“Oh, he had a job.” A grimace passed over Derrel’s face. “He has a record a mile long for dealing drugs. Pot, crack, heroin, you name it. This guy was a real prize. I guess I’m not surprised that he went so long without being found.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Though I bet his regular customers were jonesing. The neighbor in the next trailer over was the one to call the cops.”
“Complaining about the smell?” I said.
Derrel grinned. “Got it in one.”
I crouched by the body. There was something odd, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I took a deep breath, aware of the stench of the decomposition, but not bothered by it.
Something’s missing.
My mouth went dry as realization hit home. Okay, so it had been less than a day since I’d last had brains. I wasn’t hungry and probably wouldn’t start having cravings for another day and a half at least. Even so, one thing I’d discovered in the past couple of weeks was that I had a nose for brains. I could smell it in the people around me, and I could certainly smell it in dead bodies. It didn’t even matter if there was so much decomposition that it’d be inedible. Brains rotted fast—after a few days outside of a cooler there usually wasn’t much left but a nasty grey goo—but I should still be able to detect the scent.
Yet there was only the barest whiff of it here.
“Hey, Derrel,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice nice and calm and casual, even though a strange uneasiness was working its way through my gut. “What’s the guess on cause of death?”
“Hang on a sec and we’re gonna see what we can find out,” he replied. He jotted a few more notes on his pad, then set it down on the desk and tugged on gloves. “With the amount of decomposition and all this purge fluid surrounding him, it’s going to be tough to tell how he died unless there’s some obvious trauma still evident.”
I didn’t respond to that. I knew what we were going to find. At least, I couldn’t think of any other explanation. Still when we turned the body, I felt an odd relief that I hadn’t been imagining it.
“Well, how’s that for ‘obvious trauma’?” I asked, looking down at the caved-in back of the guy’s skull. Maybe I was starting to get the hang of this whole undead thing.
Derrel let out a low whistle. “I think that qualifies.”
I flicked a maggot off my glove as Derrel went outside to tell the detectives that it looked like a homicide. A large black fly buzzed in a low drone around my head, and when I waved it away it joined the others congregated against the window. I straightened as Sean entered. He gave me a pained look as he pulled the mask back onto his face.
“Angel, I have no idea how you can stand this stench,” he said. “Derrel’s been doing this for long enough that I think he doesn’t have any smell receptors left, but you . . . ?” He grimaced as he snapped pictures of the skull and the injury while I held the body in position for him. “You are one tough chick.” Then his eyes crinkled, and even though he had the mask on, I could tell he was grinning at me. “Or maybe you’re seriously sick and twisted, in which case you are so in the right line of work.”
I laughed. “Gotta be the second one,” I said. “I’m not tough!”
He finished taking his pictures, and I walked out with him. I knew it would be a while before I could take the body since it was pretty obvious it was a homicide, which meant that the detective assigned to the case would need to go in and do whatever it was that detectives did. About all I knew was what I’d seen on TV, and considering how much of what I did differed from the TV version, I figured I was most likely misinformed on ninety percent of the details.
I pulled off my gloves, leaned up against the front of Derrel’s Durango to wait. I’m tough, huh? That was a new one. I had to admit, I was kinda tickled at the thought.
“How are you doing, Angel?” a familiar voice asked to my right.
I turned with an automatic smile before realizing who the speaker was. And my sunglasses are up on my damn head, I thought with a mental cringe. “I’m all right, Deputy Ivanov,” I replied, keeping the smile on my face. Fuck it. I wasn’t the one who’d been arrested. I wasn’t going to hang my head in shame simply because my dad could be a real piece of shit. “I’m doin’ all right,” I said. “Thanks.”
His eyes crinkled as he gave me a smile of his own. “You know, it’s all right to call me Marcus.” Then his eyes swept over my face, and I had to resist the urge to stiffen. “You sure don’t bruise easy, do you? I’d have thought you’d have a real shiner going there.”
“Um, lucky I guess. And I, uh, put ice on it.”
He grimaced at my stilted response. “Sorry, I’m doing that ‘insensitive dick’ thing again. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
I shrugged. “Nah, it’s okay. Shit happens, y’know?” An awkward silence fell and I flicked off another maggot that had managed to make it up to my forearm.
He chuckled. “I bet you never thought you’d ever be casually flinging maggots around.”
I had to laugh. “Oh my god, no kidding. I used to gag if someone spit on the sidewalk in front of me.”
“You know . . .” Marcus paused, and it looked as if he was getting up the nerve to say something. I waited, and a few seconds later he continued, “I was the Resource Officer at your high school for a short time. I’d only been a cop for a few years and usually those assignments are given to the guys with a lot more experience, but the department went through a phase where they were shuffling everyone around.”
I had an odd feeling I knew where he was going with this, but I went ahead and said, “Oh?”
His smile looked slightly abashed. “It was about five years ago. I, uh, remember you.”
It was tough but I forced myself to not look away. “You remember when I left?”
He gave a slow nod.
I made a face. “Not one of my better moments.” I didn’t mention the time he’d arrested me. So far that incident was unspoken between us. Taboo. I far preferred it that way.
He shrugged. “Maybe so. But, at the risk of sounding like a pompous condescending ass, you’re doing a good job of getting over it.”
“Took me a while.” And dying.
He smiled. “I mean it. It’s like you’re not the same person you used to be.”
God, if he only knew. “I’m not. I mean, I am . . . it’s, well, um, I’m trying to figure out who I am.” I winced. Holy shit, that sounded kooky. “Uh, you know what I mean.”
“I do,” he said with a slow nod. “I think we all have to go through that at some point.”
“Yeah,” I said. And some of us needed a kick in the ass first.
“Look, I know this is the last thing you want to talk about, but I wanted to ask you . . . .” He trailed off, looking strangely uneasy.
“Ask me . . . ?” Ask me to dinner? Ask me out for drinks? Ask me if I wanted to see what he looked like under that uniform? Yow, where’d that last one come from? But no, he’d said it was the last thing I’d want to talk about.
He took a deep breath. “I wanted to ask you to please not bail your dad out of jail.”
Somehow I managed to keep my face immobile while my thoughts went crashing into a tangled heap. “Hunh?”
“Don’t bail your dad out,” he repeated, eyes on me. “I know this is tough on you, but you shouldn’t be the one to get him out.”
“ ’Cause I’m the victim,” I managed to force out. Wow, my voice almost sounded normal.
“That’s right.” He scrubbed a hand over the short brush of hair on his head. “Give yourself a few days peace.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but I didn’t need to hear it. I knew what he wanted to say. He didn’t want me to be that victim. He gave a shit. Maybe he was like this for everyone, but it didn’t matter. I still couldn’t help but relish the tiny spark of warm glow that it gave me.
“Okay,” I said quietly.