Desperate Souls (30 page)

Jake exited Saint Vincent’s after 1:00 p.m. with a white plastic bag containing eye pads, a plastic eye cup, and medication. No drugs, though.

Just as well. I need to stay alert. It was fun while it lasted.

But the fun had stopped. As he walked down Eleventh Street, he found himself looking over his shoulder and scanning the shadows ahead. Scarecrows, no zombies. Hungry eyes, not vacant expressions. His altered depth perception only added to his sense of paranoia. Worse, he had gone to the hospital unarmed, and now he felt naked without a weapon.

I
have to stop doing that.

He took a taxi to Twenty-third Street. Facing Laurel’s storefront, he felt tempted to walk into her parlor to ask her for help. But he really wanted to get into the security of his own space and make sure Edgar had disposed of any evidence that AK had been in his suite.
Security?
He laughed out loud. So what if pedestrians on the street thought him insane? He rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Skipping the stairs was becoming a habit. He crossed the sunlit hallway to his door, which he unlocked. Inside the reception area, he discovered that Edgar had not reset the alarm even though Jake had given him the code. Careless. He passed the kitchen, his attention on the closed door ahead of him.

“Jake?”

His heart recoiled in his chest as his entire body flinched. He recognized Carrie’s voice but without his left eye had walked right past the kitchen without seeing her. And she sounded so
close.
As he spun to his left, she came into view, and when she saw the pressure pad over his eye, she jumped and cried out, which caused Jake to flinch a second time.

“Son of a
bitch!”

“I’m sorry!” Carrie fanned herself with one hand. “What happened to your eye?”

Willing his heart to slow down, Jake gasped. “It’s gone. It doesn’t matter why.”

“What? Jesus! Are you all right?”

“I will be in a minute. What are you doing here today?”

“Getting a head start on your quarterly income tax filings.”

Death and taxes,
Jake thought. “Oh, right. Thanks. I have work to do, so I’ll need a little privacy.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“You know what? I think you’d better. In fact, I’d like you to take next week off.”

“But I’ve got so much—”

“Let me rephrase it without any bullshit. People are trying to kill me. That makes this office as dangerous for you as it is for me.”

“Dangerous?”

Setting his hand on the back of her neck, he guided her into the reception area. She felt so tiny, like a child. “Very. And I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come back.”

“Do you want me to call Ripper to come over here?”

“Thank you. But I don’t think your boyfriend can help me with this.”

“I don’t know. He’s got a bad temper and a real mean streak.”

“Then why are you with him?”

“Oh, he’s got a sweet side, too.”

Jake took out his wallet. “Let me pay you in advance for next week. You’ll be absent with pay.”

Carrie raised one hand. “No. Thank you. I don’t want money I haven’t earned. Call me when you want me to come back. Call me if you want me to send Ripper to watch your back. Call me if there’s anything I can do to help you with whatever trouble you’re in.”

Jake smiled. He liked Carrie. Holding out a fifty, he said, “Then at least take this. Buy Ripper a nice dinner.”

She smiled back. “Okay. Thanks, Jake. Take care of yourself.”

“You, too.” He watched her leave.
Good things come in small packages.

After the front door closed, he went into his office, sat down, and booted up his computer. He spent half an hour checking news headlines and his e-mail. His eye grew tired, so he took a break, then popped some Tylenols for the pain. He went to the safe and took out the Afterlife laptop. Reviewing the zombies and voodoo sections, he came to a conclusion: those areas were far less comprehensive than others in the file, as if someone had deliberately left out research. But who?

Not Old Nick. He spent millions of dollars on that research.

Jake studied the names of the researchers: Dr. Donna Bidel, Ramera Evans, Professor Blake Carlton, and Javier Soueza. One of them hadn’t earned his or her fee.

Or one of them held back information.

His fingers danced over the keyboard. Because he didn’t need to look at the keys, he felt like he had found something in his life that hadn’t changed because of his new disability. He Googled each member of the team. Dr. Bidel had died of heart failure four years earlier. Professor Carlton had fallen to his death from the top floor of his San Jose condo three years ago; he had not left a suicide note. And Javier Soueza had died from a brain aneurism two years ago. Following this pattern, Jake fully expected to discover that Ramera Evans had died under mysterious circumstances one year ago, but he found no reference to any such person.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Three out of four researchers responsible for a portion of Old Nick’s big research project had met with sudden deaths. Had Tower ordered them killed to protect his secrets? Jake would not put it past the old man. If so, had Ramera Evans’s body simply not been discovered, or had she gone into hiding to escape the fate of her colleagues? Or was she responsible for the deaths?

The bells on the front door to Laurel’s parlor jingled. Jake stepped down the stairs as Laurel appeared in the shadowy doorway leading to her quarters.

“What happened to your eye?” she said with apparent alarm.

“I used it to stop a knife from entering my brain last night.”

Her eyes widened. “Who did this?”

“You tell me.”

“Give me your hand,” she said, offering him hers.

“Will this one do?” Reaching into his pocket, he took out the severed hand, wrapped in red fabric. “I always wondered when that handkerchief would come in handy.”

With no sign of disgust, Laurel accepted the hand and carried it over to the round table in the middle of the room. She sat down and unwrapped the handkerchief, revealing the yellowish gray hand, its fingers uncurled. Her own hands rested flat on the tablecloth, as if she was afraid to touch the hand by accident. “Please sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

Pulling out the chair opposite Laurel, Jake sat. “Show me some of that magic.”

Sensing the sarcasm in his voice, she glanced at him. “Still doubting me?”

“Not your ability. I know you really removed that curse from me—or whatever it was.”

“Then you just doubt my intentions?”

“You like to play things close to the vest.”

“But you do want me to read this hand and provide you with some answers?” Just a touch of sarcasm.

“Yes, please.”

Returning her attention to the hand, she took a deep breath, then shook her hands in the air as though limbering up. Pumping a small amount of sanitizer into her hands, she rubbed them together. Then she slid her left palm out beneath the back of the severed hand and closed the fingers of her right hand around the dead flesh.

Jake studied her features, searching for a reaction.

Massaging the hand, Laurel leaned forward, cocking her head as if listening to a distant voice. Her eyes grew unfocused and glossy, trancelike. Then she blinked, looked down at the hand, and separated her hands from it. She pumped more sanitizer on her hands. “This hand belongs to a zonbi. Zonbies are Creole—Louisiana vodou.”

“What’s the difference between them and regular zombies?”
Regular zombies?

“A vodou Houngan is a priest, a Mamba a priestess. They’re religious figures, with no more power than a Catholic priest or a Jewish rabbi. But a bokor is a vodou sorcerer or sorceress. The majority of men and women claiming to be bokors are scam artists. A true bokor has forged an alliance with a demon. When a bokor creates a zonbi, the creature’s soul remains in its body, acting as a receiver for its master’s commands. The bokor communicates with its slaves mentally, as if they’re its physical appendages. The spirit, or soul, is trapped inside the body unless the body’s brain is destroyed.”

“Why the brain?”

“Because the source of thought is the source of the soul.”

“And when the brain liquefies …”

“It still retains the soul.”

“And if a brain is destroyed …”

“The soul escapes.”

“This city is crawling with these zonbies. Are you telling me that every one of them is walking around with its soul trapped inside?”

“Yes. They’re unwilling slaves, with no ability to resist the orders they’re given. But inside each one of those corpses is a soul screaming to get out.”

Oh, Jesus.
“Is there a way to set all their souls free without having to destroy their brains individually?”

“Certainly. All you have to do is kill their master.”

Jake digested this information. It went down surprisingly easy. “With what, a silver bullet?”

She gave him a look that suggested she was humoring him. “Any bullet will do. Bokors are still human beings.”

Rising, Jake drew his Glock and aimed it at Laurel’s head.

Although she appeared to maintain her cool demeanor, what little color she had drained from her face. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Jake focused his aim on her forehead. “Whatever it takes, lady.”

“You’re making a serious mistake.”

“I’m prone to that.”

“You don’t want innocent blood on your hands.”

“Did you ever work for Nicholas Tower?”

“No.”

“Who are you?
What
are you?”

“I’m no bokor. I have nothing to do with Black Magic or the zonbies distributing it.”

Staring into her eyes, he wished he could squeeze the gun’s trigger and end this nightmare, but he believed everything she said. Lowering the Glock, he said, “If I find out you’re lying, I know where to find you.”

Then he holstered the gun and exited the parlor.

Sitting behind the wheel of the black SUV he had rented, Jake watched the mailman stuff envelopes into the mailbox of the two-story house on 168th Street in Jamaica, Queens, not far from Sutphin Boulevard. Residents of multiple ethnicities passed his temporary vehicle. Once predominantly African American, the neighborhood had seen a large influx of West Indians, Asians, and Puerto Ricans in recent years.

As the postman moved on to the next house, Jake slipped on the pair of wraparound sunglasses he had purchased earlier. They obscured the pressure pad over his left eye socket but also cut down the vision in his right eye. He snatched the narrow CD mailer that he had addressed to Occupant from beside him and hopped out of the SUV. Crossing the busy street at a quick pace, he locked his vehicle with a remote control. On the sidewalk, he opened the metal gate and approached the house, which had gray composite siding.

Not exactly a mansion but expensive enough in this city, especially for a woman with no discernible income source.

He mounted the concrete steps, and as he reached for the lid of the black metal mailbox, he heard the steel front door unlock. Popping the lid, he snatched out the mail and used it to cover the cardboard CD mailer. The door swung open, and a black woman in her midforties stood there, attractive for her age, with a long, curly black wig. Judging by her toned biceps, she worked out on a regular basis.

A woman of leisure.

Alice Morton’s startled expression faded into one of disdain.

Jake handed her the stack of junk mail with the CD mailer on the bottom. “Here’s your mail, Mrs. Morton.”

She hesitated, clearly caught off guard by his use of her name, then took the mail from him. “I don’t use that name anymore.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, Mrs. Reid.” Jake had no trouble projecting his old cop persona.

“It’s miss. Detective …?”

“Brown.”

“Do you mind if I see some ID?”

“Not at all.” Jake took out his wallet and handed her the business card Gary had given him at One PP.

Holding the card in her free hand, she scanned the information on it. “What can I do for you on this sunny October day, Detective Brown?”