“I’d just like to know more about why I’m telling it,” Jo challenged. She’d been more comfortable in her jail. Now in his motel room, his messy bed sprawled beside her and his chest hair staring her in the face, she felt distinctly out of her league.
Like the world had started vibrating at a faster speed. But to hear some folks talk, maybe that was just Almanuevo.
He seemed to consider the request, then shrugged. “Right. I can handle that. What I do, Miss James—”
“Ms. James,” she corrected easily. “Or Sheriff.”
He stared at her, then tried again. “What I do, Mzzz. James, isn’t the usual private investigation stuff. I do that too—cheating spouses, skip-traces on bounced checks, crap like that. A guy’s got to make a living, no matter how well-off his partner is. But our specialty is the weird stuff. Cults. Curses. Ghosts.”
Zombies. Jo’s discomfort settled into her gut as she pursued the less remarkable claim. “You believe in ghosts?”
“My partner does. Me, I’m careful not to disbelieve in anything nowadays. What with the Internet, it’s pretty easy for people with, let’s call ’em special requirements, to find me. Most of them are major flakes, by the way, same as the assholes who generally suck them in. But a few of ’em aren’t.”
And that, apparently, was important.
He shifted in his seat, though it looked a bit small for him to get truly comfortable, then continued, one hand sculpting the story out of air. “So a few weeks back, we get a call from a mother whose son vanished, maybe four months ago, in Almanuevo. Not a child—a college kid. Thing is, he vanished dead. Seems he and his buds tried rock-climbing under the influence of God-knows what, with the expected, pancakelike results. No biggie.”
Jo didn’t bother to hide her scorn. “No biggie?”
He was unfazed. “So one minute his remains are safe in the town clinic, toe-tagged and body-bagged. Next thing you know—” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. Like he got up and walked away.”
“But clearly,” said Jo, “he didn’t get up and walk away. Corpses have been stolen before….” Though not around there. That she knew of. “Haven’t they?”
Lorenzo’s rugged expression stilled. Then he frowned.
When a knock sounded at the door they both jumped—then avoided each other’s eyes. “Lunch,” the detective said, rolling to his still-bare feet. He checked the peephole before cracking the door, more cautious than Jo would have expected. He was a big guy, after all. And his automatic pistol lay on the bedside table.
It was lunch. He handed the kid some bills, then shut and chained the door and carried the bag back to their table.
“Yeah, corpses get stolen,” he agreed finally, exhuming cardboard cups and Styrofoam containers of food and laying them on top of his papers. “But usually their buddies don’t claim to see them wandering around a few days later. Have some pie.”
He got the pie for her? “I only asked for—” Did he say wandering around? “—coffee,” Jo finished lamely.
“Have pie anyway. I can’t eat if you aren’t eating.” Considering how he tore into his hoagie, she questioned that.
“His friends saw him wandering where?” she demanded.
“That,” said Lorenzo, covering his mouth behind his thick wrist until he could swallow, “is the tricky part. They don’t know for sure. Not our best or brightest, they were having a memorial out in the desert, honoring their fallen comrade—no pun intended—when whaddaya know? They see him ambling along in the distance. They take off after him, lose him in the rocks, then decide not to report it to the cops because they weren’t exactly smoking Marlboro 100s out there. But later they feel guilty and admit it to the kid’s mom, who then calls—” And he pointed a thumb at himself.
Jo hesitated. She didn’t want to insult the man, but…. “And these guys don’t fall under the category of flakes?”
Lorenzo grinned full agreement with her conclusion. He had a great grin, wide and honest. It almost turned him handsome.
Almost.
“Like Christmas snow,” agreed Lorenzo. “And along with their sterling testimony, the kid’s mother has contacted a psychic who says the kid’s neither alive nor dead. As probably won’t surprise you, this upsets her. Thing is—” And he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, turned more serious. “The psychic she contacted is one of the most reputable in the country.”
Jo hadn’t fully realized that some psychics had better reputations than others. Better publicists, sure. But… “So you looked into it?”
“And found out that this kid’s not the only stiff to go missing in the area. Not all of ’em are from Almanuevo, but close enough that the Chamber of Commerce is no-commenting on the issue. Also, he’s not the only John Doe to be sighted wandering the desert in a daze, though others weren’t recognizably dead at the time. This, I had to look into. So I flew into Albuquerque, and here I am.”
Bingo. “El Paso’s closer.”
“Yeah.” He took another big bite of his sandwich, then muttered through it, “But it has a smaller airport. Lousy selection in car rentals.”
She shook her head as she took a sip of coffee, still ignoring the pie. The way her stomach cramped up at the very thought of telling her own experience, she meant to continue ignoring the pie. “Still, you can’t think that this kid—these missing persons—are the walking dead, can you?”
She wasn’t sure which she wanted more—for him to say no, and keep her safe, or yes, and prove her sane. Besides, it wouldn’t prove her sane. It would just make him another flake.
Lorenzo shrugged. “Guess I won’t know until I meet up with one of them. But it’s my job to think outside the box, so on that outside chance…”
That was her cue. He’d told her his story; now he wanted to hear about the zombies…or what could maybe have been, but surely weren’t, zombies. Part of Jo wanted to trust him, maybe to be believed or, better yet, to have everything explained at last. But if it turned out he couldn’t believe her either…
“Can I see your P.I. license again?” she asked.
With exaggerated patience, he leaned to the side in his chair, fished his wallet out of his jeans’ tight back pocket, and handed it to her. It was still warm with his body heat.
She wished she knew what a real State of Illinois private investigation license should look like. She also wondered who the pretty Italian girl displayed next to it was. It looked like a high-school graduation picture.
“Anything else?” Lorenzo asked as Jo handed back the wallet, and she shook her head.
“The cave-in,” she began hesitantly, and he slid his pad loose from beneath his lunch. “There’s so much I can’t be sure even really happened. How much do you want to know?”
He groped through stray papers until he reclaimed his pen. “As much as you’re willing to tell me—whether you’re sure of it or not.”
So she did.
She hadn’t looked scared once, not even during his undead-frat-boy story, and that one still made Zack’s partner, Cecil Taylor, shudder like a wet cat. Zack liked that about Josephine James. He liked feeling he didn’t have to sugarcoat what he did. He could almost stop thinking of her as a woman and just think of her as a law-enforcement colleague. For whole minutes at a time.
The hat had helped.
Then, as she readied to talk about the mine cave-in, damned if Jo James didn’t start looking all female and vulnerable after all…despite how her story began.