On the drive to Mayfair Joel tells me about his life. Maybe I pry the information out of him a bit Maybe he has nothing to hide. I listen attentively and grow to like him more with each passing mite, much to my disquiet Maybe that's his intention-to be open with me. Already, I think, he knows I am more dangerous than I appear.
"I grew up on a farm in Kansas. I wanted to be an FBI agent from the first time I saw that old series, The F.B.I., that starred Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. Do you remember that show? It was great I suppose I did have dreams of being a hero: catching bank robbers, finding kidnapped kids, stopping serial murderers. But when I graduated from the academy in Quantico, Virginia, I was assigned to blue collar crime in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I spent twelve months chasing account?ants. Then I got a big break. My landlady was mur?dered. Stabbed with a knife and buried in a cornfield. That was at the end of summer. The local police were called in, and they found the body pretty quick. They were sure her boyfriend did it. They even had the guy arrested and ready to stand trial. But I kept telling them he loved his woman and wouldn't have hurt her for the world. They wouldn't listen to me. There is an old rivalry between the FBI and police. Even in Los Angeles, working on this case, the LAPD constantly withholds information from me.
"Anyway, privately, I went after another suspect- the woman's sixteen-year-old son. I know, he sounds like an unlikely candidate-the woman's only child. But I knew her son as well as the boyfriend, and the kid was bad news. An addict ready to steal the change from a homeless person. I was their tenant and I caught him breaking into my car once to steal my radio. He was into speed. When he was high, he was manic-either the nicest guy in the world or ready to poke your eyes out. He had lost all sense of reality. At his mother's funeral he began to sing "Whole Lot of Love." Yet, at the same time, he was cunning. His bizarre behavior hid his guilt. But I knew he'd done it, and, as you're fond of saying, don't ask me why. There was something in his eyes when I talked to him about his mother-like he was thinking about how nice it was finally to have the house all to himself. "The problem was, I didn't have a shred of evidence that linked him to the crime. But I kept watching him, hoping he'd reveal something. I was anxious to move to another place, but during my off hours, I told myself, I was on stakeout. I felt in my gut something would turn up.
"Then Halloween came, and that evening the sonofabitch was out on his front porch carving a huge jack-o'-lantern. He flashed me a nauseatingly sweet smile as I walked to my car, and something about his expression made me pause to look closer at his knife. By this time the victim's boyfriend was in the middle of his trial, and losing. As I mentioned, the woman had been stabbed, and as I studied her son and the pumpkin on his lap, I remembered how the autopsy report noted the unusual spacing of the metal teeth marks on the victim's skin. This knife was weird-the cutting edge had irregularly spaced ridges.
"I hid my interest in the knife with a nonchalant wave, but the next day I got a warrant to search the house. I obtained the knife, and its cutting edge was compared to the photographs taken by the coroner. There was a match. To make a long story short, the son was eventually convicted. He is serving a life sentence in Iowa as we speak." Joel adds, "All because of one jack-o'-lantern."
"All because of one sharp agent," I say. "Was your success on the case your ticket to bigger and better things?"
"Yes. My boss was pleased by my persistence, and I was put on a couple of old unsolved murder cases. I solved one of them and was promoted. I have been working difficult murder cases in LA. ever since." He nods. "Persistence is the key to solving most myster?ies."
"And imagination. Why did you tell me this story?" He shrugs. "Just trying to make casual conversation with a potential witness."
"Not true. You want to see how I react to your tales of insight and intrigue."
He has to laugh. "What do you want with me, Alisa? To make me into a hero or a goat? I did as you requested-I told no one where I was going. But I'll have to call in some time today. And if I tell them I'm in Oregon riding around with a cute blond, it's not going to look good on my record."
"So you think I'm cute?" I ask.
"You catch the operative words, don't you?"
"Yes." I add, "I think you're cute as well."
"Thank you. Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"Is he normal?"
I feel a pang in my chest "He is wonderful."
"Can he verify where you were the last two days?"
"That's not necessary. I already told you I was in the Coliseum watching necks being broken and chests pierced. If there is guilt by association, then I'm guilty as sin."
"Aren't you worried about telling that to an FBI agent?"
"Do I look worried?"
"No. That's what worries me." His tone becomes businesslike again. "How did this abnormal person break the young man's neck?"
"With his bare hands."
"But that's impossible."
"I told you not to ask me these questions. Let's wait till we get to Mayfair, see what we find out from the local police. Then perhaps I'll tell you more."
"I will have to call the local office of the FBI and have them notify the police that I'm coming. They won't open their files to me just because I walk in the front door."
I hand him my cellular phone. "Notify whoever you have to, Joel."
The Mayfair police give us scant information, and yet it is crucial. While I wait in the car and listen to the conversation that takes place inside the station, Joel learns that there was a body recovered from the explosion at my house, not just pieces of flesh as I expected. I have to wonder-how did Yaksha's form survive the blast? He was more powerful than any creature that walked the earth, but even he should have had to bow to several crates of dynamite. The police tell Joel that the body was taken to a morgue in Seaside, seventy miles south of Mayfair, the city where I combated the people Yaksha sent after me, Slim and his partners. "Please! I don't want to die." "Then you should never have been born." Slim's blood was bitter tasting, as was his end. So be it.
Joel returns to my car and I give him every chance to lie to me about what the police have told him. But he gives me the straight facts.
"We're going to Seaside," I say, handing him the phone again. "Tell them we're on our way."
"What was the name of your friend who died?"
"Yaksha."
"What kind of name is that?"
"It's Sanskrit." I glance over. "It's the name of a demonic being."
He dials the Seaside morgue. "Love the company you keep."
I can't resist-I give him a wink. "It's improving by the hour."
Joel is big-time FBI. The morgue is only too happy to show him whatever bodies they have on ice. The problem is, when we get there-this time I go inside with Joel-the body we are looking for is missing. Now I know what the Mayfair police were holding back. Joel looks irritated. I fed dizzy. Is Yaksha still alive? Did he create the monster who attacked me? If that is the case, then we are all doomed. Seymour can have all the confidence in the world in me, but I will not be able to stop my creator if he is bent on spreading our black blood. Yet it makes no sense. Yaksha was looking forward to his end, secure in the knowledge that he was going to his death having done the Lord's bidding.
"What do you mean, it's missing?" Joel demands. "What happened to it?"
The bespeckled coroner shakes at Joel's question. He is the kid who has been caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. Only this guy's fingers look as if they have been dipped in formaldehyde every morning for the last twenty years. The jaundice virus could be oozing out of his big ears. Here I am a vampire, but even I can't understand why anyone would want to be a coroner and work with corpses all day, even fresh ones filled with nice blood. Morticians are an even stranger lot. I once buried a mortician alive-in France after World War II-in his most expensive coffin. He made the mistake of saying all Americans were pigs, which annoyed me. He kicked like a pig as I shoveled the dirt on top of him. I enjoy a little mischief.
"We don't know for sure," the coroner replies. "But we believe it was stolen."
"Well, that's just great," Joel growls. "How long was the body here before it disappeared?"
"A week."
"Excuse me," I interrupt. "I am Special Agent Perne and an expert when it comes to forensic evi?dence. Are you absolutely sure the body we are discussing was in fact a body? That the person was dead?"
The coroner blinks as if he has tissue sample in his eyes. "What are you suggesting?"
"That the guy simply got up and walked out," I say.
"That would have been quite impossible."
"Why?" I ask.
"Both his legs had been blown off," the coroner says. "He was dead. We had him in the freezer all the time he was here."
"Do you know who might have stolen the body?" Joel asks.
The coroner straightens. "Yes. We had an employee here, an Eddie Fender, who vanished the same time as the body. He took off without even collecting his final paycheck. He worked the night shift and was often unsupervised."
"What was his position?" Joel asks.
"He was an orderly, of sorts."
I snort. "He helped prepare the bodies for dissec?tion."