Hardcore Twenty-Four (Stephanie Plum #24)(19)

I gave up a sigh and locked myself in the bathroom. I stuffed my clothes into a plastic trash bag, shampooed my hair three times, and stepped out of the shower feeling like a new woman. I got dressed, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and set out to start my day . . . again.

Diesel was gone when I walked out of the bedroom. No doubt he was skulking around somewhere, checking on the force. I made myself another peanut butter sandwich and looked out my living room window, down at the parking lot. There were two black SUVs idling near the building’s back door. One was clearly a Rangeman vehicle. The other was smaller. Hard to tell the make from my vantage point. A Rangeman guy stood by the smaller car. I grabbed my messenger bag and went downstairs.

“From Ranger,” the Rangeman guy said, handing me the key.

It was a Lexus NX 330 F Sport. Shiny new. Didn’t smell like an outhouse. I got behind the wheel, and Ranger’s men drove off. My plan was to retrieve Lula from the bonds office, take a pizza to Ethel, and hunt down Johnny Chucci.

Lula was pacing when I got to the office.

“I’ve got the creeps,” she said. “I feel like I’m being followed. Like someone’s spying on me.”

“Who?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Lula said. “It’s just one of them feelings.”

Connie looked at me and rolled her eyes. This was just short of making one of those circular motions with your finger alongside your head to signify crazy.

“Maybe you’re hungry,” I said to Lula. “I promised Ethel I’d bring her a pizza. We could get one for you too.”

“I’d never refuse a pizza,” Lula said. “Especially if it was a Pino’s pizza.”

Twenty minutes later I was on my way to Diggery’s. Lula had a pizza with the works in a box on her lap, and there was a sausage and extra cheese on the back seat for Ethel. I had her figured for a meat lover.

“I’m feeling better already,” Lula said, selecting a second piece. “I don’t know what came over me. It was like my skin was crawling. You ever get that? I mean, I’m not necessarily a nervous person. I don’t have any of them panic attacks, so this was weird. I just knew something was wrong.”

“But it’s not wrong now?”

“Not so much. I’m settling in with the pizza. You could always count on melted cheese to have a calming effect.”

I turned onto Diggery’s road and cringed when I passed the demolished outhouse. Not one of my finer moments.

“It was a lucky break that Ethel decided to go home,” Lula said. “I have to tell you until that happened I wasn’t sure it was Ethel.”

And it was still possible that it wasn’t Ethel. The only thing I knew for certain was that the snake liked hot dogs.

I parked close to Diggery’s front door and did a fast scan for snakes and zombies. I didn’t see either, so I gave the pizza to the snake in residence and took off.

“I suppose we’ll go looking for Zero Slick now,” Lula said. “How do you think he came up with a name like that?”

“Maybe that’s the way he thinks of himself. Zero slickness.”

“That might indicate low self-esteem. He could be a man trying to find himself. He could be a victim of bullying at a young age. Or maybe he doesn’t want to be one of those phony slick guys. Maybe he’s saying he’s real. If you look at it that way he could be attractively manly.”

“He didn’t look attractively manly when he hit me with his sign. He looked like a brainless jerk.”

“You got a point. And he was insulting about my abundant body. He might be losing some of his appeal for me.”

My plan was to walk the streets surrounding the building Slick destroyed. This was an area of mostly office buildings with occasional ground-floor shops. There was a church nearby that gave out sandwiches to the homeless every day at noon. A small group of men and women never left the area around the church. They moved about like pack animals, sleeping in doorways. Some were crazy because they were off their meds, and others were crazy because they were overmedicated. I thought I’d show Slick’s photo to the crazies, the shopkeepers, and the loiterers and see if anyone had seen him.

I approached the burned-out building and saw the flashing lights of police cruisers a block away.

“Looks like something’s going on at the homeless church,” Lula said. “Maybe it’s a wedding.”

“Looks more like a crime scene. There’s a CSI truck and the ME’s truck stuck in with the cruisers. And it looks like Morelli’s SUV is parked off to the side.”

I pulled to the curb, Lula and I got out, and walked to the church. A couple uniforms were standing hands-on-hips by the cars, but most of the activity was in the back alley. I could see yellow crime scene tape cordoning off an area. Morelli was there, watching the CSI techs work around what I suspected was a body. I ducked under the tape and walked over to Morelli, standing with my back to the body, not anxious to see the victim.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“One of the church volunteers came out with trash from lunch and found a homeless man stretched out next to the dumpster. He was one of the regulars who lived on the street.”

“Dead?”

“Yep.”

I was afraid to ask. “Headless?”