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A warh me as I tried not to sho much the comment meant to me "You mean, you’re stuck with ed the keyboard toward him "But I still like your idea about Lexis Nexis" He fell silent while he did the hunt and peck thing again A part of me wanted to yank the keyboard away from him and do it myself, but theeven worse, and it wouldn’t speed things up at all

"You have good ideas," he said after a inal Peter Plescia died in 1988 and this one showed up here in 1990" He clicked a few more keys "Lived at various apartment complexes"

"Is there a way to find out where he worked?" I leaned forward eagerly "I ue or funeral home, that would clinch my theory that he was a zombie Plus that would surely ave me a funny look but didn’t question my interest "Not on here The system we use tells us stuff like residence history, possible relatives, phone nu available in a public record search That’s pretty much all we need, since thenext of kin"

I sat back and nodded "Okay, that’s cool" It didn’t matter anyway I was pretty dauy we picked up this ? Has the ID on him been confirh about an hour ago Zeke Lyons, forty-three years old, white male No hiccups with that one at least"

Okay, so he wasn’t an old zombie I had no idea if he’d really looked forty-three, since I’d never seen hiuy frouys this ho died of head injuries?" I asked "Was there anything strange about the now, girl," he said, though with enough of a s out of it "The victim from Sweet Bayou was Adam Campbell, fifty-three years old, and no apparent anomalies there either But as far as the other two--totally different means of death with those"

"But--" I stoppedbrains, took a deep breath instead, and uess"

"However, to answer your question, no Nothing weird about those two No connection or similarities Families were notified All the usual stuff"

They ithin a few miles of each other But for the first ti that wasn’t there Squished-head guy’s brainsfor all I knew And deco dealer dudewell, his brains could have liquefied and leaked out by the time we arrived

Damn it I’d been so certain that Zeke had killed those two Was Iobvious? But even if those deaths really had been accidental, there sure as shit wasn’t anything accidental about Zeke and Peter and Adaht," I said "Well I figured it orth thinking about"

"Keep it up and you’ll get proator," Derrel said Then his eyes flashed with amusement "And we all knoto shoot for!" I said, laughing

I’d lost track of ti set up for the autopsy before Dr Leblanc got there

I hadn’t assisted at the autopsy of the other headless body, and I felt kind of useless without a head to deal with Usually as soon as Dr Leblanc finished his reans, I’d start on the head while he did the more meticulous examinations and dissections But since there was no head, I prettyas if I was forgetting to do soht?" I asked Dr Leblanc

He glanced up, scalpel poised above a kidney "Why do you say that? Do you think it is?"

I was starting to get used to Dr Leblanc and his way of answering questions with questions of his own Derrel had told me a while back that Dr Leblanc was a fan of the Socratic Method, which made absolutely zero sense to me at the time In fact, I didn’t even realize he’d said "Socratic" and thought he’d said "secreting," which hadabout "the secretinghis ass off atby using questions I didn’t understand the whole thing, but there were tiht answer

However, I illing to go along with it for the moment "Well, sure I mean, in the last couple of months we’ve had three people with heads cut off and two others who died of pretty arded me "Three," he said after a few seconds

"Three what?"

"Three who died of ht before you were hired we had an MVA fatality where cause of death was multiple traumatic injuries, most notably decapitation"

A bizarre chill walked down my spine at this for no reason I could understand "Okay," I said, shaking it off "So Six total"