Bad Hair Day (3 page)

“Dr. Burr?” I said. My voice cracked despite my efforts to sound like the butt-kicking zombie killer the media seemed to think I was.

“I didn’t murder anyone, Kate.” He was surprisingly calm given that he was in the process of being arrested. “I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding.”

“What can I do to help?”

The cop holding the cuffs shoved Dr. Burr toward the door before he could answer. Totally rude. And then when I started to
follow, his partner clamped a hand down on my shoulder and held me back. Double rude.

“Kate?” Dr. Burr called out. “I want you to call—” The doors swung shut behind him. As far as marching orders went, they could have used a little improvement.

I squirmed out from under the cop’s hand. “Would it have killed you to give us a minute?” I snapped. “I just started working here. I have no idea how to run a morgue.”

“Who are you?” the cop asked.

“You don’t recognize me? You’re new, aren’t you?”

I swear I wasn’t being egotistical. It’s just that I was the infamous zombie girl, and I’d resigned myself to the notoriety. People recognized me in the bathroom at restaurants these days, for god’s sake. It just figured that my reputation failed me the one time I actually could have benefited from it.

“Why?” He tried to stare me down. It was kinda cute, actually. Not that I was interested, just less than intimidated. “Are you a criminal?”

“Of course not. My name’s Kate,” I said. He jotted it down. “Last name Grable.”

He stopped writing.

“Kate Grable? The girl who cured the zombies?” he asked.

“Technically, zombies die and are then reanimated. People with Grable’s disease aren’t dead, unless you run them over with a car.” I gulped and tried not to think too much about that. “It’s an important distinction.”

It’s also important not to antagonize the police. Particularly
if they’ve just arrested the guy with the power to put a scalpel in your hand and let you actually do something with it. But apparently I’d forgotten that. Whoops.

All he said was “Cool. Can I have your autograph?”

It was a chance to save face with the police, so I didn’t laugh even though I really wanted to.

“Who should I make it out to?” I asked in my politest voice.

“Jordan. It’s my first day.” He puffed up proudly.

I scribbled,
Jordan
—
Love and brains from the girl who cures zombies. Kate Grable
. I immediately wanted to kill myself, because it sounded both flirty and ditzy. Time to change the subject before I made myself barf.

“You don’t honestly think he killed somebody, do you?” I asked. “He’s my new boss, kinda, and I’m not sure I want to work for a murderer.”

He chucked me on the chin. So much for the flirty thing.

“Oh, it’s him, all right. We haven’t charged him yet, but it’ll happen after all the analysis is complete. I’d bet my badge on it.”

“You seem awfully sure.”

I wasn’t. After all, his badge was only a day old, so it wasn’t much of a bet.

“His ID card was on the floor next to the body. And you should see this body! He’s the only suspect with the physical size and strength to do this kind of damage.”

“Where’s the body now?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Still at the scene, I suppose. Somebody’s got to come pick it up.”

I chewed furiously on my lower lip. It helped me to think. And it sounded like Dr. Burr needed all the lip chewing I could give him. “Are they calling somebody to investigate? What else can I do to help?”

“Don’t worry, kid. We’ve got him. You can sit this one out.”

I wanted to shave off his pitiful little goatee with a scalpel for calling me kid, but I let it pass. I was too busy brainstorming a hundred different scenarios to explain why Dr. Burr’s ID might be at a murder scene.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, because it seemed like I should say something.

He left. Maybe he said something first, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention.

I hovered indecisively for a couple of minutes, torn between my obligation to clear Dr. Burr’s name and my desire to get on with the surgical goodness. I knew I should call the school or maybe Mrs. Gilbert. They’d probably want to know that my mentor had just gotten arrested. But I wouldn’t do it right away, because I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to indulge my medical fantasies unchaperoned. This hadn’t been on my list of expected outcomes. Sadly enough, I’d actually written a list of expected outcomes, like
Kate will actually use a real scalpel, and it will be awesome
. I had to stop that, because it clearly wasn’t doing a bit of good.

A muted buzzing from the wall got my attention. I walked over and stabbed the intercom button with my finger like it had done something to offend me.

“Yeah?” I said.

The voice came back tinny and static-covered. “One to drop off.”

“One what?”

An exasperated sigh. “A body.”

“Oh! Of course. Just a sec.”

I punched the button to open the doors, and a few moments later, two guys in black suits wheeled a body bag into the morgue. One of them gave me a sketchy little salute. “All right. Where do you want him?”

That was a good question. After a quick scan of the room, I jerked my thumb toward one of the aluminum autopsy tables, because my only other option was the floor. There must have been storage lockers around somewhere, but I didn’t know where, and I wasn’t about to exhibit my ignorance.

The delivery guys lifted the body onto the table. From the way they huffed and strained, it appeared the deceased was either overweight or had been carrying bricks in his pockets when he croaked. The moment the door buzzed shut behind them, I peeked. No bricks. No visible markings on the body either, just a balding middle-aged guy with a substantial beer belly. I was putting my money on heart disease. Now I just had to get Dr. Burr back so he could perform the autopsy and I could see if I was right.

The moment the door buzzed shut behind them, I ran for the infectious suite. Sebastian was still puttering around in there, completely oblivious to the whole arrest thing.

I flicked on the intercom.

“Hey,” I said. He didn’t notice, so I banged on the glass with my fist until he jumped. “Hey! Earth to Sebastian! We’ve got a problem.”

It took me ten minutes to detach the roll and a half of duct tape Sebastian had used to secure his gloves to his suit, five minutes to get him out of the rest of the protective gear, two minutes to fill him in on the situation, and twenty to make him stop hyperventilating. I barely restrained myself from slapping him and telling him to man up.

Finally, he managed to get himself under control. I could tell he wasn’t going to be much help. Sebastian wasn’t much older than me. A college freshman, maybe? A sophomore at the most. He was one of those scrawny, haunted-looking types who get constantly shoved into toilets, and so thin that I wondered if he had pectus excavatum. I’d never seen a concave chest before. I was tempted to ask him to lift up his shirt, but something told me he’d take it the wrong way.

I’d just calmed him down. I didn’t want to flip him out again.

“It’s okay,” I said, in the most soothing voice I could manage. “We can handle this, right? All we need to do is keep things under control until they release him. Is there an assistant medical examiner we can call?”

“Dr. Grundleford-Pluta. But she’s vacationing on top of a mountain in Canada right now! I’m only a part-time college student; I can’t run a morgue!”

He started flapping his hands madly at his sides, as if panic
might have given him the ability to fly. I was starting to understand the toilet-shoving urge. I felt it right now, in fact.

“Don’t panic. Leave Dr. Grundle-whatever a message and we’ll see what she says.” I held my hands up in a nonthreatening manner. “There’s no need to fly south for the winter.”

“What?” he wailed. “You’re not making any sense.”

“Don’t worry about that. Think about Dr. Burr. He’s counting on us.”

“Is he going to jail?”

His lip quivered, and suddenly I felt bad for him.

“I don’t know.” It would probably make him panic again, but the guy deserved honesty at the very least. He was a medical professional. A hypersensitive, possibly concave medical professional, but a professional nonetheless. “But I have another hour before I have to catch the bus back to school. Let’s do as much as we can; I’m sure Dr. Burr will appreciate it.”

“Okay.” Having a concrete course of action seemed to steady him. “Why don’t you help me check in the new guy?”

He jerked his thumb toward the body bag on the table, and I nodded eagerly. I must have seemed too chipper, because he looked at me funny. I made a mental note to quit bouncing in excitement whenever I was faced with a dead body. Because really, when I put it that way, it sounded creepy even to me.

And I made a mental note to rewatch some of the
CSI
episodes I’d TiVoed when I got home. Because I might need the investigative tips if Dr. Burr didn’t get released soon.

I didn’t want to hunt down a murderer, but I’d do it if I had to.

S
ebastian and I made a good team when he wasn’t hyperventilating. We got everything organized pretty fast. Then I lost track of time looking at some pathology slides under the microscope. When I glanced up at the clock, I realized I had a total of two minutes to get to the health department lobby. The only way I’d make it was if Sebastian had a stash of nuclear waste in his desk and I used it to mutate myself so I could break the sound barrier.

I grabbed my phone and dialed Aaron. He’d hold the bus for me, because he was the perfect boyfriend. Not that we didn’t have our problems. Every time we argued, I panicked. He was the first guy I’d ever dated, after all, and over the past few months, I’d become aware of how little I knew about relationships. I had this nagging worry that eventually he would come to his senses and
realize he belonged with someone with better social skills. And boobs.

The phone rang and rang. I’d resigned myself to voice mail when he finally picked up.

“Aaron!” I threw on my coat and scarf and waved a frantic goodbye to Sebastian. “Don’t let them leave without me, okay? You won’t believe what happened; I’ll tell you once I get there.”

“Hey, babe,” he replied. “Where are you? Aren’t you late?”

“Yeah, I’m late. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Sorry, I hadn’t looked at the time,” he said. I heard a burst of shrill girlish laughter in the background. It made me want to put out my eardrums with my thumbs. “Listen, you better get here fast. The bus just pulled in.”

And then he hung up on me.

Aaron had never hung up on me before.

My knee-jerk reaction was to panic, because the hyena laughter plus hang-up wasn’t a good combo. But as I rushed down the hallway, I reminded myself that Aaron wasn’t that kind of guy. He wasn’t hooking up with random laughing girls in the health department lobby; his cell had probably dropped the call. Besides, it seemed pretty petty to be obsessing over guys when there was a murderer on the loose and my mentor was in jail.

I sped out of the elevator, nearly getting run over by a gurney in the process. But the breathless dash was totally worth it when I flew into the lobby and saw the bus parked outside. I speed-walked toward it, scanning the small group of students clustered just inside the doors, taking shelter from the wind.

Someone stepped in front of me. “Have you seen Aaron Kingsman?” I asked before I realized it was Trey. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hey, Kate,” he said, licking his lips. Maybe they were chapped. I really wanted them to be, because the alternative was gross. “How’s it goin’?”

“Have you seen Aaron?” I repeated. He scowled, and I threw up my hands. “What? It’s not like I’m asking for the square root of pi; I just need to find my boyfriend. What’s your problem?”

Before he could answer, I heard Aaron’s voice. “Kate!” Trey and I both turned to see him standing just a few feet away. “What’s going on?”

“I was just going to ask Kate if she had any Chap Stick.” Trey’s face relaxed into his usual easy grin. “Do you have any, bro?”

Aaron was always prepared for everything; he opened his backpack and rummaged around. It was so good to see him, and now I felt kind of silly for assuming he was going to dump me all because of a stupid phone call. I was overcome with a potent wave of embarrassment at my neurotic wackjob tendencies, but then I noticed the girl standing next to him and nearly tripped over my own feet.

She was freakishly, annoyingly cute, and she seemed to think everyone in the world was interested in seeing her cleavage. Every time she moved, she led with her boobs. She thrust those things out so far that she’d throw her back out if she wasn’t careful. I would have warned her, but her breasts were primarily aimed at my boyfriend, so she deserved a slipped disk or two. Or seven.

“Hey, babe.” Aaron straightened up, smiling at me. “The bus driver just left to look for you. I think she’s pretty pissed.”

I mentally reassured myself that he still publicly acknowledged our relationship and focused on the matter at hand. “She’ll have to deal,” I said. “My doctor left me in charge of the morgue for a while. I couldn’t just leave. The corpses might rise again.”