Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [128]
“Once I got away from them, I took off running,” Frank said. “But these . . . these things came out of nowhere and made a beeline for me. These two vicious, growling, stinking little monsters.”
The baka had torn at his clothing, chased him around the park, drooled on him, and terrified him out of his mind. They had finally caught him and were, he felt sure, on the verge of killing him when Biko came along and rescued him.
After Biko left him alone to go in pursuit of the baka, Frank had been overcome by terror. He was afraid the zombies would find him, or that the baka would return for him while Biko was hunting them elsewhere. So he had fled.
“Since then,” Frank said, “I’ve been barricaded inside my apartment. Too scared to come out, talk to anyone, answer calls . . . Half the time, I thought I was completely crazy and had imagined the whole thing. The other half of the time . . . I prayed I was crazy and had imagined it.”
“It didn’t occur to you to warn others about this?” I said critically.
“As if anyone would listen,” he said. “Come on. You know how crazy it sounds.”
Recalling Lopez’s reaction tonight, as well as the merriment of the cops on the night I had been arrested, I found it hard to disagree with that. “Even so,” I said. “The foundation is full of kids. Shondolyn was in danger. You had a responsibility to—”
“Esther,” Max said gently. “Recriminations will not help us decide what to do next.”
I made a grumpy noise and folded my arms.
Max said to Frank, “You did not see who led the dark ritual or commanded the zombies?” When Frank shook his head, Max persisted, “But you heard a voice?”
“A woman’s voice.”
“Did you recognize it?” Max asked.
Frank shook his head. “I was scared and dazed. There was a door between us. A lot was happening. But I’m pretty sure she was speaking in Creole the whole time.”
“The mambo,” I said with cold certainty.
“She knows I didn’t see her,” Frank said. “I mean . . . I think she knows. So why send the kid to kill me? And if she had doubts, then why wait until tonight to do it?”
“Maybe the cop is the reason,” Jeff said suddenly.
“What?” I snapped.
“He goes looking for Frank. So someone else goes looking for Frank,” Jeff said. “Lopez was poking around the foundation and asking questions, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “He was.” And on Friday, when I left to go work at the restaurant, he said he was returning to the foundation to ask more questions—after I had told him about a missing teacher named Frank Johnson. I nodded. “I think he started asking about Frank a couple of days ago.”
“So maybe Celeste started getting worried about what Frank would say when Lopez got to him,” said Jeff.
“And crossing town to find and kill Frank without being noticed, stopped, and exposed would probably be a tall order for a zombie,” I said. “So she had to find another way.”
Max nodded. “Hence the possession of Biko.”
“But how did she know where to send Biko?” Frank said, “I don’t picture a chubby Haitian mambo or a kid with a sword following that police detective to my place without him noticing.”
“You filled out the same kind of paperwork I did at the foundation,” I said. “Both of our addresses are on file there now.”
As I realized this, I decided maybe I wouldn’t go home again until we solved this mess.
“That information is kept in Darius’ office,” Jeff said. “Since he died, people are in and out of that room all the time, looking for files, getting paperwork, and picking up the slack until his replacement is hired. It’s not exactly Fort Knox.”
“So the mambo just walked in and looked up my address?” Frank said. “Shit.”
“The room where you saw Shondolyn is obviously a space used for dark worship,” Max mused. “A place to honor the most dangerous of the Petro loa. Traditionally, it could not be done in the hounfour where the Rada are worshipped. That would be a form of sacrilege.”
“It would also be kind of stupid,” Jeff pointed out. “Whatever