But why would he come back and kill Marianne? I pulled the stretcher out and maneuvered it up to the house, past the unusually somber paramedics and cops. Marianne might not have been a cop or EMT, but she’d worked with them for long enough that she was definitely considered one of them. In fact, the law enforcement and rescue community had rallied around her in a touching and awesome display of support after Ed’s shocking flight.

She was lying on her back in the middle of her living room, arms and legs splayed as if she’d tripped and fallen backward. Her eyes were open, and her face seemed calm, but a thin line of blood tracked from the bullet hole almost perfectly centered in her forehead. I swept a glance around the room, oddly puzzled. The house was neat and clean, comfortably furnished with a few knick-knacks on high shelves. An upright piano rested against one wall. A vase on a side table was filled with flowers. Nothing seemed out of place. No sign of struggle. Then again, if it had been Ed, she’d have let him in, right? But why would he kill her?

Detective Abadie had his head down while he made notes in a steno pad. He glanced up as I entered and gave me a slight nod—a far cry from his usual lip curl coupled with mild disdain.

Sean and another crime scene tech were still taking pictures of the body, so I positioned myself by the wall near Abadie.

“Do you think Ed did it?” I asked him under my breath.

His mouth tightened. “We have no suspects at this time,” was his gruff reply, but the grim set of his eyes told me all I needed to know.

I swallowed. “Does Marcus know?”

Abadie gave a short nod. “He’s on his way, though he won’t be allowed behind the tape.” That made sense considering how close he and Ed had been. Abadie gave me a sudden narrow-eyed look as if wondering if it was wise to have me picking up the body since I knew both the victim and Ed. But then he must have realized that pretty much everyone here knew them, so tossing me out would be pointless.

The crime scene techs finished their pictures. Derrel and I moved forward together as if we’d choreographed it and carefully turned Marianne over so that Sean could photograph the back of her head and the other side of her body. Derrel slipped paper bags over Marianne’s hands and taped them around her wrists with surgical tape, just in case she had any evidence on her hands or under her nails that could lead to a suspect. Finally we picked her up and placed her in the body bag. I zipped it closed, clasped the buckles of the straps that held the bag in place, and clenched my jaw against a wave of utter helplessness. Why her? Why the hell would anyone want to kill Marianne?

I began to wheel the stretcher out when Abadie stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Angel…”

I gave him a questioning look.

“I don’t know if you read the newspaper,” he said, “but—”

“I saw it,” I said with a sour twist of my mouth.

“It’s bullshit. Try not to let it get to you too badly. They’re only writing crap like that because it’s election season, and they’re trying to stir up some controversy.”

I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it. Then tried again. “I thought you hated me.”

His lip curled with mild disdain. “I don’t hate you. I just don’t like you. Big difference. But I do hate assholes, and that reporter is an asshole. Airing your shit in the paper like that is bullshit.”

I fought for a smile, but it wasn’t happening, so I settled for a nod. “Thanks.” And then, because I had absolutely no idea how the hell else to respond to all that, I simply nodded again and continued on out with the stretcher.

Marcus pulled up as I reached the van. I yanked the back doors open and slid the stretcher in, then turned to him as he leaped out of his car and jogged up to me, agony written across his features. “Angel, it is true? Is Marianne…?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s her. I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else I could say that could get rid of the grief on his face. And I didn’t know how much was for Marianne or for the thought that Ed had done this.

He gave a shuddering sigh and sank to sit on the curb, burying his head in his hands. “God damn Ed,” he said hoarsely. “I swear I’ll kill him if I ever see him again. She didn’t deserve this.”

I slowly closed the van doors, then leaned back against them. “Why do you think it was Ed?”

He lifted his head, gave me a perplexed look. “What are you talking about? Angel, who the hell else could it have been? We know Ed went off the deep end.”

I frowned but didn’t argue the point. Marcus wasn’t in any state of mind to listen to anything right now. But for some reason I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Ed had “gone off the deep end,” at least not to such a degree that he would start killing non-zombies. And a single gunshot to the head? If he’d killed her because he was crazy, wouldn’t it have been a lot more violent? Wouldn’t there have been a fight, or struggle, or something?

But those arguments could be raised another time when the emotional wound wasn’t quite so raw. For now I kept my mouth shut, sat down on the curb beside him, and put my arms around him while he wept on my shoulder.

Chapter 9

The autopsy of Marianne was brutal. Not the actual procedure, but the general mood of the room. There was none of the usual joking or conversation that usually helped lighten the atmosphere. The humor that we used as a self-defense against the horror of what we had to do was gone. In some ways it was worse than when we had a kid come through.

Also, we had several observers, which further dampened the mood. Detective Abadie was present since it was his case, but Captain Pierson was also there, silently watching from a discreet distance away while Sean, the crime scene tech, took numerous pictures.

I’d been working with Dr. Leblanc, the parish forensic pathologist, for about two months now, and I prided myself on the fact that I was getting to the point where I could almost anticipate his needs, like a well-trained surgeon’s assistant, or some shit like that. Not that I knew crap about surgery—only what I’d seen on TV—but in those shows there was always some nurse or whatever standing right beside the doctor while he snapped out things like, “clamp!” or “scalpel!” Of course, considering how much the reality of police work and death investigation varied from what I’d seen on TV, there was every chance that the medical shows I watched were just as inaccurate.

I didn’t hand instruments to him or anything, but I knew his routine—which helped keep me from dropping things or doing anything equally idiotic with people watching.

“Why are they all here?” I murmured to Dr. Leblanc at one point.

He breathed a soft sigh. “It’s going to be rather high profile since the number one suspect is her boyfriend—”

“—Who also happens to be the number one suspect in the beheading murders,” I finished for him.

He nodded gravely and bent back to his examination. Together we removed the bags from Marianne’s hands and allowed Sean to take detailed pictures of them. I didn’t see any sign that she’d clawed or scratched anyone, but Dr. Leblanc still took scrapings from beneath the nails, and then clipped the nails and collected them in a small paper envelope. I assumed it would be sent to the DNA lab to be compared to whatever suspect they came up with. Ed most likely. Did they even have his DNA to compare it to? I worried over that for several minutes until I finally realized it was a stupid thing to worry about. Let the detectives figure out how to handle that detail.

It was my job to cut the heads open on bodies, but Dr. Leblanc assisted on this one since Marianne had been shot in the head. My respect and admiration for him soared as he carefully walked me through the process of doing it in a way that preserved the evidence of the bullet wounds in the skull. I was insanely aware of the presence of watchers, but somehow Dr. Leblanc made it seem as if I was doing him a favor and completely in control, instead of having to be, essentially, told step by step what to do. It didn’t even bother me that I kept having to pause so that Sean could take pictures of the wounds.

I gently tipped the brain out and set it in the bed of the scale, then returned to the now-empty skull.

“The forehead wound is definitely the entry point,” Dr. Leblanc said in a normal voice, gesturing the observers over. “See how it’s concave on the inside of the skull?” He pointed to the beveled edges, while Sean took more pictures.

“Like when you shoot a BB through a glass window,” I said, then flushed, certain I’d said something moronic.

But Dr. Leblanc gave me an approving smile. “That’s exactly it,” he said. “Don’t ever believe someone who says they can tell from the exterior which are the entry and exit wounds. You almost always have to examine the interior of the skull.”

My flush turned into a glow of pride. I stepped back to give Sean more room to take his pictures, then moved on to help finish up the rest of the autopsy. By the time it was time for me to sew up the Y-incision on her torso, the others had all filed out. I finished up in peace while Dr. Leblanc wrote up his notes, then I carefully put her back in the body bag. After I closed up the big plastic bag that contained all the organs the pathologist had removed and cut samples from, I set that in the body bag as well, between her legs. That’s one brain that I won’t eat, I decided as I wheeled the body back to the cooler. There was no way I could eat someone I’d known and liked.

Dr. Leblanc was ready and waiting for me when I returned to the cutting room with the next body of the day: a twenty-something man who’d most likely died of a drug overdose. Those still gave me a chill whenever I had to deal with one. There but for the grace of god go I and all that shit, though I rather doubted that god had anything to do with me being turned into a zombie. Though, if I hadn’t been turned that night, I would’ve definitely died. I’d already been high as a kite when my would-be rapist had slipped Rohypnol into my drink. When I’d fallen unconscious and started having trouble breathing, he’d panicked and was on his way to take me out to the swamp to dump my body when he took a curve too fast and wrecked his car. Either the drug overdose or my injuries would have been more than enough to kill me if Marcus hadn’t seen the crash and decided on the spot to do the only thing that could possibly save me.