Out of Mind

Chapter 6

Dr. Blades, what seemed like seven emaciated feet of him, slouched against a refrigeration bank in the morgue.

“Hey, Doc,” Nat said, walking into the Medical Examiner’s lair with Gray Fisher—Marley’s husband—at his heels. “Nice of you to ask us over.”

“I asked you over,” Blades said, giving Gray the evil eye. “If you want him here, it’s up to you.”

“Gray was in on the dragon case,” Nat said, damned if he’d sound defensive. “He may not be a cop anymore, but he thinks like one and it was his wife who came close to ending up as one more of the dragon’s tasty treats.”

“That thing wasn’t a dragon,” Blades said of the monster that had been responsible for the deaths of at least ten women. “It just had some Komodo traits.”

“You never saw it,” Nat said.

“I didn’t have to, I saw the bites,” Blades reminded him defensively.

“Not a dragon,” Blades said, giving Nat the kind of hard stare that told him Blades probably didn’t believe his own words, but he wasn’t going to admit that. “That’s the official word on the subject. You’d better accept it.”

“Yeah,” Nat said slowly, seeing Blades with a slightly fresh eye. The man was no more convinced that New Orleans wasn’t host to a rogue paranormal force than Nat was.

Gray was checking his watch, again. Nat figured his former partner didn’t like being late returning to the Court of Angels where the most important person in his life hung out, Marley Millet Fisher.

“I keep dead-ending on some questions I’ve asked,” Blades said, glancing at Gray as if he wished he would leave—or disappear. “The man and woman who were the dragon’s—I mean the pair who were there when the last lot went down. Your people got them. Where are they? No one’s saying anything about them, or not to me.”

“Eric and Sidney Fournier?” Nat said cautiously. The brother and sister were a thorn in his side. They had some kind of weird connection to the Embran Dragon, as Nat and those who believed New Orleans was under insidious attack called “the thing.”

Blades watched Nat and Nat felt Gray waiting for him to continue, too. “They were bound over,” he told them.

“So they’re in jail,” Blades said. The deep, purplish hollows beneath his cheekbones didn’t get more reassuring to look at. Neither did his dome of a head and pale eyes with no eyelashes. The lack of eyelashes went with the lack of eyebrows.

Nat cleared his throat. “In fact, they’re not in jail.”

“Where are they?” Gray asked. He and Blades had never gotten along, and he said as little as possible in the doctor’s presence.

“Well—” Nat pursed his lips and blew out in a tuneless whistle “—I’ve been told not to ask more questions about that. But I don’t think they’re in custody anymore.”

“What?” Gray said explosively. “Don’t you think you should have shared that with me? We’ve got people to look out for. How can those two crazies be on the loose?”

Gray stepped back and Nat saw the instant when Gray’s attention shifted elsewhere. Gray, Nat could tell by the shuttered distance in his eyes, had mentally checked out of the morgue and the conversation going on there, at least for now.

“How did that happen?” Blades asked. Actual concern replaced his usually impassive expression. “I didn’t hear about it.”

Nat shook his head. “I said I don’t think the Fourniers are in custody. I didn’t get a definite answer.”

“Because they think they can keep the lid on this,” Blades said. He looked ruffled, not something Nat remembered witnessing before. “The fools, they’re shoving their heads in the sand. This is going to make things harder.”

“Why?” Gray said, returning to the conversation. “What kind of burr got stuck under your saddle? You didn’t get us over here to discuss—”

“I didn’t get you over here at all,” Blades said.

Nat cleared his throat. “You said there was something interesting you wanted to show me, Dr. Blades,” he said and winced when he heard Gray mutter what sounded like “Dr. Death,” under his breath. The last time Gray called the man that it had been out loud and had caused antagonism between them that had lasted for years and still continued.

Blades must have heard, too, but he set his jaw and ignored Gray. “We got a body in this afternoon. Heart attack.”

Nat’s own heart quickened. “You mean Billy Baker?”

“How did you know?” Blades’s frown bunched his hairless brow over his eyes.

“I was called in before they decided it was a heart attack,” Nat said.

“It was a heart attack.”

A rap on the doorjamb got their attention. “Excuse me,” Ben Fortune said. “I was told I’d find you here.”

It wasn’t easy for Nat to cover his surprise.

“Who are you?” Blades said.

“This is Ben Fortune,” Gray said, his eyes wide and innocent. “Sykes must have sent you over, Ben. I guess he couldn’t get here himself.”

“Right,” Ben said.

With any luck Blades wouldn’t figure out that neither Sykes nor Ben should know anything about this meeting, but Nat wasn’t fooled. He had just run into Gray on the street when Blades’s call came in. They had come straight here. Nat decided the dormant psychic ability Gray was rumored to have rekindled since he met his wife, Marley, was real. He had contacted Ben telepathically and got him here.

Nat had witnessed too much evidence of psychic abilities to dismiss their existence and both the Millet and the Fortune families—and who knew what others?—were legendary for their mystical gifts.

Blades didn’t shake the hand Ben offered.

“This isn’t a social gathering,” Blades said. “Archer, this is something very serious.”

“I’ll vouch for Ben,” he said, imagining a scene where he was stripped of his weapon and badge for flouting his superiors. “He’s an old friend with some experience around cases like this.” Once they were out of here, he’d have to nail Ben and Gray to find out what their deal was.

“Like what?” Blades’s face would have fitted right in on Mount Rushmore.

“Cases where we may be dealing with supernatural elements.”

“Did I say anything about that?”

“You’re going to,” Gray said, making Nat wince.

“Shut the door,” Blades said in a monotone. “I’ve got something to show you.”

“Surprise,” Gray muttered.

Blades let his eyes close momentarily. Beside Ben and Gray, big men who exuded vitality, the doctor resembled a wraith.

Following the ME, Nat went with Gray through another door into a smaller room where a covered body lay on a steel table.

Ben shut the outer door, caught up and immediately covered his nose. Gray and Nat did the same thing, but Blades’s expression never changed at the odor.

“What are you looking for?” Blades asked Ben, who had looked over his shoulders in both directions as if searching for something.

Ben shrugged, one corner of his mouth turning up. “I thought both bodies might be in here.”

“There’s only one,” Blades said, looking quizzically at Ben. “So far.” He pulled gloves from a container on the wall and snapped them on. “How come you were called to a heart attack?” Blades asked Nat.

“One of the officers at the scene thought I’d want to be there,” Nat said. “He saw one of the dragon victims.”

“And he thought this was another one?” Blades shrugged. “Surprising he’d make the connection.”

Nat hadn’t missed Ben’s remark about two bodies. This wasn’t the moment to press him about it, but plenty of explanations would be needed later.

Was there another body? One that raised suspicion? Nat kept his attention on the body, but his back tensed.

The overhead lights flattened everything in the cheerless space. White blended with steel and every surface gave off a glare.

“We’re between a rock and a hard place,” Blades said, plucking at the sheet. “The powers that be in this town are afraid of something and you know what it is.” He gave Nat a significant look. “General panic in the city. People are settling down a bit after the last lot. Short memory is a great healer, but if this new event gets out, it won’t take long for connections to be made. Then the rumors will fly.”

“Shit,” Gray said. “It’s happened again, hasn’t it?”

“Something has,” Blades told him, drawing the cover away from a body. “I’m glad your wife, Marley—isn’t that her name? I’m glad she’s okay. I know it got close there.”

Promptly, Gray said, “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

Blades waved a hand. “I think Molyneux and the rest of them will resist admitting this has anything to do with the earlier cases, don’t you?”

At first Nat wasn’t sure what he was seeing. He went closer and looked down on what had been Billy Baker. He identified the man from what was left of very curly blond hair.

“My God,” Gray muttered.

“What did that?” Nat asked, studying livid, exposed flesh that seemed to have bubbled.

“The skin’s peeling off,” Ben said, closing in. “From the ribs up. It looks like it lifted up in circles around the little red wounds.”

“It started up here.” Blades indicated the area of the forehead and scalp. “I don’t know what caused the wounds yet.”

“Maybe you won’t now,” Ben said. “Won’t the missing skin make it harder?”

“We’ll see,” Blades responded shortly. “The technicians said the skin was all there when they bagged him. It didn’t drop off in the bag, it just disappeared. I thought you’d want to know there were what looked like puncture wounds, Archer. Nothing like the ragged messes we’ve seen before, but still punctures.”

Nat glanced away from the table. “Maybe they’ve been practicing,” he said, “and developed more finesse.”

He added, “So what did he really die of?”

“Heart attack,” Blades said, sounding annoyed. “Scared to death I should think. He must have seen whatever was coming and died before it could kill him.”