My Life as a White Trash Zombie (White Trash Zombie 1)

I felt a knot form in my throat. “Yeah,” I said, voice suddenly hoarse.

“You’re human, Angel. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have you here if you weren’t.” He turned and walked away as I stared after him in surprise.

So maybe there were different degrees of monster. I was a monster with a mushy heart.

Chapter 25

I finished up my paperwork, then checked the computer to see if there were any bodies scheduled to be picked up by a funeral home today. None were, but I frowned when I saw that the body of the pizza guy was still in our cooler. It had been almost two weeks. Surely some next of kin had been found by now?

I went looking for Derrel and found him hunched behind the desk in the investigator’s office, his eyes flicking between the screen and the keyboard as he painstakingly pecked out letters.

“Hey, Derrel, ya got a sec?”

He looked up with an almost grateful expression. “If it keeps me from having to fight my way through writing this report, sure.”

I laughed and plopped into the chair in front of the desk. “I’ll try. What’s the deal with the pizza guy? Still no next of kin?”

A grimace flickered across his face. “Well, we’re not sure. There’s some sort of screw-up.”

“Like how?”

He sighed and sat back. “We ran his prints and it came back to a Peter Plescia.”

I nodded. “Right. The pizza guy. So what’s the deal?”

Derrel lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. “The problem is that Peter Plescia is eighty-seven. That is, he would be if he wasn’t supposedly already dead.”

I felt as if a cold wind dove down my spine. And Kang looks like he’s my age. . . .“What do you mean?” I asked as calmly as I could.

“I mean,” he said, leaning forward again, “that the records must be screwed up somewhere along the line. It happens with identity theft, sometimes. The pizza guy is probably someone who stole the real Mr. Plescia’s identity. Pizza guy’s real name is probably buried somewhere. Since his fingerprints match the fingerprint records that come up for the original Mr. Plescia, that means he was never fingerprinted while the fake one was—while using Plescia’s stolen identity. We may never know who pizza guy really is.”

“Wow.” I paused as I tried to get my jumbled thoughts in order “But how do you know that this isn’t the real Peter Plescia? Maybe he faked his own death or something.”

“The age,” Derrel replied. “The people at Pizza Plaza said he was only in his thirties or so, plus Dr. Leblanc says there’s no way that the guy was in his late eighties. He can tell by looking at the bones and that sort of thing.” Then he chuckled. “Besides, I can’t see an eighty-seven year old delivering pizzas.”

He could if he was a zombie. So he wasn’t killed by a rogue—at least not for his brains. An eighty-seven-year-old zombie. Holy shit. The brains healed me of any injury and made me feel like a million bucks. It made sense that brains would somehow heal the stuff that made us get old. Kang was probably close to seventy and sure as hell didn’t look it. An odd chill skimmed over me. I’d realized he was old, but the full impact of it hadn’t hit me until now. Had Kang been forced to fake his death at some point? Did he have to move before people got suspicious? And how long would it be before people noticed I wasn’t aging? And how long did it last? Would the virus or parasite eventually die off on its own? Great . . . I wasn’t really alive, but the good news was that I could be that way for a really long time.

“So, what will you do now?” I asked, masking my inner turmoil as much as I could. “Check into this old guy’s death? Maybe the imposter was a friend or the real Peter Plescia’s kid or something.”

He gave me a nod and a smile. “You’d be good at this. That’s exactly what I’m doing now. The original Peter Plescia lived in Littleton, Colorado. I called the Coroner’s Office over there yesterday and asked if they could pull any records and get copies to me. They should be faxing it all this afternoon. But unfortunately that doesn’t necessarily give us any info on the guy in our cooler.”

“What about getting information on the pizza guy . . . like where he’s been living,” I suggested. “Even though the name might not be his”—which I figured it probably was, but I wasn’t going to argue that point—“there should be info in Lexis Nexis under that name, right? So maybe you could at least track down possible acquaintances or stuff like that, find someone who knew him and might know more about the real him.”

His smile widened. “Damn, Angel, you should be a cop!”

I gave a casual shrug that didn’t feel terribly casual. “Can’t. Convicted felon, remember?”

Derrel looked briefly abashed. “Sorry.” Then he gave me a wink. “Well, that means we get to keep you.”>Well, now I knew where Zeke had been staying. Not that it mattered anymore. “Yeah, I think the cops are freaking out a bit,” I said, relieved that my voice didn’t show any of my earlier shock. “I guess they’re thinking it’s a serial killer.”

Marianne rubbed her arms. “I’ve been making Ed stay at my place every night ever since the last body was found so close to where I live.” Then she grinned. “Though that’s not much of a change from the usual. He has a nice enough apartment over in Longville, but it’s furnished like a dorm room. Whereas I actually have silly things like beds and chairs and couches.”

“And hopefully a large refrigerator, too,” I said, thinking of his incredible appetite, then felt silly for saying it since she’d probably have no idea what I meant by that.

To my relief, she let out a peal of laughter, though she quickly covered her mouth and looked around guiltily. “Oh, gawd, look at me giggling over a dead body. People will start thinking I’m horrible and cold. But, yes, I have a large fridge. That man goes through groceries like nobody’s business! If I ate the way he did, I’d weigh about a thousand pounds!”

Someone called her name, and she whipped her head around. I followed her gaze to see Ed at the top of the berm. He gave me a wave, and I lifted my hand in reply.

“Speak of the devil!” she said. “He’s going to help me take Kudzu on a long run around this area. It always helps to have someone else with me.” She looked back to me. “It was so great meeting you. You’ll have to come over the next time we have a get-together! We have a fish fry or a barbecue at least every other weekend. I’ll make sure Ed or Marcus gives you a call! ” Then she was trotting off with Kudzu before I could do more than give a weak smile in return.