“Look at his fingers. Tell me what you see.”
Benny didn’t have to look. He’d already noticed how grotesquely crooked the artist’s hands had been.
“Someone did that to him,” Benny said. “While he was alive.”
Tom nodded. “His ribs are bruised, too, and it looks like someone knocked some of his teeth out, broke a couple others. Someone tortured him to death, Benny. And when he reanimated as a zom, he was brought here.”
“Brought here? Why would someone bring a zom here?” Benny demanded.
Tom looked at him with cold and dangerous eyes.
“Why, to kill us, of course.”
27
“WHO WANTS TO KILL US?” BENNY SAID.
Tom didn’t answer. Instead he asked, “Did you see anyone outside? Hear anyone?”
“No. Just the storm,” Benny said, then paused. “Well … I did hear one thing. Something hit the side of the house. I think it was a bullet. You said that bullets could travel a long way, so I figured it was a stray shot from the fight. Then someone started jiggling the doorknob. I thought you were trying to get back in. You didn’t take your keys with you, so I—”
Tom touched his shoulder. “It’s okay. I understand why you opened the door, and it’s my fault for not working out some kind of code. Like three knocks and then two.”
“Or how about just yelling through the door?” Benny said.
His brother grinned. “Right. Sorry. This has me a little rattled. But go back to the doorknob. You said someone turned it?”
“A couple of times.”
They looked down at the corpse. “I suppose Rob could have done it.”
“With broken fingers?”
“Zoms don’t feel pain, remember?”
“But … turning a doorknob? Zoms can’t—”
“It’s rare, but it’s been known to happen. Usually you get that sort of thing in the first couple of minutes after reanimation, because the longer someone is a zom, the less coordinated they are. The brain continues to die.”
“Has Mr. Sacchetto been dead that long?”
Tom knelt and put his fingertips against the artist’s skin. “Mmm, hard to say. Hot day, cold rain. But I doubt he’s been dead more than an hour or two. So, we’re in a gray area.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Well, if Rob didn’t turn that doorknob, then someone else did. That same person, or persons, brought Rob over here. I’ll maybe buy Rob having enough brain power left to jiggle a doorknob, but no way I’ll buy that he turned zom and then walked all the way across town specifically to target us. Aside from the fact that zoms don’t do that, there are hundreds of people living between us and the reservoir. No. This was as deliberate as if someone pointed a gun at us and pulled the trigger.”
“But … why?”
Tom’s lip curled into an almost feral grimace of anger. “‘Why,’ in this case, is the same as ‘who.’”
“What do you mean?”
“I would have thought it was obvious, kiddo. Whoever did this doesn’t want us to find the Lost Girl.”
That was all Benny needed. The pieces fell into place.
“Charlie?” he asked incredulously.
“Charlie. And Marion Hammer.”
“They weren’t out at Mr. Sacchetto’s house by accident, were they? They must have found out that the new set of Zombie Cards came out. Zak Matthias bought a dozen packs. He must have gotten one of the Lost Girl cards, too, and showed it to his uncle.”
“I’d bet on it.”