Flesh Circus

Chapter Sixteen

Piper was still processing the last scene. This time Foster showed up, his own brown ponytail slick as ever. He surveyed the stinking goop starred with porous bones that had been zombies and sighed. “Busy night. Anything else?”

I almost hated to tell him. Foster always reminds me of an otter—brown, sleek, with a cute little nose and quick clever fingers. “The bedrooms. Don’t take the iron nails out of the corpses. And there’s animals downstairs.”

“Well, shit.” But he motioned his team past, Carolyn holding the door log in front of her like a holy grail, Max with his camera, Stephanie and Browder with their matching smiles and bags of gear. “Beaucoup overtime.”

Behind them, Sullivan and the Badger showed up. The Badger negotiated the stairs with her mouth set tight and turned down, her gray hair pulled back into its usual bun, the white streak down one side glinting, since I’d flicked the porch lights on. Sullivan, scratching at his coppery stubble, gave me a weak grin. He looks like dishwater even on a good day, but that pale, nervous exterior hides a sharp, inductive mind.

The Badger looks like a cookie-baking, kitten-sweatshirt-and-mom-jean-wearing soccer mom—a particularly cuddly and harmless one. She’d added a pair of steel-framed glasses to her round florid face, and moved carefully. I wasn’t fooled—for such a rotund woman, she was light on her feet when it counted. And they don’t call her the Badger for her hair.

No, she gets that name by being tenacious as hell. She does it in such a nice, unassuming way that people forget her namesake has teeth and claws.

Rumor has it she went a couple of rounds with a sex offender once, and busted him up bad by the time backup arrived. The perp thought one plump lady cop would be easy to bowl over. He spent three weeks in the hospital and another couple months in physical therapy, I was told.

I’d lay odds it’s true.

“How many fucking scenes you going to give us tonight?” Sullivan said, blinking. He patted his breast pocket, where a pack of Marlboro Lights peeped up at me. For someone who looks so washed-out, he certainly has a big strident voice.

“As many as I’ve got. Hi, Badge.”

She grunted, heaved herself up onto the porch, and eyed me. “Thought you didn’t want a team tonight.”

I shrugged. Silver tinkled in my hair, falling over my shoulders. “With bodies mounting up like this, I need backup.” I’m glad it’s you two.

“Huh. Should we check the other scenes?” It’s amazing, the way her soft, modulated voice can slice through a hubbub. One of the forensic techs was laughing—shrill laughter with that edge of disgust you hear so often at homicide scenes.

It’s not disrespectful. It’s because sometimes you have to laugh to keep from screaming, crying, or throwing up. “Might as well. This turned out bigger than I thought it’d be. I thought I could save you guys some work.”

Sullivan wheezed and the Badger chuckled. “You kidding?” she got out, between snickers. “If we wanted less work we wouldn’t have chosen this job.”

“Very funny. Make sure the techs don’t take the nails out of the hands and feet. See if you can get any IDs on the messy bodies; the less-messy ones will be easier but I already know who they are. Find out where they were last seen, see if you can trace the animals—”

“Animals?” Sullivan’s pale face twisted up. The short buzz of his coppery, receding hair glittered again as he hunched his shoulders. “Shit.”

“Sorry.” And I was.

“Well, you didn’t kill ’em.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Should we go over Piper’s scenes too?”

I nodded. Saul moved briefly behind me, a restless movement utterly unlike him. “Please do. Oh, and see if you can dig up who this house actually belongs to. I’d like a legal name, DOB, everything.” I don’t know nearly enough about Zamba. That’s going to change.

“That means you have a hunch.” The Badger nodded. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask—I know I don’t want to know. I’ll page you as soon as we have something.”

And bless her thoroughgoing little heart, she would have the full report from chowder to cashews—or as close to it as it was humanly possible to get. “Good deal. Thanks.” I eased past both of them—the Badger stood stolidly and Sullivan flinched back. He covered it well, though, turning to look down at the garden.

“Huh,” he said. “Go figure.”

“What?” I glanced down at the belt of jungle greenery, uncomfortably reminded of Lorelei’s backyard.

“Plants are dying. Looks like someone did a lot of work on the yard, though. You’d think, a place like this, they wouldn’t have stopped watering before they died. Or are the bodies old?”

“Not too old.” Especially the ones that were trying to kill me about half an hour ago. But they didn’t need me to lay that little thought in their heads. “See you.”

Sullivan sighed. “See you, Jill. Try not to trip over any more dead ’uns tonight.”

“Shut up, Sully. It’s our job.” The Badger sounded long-suffering, as usual, and she herded him inside the house.

What a pair.

Saul drifted beside me as I made my way down the cracked, zigzagging walk. “Car’s this way.”

I nodded, let him take the lead. Sullivan was right, the garden was just in the first stages of dying. Plants were drooping, but not browned and crispy yet.

I stopped, turned, and looked back at the house, its windows blazing with golden light now. A hose was coiled up next to the porch’s listing sneer.

Hellebore. Feverfew. Foxglove. Wormwood. Mugwort. Bindweed. American ginseng under a rigged-up canvas canopy. Some succulents, but not many, and the rest of the plants were useful, in one way or another, to a rogue herbalist or kitchen witch.

Or a voodoo queen.

The zombies were relatively fresh. So were the bodies. Rigor mortis doesn’t last that long. Bellies were distended on the goats downstairs, but that happens… I’d need an autopsy to be reasonably sure of time of death.

But the garden, though. Things wilt fast out here in the desert, but if things were normal out here at Mama Zamba’s—if normal could be the word applied to the biggest wheel in the voodoo community in my town—the garden should be in tiptop shape for a little while after she was dead.

So what had kept her so busy her garden didn’t get watered? She had people to do it for her.

But those people were dead.

The zombies were too juicy and the human bodies were too fresh. It just didn’t add up. Unless the reigning queen of the voodoo scene had had something more than gardens on her mind lately—and on the minds of her followers.

Her newly dead followers.

“What are you thinking?” Saul finally asked as I stood staring at Zamba’s garden like I was hypnotized.

“I don’t quite know yet,” I admitted. “It’s more and more likely Zamba’s involved instead of a victim. I think we should get some breakfast, since dawn’s coming up.”

“And then?”

I tested the hypothesis in my head. I just didn’t know enough to see if it explained everything. “And then we’re going to visit Galina again. If she hasn’t gone through her diaries yet, I’ll wait while she does. I’ve got a theory, but I can’t figure one thing out.”

“That one thing would be?”

“Why a voodoo queen has it in for the Cirque. You’d think if she hated hellbreed she’d find some closer to home to murder.”