Johnson stopped drumming his fingers. His eyebrows slanted downward and wrinkled the skin over the bridge of his nose. “Your missing guest was Marissa Albert. This isn’t her?”
“Nope.”
Johnson pulled the sheet back but kept his attention on Carmen. “Are you sure?”
The knobs of Jane Doe’s shoulders were splayed back as rigor mortis had arched her spine upward. Her breasts lay flat against the rib cage like a pair of rotting apples. There were more spots of hamburger lacerations where the crabs had fed.
“Holy shit,” Carmen pointed, “what happened there?”
In the center of the woman’s sternum was a deep, thumb-sized hole lined with charred flesh.
My fingers tingled as my vampire sense went on full alert. The wound was identical to Gilbert Odin’s. Jane Doe had been killed with an alien blaster.
Chapter
10
The cold trail of Odin’s killer had grown red-hot. The killer was here three days ago. Before that he had been in Sarasota. Where he was today was anybody’s guess.
My vampire sixth sense sounded a warning, and my fingers trembled against the edge of the table. A warning of what?
Johnson noticed my twitching fingers. “You’re going to toss your cookies?” I heard the sneer in his voice.
The medical examiner held up a paper barf bag. “Not on my floor, please.”
I took the bag to appease her. “Thanks.”
Carmen appeared puzzled at my reaction. A vampire getting queasy around a corpse? Her expression seemed to ask, What is it?
Johnson turned to Carmen. “Doesn’t seem to be affecting you.”
She shrugged. “I lived in Detroit. It’ll take more than this to shake me up.”
Johnson’s breath puffed against the inside of his paper mask. “You sure you don’t recognize her?”
“I’ve already told you that I didn’t.”
Johnson looked at me. “What about you?”
“She’s still Jane Doe.”
Carmen leaned over the corpse and studied the chest wound. “What killed her?”
“Don’t know yet,” the examiner said. “We wanted to ID the body before we started an autopsy.”
Carmen’s finger hovered over the wound. “I’ll bet it was this.”
The examiner narrowed her eyes. Smart-ass.
Johnson was clearly furious that Carmen couldn’t identify the body. Why? My instinct was to remove my contacts to zap him and the examiner, and interrogate them both. Why was Johnson so upset? Wasn’t this just another Jane Doe? Why ask us?
Before I did anything drastic, I surveyed the morgue. Two security cameras watched; one covered the front door, the other the examination table.
We were being taped. Causing trouble might be too complicated to undo.
Johnson covered Jane Doe with the sheet. He acted like his disappointment was our fault.
Outside the morgue we took off the booties and masks and dumped them in a trash bin. Johnson took us back to the entrance desk, where we turned in our badges.
He offered Carmen a business card. “In case you need to chat.”
“About what?”
He gave her a final once-over. His frown morphed into a grin, quick as a chameleon changing colors. “Whatever.”
Carmen refused the card. “I know where to find you.”
Johnson tightened his lips in annoyance and acted like he wanted to shove the card against her face.
She gave him an innocent look. “Anything else, Deputy?”
His lips curled upward and he dropped his gaze to her chest. His eyes flicked left to right. He shook his head and cocked a thumb to the door. Dismissed.
Carmen and I went out and headed to the dock.
“I’m surprised he remembered Marissa’s name,” Carmen said. “On the way over here Johnson did nothing but stare at my boobs. I feel I need to wash them. The next time I meet up with that bastard, I’ll drain every drop of his blood. Al dente.”
That meant fanging someone without secreting enzymes to deaden the victim’s pain. The agony was like having acid pumped through every blood vessel until the organs boiled. It was a ghastly death, usually reserved for the most vile of human enemies.
“He was setting me up.” Carmen stared ahead as we walked.
“How so?”
“Because Jane Doe was Marissa Albert.”
“She was? Why did you lie?” I asked.
“To give me time to figure out what Johnson is up to. They find Marissa’s body this morning and then he comes to my resort looking for someone to ID the body. There are hundreds of hotels, spas, hideaways all over the Keys. He knew who she was from the beginning. Otherwise, why did he come to my resort?”
“How do you figure into this?”
“My guess is that once I identify the body, then the investigation turns to the resort and me. What did I know about her? Why had she come here? It’s a matter of misdirection by Johnson.”
“Because he knew who killed her?” I asked. “If that’s the case, why recover the body?”
“Maybe the body wasn’t meant to be found.” Carmen quickened her pace. When we got to the dock, she gave Thorne the signal to start the engine. Carmen grasped my arm and turned me so our backs were to Thorne. As a chalice, Thorne could be trusted with any vampire secret, but we still took precautions.
She squinted at me. “That’s not all that bothers me. What shook you up in the morgue? Very unvampire-like behavior.”
Here goes. The Araneum told me to keep my investigation of the extraterrestrials confidential. Now I had to violate that trust to keep Carmen’s. Tell Carmen the truth and she’ll have a conniption fit over my not sharing what I’ve known. My dilemma fastened around me like a pair of pliers.
Carmen gestured impatiently. “Well?”
I felt the pliers squeeze. “Marissa was killed with an alien blaster.”
Carmen’s brow lowered. “How do you know?”
“I’ve seen those wounds before.”
“Where?” Her eyes narrowed and crinkled the center of her brow.
I confessed how I’d found the alien Gilbert Odin, the space blaster, and the delivery of his rotting corpse to the UFO. The more details I gave her, the more her eyes narrowed, until they looked like slits. Her nostrils flared and one corner of her mouth twitched. I thought she was going to lunge at me and bite.
Her eyes opened a bit and glistened like hot rivets. “When the hell were you going to tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Anything else?”
There was no point in holding the rest back. I told Carmen about the message from the Araneum.
Her expression turned from anger to worry. The glint in her eyes dimmed. “You were only doing what you were told. I would’ve done the same.”
“Before Gilbert Odin died, he told me, ‘Save the Earth women.’”
“And who’s supposed to save the Earth women?” Carmen’s voice sharpened with sarcasm. “You?”
“Very funny. But the point is that since we know Marissa was killed with an alien weapon, maybe she’s the first of these women that needed saving.”
Carmen cast a look past me and across the horizon, as if searching for the meaning of what I’d just shared. “Or the first that we know about.”
I added what I knew about the charter plane that had gone down.
Carmen remained quiet and her eyes focused back on me. “And the connection?”
The best I could do was shrug and say, “Don’t know.”
We started for the boat. Carmen’s arm moved in a blur and by the time I figured out what she was doing, she had already slugged my left shoulder.
I rubbed the spot where her punch had landed. “What did I do?”
“Besides bringing me all this goddamn trouble, I’m so goddamn jealous.”
“Of what?”
“Of what?” Her voice rose. She stopped, then moved close to whisper, “Isn’t it obvious? You’ve seen UFOs twice. Once at Rocky Flats and then here. I’d give my left testicle to see a UFO.”