“Zombies?” I guessed.
His head bobbed and he looked up at me, said, “And how they smell.”
“Right. Not like something dead.”
“Well, I don’t know about all zombies. Just the one that was in the house.”
“How could I forget?”
My son stopped outside the fence that surrounds the school playground and said, “You don’t believe me, but I figured out what he smelled like, I mean who he smelled like.”
“And who was that?”
“That guy who came to my school and talked to us about his company,” Ali said, and curled up his nose. “He smelled weird, just like the zombie.”
That stopped me. “What was this man’s name?”
“I don’t remember,” Ali replied. “Just that he smelled weird. I could ask Mrs. Hutchins, though, and have her tell you.”
“You do that,” I said, and mussed up his hair. “Nana will be here when school gets out.”
Chapter
66
I watched my little boy until he’d joined a group of his buddies gathered at the tetherball pole and then hurried home, trying to figure out what I was going to do first. The vacuum cleaner van was gone and a dark-blue Chevy Tahoe with tinted windows and District plates had taken the parking spot.
The sound of nail guns greeted me as I climbed the stairs up to the house, only to find Nana Mama coming out the front door in a tizzy.
“If they’re going to do that all day, I’m leaving,” she announced.
“Smart idea.”
“Father Hannon asked for my help, anyway,” she replied. “Getting ready for Good Friday and Easter services.”
“Need a lift?”
“Absolutely not,” she said, and went on down the stairs.
In the dining room, Bree was eating cereal and looking morose.
“Thinking about those babies?” I asked, pouring myself coffee.
“And Cam Nguyen,” she replied, her face pinched. “I can’t stand feeling helpless like this, knowing that—”
My cell phone rang.
“Got your fax on?” Sampson asked by way of greeting.
“Think so. I can check.”
Sampson said we had artists’ sketches on the way: the profile view from Irina Popovitch, who’d witnessed the brothel slayings, and the head-on perspective that Harry Barnes had gotten of the killer leaving the Superior Spa.
“Quintus’s sending over the artists’ sketches any minute.”
“You seen them?”
“Not yet. When are you going in?”