Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [92]
Max was right! Someone was raising an army of zombies! Or at least a small platoon of them.
“Yes, I’m fine.” My voice sounded breathless. “Are the other, er, victims from Harlem, too?”
“No, they lived all over the city. They’re not all African-American, either. And they died of different causes. One died of an accidental head injury, one of a chronic illness, one was shot by a drug dealer, and one punched his own ticket.”
“He did what?”
“Uh, committed suicide.”
“It sounds very random,” I said, puzzled.
“It is. I don’t think there was any connection between any of them in life.” He gestured to a park bench in the shade. “Want to sit down?”
I nodded and took a seat. He sat down beside me and removed his sunglasses, then lifted his head and closed his eyes, enjoying the momentary breeze that fluttered through the heat-soaked park and ruffled his black hair. I looked at the smooth, dark golden skin of his throat, gleaming with a faint sheen of perspiration, and thought about the moment in the lobby when he had almost kissed me.
Eyes still closed, he said, “I think the connection occurred after they died. As corpses, they all have relevant factors in common.”
“Huh?” I said, still staring at him.
He lifted the fabric of his pale shirt away from his chest and flapped the material gently a few times, inviting cooler air to touch his torso. “For starters, of course, they were all buried in the same cemetery. It seems to be the grave robber’s hunting ground.”
Lopez let go of his shirt, opened his eyes, and looked at me. I did my best to assume an intelligent facial expression.
He continued, “And in death, they all fit the same profile as Darius. That is, they died in the prime of life and within the past month.” He tugged on his tie, removed it, and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. “And they didn’t have local families, so there was no one to visit their graves or notice anything odd.”
I frowned as I thought it over. “Is the bokor finding them through their obituaries?” It seemed so . . . mundane.
“What’s the bokor?”
I realized I had been thinking aloud. “I meant the grave robber.”
“Why was Max at the Livingston Foundation today?”
I knew what Lopez was doing. The quick topic shift was intended to surprise me into an unguarded answer. This was something that I had not missed about him.
“He came to visit me,” I said.
“Why are you working at the foundation?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Imagine my surprise when I went to see Dr. Livingston yesterday and she remarked that I was asking questions similar to the ones a new employee had been asking that same day—an actress whose name she couldn’t remember.”
“I’m filling in for a workshop teacher there.”
“I won’t even bother asking how or why you tracked down Darius Phelps’ place of employment,” he said. “I probably should have seen that coming. And, once you got there, you couldn’t resist asking questions about him. Fine. But for God’s sake, when you found Biko at the foundation, why didn’t you call me?”
“Why should I have called you?” I asked blankly.
“Because he was part of whatever crazy stunt someone was playing in the dark with a severed hand the other night!”
“Oh! You think . . . ? Oh, no. No,” I said. “You’ve got it all wrong. Biko wasn’t playing tricks that night. He was looking for the creatures that I saw.”
“So he was out and about?”
Oops. I suddenly remembered that Biko’s official story about that night was that he was at home in bed. He’d be annoyed when he found out I’d blown his alibi. Oh, well. Spilled milk. Besides, Lopez hadn’t believed him anyhow.
“He was looking for the creatures that killed his dog,” I said. “The same creatures that I saw that night.”
Lopez leaned back on the bench and studied me through narrowed eyes, trying to decide if he believed me. He didn