Лорел Гамильтон - The Laughing Corpse

Had it gotten them all? That quickly, without a shot fired. Naw. But still, my stomach was tight, sweat trickled down my spine. Are you alright, Dolph? I thought.

"Did you say something?" John asked.

I shook my head. "Just thinking really hard."

He nodded as if that made sense to him.

Dolph came into the living room. I couldn't tell anything by his face. Mr. Stoic.

"Well, what was it?" l asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"What do you mean, nothing?"

"She's cleaned the place out completely. We found the rooms you told me about. One door had been busted from inside, but the room's been scrubbed down and painted." He held up one big hand. It was stained white. "Hell, the paint's still wet."

"It can't all be gone. What about the cement-covered doors?"

"Looks like someone took a jackhammer to them. They're just freshly painted rooms, Anita. The place stinks of pine scented bleach and wet paint. No corpses, no zombies. Nothing."

I just stared at him. "You've got to be kidding."

He shook his head. "I'm not laughing."

I stood in front of Dominga. "Who warned you?"

She just stared up at me, smiling. I had a great urge to slap that smile off her face. Just to hit her once would feel good. I knew it would.

"Anita," Dolph said, "back off."

Maybe the anger showed on my face, or maybe it was the fact that my hands were balled into fists and I seemed to be shaking. Shaking with anger and the beginnings of something else. If she didn't go to jail, that meant she was free to try to kill me again tonight. And every night after that.

She smiled as if she could read my mind. "You have nothing, chica. You have gambled all on a hand with nothing in it."

She was right. "Stay away from me, Dominga."

"I will not come near you, chica, I will not need to."

"Your last little surprise didn't work out so well. I'm still here."

"I have done nothing. But I am sure there are worse things that could come to your door, chica."

I turned to Dolph. "Dammit, isn't there anything we can do?"

"We got the charm, but that's it."

Something must have showed on my face because he touched my arm. "What is it?"

"She did something to the charm. It's gone."

He took a deep breath and stalked away, then back. "Dammit to hell, how?"

I shrugged. "Let John explain. I still don't understand it." I hate admitting that I don't know something. It's always bothered me to admit ignorance. But hey, a girl can't be an expert on everything. I had worked hard to stay away from voodoo. Work hard and where does it get you? Staring into the black eyes of a voodoo priestess who's plotting your death. A most unpleasant death by the looks of it.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I went back to her. I stood and stared into her dark face and smiled. Her own smile faltered, which made my smile bigger.

"Someone tipped you off and you've been cleaning up this cesspit for two days." I leaned over her, putting my hands on the arms of the chair. It brought our faces close together.

"You had to break down your walls. You had to let out or destroy all your creations. Your inner sanctum, your hougun, is cleaned and whitewashed. All the verve gone. All the animal sacrifices gone. All that slow building of power, line by line, drop by bloody drop, you're going to have to start over, you bitch. You're going to have to rebuild it all."

The look in those black eyes made me shiver, and I didn't care. "You're getting old to rebuild that much. Did you have to destroy many of your toys? Dig up any graves?"

"Have your joke now, chica, but I will send what I have saved to you some dark night."

"Why wait? Do it now, in daylight. Face me or are you afraid?"

She laughed then, and it was a warm, friendly sound. It startled me so much I stood up straight, almost jumped back.

"Do you think I am foolish enough to attack you with the police all around? You must think me a fool."

"It was worth a try," I said.

"You should have joined with me in my zombie enterprises. We could have been rich together."

"The only thing we're likely to do together is kill each other," I said.

"So be it. Let it be war between us."

"It always was," I said.

She nodded and smiled some more.

Zerbrowski came out of the kitchen. He was grinning from ear to ear. Something good was up.

"The grandson just spilled the beans."

Everyone in the room stared at him. Dolph said, "Spilled what?"

"Human sacrifice. How he was supposed to get the gris-gris back from Peter Burke after he killed him, on his grandmother's orders, but some joggers came by and he panicked. He's so afraid of her"-he motioned to Dominga-"he wants her behind bars. He's terrified of what she'll do to him for forgetting the charm."

The charm that we didn't have anymore. But we had the video and now we had Antonio's confession. The day was looking up.

I turned back to Dominga Salvador. She looked tall and proud and terrifying. Her black eyes blazed with some inner light. Standing this close to her, the power crawled over my skin, but a good bonfire would take care of that. They'd fry her in the electric chair, then burn the body and scatter the ashes at a crossroad.

I said softly, "Gotcha."

She spit at me. It landed on my hand and burned like acid. "Shit!"

"Do that again and we'll shoot you, and save the taxpayers some money," Dolph said. He had his gun out.

I went in search of the bathroom to wash her spit off my hand. A blister had formed where it had hit. Second fucking degree burns from her spit. Dear God.

I was glad Antonio had broken. I was glad she was going to be locked away. I was glad she was going to die. Better her than me.

Riverridge was a modern housing development. Which meant that there were three models to choose from. You could end up with four identical houses in a row, like cookies on a baking sheet. There was also no river within sight. No ridge either.

The house that was the center of the police search area was identical to its neighbor, except for color. The murder house, which is what the news was calling it, was grey with white shutters. The house that had been passed safely by was blue with white shutters. Neither's shutters worked. They were just for show. Modern architecture is full of perks that are just for show; balcony railings without a balcony, peaked roofs that make it look like you have an extra room that you don't have, porches so narrow that only Santa's elves could sit on them. It makes me nostalgic for Victorian architecture. It might have been overdone, but everything worked.

The entire housing project had been evacuated. Dolph had been forced to give a statement to the press. More's the pity. But you can't evacuate a housing development the size of a small town and keep it quiet. The cat was out of the bag. They were calling them the zombie massacres. Geez.

The sun was going down in a sea of scarlet and orange. It looked like someone had melted two giant crayons and smeared them across the sky. There wasn't a shed, garage, basement, tree house, playhouse, or anything else we could think of that had been left unsearched. Still, we had found nothing.

The newshounds were prowling restlessly at the edge of the search area. If we had evacuated hundreds of people and searched their premises without a warrant and found no zombie … we were going to be in deep fucking shit.

But it was here. I knew it was here. Alright, I was almost sure it was here.

John Burke was standing next to one of those giant trash cans. Dolph had surprised me by allowing John to come on the zombie hunt. As Dolph said, we needed all the help we could get.

"Where is it, Anita?" Dolph asked.

I wanted to say something brilliant. My God, Holmes, how did you know the zombie was hiding in the flower pot? But I couldn't lie. "I don't know, Dolph. I just don't know."