Play Dead

Chapter 21

"It's the necromancer spirit!" the TV evangelist shouted from behind a pulpit. "Hanging over the city of Savannah! A spirit that is praying to the dead! Worshiping dead spirits! Voodoo curses, brought by servants of the devil! Creating mindless people who have no pulse, who breathe no air, but are alive!"

A font showed up on the bottom of Elise's TV screen: brother samuel, of the church of samuel. It was late. Almost midnight, but Elise couldn't quit thinking of the theories that had been tossed around that afternoon at police headquarters.

"A curse put on our fair city!" the man on the TV continued to shout. "We must pray! Children of the devil. A demon spirit we've allowed into our homes! Caused by rejecting Christianity! I plead with you to come forward now and beg forgiveness, to denounce the devil. Denounce the necromancers!"

Another message appeared at the bottom of the screen: a P.O. box where people could send their donations.

Elise clicked off the TV, picked up her portable phone, and called David.

He answered after one ring, sounding wide-awake.

"What do you know about necrophilia?" Elise asked.

"Necrophilia. A pretty word for a really sick sickness."

"I keep asking myself, why would the killer drug someone with TTX in the first place?"

"You think the guy could be a necrophiliac? An interesting theory. But a necrophiliac gets off on dead people, not zombies."

"As we all know, a dead body begins to do nasty things pretty damn quickly, especially in a hot, humid environment like Savannah," she said.

"So he simulates death. So he can romance the body until the victim eventually really dies."

"Then tosses it like so much garbage."

"What a sweetheart."

"I think we need to check local funeral homes and cemeteries. The morgue. Get a list of employees. See if any of them have ever shown a particular fondness for the dead."

"Sounds like a good job for Starsky and Hutch."

"You read my mind."

The flashlight beam sent cockroaches scurrying for darkness in one giant black wave. There were billions of them, packed into every crack and seam. The walls of the tunnel were made of brick, with a rounded ceiling. Years ago someone painted them white, but now the red was bleeding through.

Tunnels are everywhere under Savannah. Nobody talks about them much, but they're here. Some have collapsed; some have been filled in. All have been sealed, most with bricks and mortar, others with a grate that can still be opened if a person knows where to look.

I knew where to look. I made it my business to know.

The tunnels are a black, rotten, infested world that lurks just below the feet of the gentlemen who frequent the exclusive Oglethorpe Club. Sometimes when I was walking along President Street and passed a sewer grate, I would get a whiff of that fetid, rotten stink and know decay was near.

It was easy to blend with the homeless.

And there are a lot of homeless in Savannah. They like to hang out downtown, in the square nearest Martin Luther King Boulevard.

When you're homeless, you're invisible. People, even cops, look right through you. Tourists don't want to make eye contact for fear you'll hit them up for cash or say something crazy…

Right now I was in a section of tunnel near the old Candler Hospital. It was no longer a hospital but some kind of home for old people. I could always get my bearings near Candler, because the tunnel was littered with discarded and forgotten hospital debris like old wooden wheelchairs and rusty gurneys.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a map dating back to the 1800s that I had lifted from the Georgia Historical Society.

Finding my way around in the tunnels was a little like playing Monopoly, only with bigger pieces.

I traced my finger along the path leading to the Hartzell, Tate, and Hartzell Funeral Home. A left, then a right, then a left.

Advance to Boardwalk.

I slipped the map back in my pocket, grabbed a gurney, and continued my journey.

The funeral home was located in an old mansion with a catacomb-like basement that seemed miles from the rest of the building. Like everything else about the tunnels, the sealed entrance was crumbling.

I'd been this way before.

It didn't take long to dig out the bricks and make a hole large enough to crawl through-and I'm not a small person.

But once inside, I got a little turned around-it was such a maze! Room after room of embalming paraphernalia. Shelves of embalming fluid. Boxes of drainage tubes and expression formers. Yes, that's right. They could actually make a dead person smile. But then, I could do that too.

I moved silently up a flight of stairs. I'd also been here before, so it was easy to locate the cooler.

And locate my friend, Mr. Turello.

He looked good, considering. And lucky for me he was a little bit freeze-dried. Much lighter than the night I dumped him in an abandoned lot off Skidaway Road.

But he was still heavy.

I wasn't exactly sure why I decided to collect him. For one thing, I thought it might be fun. Stir up the cops. Those two detectives. Elise Sandburg. David Gould.

David Gould. He was kind of sexy. Really sexy, actually. I'd seen him running and running. As if someone, or something, was after him.

I had to drape Turello over my back to carry him. He was stiff, but pliant at the same time. A little like a cheap leather jacket you know is never going to soften up no matter how many times you wear it.

When I originally dumped him, he smelled. Dead-rat awful. Now he smelled… mysterious. Like the sweet odor of embalming fluid, but also maybe a little like compost.

Downstairs, I dragged him through the opening, sealed it back up, put him on the gurney, and we were off.

"Somebody's going to be shocked as hell," I told Gary as I shoved him along the rough floor.

Anybody who's ever had to deal with a shopping cart with a bad wheel will know how bone jarring it can be. Not fun. Not fun at all.

Then I forgot about my struggle and laughed softly to myself. I couldn't help it as I pictured the chaos tomorrow morning when they couldn't find Gary.

Psychiatrists might say I was starved for attention. That I didn't get enough as a child.

They would be right.