Page 112 of The End of the World As We Know It

He could burn the bodies, same as he did with all the others who died of the plague or random violence or suicide or simple, foolish accidents that could no longer be set right because there were no hospitals, no ambulances, no police patrols, no social order. Or…

He could solve the case.

Someone needed to speak for the dead. Eddie Kovach couldn’t do it for all of them, but for the five in the meat locker at Bad Boy’s BBQ in his very neighborhood? He could do that much.

That night, he began surveillance.

It was three days before anyone approached the building. Three long hot days and nights of round-the-clock surveillance, dozing here and there, but mostly awake, trying to keep his mind off the relentless stink of death, off the memories of other long nights with partners at his side, good men and women who were likely all dead now, like Debbie. Sometimes, he played the radio low, wondering which survivor was manning the equipment, and why they never spoke. Maybe it was on some kind of autopilot… or maybe the survivor who played music knew better than to announce his or her existence. The music was pop hits, modern stuff, Madonna and Larry Underwood. Kovach could do without Madonna, but he liked Underwood’s song “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” The way the white boy sang it made Kovach think of the old solo album from Buddy Miles, who’d been Hendrix’s drummer, had an Afro damn near as wide as his drum kit. Kovach had loved that album back in the days when Debbie and Kovach would go out and dance. Hard to believe there’d ever been such days.

“But bay-yay-yaybe you can tell me if anyone can…”

He turned the radio louder when that Underwood song played. Drummed his fingers off the steering wheel of the gutted van he’d set up as a surveillance post. When the song was over, he’d turn the radio back down low, or off entirely, and watch the barbecue joint in silence, the way a detective should.

Third day, finally, action. Just before sunset. A woman, small and brunette, weighing maybe a buck ten, dressed in a tank top over loose blue pants that looked like medical scrubs.

Pushing a body in a wheelbarrow.

The corpse was a man, pale and broad-shouldered and blond and big, too big for the woman to push easily even using the wheelbarrow. Kovach was so struck by the scene he almost forgot about his camera. He finally snapped a few photos while she fumbled the door to the barbecue restaurant open and wrestled the wheelbarrow inside.

When she was out of sight, he lowered the camera and let his hand trace the butt of his duty pistol. Go in? Murder suspect with a corpse, of course you went in.

Those had once been the rules, anyhow.

These were different times.

He waited. There was no need to rush, and he was curious about the blood.

She was inside for twenty minutes. Came back out with a plastic two-liter of Pepsi in each hand, walking fast. In the waning light, the contents of the Pepsi bottles could almost have passed for the real deal. There was just enough of the day left to show that the liquid inside wasn’t cola-colored.

It was a dark ruby.

Kovach took pictures. He left the van when the brunette was two blocks away, then followed, kept low and quiet, stopped when she stopped, ducked behind a dumpster the one time she looked back. Counted to twenty, checked the street again. She was back in motion, walking faster.

He followed her for almost thirty blocks, thinking that once she would have been insane to walk in this neighborhood after dark, then reminding himself that she was the one who’d brought the dead in and hung them up on the hooks—her sanity was a question, yes, but her safety wasn’t the concern. The advantage of so much death was that there was no such thing as a dangerous neighborhood.

They went north, all the way to Detroit Avenue, where she finally stopped at an apartment building, used a key on a padlock to loosen a chain that held the door shut, and slipped inside. A few minutes after she entered, a light went on in the fifth-floor corner apartment, the faint, flickering glow of a candle or kerosene lamp.

Somewhere down the street, not far away, a man howled with madness, and gunshots cracked. It was full dark now, and Kovach had decisions to make. Arrest her? He almost laughed. He intended to stop her—but, really, what was the rush? She’d chained and locked the door and he had no backup. She’d hear him breaking into the building, and if that happened, Fast Eddie K was likely to take his leave from this world dangling from a meat hook himself. No thanks.

He went home. Slept until daybreak. Woke up and cleaned his gun and walked back to the brunette’s apartment building. Waited.

She came down two hours later, checked the window, then unchained the door and stepped outside. She had a black leather bag slung over one shoulder, a clipboard in her left hand, and a street map in her right. She checked the map, then the clipboard, then folded the map, removed a pen, made a notation on the clipboard, and tucked the pen behind her ear before setting off up the street.

Kovach fell in behind her.

They walked west, then north, toward the lake. The heat had finally broken, and the air was crisp. The day was quiet, no looters out—not much left to loot. Sometimes the mornings could almost pass for sane.

Almost.

Farther north, past Don’s Lighthouse Grille, where Kovach and Debbie had eaten dinner on the night he proposed, and straight across the intersection, moving toward Edgewater Park, where he’d finally gotten down on one knee, his hand trembling a little as he opened the ring box. Left on Lake Avenue, then left again on West 145th. Kovach wheezing a little now, thinking there was no wonder the brunette killer was so damn slim, with all this walking. She stopped outside of a brick Tudor-style house, looked up the drive, then down at her clipboard. All business. Satisfied with whatever she’d seen, she knelt behind a tree and unzipped the black leather bag. Kovach removed the lens cap from his camera and zoomed in.

The clipboard was in the grass at her feet. She had a syringe in her right hand and a vial in her left.

Mysterious cause of death = solved. Kovach couldn’t help being pleased with his initial read of the scene in the meat locker, determining that the hooks hadn’t been used until after the fact.

She uncapped the syringe with her teeth. Kovach snapped pictures while she pierced the vial with the needle and drew back the plunger, filling the big syringe with an unknown liquid. She then withdrew what looked like an air pistol, flipped the bolt open, and loaded the syringe inside. A dart gun. Kovach had never seen one in action.

She put the loaded gun in the bag and straightened up and eyed the Tudor again and he knew he had to stop her now. Even in this sorry excuse for a world, Detective Eddie Kovach wasn’t going to let a murderer proceed with business.