Bad Hair Day, page 7
part #2 of Kate Grable Series
He must have done some serious damage with that knife if the blood pool was any indication. I had no idea how the bad guy could have gotten over the fence after sustaining such a massive injury, but it didn’t matter how far he ran. He wasn’t getting away from me, damn it. He should have known better than to mess with the science geek.
I groped around in the scattered med supplies for a spare specimen vial. I’d started carrying them around with me after the almost-zombocalypse. EDTA tubes would have been handy, because they keep blood from clotting, but there was geekery and then there was obsessive-compulsive straitjacket territory. A dangerous line, but I toed it well.
A quick flick of my thumb and the vial popped open. I let the knife drip into it. A clump of something wiry stuck on the edge of the vial. When I tried to remove it, it stuck to the side of my red-streaked finger. Great.
The EMTs shoved their gurney onto the gravel; it bounced and rattled over the uneven ground, but they were still closing in on us fast. I needed to hide my samples pronto, or I’d lose them. For some reason, medical professionals get all crazy about high school students taking medical samples from a crime scene.
I squinted at the wiry stuff in the dim light. It was hair. Lots of hair. Little clumps of it were scattered around the blood pool. Bryan had a bunch in his hand. There was no way it was his; he had a buzz cut. So it had to be from his attacker. My overactive imagination treated me to a great visual of Bryan, stabbing wildly with the knife as his attacker throttled him, blood and hair spattering down on his face. Ick. I had to concentrate on the positives.
That hair was like trace evidence from the gods.
I’d probably just saved Bryan’s life, so the cops wouldn’t begrudge me a sample of that too. Or at least, they wouldn’t if I didn’t tell them I took it.
Out came another vial, and I shoved a few strands of hair into it. When I stuffed the samples in my pocket, my hand left a streak of gore down the front of my favorite jeans. The things I sacrificed in the name of medicine.
The two EMTs finally made it over to us, dashing over and evaluating Bryan at lightning speed. One of them, an older guy with about three strands of hair left, looked up and said, “Which one of you is Kate?”
I raised a freezing, red streaked hand. “That would be me.”
“Don’t go anywhere. We need to talk to you once we’re done.”
He was looking at me like I’d done something wrong, and that kind of ticked me off. What did a girl have to do to earn a thank-you around here? Save the world?
Oh, wait. I’d already done that.
“Fine,” I huffed. “But I’m going inside to wash my hands first.”
I didn’t wait for permission. I stalked back into the restaurant with my gory hands held up in front of my face. The hostess took one look at me and shrieked at the top of her lungs.
“Quit screaming and open the bathroom door for me,” I said. “I just conducted impromptu surgery in your back lot, and I don’t want to drip on your floor.”
My matter-of-fact tone snapped her out of it.
“Ohmigod,” she said. “Of course. Right this way, Miss Grable.”
Some guy in a corner booth took out his cell and snapped a picture. It was so tempting to flip him off, but I reminded myself that I wasn’t mad at him. I was mad at the hairball who’d nearly killed one of my friends.
The hostess opened the bathroom door for me and turned on the hot water. After I scalded my hands for about ten minutes, they finally started to warm up. I’d been really lucky that we were in a relatively warm snap and the temperature hadn’t dipped below freezing. Blood gets really cold after it’s been drying on your hands for about a half hour.
In the time it took me to scrub the blood out from under my fingernails, the entire waitstaff had congregated outside the bathroom, and they pounced as soon as I opened the door. Anyone close enough to touch me did—they patted my shoulder and shook my hand and thanked whatever deity happened to be listening that I’d been in the right place at the right time. Someone started applauding, and the noise quickly spread through the restaurant. I endured it with flaming cheeks and attempted to teleport somewhere else. Anywhere that didn’t have tons of people simultaneously trying to climb into my lap. It didn’t work.
“Here,” said our waitress from earlier, wrapping her arm around me and thrusting a to-go cup in my hands. “Black coffee, extra strong. Just the way you like it.”
“Thanks. Would it be too much trouble to get another one for my friend? Her boyfriend is the one who got attacked.”
“You hold on for a second.”
That was how I found myself treating the entire crew of assorted civil servants to coffee and fresh pastries. I walked back outside trailed by a little parade of girls, winter coats pulled on over their skimpy outfits, bearing hot food. One of the EMTs nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw us coming.
I thanked the Leg and Eggers again and made a beeline for Rocky with a hot cup of caffeinated goodness. “Thanks,” she said, huddling over the steam but not once removing her eyes from Bryan’s face. He was already strapped onto the stretcher. I’d give these guys one thing—they worked fast.
“We’re heading out now, miss,” the near-tongue-swallower said to Rocky. “Did you get in touch with his mother?”
“Yeah. She’s on her way to the hospital now.”
“Good.” He patted her on the shoulder. “I know the cops want to talk to you, but you come on over once you’ve cleared things up with them. He’s gonna be okay.”
She rubbed her red-rimmed eyes. “Thanks.”
I hugged her then, and she’d just started to cry it out when those tactless idiot police decided this was an ideal time to start interrogating us. They split us up and made us stand out there in the cold for almost an hour. I told the story about how we found Bryan. The cops made me go through it twice because they thought it might jog my memory. And then Despain showed up, and I told her too.
“I’ve got to tell you, girlie,” she said, briskly rubbing her glove-less hands together, “it’s awfully coincidental that you keep showing up at these attacks.”
Oh my god. She thought I was a murderer. Maybe she sensed my residual guilt over the samples; I wanted to confess that I’d taken them. And one time they accidentally gave me two hamburgers at McDonald’s, and I didn’t go back to pay for the extra one. I felt like I should spill it all just to make her stop looking at me like that.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you’re not telling me?” she asked, looking at me closely.
I shook my head vigorously. “No, ma’am. I’m just a magnet for weird stuff. That’s all. Actually, that’s a lie; I’m also a closet stalker of medical professionals.”
I sounded like a wackjob. Frankly, I was resigned to wackjob city. I was pretty much a permanent resident by this point.
Despain grinned. “Tell me something I don’t know. Listen, I’ll be in touch once I know more. If you figure something out, you call me. Understand? No going off on your own to save the day again. I’ll believe whatever you’ve got to say, no matter how weird. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She walked away, and then Rocky practically knocked me over. I assumed it was supposed to be a hug, but it felt more like a tackle. I barely managed to maintain my balance. Of course, I was highly motivated, since we’d be toppling over into the pool of blood if we fell.
“Thank you, Kate. You’re a life saver.” Her damp cheek pressed against mine.
“It’s what I’m here for,” I said, but my face still flushed with the praise. “Have you heard anything about Bryan yet?”
“They said he’s going to be okay, thanks to you.”
If she didn’t stop complimenting me soon, my head would explode. With all the gore around here, probably no one would notice.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked.
“Rocky, I can find a ride. I bet Despain would take me home once she’s done here. Go see Bryan.”
“I’m driving you home so you can figure out who did this.” She grabbed my arms and hissed, keeping her voice low so the cops didn’t hear. “You find the bastard and nail his testes to the wall, you hear me?”
I pulled the vials out of my pocket, hunching over them so no one would see. “I intend to. And I’m hoping these will help me do it.”
“Good.”
Our eyes met. She looked as mad as I felt.
At home, I stopped by the study to tell my dad why I was late. He was watching something on SyFy; from his surprised expression, my lateness hadn’t even registered. Probably because he’d been watching TV with his eyes closed again.
I fortified myself with caffeine and then went downstairs. Our basement was Geek Central. The stairs opened right into Jonah’s domain; it was dominated by a large computer desk strewn with random electronic thingies and empty Mountain Dew cans. The rest of the floor space was covered in foam mats so he and his friends could pretend to be elven gladiators without hurting themselves.
The people who’d owned our house before us had had a bedroom in the basement, and I’d converted it into a lab. After I’d neutralized the zombie infestation, the school gave me all my chemistry teacher’s old lab equipment. They didn’t have the space to store it or the know-how to use it, and she was serving jail time, so she didn’t exactly need it either. So the former bedroom was stuffed with lab geekery: a microscope, a centrifuge, a lab bench, and even a fume hood, although I couldn’t figure out how to hook up the ventilation, so that was pretty much for show.
Jonah stood in the middle of the mats, waving around a sword covered in pink foam. My brother’s brand of geekery had become increasingly popular since we’d fought off the zombies with his pseudoswords. The swords were really just PVC pipe wrapped with foam and duct tape, but he was delusional enough to insist that we refer to them as swords.
Jonah’s moves weren’t that bad; he actually managed a halfway decent spin kick as I came into the room. But I still had to suppress a snort. What could I say? Elf ears, frilly tunics, and bright orange leggings cracked me up.
The three geek girls sitting against the wall didn’t seem to mind, though. Beneath their ridiculous face paint and stupid costumes, they watched him with expressions of total adoration. I had to concede one thing to Jonah; he’d always claimed magic was possible. After witnessing his newfound popularity with the ladies, I couldn’t argue with him anymore.
When he saw the samples in my hands and the bloodstains on my clothes, he stopped midspin and nearly chopped his own head off. Or he would have, if decapitation by pseudosword had been possible. The geek girls didn’t seem to notice. They ooohed appreciatively.
“Is it the zombies again?” Jonah’s voice contained much more eagerness than the question really deserved.
“Nope.” I pushed past him en route to my lab. His groupies shrank back from me with reverence. If my friend hadn’t just been mauled, I might have felt pretty flattered.
“Something new?” he said. “Is it vampires? Staking vampires would be so awesome!”
He tugged repeatedly on my shoulder. If I didn’t tell him something, he’d bring his whole PVC-infested crew into my lab. My lab was not PVC compatible. My mental health wasn’t either; at least not today.
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
As far as answers go, this one was about as generic as they came, and it had completely unexpected results. Jonah started barking out orders like a drill sergeant; he sounded pretty impressive except for the part where his voice kept cracking.
“You heard her, girls!” he barked. The girls leapt to their feet, teeth bared and mock swords held in white-knuckled hands. They didn’t look intimidating; they looked terrified. “Plan Alpha. Starfire, call the troops and put them on high alert. Europa and Calamity, establish a perimeter around the house. Kate, what’s our target?”
“Target?” I blinked. He was kind of freaking me out right now. And I was trying to figure out which one of these washrag-looking girls thought Calamity was a good choice for a nickname. Because I thought someone should tell her she was delusional.
“Target. As in what kind of creature are we defending you from?”
“Oh. Um … it’s something really hairy. And strong. Possibly with claws. I don’t know if we’re talking animal or human yet.”
“Hairy?” He was so excited that he practically vibrated. “Do you realize what this means? Werewolf awesomeness!”
The girls all started squealing. I realized at that moment that I would never understand people at all. Although this was probably not a representative sample.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed. “There are plenty of other potential explanations.”
“Like what?”
“Um … well.” I couldn’t come up with any other explanations, damn it. “Well, maybe it’s a really strong guy with long fingernails and a severe case of hypertrichosis.”
“Hyper-whatsis?”
“Excessive body hair.”
He snorted at me. The gall.
“It’s better than the werewolf theory,” I snapped. “I’d probably be able to come up with a better explanation if you’d let me get into my damned lab!”
He backed out of my way but didn’t look apologetic. And when I stomped into my lab, he followed me. At least the geeketeers didn’t come too. They shouldered their PVC and scrambled off to their battle stations.
I went into the bathroom and washed my hands with the speed of a Marvel superhero. I didn’t want to give Jonah enough unsupervised time to break anything. When I came back out, he was squinting at the specimen vials, trying to figure out what was inside. He took one look at me and dropped them on the floor in an attempt to look innocent.
“You dork,” I said, but it didn’t have much heat to it. If I’d been left alone in a room with some mystery samples, I would have checked them out too.
“Sorry.”
He shouldered his sword and moved out of my way. I ignored him as best I could, pulling out a box full of slide-related paraphernalia. Rocky had a secret stash of chocolate. Jonah had some very embarrassing magazines that I found under his bed the one time he stole my glasses and refused to give them back. And then there was me. I hoarded boxes of slides, because I was twenty different kinds of pitiful.
I wormed my hands into a pair of gloves and started assembling the slides. I was just preparing a piece of wet-mounted perfection when the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Someone was watching me. I looked up, half expecting to see a huge, hairy serial crusher, but it was only my brother. It was nice to have a personal guard and all, but something told me his technique of staring at me gape-mouthed wasn’t really going to dissuade any potential intruders.
The distraction made me place the cover slip crooked. Now my slide was smeared. In my lab, a smeary slide pretty much signifies that the apocalypse is coming. It just isn’t done.
“Jonah,” I said. “If you don’t stop hanging over my shoulder, I will infect you with elephantiasis.”
“Not possible.” He shuffled from foot to foot, thinking it through. “Is it?”
“It’s a parasite; of course it’s possible. You’ll be lugging your testicles around in a wheelbarrow if you don’t leave me alone.”
“Gross,” he said, with an admiring nod. He managed to stay quiet for about fifteen seconds. “Can’t I do something to help?”
“You are helping,” I muttered, trying to keep my arm steady as I administered just the right amount of pressure to my saline dropper. “You and your girlfriends are protecting me from whatever-this-is.”
“Look, we both know that’s utter bull. It’s just a good way to keep the girls from messing with your lab. I know how much you hate that.”
“Thanks.”
This time, the cover slip slid into position without a single jiggle. Not an air bubble in sight.
When I turned around, Jonah’s face smacked into my shoulder. I was so glad he wasn’t about a half a foot shorter, because then he would have hit my chest, and that would have been made of awkward.
“Would you back off?” I snarled.
I had to get him off my back before we had another murder on our hands. Because really, he was about an inch away from death by pipette.
“So have you learned anything about Holly?” I asked. “Or do you know anybody you can ask? I need to know if she has a brother. I think he might be in my morgue.”
He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I can ask around. Most people don’t give out identifying info online, but I bet somebody would know. Calamity was saying that she thought Holly’s boyfriend also played Dragons of Roargan Kross. Maybe I could hunt him down.”
“Do it. I’ll take any info you can get on her. Or the boyfriend. And leave me alone before I infect you with elephantiasis.”
“You have elephantiasis on the brain.”
“But not elephantiasis of the brain.”
He grinned at me before going out to boot up his computer. I was alone in my lab again. It made me so happy I could have squeed.
The lab work was easy, but my results didn’t make sense. And we’re not talking Nobel-level science here. There’s a simple rhythm to making a wet-mount slide. Pick a blank slide. Apply the saline. Scrape some sample from the pellet. Apply the sample to the slide. I had no idea how I could have messed it up, but stranger things had happened. I’d witnessed a lot of them.
I’d just have to start all over. I began pulling out the necessary equipment a little more aggressively than I probably should have, but I was ticked. A box of slides fell to the floor with a clatter and the tinkle of broken glass. I said a very bad word. Twice. Loudly, even.
As I stood there surveying the mess, my cell beeped. I was tempted to ignore it, but I couldn’t, not under the circumstances. I thought it might be Rocky, but wrong again. It was Aaron.
Not too late to come over, is it?
It took me forever to type a reply. I was über-paranoid about sounding like the desperate girlfriend. After about three tries at political correctness, I just gave up and typed what I was thinking.
