Flesh Circus

“Sure thing.” But he just stood there, looking at me, for a long moment. “I’m glad I came out.”

What do you want, a tickertape parade? But that was uncharitable of me. I could just chalk it up to nerves, couldn’t I? “Me too, catkin. Let’s see those bodies.”

“Are you really?” It wasn’t like him to persist. “You sure?”

I exaggerated rolling my eyes, just like a teenager. I’ll never see the su

“Nothing.” He turned gracefully and led me up the stairs. “There are bodies in the bedrooms, nothing in the kitchen but a pot on the stove. Smells like the other place, a little.”

“But no blondes? Blond dreadlocks, waist-length?” Wide face, big nose, bad skin, rotting teeth rimmed with gold making a bright-starred smile, and those dreadlocks. Zamba was tall and almost breastless, and I’d sometimes thought she was in drag. Nowadays you can’t tell, and dealing with ’breed on a regular basis will wallop some of your assumptions about gender pretty hard.

“Come and see.”

Goddammit. But he was right not to tell me, I suppose. I might not have believed it, if he had.

It was nine bodies, all told. I recognized an ebony-ski

They probably wouldn’t rise as zombies, though I would nail the palms and feet before Forensics got here. There wasn’t enough etheric residue in them to power that kind of motion, though. Zamba’s devotees had been eaten. And either someone had brushed aside Zamba’s protections and killed her followers and her, or…

Jesus.

In the kitchen, a pot on the stove was long cool. A stringy brew of something that smelled vaguely similar to Lorelei’s still-bubbling concoction rested under a thick scrim of clotted grease. The kitchen was otherwise spic-and-span, the attached dining room where Zamba fed her acolytes holding a long table, chairs ranked neatly, and an altar on the wall under the window that looked out on the side-yard and the wall of the abandoned house next door.

“What do you make of this?” Saul asked quietly. He stood by the sink, arms folded, looking at the bottle of dishwashing liquid and scrubbies, neatly placed in a chrome rack.

“I don’t like that we can’t find her body.” That’s just one of the things I don’t like about this.

“Any chance she could be the one behind all this?”

Trust him to say what I was thinking. “More than a chance, catkin. Still, I suppose there’s always room to hope she’s not. I’d like it better if the bitch was dead.”

“Now there’s something I don’t hear you say often.” He peered out the window. “It’s almost dawn.”

No shit. This has been a long night. I spotted the phone, hanging at the end of the counter. “If Zamba’s behind this, it’s bad news. If she’s just disappeared it’s bad news too; it means we might have another body site.” I let out a sigh. The smell was bad, the situation was worse, and I had the idea I wasn’t going to spend today sleeping, either. “I’ve got to call in and see who they can spare to come out and process this site too. No rest for the wicked.”

“Amen to that.” His shoulders went down a little. Had he been bracing himself? For what? “What’s our next step?”

I thought about it. “Calling someone to come out and take care of this site. Seeing if I overlooked Zamba’s body downstairs or in the back yard. Going over this place with a fine-tooth comb, then going through the files—” I tapped the counter with bitten-down nails, my fingers drumming. “This has all the earmarks of a serious fucking tangle.”

As usual, Saul put the question in reasonable terms. “If Zamba is behind this, what does she have against the Cirque?”

“I don’t—” I straightened, suddenly, and stared at the pot on the stove. “Huh.”

Saul kept quiet, looking at the sink, and let me wander around inside my head. It was good to have him there—he served up the right questions, and knew when to keep his mouth shut so I could think. I found myself studying the lines of his fringed jacket, his jeans splattered with zombie, the edge of the stove, his boots, my own boot-toes. Eyes roving, snagging on the linoleum as I pursued the line of thought to its logical end, found it wanting—but not wanting enough.

“If a better theory comes along, I’ll snag it,” I decided out loud. “Call this scene in, I’m going to check the back yard and the houses on either side.”

“I’m coming with you.” His jaw jutted, stubbornly.

Oh, for Chrissake. “Of course you are. After you call.”

Chapter Sixteen

Piper was still processing the last scene. This time Foster showed up, his own brown ponytail slick as ever. He surveyed the stinking goop starred with porous bones that had been zombies and sighed. “Busy night. Anything else?”

I almost hated to tell him. Foster always reminds me of an otter—brown, sleek, with a cute little nose and quick clever fingers. “The bedrooms. Don’t take the iron nails out of the corpses. And there’s animals downstairs.”

“Well, shit.” But he motioned his team past, Carolyn holding the door log in front of her like a holy grail, Max with his camera, Stephanie and Browder with their matching smiles and bags of gear. “Beaucoup overtime.”

Behind them, Sullivan and the Badger showed up. The Badger negotiated the stairs with her mouth set tight and turned down, her gray hair pulled back into its usual bun, the white streak down one side glinting, since I’d flicked the porch lights on. Sullivan, scratching at his coppery stubble, gave me a weak grin. He looks like dishwater even on a good day, but that pale, nervous exterior hides a sharp, inductive mind.

The Badger looks like a cookie-baking, kitten-sweatshirt-and-mom-jean-wearing soccer mom—a particularly cuddly and harmless one. She’d added a pair of steel-framed glasses to her round florid face, and moved carefully. I wasn’t fooled—for such a rotund woman, she was light on her feet when it counted. And they don’t call her the Badger for her hair.

No, she gets that name by being tenacious as hell. She does it in such a nice, unassuming way that people forget her namesake has teeth and claws.

Rumor has it she went a couple of rounds with a sex offender once, and busted him up bad by the time backup arrived. The perp thought one plump lady cop would be easy to bowl over. He spent three weeks in the hospital and another couple months in physical therapy, I was told.

I’d lay odds it’s true.

“How many fucking scenes you going to give us tonight?” Sullivan said, blinking. He patted his breast pocket, where a pack of Marlboro Lights peeped up at me. For someone who looks so washed-out, he certainly has a big strident voice.

“As many as I’ve got. Hi, Badge.”

She grunted, heaved herself up onto the porch, and eyed me. “Thought you didn’t want a team tonight.”

I shrugged. Silver tinkled in my hair, falling over my shoulders. “With bodies mounting up like this, I need backup.” I’m glad it’s you two.

“Huh. Should we check the other scenes?” It’s amazing, the way her soft, modulated voice can slice through a hubbub. One of the forensic techs was laughing—shrill laughter with that edge of disgust you hear so often at homicide scenes.