Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues (White Trash Zombie 2)

I swept my gaze over the ugly white exterior, only now seeing an unlit sign that identified the place as NuQuesCor. Otherwise it resembled little more than a large white brick. A few narrow windows here and there marred the surface, looking out of place and rather pathetic.

“I didn’t even know this place existed before today,” I admitted.

Derrel’s eyes crinkled. “They’re one of the top tech employers in this part of Louisiana.”

I snorted. “Derrel, up until a few months ago my grandest career aspiration was to get off the night shift at the XpressMart.”

He chuckled under his breath. “Well, it’s also quite possible that NuQuesCor is the only tech employer of any note in this part of Louisiana.”

“Again,” I said, “minimum wage girl here.”

“Not anymore,” he said.

“Not anymore,” I agreed, somewhat surprised at how certain I was of that fact.

“Good deal,” he said. “All right, let’s get to it. Oh, and you’ll need your badge and ID.”

“My badge…?” Grimacing, I returned to the front of the van and spent a slightly frantic few seconds digging through my belongings. To my relief the badge in question was still at the bottom of my purse where I’d tossed it after it had first been issued to me, along with my Coroner’s Office ID card. I retrieved both, then went ahead and grabbed some extra gloves and stuffed them into the side pocket of my cargo pants.

Derrel had his badge clipped to the front of his belt, and I quickly copied him. He gave me an approving smile, then together we headed up the sidewalk to the entrance with the stretcher and the empty body bag in tow.

The inside of the building was a lot more impressive. The double glass doors opened up into a large two-story lobby that looked more like the entrance to a hotel than a lab. Panels of burnished metal covered the walls and the floor was a grey marble with dark black flecks. Off to the left was a shuttered coffee stand along with an assortment of tables and chairs. Beyond that were couches and coffee tables, with an odd sculpture of what I thought might be birds in flight looming over the seating area. A balcony/walkway type thing overlooked the lobby, with a set of curving stairs and an elevator off to the right. And in the center of the lobby was a circular desk, but instead of a concierge it was manned by a security guard who gave us both a tight-faced glower as we approached.

I was asked to produce both badge and ID, which were subsequently scrutinized as carefully as a bouncer would in a college town. For that matter the guard looked like he could totally be a bouncer—tall and thick. Thick neck, thick shoulders, thick arms. Even his nose was thick.

Fortunately my ID looked sufficiently authentic, and I was allowed to continue on to a doorway on the far side of the lobby, this one manned by another dour guard who required us to sign in on a clipboard. I hid a smile at the sight of Deputy Marcus Ivanov’s neat signature further up the page. He was busy tonight as well.

We finally passed through the door and entered a stark white hallway with lots of closed doors. No marble back here, just regular industrial white tile that made my shoes squeak. I felt a low hum of machinery and heard the occasional distant beep. The doors all had numbers on them, but no signs or labels to indicate what went on behind them. I also noted that all but a few had specialized locks that required a fob or keycard.

“What’s the deal with all the security?” I murmured to Derrel. “Is this a government building or something?”

“Not anymore,” he replied, keeping his voice low as well. “Used to be a NASA computer center a couple of decades back, but NuQuesCor took over the building about five years ago. They’re private, but they work on some government contracts. From what I gather they mostly do nutrition science, sports supplements, vitamins, and the like. But even though they aren’t NASA anymore, they still likely have a fair amount of proprietary information that they want to protect. Hence the security.”

“In other words, they’re afraid of industrial espionage, that sort of thing?”

“Exactly.”

I gave him a doubtful look. “What could an industrial spy want in a nutrition science lab?”

“Well, suppose they come up with low-fat low-sugar food that doesn’t taste like complete ass,” he said. “They don’t want someone else coming in and stealing it before they can patent it, right?”

“Ahhh, gotcha. It all comes down to money.”

He snorted softly. “It always does.”

We came out abruptly into another two-story area that appeared to be a lunchroom. By my guess it was in the exact middle of the building to judge by the hallway entrances on all four sides. There was no “hotel lobby” look to this, either. This was more of the plain white décor. Walls, ceiling, even the staircases to my right and left were white. The only deviations from the color scheme were the tables and chairs, all made from what looked like aircraft aluminum.

Yellow crime scene tape had been strung across each of the hallways, and I saw a number of onlookers peering toward the stairs to my left. There, crumpled at the foot of those stairs, was the body.

I figured he was in his late fifties or maybe early sixties. Short grey hair, somewhat aged and lined face. He was dressed in a dark blue uniform that looked to be the same as the one the other security guards wore, though I saw that he was missing a shoe. A trickle of blood tracked from his ear, which I’d come to learn meant a bad head injury. But that was easy enough for me to figure out, since there was another pool of blood beneath his head. From what little I could tell, it looked like this guy had tumbled down the stairs, landing at the bottom with enough force to crack his skull open.

Hi there, darlin’. My name is Angel, I thought. I’ll probably eat your brain sometime soon. I hope you don’t mind.

I held back the snicker and managed to maintain a properly serious expression. I wasn’t the smartest chick in the world, but even I knew that laughing at a death scene was pretty uncool.

In the couple of months I’d been working for the St. Edwards Parish Coroners Office I’d probably been on more than a hundred death scenes. Some were tragic and heart wrenching—which was anything that involved kids; a few were truly bizarre—such as the guy who choked to death on a sex toy; but the large majority were simply in the category of “ho hum, another person died and I get to go pick them up.”

It wasn’t that I was jaded. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. But my views of death had certainly come a long way from the screwed up chick I used to be. I mean, I was definitely still a chick, but I wasn’t screwed up. Well, not as screwed up. Or rather, I was screwed up in different ways.