Since the lawn gnomes were armed and dangerous, I wanted to bring McGoo the new development about Stentor’s displaced voice as soon as possible. I headed to the main precinct station of the UQPD.
McGoo is not a desk cop. He walked the beat every day, claiming that he enjoyed the fresh air more than a stuffy office job. I knew he was kidding himself, because no one had ever accused the Unnatural Quarter of having an abundance of fresh air . . . especially after the recent sewer uprising.
“A desk job just gives you hemorrhoids and a big gut,” McGoo had once told me after he was passed over for a promotion.
“And you prefer sore feet,” I said.
“Damn straight, Shamble.” With the dramatically changing weather due to the Wuwufo campaign, he couldn’t have enjoyed being outside very much.
At this time of day, I knew he would be back at the station. I arrived at the dingy building whose façade had come from a large crypt that was dismantled stone by stone and then moved across town. Perpetrators and victims were a motley mix of species and levels of scruffiness. A mummy sat on a bench smoking a cigarette, careful not to set his bandages on fire. A vampire was hauled into the rear holding cells by two uniformed cops as the vampire yelled, “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me! That was somebody else’s coffin.”
Two poltergeists had been brought in for causing a domestic disturbance, rattling the neighbors with their ectoplasmic argument. A group of teenaged zombie slackers looked sullen as they waited for their parents to bail them out; they had been picked up for vandalism, using spray paint to tag the side of a building, and were apprehended because they moved so slowly that they couldn’t finish writing their statement.
A small bald man in a plaid sport jacket handed me one of his cards. “You in trouble? I can get you out of it.” I glanced at the card, recognizing him as another slimy cop-car–chasing bail bondsman. “Been Busted? Call Ghost Fixers!”
“Sorry, no,” I said. “Zombie detective. Here on business.”
“I should have noted the lack of handcuffs.” He scurried into the station, handing out cards to anyone who might need his services.
Behind a high desk, the watch chief lorded it over anyone coming and going in the station. A poster on the back wall showed a muscular werewolf with a torn cop uniform holding a gigantic magnum in his furry hand. It was the rogue vigilante cop, Hairy Harry, a hero to policemen everywhere. The poster was even autographed.
I knew my way around the station well enough. After asking a couple of the cops on duty where I could find Officer McGoohan, I was directed back to the lunchroom. I bumped into him in the hall where he was just clocking out. He looked tired, wrung out. I wondered if it was due to frustration from the lawn gnome robbery, or—worse—if Rhonda had called him back with more surprises (twins, this time?), but I didn’t ask. Sometimes it’s best not to disturb junkyard dogs. Or ex-wives.
“Man, what a day, Shamble—I’m ready for the Tavern,” he said. “Those lawn gnomes are really giving me a bad opinion about landscaping fixtures. Four violent robberies so far. No one’s been hurt yet, despite all the firepower in those Timmy guns, but sooner or later they’re going to poke somebody’s eye out with those things.”
I hid my smile. “Cheer up, maybe you’ll catch them tomorrow—all it takes is some good detective work.”
He was too distracted to pick up on the hint. “Around here, the detectives have desk jobs.”
“I meant some zombie detective work, McGoo. I’ve got a connection to Mr. Bignome.” His eyes lit up as I explained how the Wannovich sisters had established a linkage with Stentor’s voice, so that whenever the ogre talked, the loud words would come out of Mr. Bignome’s mouth. “I told him to keep shouting. The neighbors are bound to hear it and call in a report.”
“Like somebody with a stolen cell phone calling their own number to harangue the thief.” He raised his eyebrows. “Interesting—but if Bignome is holed up in an isolated hideout, we might not hear it.”
“Stentor is very motivated,” I said. “We can get him to yell for quite some time—and that ogre’s got a three-window-pane voice. If he yells enough, somebody’s going to report a disturbance.”
McGoo chuckled as the possibilities occurred to him. “If he’s clever, Stentor could cause Bignome lots of trouble. Say, by making the gnome shout, ‘I’m overcompensating. I need a big voice because I have a very tiny penis.’ Good work, Shamble. I’ll tell the report desk to pay close attention. I’d like nothing better than to shut down those gnomes.”
Next to the front desk of the precinct house, business cards covered a corkboard, tacked one on top of the other. I saw the Ghost Fixers bail bonds, various attorneys, and estate-planning services. Even Lurrm had put up a flyer offering a special rate to anyone recently arrested: Feeling stressed? Come relax in the Recompose hot springs. Get a massage from our expert masseuse C.H. (Convicted felons excluded). The frog demon was an ambitious marketer, but if he wanted to establish a new, clean reputation for the former Zombie Bathhouse, I thought he should go after a different class of clientele.
As we walked out the front door, I finally had to ask, “Any more word from Rhonda?”
“Not a peep. Maybe she reconsidered . . . or maybe she’s got something else up her sleeve.”
I felt sorry for him. “Rhonda’s not the type to reconsider.”
“Nope,” he said. “I’ll just wait for the other combat boot to drop.”