Dead Mann Walking

necks.

“There.”

I stared. I’d figured they’d used a hacksaw or something, but the cuts were both razor clean. “So they used choppers.”

“Yeah, but what else?”

I looked again and shrugged. “You going to tell me?”

“Spring assist makes it too easy. Street gangs started using them on one another, so choppers were made illegal, right?”

“Right, but so’re a lot of guns.”

“Guns are different. I’ll show you.” He stood up, opened a tall closet, and withdrew a set of choppers. Unhinging the blades, he stepped toward me.

When he got a little too close, an image of Colin Wilson’s head flashed in front of me, and I fell backward to get out of the way.

“Easy!” I said.

“Sorry,” he answered. He knelt by me and pointed to the edge of the blade. “I just wanted to show you this. See? They make all the blades a little different, like a signature, so they can track them if they’re ever used on livebloods.”

His gray finger graced a part of the blade. At first I thought it was jagged, but then I realized it was a pattern. “I get the idea.”

He put the blade away, then pointed at the necks again. “Those chakz were D-capped by the same set of choppers.”

What the hell?

I stared at the marks on the necks long enough to realize he knew what he was talking about. The cuts were smooth except for some very small notches grouped right next to one another, two half-circles, a triangle, a square, and another half-circle. Same on each.

Whoever killed Frank Boyle also killed Colin Wilson, or at least had access to the same clippers. What did that mean? Maybe nothing. Ashby described two goons. If they were for rent, like rat catchers bumping off pesky chakz so you don’t have to, they wouldn’t think twice about leaving the same calling card. Someone else might have hired them to get rid of Colin Wilson, maybe because he was hanging out on their lawn. The Boyles hired them of get rid of their inheritance problems. The rat catchers might not even have known how much money was involved.

That fit, except for one detail: the heads. Both were missing. Why? That electric syrup hit me again, flashes of disembodied heads chatting in the desert while the coyotes gnawed at them. Hard enough to keep my obsessions and the world separate; now it felt like they were crashing into each other. I groaned and twitched my own head, trying to clear it.

The vet looked at me but didn’t say anything.

Proof they’d done the job? Here’s the head; where’s my cash? Maybe in the Middle Ages. A photo or fingerprints could do that just as easily, without the gore or the bother. I couldn’t see Cara Boyle going for a deal that involved eyeballing her brother’s body parts unless she really hated him for some reason—and nothing Frank said about them suggested that kind of rift. If anything, he seemed confused and a little hurt that they’d been left out of the will. It didn’t make any sense, but in a way that made you wonder if making sense was worth it.

“Funny, huh?” the vet said; then he started packing the pieces back into the plastic bins.

“Yeah,” I said. I pulled out a twenty and stuffed it in his pocket. “For your trouble.”

He pulled it out and handed it back. “This is my job, Detective. I’m supposed to help you guys. Glad to do it when I can. Not like I’m ever going to be a cop myself, right?”

“Yeah, but neither am . . .” I hesitated. “Look, buddy, I’m sorry, but for the life of me I can’t remember your name.”

“Really?” He scrunched his face and looked around. “Tommy. I think it’s Tommy.”

12

At this point, it was an equation. Two and two equals four. If Boyle’s attacker and Wilson’s attacker were the same, who were they, and why? For the first time I was thinking maybe Boyle’s siblings weren’t responsible. If that was the case, the victims had to have something in common, other than being headless. I had to find out what it was. Given that I didn’t know squat about Wilson, and Cara wasn’t about to give me an interview, I figured I’d try the Internet.

The library was a hike from police HQ, their Wi-Fi iffy to begin with. My best bet was the River Styx, a coffee/cybershop. It was on the way home, about six blocks west, right on the border of the Bones, where the Bohemian LBs were trying to gentrify. Cute name, Styx, the river separating the living and the dead. Here they pretty much meant it. Chakz were expected to stay on our side of the street, out of the Styx.

By the time I got there, it wasn’t getting any cooler, but night was showing up just the same. The dress code here was more my style than the center of town. In the dark, it’d be easier for me to pass, as long as I didn’t stay long enough for someone to strike up a conversation or get a good whiff of me. Not that I had any rot, but we do smell dead.

I got there just in time to see a familiar chak being shoved out the dark brown door. It was Jonesey, espresso in hand, heat sleeve and travel lid in place. They didn’t throw him out without serving him, which meant Jorelle was on duty as barista. Not Superman’s dad—Jorelle was an acne-faced Frenchman working his way through college. He didn’t mind where his tips came from as long as the little jar got filled.

There was a bit of a bounce to Jonesey’s shamble, so I figured he hadn’t heard about Boyle yet. Then I noticed his other hand was full of flyers. Was he advertising for a new strip joint? I thought about asking, but the living were around. If I was going to get a seat with a computer, I had to act like I didn’t know him.

He knew the score. As we passed, he whispered, “Keep to the back, near the AC vents.”

I slipped among the grain-stained browns that made up the furniture, posts, and walls, got myself a cup of joe from Jorelle, and made sure to tip too much. I almost forgot to take the coffee. I don’t drink it. It was a decent crowd, easy to hide in, so I made my way toward the dark corner where they kept the older rigs. Might as well have been state-of-the-art to me.

Right before I sat, I noticed that one of those flyers Jonesey was carrying had been pasted up on the wall, next to all the ads for local bands, massages, and house sitters. It stood out because of the sloppy handwriting. I stopped in my tracks as I read it.

Join the Dead Man Walk!

Rise and keep rising! Peaceful Chak Rally in

Town Square

Listen to the dead; we are your brothers, your sisters, your mothers, your fathers!

A rally. So the crazy bastard was running with it. I should find him, talk some sense into him. I looked toward the door, but he was gone. By the time I turned back, someone had already torn down the poster. Maybe that problem, at least, would take care of itself, and I had other worries.

The screen on the ancient computer flickered like the lights in a horror-film hallway. I was never much for bells and whistles, but a mouse would have been nice. A touch pad is tough if you don’t have proper hand-eye coordination. But the connection was clean. I logged in with my debit card fast as you please, and winced at the balance. I hadn’t deposited any of Turgeon’s cash yet, and only had enough in my account to pay for fifteen minutes.

I was about to do a search on Wilson when I got a twinge. Not the muscle kind, but the what-am-I-missing kind. Aside from the usual tingles and shakes, every now and then I get this particularly annoying sensation, like an itchy spot in the flow of consciousness that I can’t scratch because my hands are outside my skull.

I was forgetting something. I knew I was forgetting something, something I should check on besides Wilson and Boyle. It was something else. Someone from Bedtown, the hakker attack? No. I kept getting an image of a baby covered in scrambled eggs. Great.