Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues

Chapter 3

By the time we got the body extricated and into the body bag, the evening sun was busily painting the sky over the highway in brilliant shades of orange and yellow while also making it hard as hell to see to drive. As I got closer to Tucker Point, election signs became more frequent for everything from school board to state senator, including several for the parish coroner, Dr. Duplessis, AKA my boss. Elections were still a few months off, but politics were a spectator sport in Louisiana, and quite a few candidates started campaigning well before qualifying even opened. I’d heard whispers that the coroner might actually face some competition in the next election, but even though it was doubtful there was anyone who could pose a real threat to Dr. Duplessis, he wasn’t taking any chances.

I heard my phone buzz with a text message, but I waited until I could pull into the parking lot of an XpressMart to read it. I wasn’t worried about dying in a car wreck, but I sure as hell didn’t want to do the same to anyone else.

In the past months I’d developed a much higher appreciation for the value of life.

It was from Derrel. No rest for the wicked. Just got a call re another death—accidental fall at NuQuesCor Lab. Meet me at front gate.

Well, it wasn’t the first time I’d gone from one death scene straight to another. I knew from experience that I could fit four bodies in the back of the van, though it wasn’t pretty. I texted back an “OK”, then pulled the GPS off the dash and stuck in the address he’d sent. Hunger nudged at me again, but I was pretty sure this was hunger for real food. At least part of it was, and satisfying that much would help keep the brain-hunger at bay—at least for a few hours.

This whole “controlling my urges” thing wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

I killed the engine of the van and hurried inside the convenience store. The girl behind the counter looked about my age, maybe twenty-three at the most, pale-skinned, with hair that looked like it suffered from a distinct lack of shampoo use. She lifted her head as I came in, gave me a vacant look before returning her attention to her phone. A brief wave of sympathy went through me. I’d done more than my share of shit jobs like that. And while there were lots of people who wouldn’t see my current job as a step up, I knew there was no comparison.

I quickly grabbed chips and a Coke, giving the clerk as friendly a smile as I could manage while I paid, silently urging her to hurry the hell up, and for chrissakes I’d seen roadkill move faster. She finally managed to fumble out something resembling the correct change, delivering it with the same glazed-eyed, slack-jawed look she’d worn the entire time I’d been in there.

Did I ever look like that? I wondered briefly. Probably so, I thought with mild amusement as I shoved my change into my pocket and hurried out. There’d been plenty of times I’d gone to work high as a kite.

My navel-gazing had me distracted enough that I nearly barreled right into someone about to come into the store.

“Oh, shit, sorry!” I exclaimed.

“Angel?”

As the door swung closed behind me I blinked and focused on who I’d run into. Hispanic, not much taller than me, and a little bit stocky. I didn’t recognize him at first, until I realized he was wearing a uniform. Khaki pants, black boots, navy shirt with an insignia shaped like the state of Louisiana with “Agent” and “Probation and Parole”…

Shit. This was my probation officer.

Almost two years ago, while I was deep in my “Angel is a moron with zero judgment” phase—a phase which had lasted for most of my life—I’d made the mistake of trusting my then-boyfriend and had believed that there was nothing shady about a nearly-new Prius that he could get for me for only five hundred dollars. A couple of weeks later I was pulled over and promptly arrested for possession of stolen property, and spent a terrifying three days in jail before making bail. Eventually I was sentenced to three years probation.

I managed an unsteady smile as I clutched the chips and Coke to my chest like a shield. “Um, yeah. Hi, Mr. Garza. How’s it going?”

“I’m doing fine,” he said. His gaze raked over me, pausing on the insignia on my own shirt. “Still with the Coroner’s Office, I see.”

For a second I couldn’t figure out how the hell he would have known I was working there. I was a low risk offender which meant that I only had to meet with him in person every six months. Yeah, but I have to turn in those stupid forms, I reminded myself. Every month, along with a check for sixty-five dollars, I had to give all sorts of details about my living conditions, work situation, and any possible incidents that might affect my probation.

“Yeah. Still with the C.O,” I replied. “Two months now.”

“That’s some sort of record for you, isn’t it,” he said, mouth curving in a humorless line.

I fought the urge to hunch my shoulders or shuffle my feet uncertainly. “I’m doing a lot better now,” I said, possibly a little defensively.

“I see that,” he said. “I’m real glad to see it.” He didn’t look very glad, but then again, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him smile.

I cast a longing glance at my van. I needed to get going, but I couldn’t exactly blow my probation officer off. “Yeah, thanks. I, um—”

“How’s the studying going?” he asked, cutting me off.

My response was to blink stupidly. “Hunh?”

“The GED,” he said. “It’s one of the conditions of your probation, remember?”

“Oh, right!” I said, plastering a smile onto my face. “Sure, it’s going just great. I, um, I’ll be taking it in just a coupla months. No problem.” I kept the smile frozen on my face while inside I cringed. God damn fucking shithole crapstains! I’d completely forgotten about that little detail. Since I was also a high school dropout, one of the conditions of my probation had been that I had to get my GED—the General Educational Development test which could serve as a substitute for a high school diploma.

He probably could tell I was handing him a line of complete bullshit. “Do you have a few minutes?” he asked. “There are a couple of things I’d like to discuss with you.”

“I can’t,” I practically gasped. “Sorry. I’m on call, and I just got texted to go pick up a body.” I fumbled my phone off my hip and waved it for emphasis.

He pursed his lips, but nodded. “Sure thing. But don’t forget, we do have a scheduled meeting next week.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled through a couple of screens. “Wednesday. Nine a.m..”

“I’ll be there,” I assured him, smiling in what I hoped was a confident manner though I had a feeling I looked more manic.

“Good. Please don’t forget,” he said. “There are some important matters we need to discuss.”

“I won’t forget,” I promised. “I gotta go now!” I ducked around him before he could say anything else and practically sprinted for the van. I had a feeling he was watching me as I drove off, but I was too chicken to look back and see.

Great. My probation officer had “important matters” to discuss with me. There was no way in hell that could be a good thing.

And the GED…? I groaned as I followed the directions from the navigation system. Sure, I’d dutifully listened to the judge’s conditions when they’d been handed down. But, at the time, three years had seemed like such an insanely long time that I didn’t feel any sort of rush to get started on it.

And, more importantly, there’d been a little part of me that felt it didn’t matter. In three years I’d be dead, or arrested again, or something equally self-destructive. I certainly hadn’t been thinking of any sort of future.

But, I realized with a sense of mild shock, it had been close to a year and a half since that arrest. And now I had to learn all the shit from high school that I never bothered to learn back then.

I am so screwed.

It was probably a good thing that the trip to NuQuesCor was somewhat convoluted, forcing me to pay close attention to the GPS, and helping take my mind off my educational shortcomings.

The lab turned out to be not quite in the middle of nowhere, but certainly far from anything anyone gave a crap about. It was full dark by the time I pulled up in front of the building, and the only way I could be sure I was in the right place was because of the small cluster of emergency vehicles near the front entrance. A black Dodge Durango was parked next to an unmarked police car, and I saw Derrel leaning against the front grill. As I climbed out of the van he gave me a casual lift of the chin in greeting, then pushed off the Durango and started my way.

“Sorry it took me so long,” I said as I yanked the stretcher out of the back of the van.

“Not a problem,” he replied. “Crime scene is still taking some pics. Figured I’d meet you out here since getting to where the body’s at is a bit complicated. You ever been here before?”

I swept my gaze over the ugly white exterior, only now seeing an unlit sign that identified the place as NuQuesCor. Otherwise it resembled little more than a large white brick. A few narrow windows here and there marred the surface, looking out of place and rather pathetic.

“I didn’t even know this place existed before today,” I admitted.

Derrel’s eyes crinkled. “They’re one of the top tech employers in this part of Louisiana.”

I snorted. “Derrel, up until a few months ago my grandest career aspiration was to get off the night shift at the XpressMart.”

He chuckled under his breath. “Well, it’s also quite possible that NuQuesCor is the only tech employer of any note in this part of Louisiana.”

“Again,” I said, “minimum wage girl here.”

“Not anymore,” he said.

“Not anymore,” I agreed, somewhat surprised at how certain I was of that fact.

“Good deal,” he said. “All right, let’s get to it. Oh, and you’ll need your badge and ID.”

“My badge…?” Grimacing, I returned to the front of the van and spent a slightly frantic few seconds digging through my belongings. To my relief the badge in question was still at the bottom of my purse where I’d tossed it after it had first been issued to me, along with my Coroner’s Office ID card. I retrieved both, then went ahead and grabbed some extra gloves and stuffed them into the side pocket of my cargo pants.

Derrel had his badge clipped to the front of his belt, and I quickly copied him. He gave me an approving smile, then together we headed up the sidewalk to the entrance with the stretcher and the empty body bag in tow.

The inside of the building was a lot more impressive. The double glass doors opened up into a large two-story lobby that looked more like the entrance to a hotel than a lab. Panels of burnished metal covered the walls and the floor was a grey marble with dark black flecks. Off to the left was a shuttered coffee stand along with an assortment of tables and chairs. Beyond that were couches and coffee tables, with an odd sculpture of what I thought might be birds in flight looming over the seating area. A balcony/walkway type thing overlooked the lobby, with a set of curving stairs and an elevator off to the right. And in the center of the lobby was a circular desk, but instead of a concierge it was manned by a security guard who gave us both a tight-faced glower as we approached.

I was asked to produce both badge and ID, which were subsequently scrutinized as carefully as a bouncer would in a college town. For that matter the guard looked like he could totally be a bouncer—tall and thick. Thick neck, thick shoulders, thick arms. Even his nose was thick.

Fortunately my ID looked sufficiently authentic, and I was allowed to continue on to a doorway on the far side of the lobby, this one manned by another dour guard who required us to sign in on a clipboard. I hid a smile at the sight of Deputy Marcus Ivanov’s neat signature further up the page. He was busy tonight as well.

We finally passed through the door and entered a stark white hallway with lots of closed doors. No marble back here, just regular industrial white tile that made my shoes squeak. I felt a low hum of machinery and heard the occasional distant beep. The doors all had numbers on them, but no signs or labels to indicate what went on behind them. I also noted that all but a few had specialized locks that required a fob or keycard.

“What’s the deal with all the security?” I murmured to Derrel. “Is this a government building or something?”

“Not anymore,” he replied, keeping his voice low as well. “Used to be a NASA computer center a couple of decades back, but NuQuesCor took over the building about five years ago. They’re private, but they work on some government contracts. From what I gather they mostly do nutrition science, sports supplements, vitamins, and the like. But even though they aren’t NASA anymore, they still likely have a fair amount of proprietary information that they want to protect. Hence the security.”

“In other words, they’re afraid of industrial espionage, that sort of thing?”

“Exactly.”

I gave him a doubtful look. “What could an industrial spy want in a nutrition science lab?”

“Well, suppose they come up with low-fat low-sugar food that doesn’t taste like complete ass,” he said. “They don’t want someone else coming in and stealing it before they can patent it, right?”

“Ahhh, gotcha. It all comes down to money.”

He snorted softly. “It always does.”

We came out abruptly into another two-story area that appeared to be a lunchroom. By my guess it was in the exact middle of the building to judge by the hallway entrances on all four sides. There was no “hotel lobby” look to this, either. This was more of the plain white décor. Walls, ceiling, even the staircases to my right and left were white. The only deviations from the color scheme were the tables and chairs, all made from what looked like aircraft aluminum.

Yellow crime scene tape had been strung across each of the hallways, and I saw a number of onlookers peering toward the stairs to my left. There, crumpled at the foot of those stairs, was the body.

I figured he was in his late fifties or maybe early sixties. Short grey hair, somewhat aged and lined face. He was dressed in a dark blue uniform that looked to be the same as the one the other security guards wore, though I saw that he was missing a shoe. A trickle of blood tracked from his ear, which I’d come to learn meant a bad head injury. But that was easy enough for me to figure out, since there was another pool of blood beneath his head. From what little I could tell, it looked like this guy had tumbled down the stairs, landing at the bottom with enough force to crack his skull open.

Hi there, darlin’. My name is Angel, I thought. I’ll probably eat your brain sometime soon. I hope you don’t mind.

I held back the snicker and managed to maintain a properly serious expression. I wasn’t the smartest chick in the world, but even I knew that laughing at a death scene was pretty uncool.

In the couple of months I’d been working for the St. Edwards Parish Coroners Office I’d probably been on more than a hundred death scenes. Some were tragic and heart wrenching—which was anything that involved kids; a few were truly bizarre—such as the guy who choked to death on a sex toy; but the large majority were simply in the category of “ho hum, another person died and I get to go pick them up.”

It wasn’t that I was jaded. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. But my views of death had certainly come a long way from the screwed up chick I used to be. I mean, I was definitely still a chick, but I wasn’t screwed up. Well, not as screwed up. Or rather, I was screwed up in different ways.

This death scene looked like it was going to be one of the ordinary ones. No kids, no sex toys, no batshit craziness that I could see so far.

A gangly red-haired man wearing a jacket with SEPSO Crime Scene stenciled across the back flashed us a smile. “Almost ready for y’all,” he said, lifting the camera in his hands.

“No rush, Sean,” Derrel replied before turning to me. “I’m going to go talk to the head of security and see if I can get this guy’s personnel info.”

“Go wild,” I said. Derrel gave me a wink and a smile before abandoning me and heading toward an unsmiling man with a walkie-talkie in his hand, who totally looked like a head of security. Hell, he practically looked like a Secret Service agent. He wore a black suit and white shirt, with a tightly knotted grey tie that had some sort of boring and forgettable pattern. Dark brown hair was buzzed short enough for the military, and good grief, if his jaw had been any more square it could have been used as a brick. All he was missing was the little ear thingy with the squiggly wire that I always saw Secret Service agents wearing in the movies. He was deep in conversation with a slim auburn-haired woman several inches shorter than he was. If he was dressed like Secret Service, she was dressed like an uptight congresswoman—maroon suit with a fitted skirt, cream blouse, and matching cream pumps that were well within the “I am a woman to be taken seriously!” height range.

The woman walked away before Derrel reached them. I watched as Derrel spoke to the security guy, then they both headed off down yet another hallway, I assumed to get the dead guy’s personnel file.

Which meant I was definitely at loose ends until he got back. I made myself comfortable against the wall and took in the general bustle of activity. Detectives Abadie and Roth had their heads close together and seemed to be involved in a serious discussion, though, knowing them, it had more to do with acquisition of Saints tickets than anything to do with the body. A knot of six or seven people stood in the hallway on the other side of the room, held back by the thin, yellow authority of the crime scene tape strung across the entryway. I assumed they were employees who had stayed late. Several of them wore white lab coats, and they all had ID badges clipped somewhere visible. Most of them looked upset or simply curious, but a few looked annoyed and impatient. The woman who’d been speaking to the security guy was talking on her cell phone, and she looked downright pissed. Maybe all of this was disrupting some sort of super important project? That sort of attitude didn’t really surprise me anymore. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d been out on a highway to pick up a victim from a traffic fatality and witnessed some irate driver bitching about the fact that the road was closed off while we did our work. Some people were insensitive shits, and that’s all there was to it.

Then again, maybe she’s fighting with a husband or boyfriend, I told myself. Or maybe her purse was stolen, and she’s calling to cancel her credit cards. Sometimes people weren’t actually insensitive shits and were simply having a bad day. See, this was me trying to be open-minded and understanding.

I looked around for Marcus and saw him near the hallway, across from where Derrel and I had entered, in conversation with a tall and slender blond woman wearing a lab coat. I felt a frown tug at my face as I watched them. This was definitely more than him talking to a possible witness, not with how close they stood or the way she occasionally touched his arm. She looked deeply upset, though, and kept glancing toward the body.

I didn’t have much time to wonder about it before Derrel returned from his info-gathering expedition with the security chief guy. As if on cue, the crime scene tech stepped back from the body and gave a slight wave to let Derrel and me know he was ready for us to get on with our part of this whole thing. No one else was allowed to touch the body except for coroner’s office people, yet we had to wait until the crime scene folks finished doing all the stuff they did, which meant there was usually a little dance of cooperation when it came to working death scenes.

Derrel and I stepped forward now and carefully rolled the man over so that Sean could snap pictures of the other side of the body as well as the floor beneath him. The dead man’s grey uniform shirt had been unbuttoned in the front and sticky pads dotted his torso, left over from the EMTs—the only exception to who was allowed to touch the body, since technically it wasn’t a “body” until it was declared dead after the EMTs ran an EKG strip. They’d already come and gone, which was often the case on death scenes. Even unbuttoned the shirt looked overly large on him, and the pants were bunched up beneath his belt. He must have lost a lot of weight recently. Maybe he’d been sick? Not that it mattered now.

“Definitely some serious skull fractures,” Derrel said as he ran his gloved fingers over the man’s head. Pieces moved underneath the scalp in unnatural ways as he carefully probed the injuries. He glanced up at the stairs, a slight frown tugging at his mouth. “He must have tripped? Somehow he came flying down and smacked his head hard. I’m not seeing any blood anywhere else on the stairs.” He glanced up at the tech for confirmation.

“I didn’t either,” Sean said, “but I took lots of pictures anyway. One of the lab employees who was working late here walked through the room just as the guy hit the bottom. He called nine one one immediately, but…” He shrugged.

“But this guy was probably dead within seconds,” Derrel murmured.

Sean took one last shot of the man’s head and then stepped back. “And that’s the last of it for me. Thanks, y’all.”

Derrel gave me the nod, and I went ahead and spread the body bag out on the concrete. The man looked like he probably weighed around one-seventy or so—more than easy enough for me to handle when I was “well fed,” but it had been about a day and a half since I last had brains, and my strength was about what one would expect from someone my size. In other words, total weakling.

Fortunately, Derrel was willing to help without me having to ask. He grabbed the dude under the shoulders, I grabbed him under his knees, and together we got him into the bag with a minimum of fuss. A smear of blood lingered on the tile, and I saw that it had seeped into the grout, making a stain. That’d be a bitch to get out.

Derrel tilted his clipboard toward me so that I could jot the dead guy’s info onto the toe tag—Norman Kearny, age sixty-three—and then I snapped the rubber band around the big toe of the foot that was already shoeless. I did a quick search of his body for valuables, finding only a watch; no wallet or jewelry. After removing the watch and dropping it into a property bag, I retrieved the wayward shoe from under the stairs and stuck that in the body bag as well. It was probably stupid, but I had a feeling that if the shoes were separated they’d never get paired up again, and they’d be doomed to wander the world alone forever.

I started to zip the bag closed and paused. I was fairly brain-hungry right now. I wasn’t ravenous or anything, and I hadn’t reached the point where I was starting to smell or skin was peeling off, but my nose for brains always got better the hungrier I was. And with this guy having a fractured skull, I should’ve been able to smell his brains quite clearly. Hell, my stomach should have been yelling at me to pry the broken pieces of skull apart to fish a handful out and cram it into my mouth right this instant.

But as far as my nose was concerned, there was nothing of interest within the man’s head. Which is probably a good thing, I decided, since treating the guy’s head like a popcorn bowl probably wouldn’t go over well.

Hiding a smile at the thought, I finished zipping the bag closed, then got it onto the stretcher and belted into place. I felt someone come up beside me, but I didn’t need to turn to see who it was.

“You hungry?” Deputy Ivanov murmured.

“Fucking starving,” I replied just as quietly. “It’s been slow at the morgue, so I’m trying to go longer between meals.” My lips twitched. “And somehow last night I burned off a whole lot of brains.” I gave him a sly, knowing look, but frowned as sudden worry struck me. “Why? Do I smell?”

He started to shake his head, then shrugged. “Nothing anyone would notice. I ate this morning, so my senses are probably being overachievers.”

I gave him a light elbow in the ribs. “You don’t have to lie. A good zombie boyfriend tells his zombie girlfriend if she’s starting to rot. Just like you’d better tell me if I have spinach in my teeth.”

He grinned. “Or if your skin starts peeling off?”

“Exactly! That’d be as bad as having my skirt caught up in my underwear!”

He leaned close. “I made a new batch of pudding this morning.”

I gave him a sidelong look. The pudding in question was nicknamed “foreplay”—and was heavily spiked with pureed brains. “Are you hoping I’m hungry or horny?”

“I know you’re both,” he said with a wink.

“So, who was the blond chick you were hugging?” I asked. I think I even managed to do so without sounding jealous. Well, not too jealous.

Amusement lit his eyes. “That was Dr. Sofia Baldwin. I’ve known her since high school.”

“Uh huh,” I said, giving him a mild stink eye. “And did you ever date her?”

He grinned. “Yes, and before you get too green-eyed, she dumped me.”

I gave a sniff. “Well, either she’s an idiot, or I have yet to discover your horrifying flaws.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Or both.”

“Hmmf. We’ll just have to see. Now get out of my way, I have a corpse.”

He stepped aside. “I’ll call later.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll just see if I answer.”

His low chuckle followed me as I pushed the stretcher down the hallway.

The security guard pulled the lobby door open for me and gave me a slight dip of his chin in greeting as I passed him. I gave him an appropriately sober nod in return. The scent of his brains swirled briefly around me, accompanied by a jab of hunger that reminded me I needed to eat soon unless I wanted to start falling apart.

I continued on outside, shoved the stretcher into the back of the van, and then climbed into the driver’s seat. Screw this whole rationing crap. Especially if there was any chance I was starting to smell. That was one thing I was super paranoid about. The bottle of brain-chocolate smoothie in my lunchbox was only partially thawed, but I went ahead and downed what I could. By the third gulp the hunger faded away to be replaced by a lovely feeling of warm energy.

It wasn’t until after I’d put the half-full bottle back into my lunch box and started the van that it occurred to me:

If I’d been able to smell the live guard’s brains, why hadn’t I been able to smell the dead one’s?