Zig gave it a moment, watching the skin stretch and pucker with the rise and fall of Andy’s chest. He waited for more blood to seep through, but instead . . .
Done. Stopped. Andy’s eyes blinked awake. He looked around, panicking, still in shock, but the color was already back in his face.
“I gotta be honest, Mr. Zig—I didn’t think it would work,” Roddy said, “but you—”
“Did you know they would be here, Roddy?”
Roddy turned, confused. Zig was still on his knees, breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath. There was so much blood caked along his fingers, Zig scratched an itch on his nose with his forearm. “Did you know?” Zig repeated, refusing to look at him.
“I don’t understand.”
“The redheads—Seabass and his sister-wife, or whatever the hell she is,” Zig said, his voice low, simmering with anger, as he motioned to the back of the empty sanctuary. In the distance was the faint wail of a siren. An ambulance, still a few blocks away. “We would’ve been dead—they would’ve killed us—but for you swooping in and saving our asses. The timing was remarkable,” Zig explained. “So answer my question, Roddy. Did you know those redheads would be here?”
Roddy cocked his head, like Zig was speaking Chinese. “How could I possibly know that?”
Zig turned, finally making eye contact, the siren growing louder. “Then why’d you come here, Roddy?”
“The guy. I found the guy. From the back of the painting,” Roddy explained. “Elijah King—the third guy from Mint and Nola’s original mission. I spoke to him and he said . . . he said he’s willing to talk to us.”
59
Zig needed this shower—and not just to get rid of the blood.
He needed the quiet, the few minutes of solitude that came with standing naked, swallowed by the steam, in the small bathroom just off the funeral home’s embalming area.
The water was too hot—tiny needles on his skin—but he didn’t adjust it. Better to feel something, to feel anything. Zig lifted his chin, letting the spray hit him in the face.
Most of the blood came off easily, antiseptic soap sending reddish-pink suds coiling like snakes down his arms and legs. The smell was the harder part. In the corner of the shower, Zig picked up a gallon jug of Clorox. Pouring the bleach onto his hand, he used a nailbrush to scrub away the stubborn blood under each fingernail. Same as cleaning a corpse.
According to the cops and the EMTs, Zig’s makeshift tracheostomy had saved Andy’s life. It didn’t make Zig feel any better. What happened today . . . what they did to Andy . . . Zig closed his eyes, unable to stop seeing it. The redhead with the saw . . . she slit Andy’s throat! And for what? Something called Black House, whatever the hell that was.
According to the redhead, it was a location online. “A place where people want to talk. Privately.” Zig thought about that. If Mint was one of the people using Black House . . . Who was he talking to? And what were they talking about?
Zig was still scrubbing so hard with the nailbrush, he didn’t even realize he’d opened a hairline cut underneath his own thumbnail. It burned from the bleach. Zig barely flinched, thinking he deserved it.
Half an hour ago, when the EMTs first arrived at the funeral home, Roddy flashed his badge. Zig knew it was a good thing, a way to stay in control—but it was time to admit, since the moment this started, Zig hadn’t been in control. That needed to change, especially wi—
Tap tap. A knock on the bathroom door.
“Roddy, I’ll be out in a sec!” Zig called.
The door opened with a click.
“Roddy, I swear, if you’re standing there with a knife like Psycho—！”