The Voodoo Killings (2 page)

“You kidding? I put them back when I’m done. I sure as hell don’t let them go walkabout in Seattle with cellphones.”

Randall snorted.

“Think he’s the real thing? Not just pretending, or messed in the head?”

“Kid, trust me, he’s a zombie. Can you help him?”

I let out a long breath as I fumbled my keys off the stand. “I don’t know, but just don’t call the cops until I get there.”

I heard the door chime in the background; I hoped it was Cameron walking in. I pictured Randall weighing the baseball bat he kept behind the bar. “Just get down here fast before one of my customers figures out what’s up with him.” He hung up.

I headed into the washroom to leave a message for Nate, my roommate. I grabbed the red lipliner in Manhunt I always left by the sink and began to write backwards on the mirror:
Nate. Going out. Back in an hour or so
.

I waited for a response.

Nothing. He was probably still pissed about my most recent
comments on nineties-era grunge music. Piece of advice? Don’t argue with the ghost of a deceased grunge star about his contribution to the modern music landscape. It doesn’t go well.

I added,
Stop being a princess
.

Still nothing.

I stuck the lipliner back in the toothbrush holder. He’d hold out for another day at most. Ghosts might be stubborn by nature, but the modern ones love their electronics and suck with combination locks. Too tactile. If Nate wasn’t jonesing for his PlayStation by tomorrow, then I’d get worried.

Before I headed for the elevator, I opened my freezer and carefully removed the blue ice trays and shelf, and reached for one of the three silver Thermoses I kept hidden there. I rolled it over and checked the date. June 2015: three months old, so still good—or good enough in an emergency. I tucked it in a discreet compartment of my backpack and grabbed my bike, a red 1990 Honda Hawk GT 650 in desperate need of an overhaul. As I locked up, I couldn’t help wondering what the hell was waiting for me at Catamaran’s. Some start to my Friday night.

—

I live in a converted warehouse by the Seattle docks that was originally used for sugar- and rum-running in the 1800s; the boats had sailed right in where the cargo could be unloaded away from prying eyes. It wasn’t until 1950 that they infilled the slough and converted the warehouse into studio apartments. The one feature they’d left intact was the freight elevator, which I was partial to because it let me take my bike upstairs. No, I don’t trust my neighbours.

The building attracted a revolving and seemingly endless roster of artists and musicians. I had my suspicions there was a witch three floors down, but people in my business tend to keep to themselves. I’d pieced together from snippets of laundry room conversations I’d overheard that tenants in the building thought I was a drug dealer or a stripper. It’s the leather. The bike doesn’t hurt either.

As I rode the elevator down to the main floor, I composed a mental list of everyone in Seattle still capable of raising a zombie. It wasn’t long. Since the new laws kicked in, restricting what kind of dead you could raise and when, there were only two of us left in town that I knew of: me and Maximillian Odu.

Max was the genuine article, a traditional voodoo priest from a long New Orleans family line. He was very good. I’d been Max’s apprentice for a number of years, an arrangement I’d terminated almost a year ago at Halloween. Max was a stickler for tradition and didn’t appreciate some of my more creative modifications when it came to raising the dead. And unlike me, Max outright refused celebrity seance gigs. As he’d said many a time, it went against every fibre in his body to capitalize that way. Given the new laws, his wallet had to be hurting too.

I’m not so picky. This is Seattle: do you have any idea how many calls I get for one-on-one time with famous dead grunge rockers? It’s called making rent.

I was not keen on zombie shoptalk with my old teacher—my leaving him was still a sore point between us—but I found Max’s number and hit Call; even if it wasn’t his zombie, he’d know if anyone else in Seattle could have pulled off a raising. He was a hell of a lot more up to date on the local scene than I was these days.

The phone rang six times before it went to voice mail.

“Max, it’s Kincaid. Get back to me ASAP, will you? Business-related question.”

The freight elevator hit the ground floor and I kicked the grate open—hard; it had a bad habit of catching on its hinges. One of these days I’d oil them, since our building manager sure as hell wasn’t about to. I pushed the bike out and weaved between the haphazard art installations—an impromptu art gallery for the artistically inclined in the building, or a display of every piece rejected by the legitimate dealers of Seattle. Take your pick.

By the back entrance, the front wheel of my Honda Hawk rammed into the side of a new installation. I swore, and backed the bike up to try again. The piece in question was an ornate six-foot mirror
painted to look like a ghost summoning, complete with a detailed depiction of a frozen Renaissance-era man with an authentic Otherside ghost-grey cast.

I shook my head. No wonder none of the art galleries took it. First off, ghosts don’t last that long; they can survive a century and a half, tops. And they sure as hell don’t stand there and watch the world go by.

I negotiated my bike past it and out the door into a perfect mid-September Seattle night: drizzle with a touch of seaweed in the air. I hopped on, kicked it into gear and took off up First.

—

Catamaran’s was only a few blocks from my place, and I knew the route well enough to hug the alleys. The last thing I needed was some cop spotting me en route. A zombie by nature is unpredictable, doubly so if the practitioner who raised it is MIA. It was a distinct possibility all hell would have broken loose by the time I got there…which brings me back to wishing to avoid a patrol car on the way. Even if I had twenty rock-solid alibis, in the event of a zombie mishap I’d be an immediate suspect. A vision of one of those Monopoly “Go directly to jail” cards comes to mind.

I veered into Pioneer Square, the trendy historical part of town. In my experience, the cops usually left Pioneer Square alone. At least until after midnight.

As I crested the hill, I noticed floodlights a block away on the other side of Pioneer Square park. The streets were crowded with people heading to the clubs, but there was a notable gathering around one of the popular coffee shops, one I liked to frequent. I hadn’t heard about any movies filming in town this weekend; most of that action had moved north to Vancouver. So what gave?

I spotted the two unmarked black sedans tucked by the curb, the silently flickering red and blue lights set just inside the windshield.

Shit.

I turned into the nearest alley. Most of the detectives wouldn’t recognize my Hawk from this distance, but my ex, Aaron, and his
partner, Sarah, would. I checked out the scene unfolding behind me in the side mirror. No sirens, no ambulance—a break-in?

I stuffed my curiosity. Even if I rode up and asked the uniforms, they probably wouldn’t give me the time of day, even though I used to be a department consultant. Like I said, the new paranormal laws outlawed five-line, permanent zombies and also restricted the four-line, temporary zombies used in police investigations and legal disputes. That changed a lot of things in Seattle, especially for me. One day you’re raising ghosts and zombies to help the police catch killers, the next you’re
persona non grata
.

I reached Catamaran’s and glided the bike around back, where I stashed it beside the overflowing green Dumpster. I reached for the canvas tarp Randall kept out back to further conceal my bike and was rewarded with a hiss. Randall’s fat yellow tabby growled as I uncovered its hiding spot before bolting off to find another refuge from the rain. I shook my head. Randall really needed to stop feeding that thing. It’s rare you run into a cat that hates the Otherside so much it reacts to the trace scent I carry with me everywhere.

I slipped in through the kitchen’s back door—and by kitchen, I mean a deep fryer and dishwasher wedged into a corner. I squeezed by the deep fryer, trying not to think how many health regulations Randall was breaking. It was his bar, though, so I suppose they were his rules to break….

The many widescreen TVs out front were all playing the Mariners’ home game against the Oakland Athletics. They were heading into the sixth inning, Mariners up to bat and the game tied 2–2. I doubted even a zombie would get the crowd’s attention, and they certainly paid me no mind as I stepped out through the tropical-coloured yellow and green kitchen push door. The doors stuck out like a sore thumb, but Randall had taken to decorating the place in a tropical theme to complement the bar’s name.

I spotted my zombie immediately.

He was sitting at the far end of the bar—the one spot where you didn’t have a clear view of one of the TVs—and was wearing a faded Mariners sweatshirt with the hood pulled down over his face. It was
at least two sizes too large, so Randall must have given it to him. An untouched beer sat in front of him. Randall himself stood nearby at the sink, cleaning glasses when there was no shortage of clean ones hanging overhead. He saw me and waved me over.

“Randall,” I said, taking a stool one over from the zombie. I crinkled my nose as the smell hit me, but it wasn’t strong enough to alert anyone not trained to pick it up.

Randall poured me my usual Pilsner and placed it on the bar beside the zombie’s untouched drink, no coaster. It wasn’t a coaster kind of place. “He’s all yours, Kincaid,” he said. Then the Mariners game hit a commercial break and without another word Randall headed to the crowded end zone of the bar, as people clamoured for more beer.

I took a sip of mine and turned my attention to the zombie. “Cameron?”

His head didn’t move and with his face obscured by the hoodie, I couldn’t gauge whether he’d heard me or not. I didn’t dare check his bindings—the focused lines of Otherside energy that were holding him together. Not that anyone would see me pull a globe to check, but Cameron would feel it and I didn’t want to startle him.

Instead, I touched his forearm. In the early stages, zombies respond to touch better than sound. Has to do with how the different parts of the brain break down. “Cameron?” I said again, applying a little more pressure.

He lifted his head and turned it to face me.

An untrained person would figure him for a homeless guy Randall had taken pity on and let sit at the bar while the game was on. Not bad-looking, either—still had all his teeth, minimal decrepitude. But to me? It’s in the eyes. A new zombie watches you as if he’s grasping to remember something on the tip of his tongue and you might have the key. It’s when he stops searching your face that you need to worry. I don’t know if it’s even possible to bring a zombie back from that….

The way Cameron’s pupils focused on me, part of him still had to be in there. There was no way he was a four-line, permit-friendly zombie—the temporary kind you were still allowed to raise for will disputes and such. The kind who have just enough brainpower to
recite pertinent info from memory, but not enough to appreciate their predicament, so when they’ve served their purpose you can put them in the ground, no problem. Cameron was a five-line, permanent zombie. The illegal kind.

Shit.

I quickly scanned him, top to bottom. There was no obvious trauma, no bullet holes, no darkening of the lips from lack of oxygen…no obvious sign of foul play. Nine times out of ten, the reason a zombie is raised is to cover up a murder. Makes proving time of death a real bitch.

I couldn’t be sure with the hoodie up, but it didn’t look as if his shoulder-length red hair had started to fall out yet.

Young, too. Not a day over thirty, if that. Shame he was dead.

I heard a bat crack on TV, signalling that the game was back on. I tensed as Cameron’s focus shifted away from me and towards the noise. In profile, there was something familiar about his face….“Cameron?”

He slowly turned back to me, narrowing his zombie faded green-white eyes. “Are you…?” He struggled to remember my name. Zombies aren’t known for their short-term memory.

“Yes, I’m Kincaid,” I said. “You called me, remember? I’m here to help you.”

His frown deepened. His cellphone was on the counter. I fished out a business card and picked up the phone, flipping to the last called number. I held my business card up beside it, showing him the identical numbers. “See? We spoke less than a half-hour ago.”

Cameron took the phone from my fingers and stared at the screen.

“Do you know why you’re here?” I asked.

After a moment more of staring at the phone, he nodded. “I have to stay here,” he said. He picked up his beer and peered at the contents, as if undecided whether he should drink it or put it back. His indecision morphed into frustration, and I watched his knuckles turn white as if squeezing the glass would somehow make the decision easier. I counted another ten seconds before he looked back at me again. “I’m waiting for someone,” he said.

Afraid the glass would shatter, I gently pried it from his hands. In general, alcohol is a bad choice for a new zombie: wreaks havoc on the intestines, accelerates bloating, decay…

I glanced around, but everyone was still fixating on the Mariners’ home game. Randall, smart man that he was, was making a point of not glancing in my direction. I removed the metal Thermos from my bag and unscrewed the cap, out of sight under the lip of the bar.

I leaned in close to Cameron and passed the Thermos right under his nose so he’d be sure to smell the contents; frozen brains aren’t nearly as aromatic as thawed. “Drink this instead,” I said, keeping my voice low.

Cameron’s nose crinkled as he grasped the Thermos, trying to figure out the smell. The hairs on the backs of my arms shot up. It wasn’t every day I had to get close and personal with a zombie I didn’t control.

He took a first hesitant sip, and winced.

“Trust me, it’ll make you feel better,” I said.

He gave me a critical stare—or as critical as a zombie in his condition could manage—but took another sip. The emergency mix of cow, pig and sheep brains would stop Cameron from deteriorating further but wouldn’t fix him. To fix him, I needed to get my hands on real brains—human ones—which was a serious problem since it was highly illegal to feed real brains to zombies. Life-sentence illegal.