Dead Harvest

  MacNeil, it turns out, made the front page. My guess is it was the Park Avenue address as much as the three dead bodies that landed her there. Hell, a couple blocks further north, she might have been above the fold. I skimmed the article. Seems some neighbors heard screaming and called the police. By the time they arrived, Kate's brother and father were dead; the cops got there just in time to watch her slit her mother's throat. Took six officers to bring her down, and by the time they did, she was unconscious. Now they had her under guard at Bellevue Hospital, at least until she woke up. With a little luck, I thought, I could have this wrapped up before she even does.

  I tossed aside the A-section and flipped through the paper until I found the obits. Papers like the Times, the obituaries are always a crapshoot. More days than not, they're stuffed front to back with octogenarians of some historical import – a touching gesture for friends and family, I'm sure, but it doesn't do me a load of good. Today, though, I was in luck. A playwright, thirty-five. Pills and booze, an apparent suicide. Not half-bad looking, either. It didn't get much better than that.

  I closed my eyes and focused. My limbs grew heavy and ungainly as I pulled away. The jasmine scent of spring retreated, replaced by hollow nothingness.

  Somewhere behind me, a body convulsed, thrashing about on the grass as a thousand synapses misfired. Then the world lurched, and it was gone.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell – a harsh ammonia reek that burned my sinuses and caught in the back of my throat, making me gag. My stomach clenched and I doubled over, or tried to. My head clanged against something just a couple feet above, a muffled thud. I pressed against the liquid darkness. Cold vinyl pressed back, slick and unpleasant. Clumsy fingers fumbled in the darkness as I followed the line of the zipper. It ended just overhead. I forced a finger through, metal teeth digging flesh, and then pushed the zipper open.

  I kicked free of the body bag. The chill of the morgue drawer stung my naked skin. My heart raced – the useless panic response of a fledgling meat-suit. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and the flutter slowed.

  Hands against the back wall, I pushed, and the morgue drawer slid open. The room beyond was dimly lit, but after the absolute black of the drawer, I squinted still. I stumbled to a large utility sink, clumsy as a newborn foal. Bile rose in my throat, and I retched. It happens every time. A reflex, I suppose – just the body's way of trying to get rid of me. I try not to take it personally.

  The water ran cool from the tap. I drank from cupped hands. Whiskey and pills and sick swirled toward the drain. The water calmed my stomach, and the act of drinking was an anchor, fixing me in place. The body no longer fought my movements, no longer coursed with fear. I stretched my limbs, testing each in turn. Not a bad fit, really. Possession can be a tricky thing, particularly with the dead. You've got to find one in decent working order, for one – if you don't get to them quick enough, they tend to run a little rough. And they've all got their quirks. The guy I left in Oxford, for example: bum hip, lousy stomach, and apparently scared shitless of bugs. You get something that ingrained, there's no stopping it, and considering he'd been on his floor a couple days before I found him, I was lucky he didn't have a fucking heart attack. I had to shower for an hour before his skin stopped crawling. Still, it beats taking the living – no thoughts, no memories, no baggage. Their constant yammering is enough to make you want to take a header off a bridge and bail on the way down.

  I glanced at my wrist, a useless gesture. The watch I was looking for was a continent away, adorning the arm of a corpse. I looked around. The clock on the wall read 5am. If I were a betting man, I'd have said this place'd be deserted for least another hour. Of course, I'm not a betting man – in my line of work, I've seen my share of wagers, and believe me, the house always wins. Still, it couldn't hurt to poke around a bit.

  I peered through the gloom at the bank of morgue drawers behind me. They gleamed faintly in the pale glow of the exit signs. Numbers, no names. I padded naked toward the door at the far end of the room. Beside the door hung a clipboard – a list of names, arranged by drawer. Three of them MacNeil.

  I crossed the room and slid one out. As I unzipped the bag, the copper tang of blood prickled in my sinuses, and I went a little woozy. Great – New Guy had a thing about blood. That was gonna be a treat.