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I smiled in amusement. He’d included his phone number and email address as well. My cynical side told me he was simply hoping to get an inside contact and maybe pump me for info, but I allowed myself a bit of preening. There was no law that said a polished and spiffy TV guy in his late thirties couldn’t be interested in a bedraggled twenty-two-year-old morgue tech—
Okay, yeah, he wanted the inside scoop.
Still, I stuffed the note into my pocket and grabbed the towel. The piece of gravel dropped off and bounced into the grass, and my blood went cold as it landed beside a piece of red, white, and blue paper.
A hand-rolled cigarette butt with little American flags printed on it.
Chapter 10
Heart pounding, I stared at the cigarette butt as if the thing was a water moccasin about to bite me. Another coincidence. That’s all. Judd drove this highway damn near as much as I did. This stretch probably had a few hundred of his stupid butts. Didn’t matter that this made three coincidences. The number didn’t make them any less coincidental. Circumstantial evidence. That’s what it was called. What I needed to do was call Ben over, let him make his own determination as to whether a cigarette butt a quarter mile away from the body was the least bit important.
Randy was with Judd and Coy last night. The thought ricocheted within my skull. But Randy wasn’t a murderer. None of them were. Couldn’t be. Coy had a good reputation that didn’t need to get screwed up by dumb suspicions. And Randy didn’t need to be hassled by the cops.
I snatched up the cigarette butt before sanity could return. It wasn’t tampering with evidence if it wasn’t actually evidence. Right? My hands shook as I unrolled the paper to dump the tobacco out, and I cursed under my breath as a greasy smudge of dark green smeared across my fingers. Bug shit, with my luck. I crumpled the paper and shoved it into my pocket, then scrubbed my hand on my pants to get the green crap off.
I got my ass into the van and drove to Nick and Ben, loaded the body up while anxiety and brain hunger stewed in my gut. Nick gave me a funny look, likely wondering why I was acting like a guilty spaz, but he backed off quick after I mumbled something about female trouble.
Once I was on my way, I grabbed a brain smoothie out of my lunchbox and chugged it down. Though the grumbling hunger settled, my tension and worry stuck tight. Randy lived just a few miles away. It would only take a couple of minutes to swing by and see what he was up to, ease my mind, and confirm that my imagination was running wild.
Shit. No, that wouldn’t work. The Coroner’s Office vehicles had GPS trackers on them. While van drivers on call were allowed to run personal errands in the van, protocol was no stops or detours between picking up a body and reaching the morgue except for absolute emergencies. I didn’t need to give Allen any more ammunition to use against me. Not to mention, Randy might get a little suspicious if I showed up in the van with a body in the back.
I pulled the cigarette paper from my pocket. Too late to put the thing back where I’d found it, especially since now my fingerprints were all over those dumb American flags. But I didn’t want to be caught with it, either.
Another two miles down the road, I rolled my window down, checked for witnesses, then flicked the crumpled paper into a water-filled ditch.
• • •
At the morgue, I transferred Mr. Seeger from the gurney onto a rolling table then unzipped his body bag. Even though Nick and I had performed a cursory search of the body on the scene, I still needed to do a full property inventory.
Hunger grabbed my belly in a sneak attack and squeezed a sharp gasp from me. Hissing, I grabbed the edge of the table as an itch began in my bones. Invisible ants walked up my arms. A mini-dose, a tiny hit was all I needed to—
No! C’mon, Angel, don’t be a fucking wimp.
Jaw clenched, I sucked air through my teeth and focused on a spot on the wall. The clock behind me ticked out seconds, and I used the sound, imagined myself shoving the need a little farther back into its hole with each tick.
The hunger eased. The itch faded to mild buzz. The desire to climb out of my body went away.
Straightening, I wiped my mouth and let out a strangled laugh. I’d won. I’d fought that bitch down. It was all good. I could do this “no more V12” thing. A tendril of fear slid through a crack, and I slapped it down hard. No. Everything was going to be just fine. Beating this shit was all about willpower, and I had plenty of that. Time to get my head back in the game.
I went to the bathroom and washed my face and hands, then pulled on fresh gloves and began a meticulous search of Mr. Seeger. No jewelry, watch, keys, or phone. Jeans pockets were empty except for a damp Kleenex, and the front pocket of the flannel shirt held lint and nothing more. Shoes and socks contained feet and nothing else. I even tugged his jeans down to check his underwear and found only the expected boy parts and shaved pubic hair. Interesting, but not at all what I was looking for.
Sighing, I pulled his clothing back into place. Later, I’d remove them for good, after I photographed him on the table and before the autopsy. It was silly, but I hated leaving the bodies naked in the bag before autopsy. Why not let them have a few more hours with that tiny shred of dignity?
Something crinkled beneath my hand as I adjusted the flannel shirt. A quick investigation revealed an inner pocket that held a folded piece of paper. My pulse quickened as I slid the paper out. Bingo.
It was a list of filenames, on battered Infamous Vision Studios letterhead, with several handwritten notes scribbled on it. The word “zombie” leaped out at me from several places, but that didn’t surprise me considering Grayson Seeger was a producer for a zombie movie and was in town for a zombie fest.
The list header read Contents of USB Flash Drive from D.R. and was followed by more than a dozen filenames such as *zombie_feeding and **zombie_turn_1. One file named *zombie_frenzy had a hand-drawn arrow pointing to it with Zombie Frenzy! written beside it. I snorted. Gee, that was a tough code to crack.
Most of the filenames were marked with asterisks or double asterisks which matched up with a handwritten note at the side:
* approved by DR for ZAAU
** use for deal with SASA
Seeger sure liked his acronyms. DR was most likely someone’s initials. The others could be studio names or—
ZAAU. Zombies Are Among Us? That was the short film title on the “coming soon” display I’d seen at the movie premiere. Could be the asterisk meant the file was used in the “documentary THEY don’t want you to see.” But I had no clue at all what SASA could stand for. Sharks Are Sexy Also? Secret Aardvark Social Action?
