The Undead Kama Sutra by Mario Acevedo Page B

covered a corpse on a table. The examiner went to a computer monitor and tapped on the screen to bring up her files.
    Johnson walked to the table and grasped a corner of the sheet. “We found Jane Doe this morning. Hopefully you can give us her real name.”
    Carmen looked at the corpse. “Why are you asking me?”
    “Just take a look,” he answered.
    Carmen and I stood alongside the table directly opposite of Johnson.
    He pulled back the sheet and uncovered Jane Doe’s head. The eyes were clouded marbles recessed into the dark, wrinkled pits of the eye sockets. A delicate nose pointed from a face molded of spotty, darkened flesh pressed against the skull. Black hair jutted from her scalp in matted tangles. As an amateur specialist in corpses, I guessed the woman had been dead three days. Too bad; alive she must have been a looker.
    Something had left ragged edges at the lobes of Jane Doe’s ears and the loose skin of her throat.
    I looked at Johnson.
    “Crabs,” he said. “They had a munchfest.”
    Carmen’s foot nudged against mine and pressed. The movement was deliberate yet secretive. What was she trying to signal?
    Johnson leaned against a file cabinet and drummed his fingers. “Well?”
    Carmen pulled her foot from mine. She returned Johnson’s gaze and shrugged. “Who is this?”
    Johnson stopped drumming his fingers. His eyebrows slanted downward and wrinkled the skin over the bridge of his nose. “Your missing guest was Marissa Albert. This isn’t her?”
    “Nope.”
    Johnson pulled the sheet back but kept his attention on Carmen. “Are you sure?”
    The knobs of Jane Doe’s shoulders were splayed back as rigor mortis had arched her spine upward. Her breasts lay flat against the rib cage like a pair of rotting apples. Therewere more spots of hamburger lacerations where the crabs had fed.
    “Holy shit,” Carmen pointed, “what happened there?”
    In the center of the woman’s sternum was a deep, thumb-sized hole lined with charred flesh.
    My fingers tingled as my vampire sense went on full alert. The wound was identical to Gilbert Odin’s. Jane Doe had been killed with an alien blaster.

Chapter
10
    T he cold trail of Odin’s killer had grown red-hot. The killer was here three days ago. Before that he had been in Sarasota. Where he was today was anybody’s guess.
    My vampire sixth sense sounded a warning, and my fingers trembled against the edge of the table. A warning of what?
    Johnson noticed my twitching fingers. “You’re going to toss your cookies?” I heard the sneer in his voice.
    The medical examiner held up a paper barf bag. “Not on my floor, please.”
    I took the bag to appease her. “Thanks.”
    Carmen appeared puzzled at my reaction. A vampire getting queasy around a corpse? Her expression seemed to ask, What is it?
    Johnson turned to Carmen. “Doesn’t seem to be affecting you.”
    She shrugged. “I lived in Detroit. It’ll take more than this to shake me up.”
    Johnson’s breath puffed against the inside of his paper mask. “You sure you don’t recognize her?”
    “I’ve already told you that I didn’t.”
    Johnson looked at me. “What about you?”
    “She’s still Jane Doe.”
    Carmen leaned over the corpse and studied the chest wound. “What killed her?”
    “Don’t know yet,” the examiner said. “We wanted to ID the body before we started an autopsy.”
    Carmen’s finger hovered over the wound. “I’ll bet it was this.”
    The examiner narrowed her eyes. Smart-ass.
    Johnson was clearly furious that Carmen couldn’t identify the body. Why? My instinct was to remove my contacts to zap him and the examiner, and interrogate them both. Why was Johnson so upset? Wasn’t this just another Jane Doe? Why ask us?
    Before I did anything drastic, I surveyed the morgue. Two security cameras watched; one covered the front door, the other the examination table.
    We were being taped. Causing trouble might be too complicated to undo.
    Johnson covered Jane Doe