"Jesus," he said.
"Yeah."
Dolph was silent, staring down at the dead man. "What can we do?"
"I should be able to raise the corpse as a zombie."
"I thought you couldn't raise a vampire victim as a zombie," Dolph said.
"If the corpse is going to rise as a vampire, you can't." I shrugged. "The whatever that makes a vampire interferes with a raising. I can't raise a body that is already set to rise as a vamp."
"But this one won't rise," Dolph said, "so you can raise it."
I nodded.
"Why won't this vampire victim rise?"
"He was killed by more than one vampire, in a mass feeding. For a corpse to rise as a vampire, you have to have just one vampire feeding over a space of several days. Three bites ending with death, and you get a vampire. If every vampire victim could come back, we'd be up to our butts in bloodsuckers."
"But this victim can come back as a zombie?" Dolph said.
I nodded.
"When can you do the animating?"
"Three nights from tonight, or really two. Tonight counts as one night."
"What time?"
"I'll have to check my schedule at work. I'll call you with a time."
"Just raise the murder victim and ask who killed him. I like it," Zerbrowski said.
"It's not that easy," I said. "You know how confused witnesses to violent crimes are. Have three people see the same crime and you get three different heights, different hair colors."
"Yeah, yeah, witness testimony is a bitch," Zerbrowski said.
"Go on, Anita," Dolph said. It was his way of saying, "Zerbrowski, shut up." Zerbrowski shut up.
"A person who died as the victim of a violent crime is more confused. Scared shitless, so that sometimes they don't remember very clearly."
"But they were there," Zerbrowski said. He looked outraged.
"Zerbrowski, let her finish."
Zerbrowski pantomimed locking his lips with a key and throwing the key away. Dolph frowned. I coughed into my hand to hide the smile. Mustn't encourage Zerbrowski.
"What I'm saying is that I can raise the victim from the dead, but we may not get as much information as you'd expect. The memories we do get will be confused, painful, but it might narrow the field down as to which master vampire led the group."
"Explain," Dolph said.
"There are only supposed to be two master vampires in St. Louis right now. Malcolm, the undead Billy Graham, and the Master of the City. There's always the possibility we've got someone new in town, but the Master of the City should be able to police that."
"We'll take the head of the Church of Eternal Life," Dolph said.
"I'll take the Master," I said.
"Take one of us with you for backup."