Dead and Alive

Almost round. Jocko was good. He could even caper while juggling.
    He capered around the kitchen. Juggling, juggling. He wished he had a funny hat. One with bells.

    ON THE PHONE , Erika Four said, “There is a legion in the dump, my darling psychopath. I need not come for you alone.”
    “Only a legion of the dead,” Victor said. “And the dead don’t rise again.”
    “Like me, they were not fully dead. Mistaken for dead, but with a trace of life remaining … and after a while, more than a trace.”
    The doorknob had turned one way, then the other. For almost a minute now, it had not moved.
    “We will carry you by torchlight down into the bowels of the dump. And though we’ll bury you alive, we’ll have our fun with you before interment.”
    The knob turned again.

    FROM THE LIBRARY , she hurried directly to the front stairs and ascended to the second floor. Enough was enough. Maxim would have to speak with Mrs. Danvers. The woman’s loyalty to Rebecca exceeded that of a faithful servant, was nothing as innocent as honest sentiment. It was mean, perverse, and suggested an unbalanced mind.
    She threw open the door, swept into the master suite, and was shot four times in the chest by herbeloved Maxim, whose treachery stunned her, though as she fell, she realized that he must have shot Rebecca, too.

    JOCKO, CAPERING IN THE KITCHEN , dropped the apples when the gunfire boomed.
    Knife. He had forgotten the knife. Victor waited to be killed, and Jocko forgot the knife.
    He hit himself in the face. Hit, hit, hit himself. He deserved to be smacked twice as often as he was. Three times.
    One drawer, two drawers, three … In the fifth drawer, knives. He selected a big one. Very sharp.
    Tippytoe, tippytoe, out of the kitchen, into the hall.

CHAPTER 38
    DUKE SLEPT in the backseat of the Honda during the drive east-northeast on I-10 and then west on I-12.
    The dog’s snoring didn’t induce drowsiness in Carson, though it ought to have, considering how little sack time she’d grabbed in the past couple of days.
    The half liter of supercaffeinated cola from Acadiana helped. Before crossing the city line, they stopped at a combination service station and convenience store that was open 24/7, where they drained themselves of some of the first cola they had consumed, and then bought two more half-liter bottles. They also bought a package of caffeine tablets.
    As they hit the road again, Michael said, “Too much caffeine ties the prostate in knots.”
    “I don’t have a prostate.”
    “Carson, you know, everything isn’t always about you.”
    One thing keeping her awake and focused was the suspicion that the Helios-Frankenstein case might be as much about her as it was about anyone. Not merely because she happened to be one of the two detectives who stumbled on the case. And not because her path crossed Deucalion’s just when she needed to meet him.
    Of all the cops Carson knew, she and Michael had the deepest respect for individualism, especially when a particular individual was quirky and therefore amusing or even if he proved stubborn and frustrating. Consequently, they were more alarmed than some might have been by the prospect of a civilization with a single-minded purpose and a regimented population of obedient drones, whether that population was comprised of propagandized human beings or of pseudo-humans cultured in a lab.
    But her respect for individualism and her love of freedom was not why this case was so powerfully, immediately, intimately about
her
. Early in this investigation, she began to suspect that her father, who had been a detective with the NOPD, might have been murdered by the New Race—and her mother with him—at the order of Victor Helios. Her dad could have encountered something exceedingly strange that had led him to Helios, just as his daughter would be led to the same suspect years later.
    Her parents’ murders had never been solved. And the evidence concocted to portray her father as a corrupt cop—who might have been executed by criminal elements with which he was involved—had alwaysbeen too pat, an insult to common sense, and an offense against the truth of her dad’s character.
    Over the past few days, her suspicion developed into conviction. As much as the caffeine, a hunger for justice and a determination to clear her father’s name kept her awake, alert, and ready to rumble.
    The vast lightless expanse of Pontchartrain lay to their left, and it seemed to have the