I stood in the doctor’s office, blinking, feeling sick, and realizing with sudden clarity that my life would never, ever be the same again. I was vaguely aware of the doctor speaking soothingly to his assistant, of the phone ringing incessantly, and, most striking, of the slightly putrid smell of death that filled the office.
Bloody footprints and drops of hemoglobin led up from the morgue and to the door, where a bloody handprint smeared the handle. I had no doubt the trail of crimson led out into the night and through the small town.
My first reaction was to call for backup, but I held off as soon as I asked myself what I was supposed to report. A naked corpse carrying a bowlful of bagged intestines? Yeah, not so much.
Besides, the womanizing doc had it right: we both needed our jobs. And that meant the less crazy I sounded, the better.
Now, as I mentally replayed what I’d just seen, I became more and more certain that someone was playing a trick on me… on us. On second thought, I wondered if it could have been the doctor himself who was at fault. Maybe this was some sort of weird hazing of the new police chief? The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced such was the case.
No doubt, cameras were filming me even now and this whole thing would appear on YouTube before the night was out. If so, I was gonna bust the ass of each and every person who’d had something to do with it.
Yes, it was just a childish prank. An elaborate prank but a hoax, no less. Ha-ha, they’d gotten me. I was sure the look on my face had been priceless.
Except... except... I had studied the corpse yesterday. And I’d looked for a heartbeat and found none. The man had been dead, I was sure of it. And Miguel had been sure of it. Unless he, too, was somehow in on it?
I replayed the image of the thing coming up the stairs, searching my brain for a plausible explanation for how I’d seen what I had. Its face had been all peeled up! And I’d seen inside its chest cavity, even while it was walking!
Yes, but that could have been no more than an elaborate costume and special effects makeup, I argued with myself.
Um, like incredibly elaborate, I argued back.
And what about the blood smeared across the floor from John Doe dragging his foot? That could have been real? Or not. It certainly looked real… But how? No! Things like this just didn’t happen. Not in real life anyway.
I felt like a moron for even considering it in the first place.
So, I did the only thing I could think of: I walked through the office, down the steps and into the morgue where, to my dismay, I found the metal autopsy table vacant, although it was smeared with more blood. A mean-looking bone saw had been knocked to the ground, along with scalpels, clamps, clips, tongs and scissors. More blood was on the floor, a lot of it, in fact.
I quickly searched the small morgue, in particular, the mini corner office and the freezer, all of which were empty. Then I just stood there, frowning at the room because I was certain I’d seen a corpse just fifteen minutes earlier. And now there was no corpse but one hell of a mess.
And me? All I could do was question everything… what I thought I’d seen, my own level of sanity, Dr. Moody…
Elodie, stop! I yelled at myself. Obviously, this was all just a prank. Stop trying to make sense of it.
It. Wasn’t. Real.
That’s what it amounted to. Dead bodies didn’t just rise from the dead. And they didn’t walk up the stairs, holding their organs. And they didn’t try to talk without a tongue. But new police officers did get hazed. Especially when said new officer’s comrades didn’t want them there in the first place.
Whatever had happened, it had been elaborate and well thought out. I hoped at some point, I’d get a good laugh out of. But first...
First, it was time to kick lots of asses and take names.
***
The trail of blood and footprints led out into the night, across a smattering of freshly fallen snow, and toward a park across the street.
Whoever this was, he’d fully committed himself to the role, and was probably freezing his ass off. Costume or not, the man was barefoot, and this was still the tail-end of winter. Served him right… the jackass.
I figured I’d find bloody footprints leading to tire tracks, where his friends had likely picked him up. Even now, they were probably watching from afar—and filming me—unable to stifle their laughter. In fact, they were probably laughing so hard, they were all in tears. All because they managed to scare the living shit out of the new chief of police.
Well, good for them.
The only problem was that as far as I could see, there were no cars, vans, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, bicycles, unicycles or anything else with wheels anywhere in the vicinity. Just snow, snow and more snow.
The evening was cold, and the streets were empty. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise because Hope was a small town, and most people hunkered down for the exceptionally long and cold nights. Actually, correction, there was a couple walking up the street, about a quarter-mile away. I watched them turn into one of the town’s few restaurants, the Gray Wolf.
Other than the lone couple, this stretch of road was empty of foot traffic, cars and lurching zombies.
I paused in the center of the road, searching, listening, waiting. If it was my guys who had were involved in the prank, I could fire each and every one of them. But if I fired all of them, there would be no police force left. And that would make me the chief of a whole lotta nothing. Okay, so if I didn’t fire them, I could demote the crap out of them? But, no, I wouldn’t do that. And, what was more, they probably knew I wouldn’t do it. If I did, it would just set me apart as the female chief who couldn’t take a joke. It would forever cement them against me.
Yes, I would have to suck it up and laugh along with them, even though I wanted nothing more than to bitch-slap each one of them into oblivion.
A gust of wind whipped up a billowing flurry of snow and ice, and pushed it along the center of the street, looking like an icy apparition.
The wind picked up, and so did the swirling ghosts moving along the street, glowing brightly in the ambient light.
As for me? I did the only thing I could think of... I continued following the trail of bloody footprints, all the way into the park...
Chapter Nine
The bloody tracks ended right in front of a swing set. Beyond the swing set was a slide and beside that, a drinking fountain. Everything was covered in at least two inches of snow.
“How the hell can the tracks just end here?” I asked myself as I whirled around once, then twice, trying to ascertain in which direction the corpse prankster had gone. But nothing. Nothing at all. For all intents and purposes, he’d simply turned into a bat and flown off into the dark night sky.
“Un-freaking-believable,” I continued, frustrated beyond belief and talking to myself as I chewed my lower lip. I had no idea what this could possibly mean. How could there be tracks and then none? How was it possible that someone just disappeared? I glanced up to see if there were any trees with low-hanging branches that someone could have taken hold of. But there was nothing overhead except for the full moon. The closest tree was probably twenty feet away. Shivering in spite of myself, I took another few steps forward, until I nearly bumped into the swing in front of me and then I noticed something.
Tracks.