Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [221]
I nodded. “Other vamps call them nightshift Mormons.”
He grinned. “Nightshift Mormons, really.”
“Honest.”
“Oh, I will have to remember that one, that’s good.” He looked behind us at the waiting ambulance, fire truck, and all the personnel. “Now that you’ve helped save the vamps, how about looking at the acutal crime scene?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
He grinned, and it almost pushed the tiredness out of his eyes. “I get to go first down the ladder,” he said.
I frowned at him. “What ladder?”
“Our murder scene and body dump are in a hole left by some overzealous construction workers. According to the club manager, they broke ground, but didn’t have all their permits in line, so it’s just a big hole. That’s why we need the firemen to help us get the body up out of the hole when you’re done with it.”
“You are not going ahead of me down the ladder, Zerbrowski.”
“What are you wearing under that little bitty skirt?”
“None of your damn business, and if you don’t let me go first down the ladder, I’ll tell your wife on you.”
He laughed, and a few people looked our way. They were colder than we were, and just as tired. I don’t think they saw anything to laugh about. “Katie knows I’m a lech.”
I shook my head. “How messy is it down in the hole?”
“Let’s see, it’s rained, it’s frozen, it’s thawed, and it’s rained some more.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Where are those overalls you used to wear to all the crime scenes?”
“It’s against company policy to wear crime scene gear to a zombie raising now.” What I didn’t say out loud was that I’d forgotten and worn overalls that had blood on them to a zombie raising. The client’s wife had fainted. Was it my fault that she had a fragile constitution? It wasn’t Bert who said no more, it was a majority vote at Animator’s Inc. So I actually had to pay attention to the rule. “I didn’t plan on climbing into holes and looking at bodies tonight.”
The grin faded from his face. “Me neither, let’s get this done. I want to go home and hug my wife and kids before they go off to school and work.”
I didn’t point out that it was 6:30 in the morning, and his chances of making it home in time to see Katie and his kids before they rushed off to their days was slim to none. Everybody needs a little hope, who am I to take it away?
47
THE WOMAN IN the hole was beyond hope, or fear, or whatever had happened to her. Her face looked empty, the way the dead always do. You get an occasional one that looks scared, but it’s just happenstance. The way their face muscles worked at the moment of death. But mostly, the dead look empty, like something essential is missing, something beyond just no breath, no heartbeat. I’d seen enough eyes do that last glaze, to say that something more precious than breath goes with death. Or maybe I was just tired and didn’t want to be standing ankle-deep in mud, staring down at a woman that was probably younger than I was, and now always would be. I get more morbid the closer to dawn it gets, if I haven’t been to bed.
There were a lot of similarities to the first body. This one was lying on her back, just like the last one. They’d both been strippers. They were both killed just outside the clubs that they worked in. This one was a blonde, and white, which was the same as the first one. There were a set of bite marks on either side of the neck, and one in the bend of her left arm, right wrist, and chest. To see if she had thigh bites I was going to have to kneel in the mud, and I didn’t want to. Simple as that, I didn’t want to. I promised myself I would never again be caught out, anywhere, without a pair of coveralls, and mud boots. I’d had to borrow gloves from Zerbrowski. I’d been thinking about my date, not about my job when I packed the Jeep earlier. Stupid me.
I stood up and debated on whether I could get away without crawling around in the mud and looking at all the bites. “She’s taller, by almost a foot than the last one. Blond hair but very short, the last one had long hair. Other than that, it looks damn similar.