“Except that what?” Danni asked.
“He doesn’t believe in zombie-nuns,” Sandy told them. “Anyway, Davy has been brought to an interrogation room to speak with you, Miss Cafferty. And, Quinn, if you’re ready, I’ll take you up to the morgue—you said you wanted to speak with the medical examiner. It’s about an hour up.”
Danni saw Quinn frown. He didn’t like leaving without her. Well, her fault. She had woken up screaming for him.
“Not to worry,” Danni said. “I’ll be fine here. I’m at a police station,” she reminded him.
Quinn nodded and turned to Sandy Burnett. “Thank you. Can we go right away—and get back right away.”
“Of course.”
Sandy quickly introduced to Danni to the desk sergeant, Ned Martinez, who would help her with anything she needed.
She had her own pencils and sketchpad; she didn’t need anything.
Quinn left; Martinez escorted Danni to the interrogation. Davy Gray was a nice looking young man of about twenty-five. He’d bathed recently; his hair was still damp and smoothed back on his head. He was subdued but seemed pleased to be working with Danni.
She asked him just to talk at first and she tried to get him to focus on the nun-thing that had passed by him—to try to remember every detail.
Then she began to draw. And as she did, Davy concentrated very hard, and little by little, he began to have her make changes.
Long before she had finished, Danni realized that they were talking about two very different zombie nuns. Davy’s nun had flesh torn off the right side of the face and a big pustule on the right.
The zombie nun they had dismantled had pustules on the left side and a big tear on the right.
“You going to arrest it?” Davy asked dryly, mocking himself—and yet serious and still scared.
“I think it’s important, Davy,” she said. She thanked him and rose.
“They aren’t going to kick me out now, are they?” Davy asked her.
Danni hesitated. She couldn’t lie—and she didn’t know the Key West police. “I don’t think so,” she told him, and added, “I think you’re still a suspect.”
That pleased him. She thanked him again and headed out of the interrogation room, looking at her watch.
Quinn had been gone just about an hour and a half. It would still be a while before he was back. She headed to the front and asked Sargent Martinez what he knew about the filming going on in the Keys.
“Today, they’re on the beach, near Ft. Zachary Taylor,” he told her. “They’ve been hiring extras from all over the island—want a chance to work?” he asked her.
She smiled. “No, but I think I’ll head there,” she told him. “Watch what’s going on!”
“In bad taste, I say,” Martinez told her. “They shouldn’t still be filming that thing—not when we have real murders going on here. But, hey, people are what they are. You hear them talking now in the bars and coffee houses—the movie is going to be big! People being horribly murdered—and a film director taking advantage of it!”
“Taking advantage of it?” Danni asked.
Martinez shrugged. “People can’t wait to see the finished product—because it was filmed while truly horrible things were happening.”
“Ah,” she murmured.
“I’ll get a driver for you—he can get you right through the crowds,” Martinez offered, and Danni thanked him.
She decided to text Quinn. “Movie people. They know props, film history—and animatronics. You think any of these guys might be involved? Vanessa was a bit player—corpse #3—in Zombie Nuns of the Apocalypse.”
He didn’t answer right away, but she didn’t expect him to—he was probably in with Sandy Burnett and the medical examiner.
Officer Pratt drove her to the beach by the old fort where the filming was going on; he regaled her with stories as he did so. While Florida had been the third state to secede from the Union during the Civil War, the Union had had held tight to both Ft. Zachary Taylor on the Island and Ft. Jefferson out west in the Dry Tortugas. It had made for controversy throughout the Civil War—and constant conflict between blockade runners and the American military. He was pretty sure that they were throwing some real history into the movie and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“It’s not going to be any ‘War and Peace,’” he warned rolling his eyes.
And it wasn’t.
When she reached the filming area, she saw that they were doing a scene in which the Lucinda mannequin was attacking sunbathers.