, and then transfer the digital image into a computer. From there he pulled the image of the print up on the screen and began marking the enlarged print with red dots—which he explained were “points”; places where ridges ended, came together, separated, or simply made dots.

It looked awesome and, at the same time, tedious as hell.

“Who is this guy supposed to be again?” Sean asked as he submitted the fingerprint with all its marked points into the database.

Ben glanced down at the file. “Norman Kearny.” He rattled off the date of birth and social security number. “He should have prints in the system since all employees at NuQuesCor have to get a background check.”

Sean tapped a few more keys. “Yeah, here are his prints.” His eyes flicked back and forth on the screen, then his forehead puckered in a frown. “But the print on the watch doesn’t match them.”

An electric thrill ran through me as Ben let out a low whistle. “Angel,” he said, “I’m damn glad I humored you.”

I managed a weak smile.

Sean glanced over his shoulder. “Now we simply have to find out who it does match.”

“And where’s the real Norman Kearny?” I added.

Ben grimaced. “Damn good question.”

My patience had a hard time enduring all the waiting that was apparently a big factor in crime scene forensics. I fidgeted while things flashed on the computer screen. I could only assume something was happening.

After about ten minutes my wait paid off. “Well, that’s odd,” I heard Sean murmur.

“You got something?” Ben asked, leaning forward to peer at the monitor. I did too, though all I saw was two big fingerprints with a bunch of dots all over them. I had no idea what any of it meant.

“Well, I think so,” said Sean. “I mean, this sure as hell looks like a match.” He continued to click things. “I have well over ten points matched already. As far as I can tell this is your guy.”

“Great!” Ben said. “What’s so odd about it?”

Sean leaned back in the chair and shoved both hands through his hair. “I saw the body on the scene. He looked like he was in his sixties at least, right?”

We both nodded, but a knot began to form in my gut.

“Well, just for starters, the guy who matches that print would be forty-three years old.”

Ben shook his head. “That has to be a typo.”

Sean pivoted to a different computer. “Nope, his other records also have that same date of birth.”

“Maybe he looks really old for his age,” I offered. “Or perhaps the print is from someone else. I mean, maybe someone grabbed the watch or something.”

Sean shrugged. “It’s possible, but that’s not the only thing that’s fucked up. Take a look at this guy’s name.”

Ben and I leaned in to read the name off his screen.

“That’s impossible,” Ben blurted while I could only stare.

I’d wanted some sort of confirmation that the guy was a zombie, but this didn’t make any sense at all. The name that matched the fingerprints was Zeke Lyons—who’d been decapitated by Ed Quinn about a month ago. He was a zombie. But he was a dead zombie. How could his prints get on that watch?

“There’s a mix-up with the evidence,” Ben said, shaking his head. “This can’t be the watch of the guy who died out at the lab.”

I finally found my voice. “Sean, you have the pics you took out there, right?” At his nod I continued. “Can you pull those up and see if it’s the same watch?”

Sean switched screens and a few minutes later pulled up a file containing all of the crime scene pictures he’d taken. Ben and I watched silently while Sean scrolled through, finally clicking on one that showed the watch on the victim’s wrist. He zoomed in.

“It looks like the same watch,” Ben admitted. “But that could still be coincidence.”

“Sean, can you pull up one you took of his face?” I asked.

Sean flicked a glance over his shoulder. “I can…and I can also pull up a driver’s license pic of Zeke Lyons.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” I breathed as I looked at the side by side pictures.

“It must be the guy’s dad or something,” Ben said, deep frown on his face.

My throat was dry as I pointed to the screen. “Look at that thin scar on the side of his chin. Same on both. And the mole on his temple. It’s the same guy…but a lot older.”

Ben sat back heavily. “Angel. I take back what I said about being glad I humored you. How the hell do I explain this to my rank? How can this guy be dead…twice?”

I spread my hands in helpless defeat. My thoughts whirled madly as I tried to make sense of it. I was right about him being a zombie, but…how could he have survived having his head chopped off? And why did he look so much older? And why did he seem to be dead after falling down the stairs?

What the fuck was going on?