We weaponed up and grabbed a bin of blue spelled unis from behind the seats. No one approached us, but that was because FireWind and T. Laine pulled in front of Occam’s car and went straight to the gathering of law enforcement. We went the other way and approached the side of the road.
A deputy was guarding the vehicle, twenty feet away, standing hipshot on the uneven ground, lit by the blue flashes. He touched his hat brim as we approached, recognizing us. “It ain’t pretty,” he said.
“Seldom is,” Occam agreed.
The car in question was off the road, down a slight embankment, resting against trees, the front driver’s-side panel and door dented in. I flicked on my flash and shined it in through the dirty window. Cale Nowell’s face was resting against the glass, one hand trapped in the steering wheel. His lips and fingertips were green, and he was covered in a fine, glistening green froth. “He’s decomposing,” I said. My theory about it hitting women harder might be disproven.
“One vic,” Occam said, walking around the car, inspecting it with his flash. “No sign of other vehicle damage. Tires look okay. Deputy,” he called. “Any skid marks or debris?”
“No. Nothing. We’re treating it as a single-vehicle accident, but it’ll be worked up as a murder-by-paranormal-means investigation as soon as all your people get here. All paras should be gathered up and shot.”
“Ummm,” Occam said. He returned to me, where I stood on the street by his car, and said softly. “Charmin’ fella.”
“I reckon being shot is marginally better than being burned at the stake?”
Occam chuckled, the tone harsh, and began removing P3Es from their small bin.
“When will the para hazmat team be here?” I asked, my eyes on Cale Nowell.
“PsyCSI and the military PHMT will arrive here by seven a.m. Soon,” Occam said, placing our protective gear in the seat of his car. “The local LEOs brought in a drug- and bomb-sniffing dog and got no hits. We need to get our workup started.”
I had no answer to that. I accepted the sky blue P3E and dressed out.
Clad in one-piece P3E null unis and thick gloves, masks, and goggles, we took Geiger counter readings; performed quick tests on the air and the ground beneath the car for on-scene chemical residue; took soil and air samples; photographed the street, the ground, the trees, and the victim inside the car; sketched the scene; and started to take fingerprints from thevehicle body and door handles to send to IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, but there was a problem. Green goo was slimed all over the outside of the driver’s door handle. Green goo started toward the end of the dying process and after respiration was affected.
I shined my light into the car and studied Cale’s hands, where he gripped the steering wheel. Several fingers were missing. They weren’t in his lap. I borrowed a small step stool from the fire truck. Firefighters had everything. Positioning it at the car door, I got a better angle. The fingers weren’t on the floor of the car. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with autumn’s weather change.
“Occam?” He raised his head from the back bumper and looked back at me. “I think he got into the car after he lost fingers.”
Occam walked to me and shined his light into the car, looking for fingers, as I had. Cale’s face was sludged against the window, sliding down as gravity exerted its power. “HPD got here within minutes of the crash. The officer sent me photos.” Occam paged through his cell. “Cale’s eyes were already whited over.” He studied the goo on the outside of the car door. “This don’t make sense.”
“Unless he was driving after he died,” I said, too softly to be overheard.
Occam’s scarred eyebrow went up. “Like a zombie? Ain’t no such thing as a true zombie, Nell. Just fangheads rising too early, or revenants. And Cale ain’t neither.”
“We know humans and witches can be demon ridden. Is it possible that this body was... being ridden? After he was dead?”
“Like a necromancer? Necromancers have never been proven to exist either.” Occam looked back at the man in the vehicle. “But it’s possible, I reckon. Until Marilyn Monroe was staked in the Oval Office trying to turn President Kennedy, vamps hid in the closet for near two thousand years, so yeah. Zombies and necros might be real and not sci-fi, but don’t tell that to the powers that be just yet. We’d need proof.”
“Necromancer,” I said, trying the word on my tongue. That subject hadn’t been covered in Spook School. “So that’s what we call magic users who kill and then control dead bodies?”
“That and dangerous, Nell, sugar. Dangerous as hell. But abetter question would be, if the magic userwasriding Cale Nowell, why?”
Laine and the North Nashville coven leader waved us over to take readings on the psy-meter 2.0. By the time the government para hazmat team arrived, we had done everything we could without opening the vehicle doors and had peeled off our P3Es. We were waiting in the gray light of dawn, sipping coffee from paper cups poured from an insulated gallon container brought by a day-shift deputy. The PHMT team leader who got out and approached us was midfifties with brightly dyed hair in shades of green, purple, and dark burgundy, clearly a civilian, not a soldier. I had a wig in similar shades as part of an identity created by JoJo, for my one and only—so far—stint undercover.
“Jamie Lee Frost,” she said, shaking first with me and then with Occam as we identified ourselves. “I’ve read your CBRNEP workup of the Ragel farm site.” CBRNEP covered chemical, biological, radiological/nuclear, explosive, and paranormal materials as causative agents. “Your team did good work.”
“We’re not crime scene techs or hazmat,” Occam said, “but we try to not mess up your scenes too much.”
Frost gave a half smile. “Update me on this one?”
“Since the vic is tied to the Melody Horse Farm,” Occam said, “we think we can eliminate everything except paranormal as COD,” he said, referring to the cause of death. “There and here, we’ve given it a prelim classification as a type of death curse, which we’re callingdeath and decay, because it seems to be normal death and decomp process, but vastly speeded up. Nothing reads like witch magics, but we also have nothing to prove it isn’t being perpetrated by a death witch.”
“If it’s adeathworking, that’ll be hard to close,” she said, while pulling on a uni. “I’ve worked up exactly onedeathworking and it’s still open.”
“How long ago?” I asked.
“Four years, twenty-seven days, and counting. And I still can’t get the memory of the withered and desiccated body out of my mind and the smell out of my head. I smell it in my dreams. I had to burn my clothes. Thank God for the better unis. They keep the worst of the stench out. Excuse me,” she said, spotting FireWind.
