Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice Read Free Page B

sit through again,” Manning said.
    I looked at her and saw a terrible tiredness in her eyes, as if just watching the one film had aged her. She shook her head. “Play the next one, Brent; let’s just get this over with.”
    I didn’t tell her she didn’t have to watch them again; I let her handle her own shit. To do anything else would have been a breach of the “guy code” that all police work revolved around. The sex of the police officer didn’t change the code. I only broke it with friends, or when I couldn’t help myself, like Manning had when she asked about my engagement. That seemed like a long time ago, and Brent was right; pretty, pretty princess talk was looking a whole lot better.

3
    T HE FILMS WERE relentless. They eventually got her out of her burial clothes. We saw the zombie naked, in lingerie inexpertly put on her, so that I was pretty sure there was no woman on their crew. It was the fourth film where the zombie looked more rotted, which is something that happens to zombies eventually, no matter how good they look at the beginning. Zombies rot; it’s one of the things that set them apart from ghouls, or vampires. Not all corpses are created equal.
    I waited for the rot to spread, but it didn’t. It just stayed with one eye filmy white, while the other was still clear and grayish-blue. Her skin had taken on a bluish tinge, and the cheeks had begun to collapse inward; the breasts were only perky because the implants held them up, but her body looked different naked now, more skeletal, but that was it. There were no other changes; the rot just stopped in midprocess, and her eyes were still full of terror. Sometimes they let her talk and she begged them not to make her do this, or that, but she seemed unable to disobey that male voice just off camera. I was betting it was the animator who had raised her from the grave. At first I’d thought the animator had raised her, taken his money, and fled, but now I knew he had to be nearby, because the rot had started and then stopped; for that you needed voodoo of the blackest kind.
    “Well,” Zerbrowski said, “I’ll give the sleazebag props for stamina, but it’s a shame that abuse of a corpse isn’t a capital crime.”
    Brent paused the images; I think any excuse at this point to take a breather sounded good to all of us. “We thought they were just changing clothes on her to make it look like time was passing, too, at first,” Brent said, “but notice the calendar on the wall.”
    “It’s not just there to make it look more homey?” Zerbrowski asked. He made little air quotes around
homey
.
    “Nobody puts a calendar in their bedroom unless it’s the only space they have to live in,” I said.
    “Exactly,” Manning said. “Did you notice?”
    I thought for a second. “The month changed.”
    “Zombies rot, always; that’s the rule that Anita taught me. It can’t be a month later.”
    She nodded. “It’s not proof that much time actually passed, but we think it may be their way of showing clients that they’ve done something unique.”
    “Her soul is back in her eyes, that wasn’t unique enough?” I asked, and my voice didn’t sound neutral the way I tried to sound this early in an investigation. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to pull off neutral with this case; sometimes you can’t.
    “You saw it,” Manning said.
    “We both saw it,” Zerbrowski said.
    “Would you have said her soul was back in her eyes, Sergeant?”
    “I’m not that poetic.”
    Manning looked at me. “I don’t think Marshal Blake was being poetic.”
    Zerbrowski looked from her to me. “I think I’m missing something.”
    “Don’t feel bad,” Brent said. “It took us weeks to figure it out.”
    “Figure out what?” he asked.
    “Were you being poetic, Marshal Blake?” Manning asked.
    “No.”
    “Enlighten us,” she said, and there was something in the way she said it that I didn’t like. It was just an undercurrent, but if I had to