“. . . moves like Jagger . . . I got the moves like Jagger . . .”

Jamar was only vaguely aware of the box truck passing on his left and the dark car merging onto the road in front of him. He wasn’t thinking about how long it would take to stop the tank he was driving if the need arose. His attention was fractured among too many things.

Then, in a split second, everything changed.

Brake lights blazed red too close in front of him.

Jamar shouted, “Shit!” and hit his brakes in reflex.

The Wild Thing just kept rolling. The car seemed to drop, then bounce, the trunk flying open.

Now his attention was laser focused on what was right in front of him, a tableau from a horror movie illuminated by harsh white xenon headlights. A woman popped up in the trunk of the car like a freak-show jack-in-the-box. Jamar shrieked at the sight as the woman flipped out of the trunk, hit the pavement, and came upright. Directly in front of him.

He would have nightmares for years after. She looked like a freaking zombie—one eye wide open, mouth gaping in a scream; half her face looked melted away. She was covered in blood.

The screams were deafening then as the Wild Thing struck the zombie—Jamar’s screams, the screams of the girls behind him, the shouts of the guys. The Hummer went into a skid, sliding sideways on the ice-slick road. Bodies were tumbling inside the vehicle. There was a bang and a crash from the back, then another. The Hummer came to a rocking halt as Jamar’s bladder let go and he peed himself.

Twenty percent gratuity included . . .

Happy New Year’s fucking Eve.

2

“Happy freakin’ New Year,” Sam Kovac said with no small amount of disgust.

What a mess. Headlights and portable floodlights illuminated the scene, with road flares and red-and-blue cruiser lights adding a festive element. The television news vans had already swooped in and set up camp. The on-air talent bundled into their various team color-coordinated winter storm coats had staked out their own angles on the wreck.

Fucking vultures. Kovac kept his head down and his hat brim low as he walked toward the scene.

A white Hummer of ridiculous proportions sat sideways across two lanes of road. The back window was busted out, allowing a glimpse of the interior: purple LED lights and zebra-striped upholstery.

Erstwhile holiday revelers milled around the vehicle, overdone and underdressed for the weather. Most of them were either talking or texting on their cell phones. The girls, who had undoubtedly begun the evening looking the height of hip fashion, now looked like cheap hookers on a hard night: hair a mess, makeup smeared, clothes disheveled. They were in short dresses. One was wrapped in a fur coat; another was wrapped in a tuxedo jacket. They all either had been crying or were crying, while their dates tried to look important and serious in the face of the crisis.

A Lexus coupe appeared to have rear-ended the party-mobile, which hadn’t worked out for the Lexus. With the front end smashed back almost to the windshield, the car looked like a pug dog on wheels. A third car had hit the Lexus from behind. A Chevy Caprice with a busted-up front end had pulled to the shoulder.

But Kovac hadn’t come out in the minus-freezing-ass cold on New Year’s Eve to attend to a three-car pileup. He was a homicide cop. His business was murder. How murder figured into this mess, he had no idea. But it was a good bet it was going to take half the damn night to sort it out.

Not that he had anything better to do with his time. He didn’t have any hot date to ring in the New Year with. He wasn’t going to any parties to watch people get drunk and make fools of themselves for no other reason than having to buy a new calendar.

“Happy New Year, Detective.”

Kovac growled at the fresh-faced uniformed officer. “What’s happy about it?”

“Uh . . . nothing, I guess.”

“I’m assuming there’s somebody dead here. Should we be happy about that?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Jesus, Kojak. Just ’cause you’re not getting laid tonight doesn’t mean you get to take it out on young Officer Hottie here.”

Kovac turned his scowl on his partner as she walked up. Nikki Liska was decked out in her standard subzero outfit—a thick down-filled parka that reached past her knees and a fur-lined Elmer Fudd hat with the earflaps down. She looked ridiculous.

Liska was five foot five by sheer dint of will. Kovac called her Tinks—short for Tinker Bell on steroids. Small but mighty. If she’d been any bigger, she would have taken over the world by now. But bundled up like this she looked like the little brother in A Christmas Story, ready to have someone knock her down on the way to school so she could lie helpless on her back like a stranded turtle.

“How do you know I’m not getting laid tonight?” he grumbled.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” she said. “Neither one of us is ringing in the New Year with an orgasm. And I did have a date, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got news for you,” Kovac said. “If that’s what you were wearing, you weren’t gonna get laid either.”

“Shows what you know,” Liska shot back. “I’m bare-ass naked under this coat.”

Kovac barked a laugh. They’d been partners for a long time. While she could still make him blush, he was never surprised by the shit that came out of her mouth.

The uniform didn’t know what to make of either of them. He might have been blushing. Then again, his face might have been frozen.

“So what’s the story here, Junior?” Kovac asked.

“The guy driving the Hummer says a zombie jumped out of the trunk of the vehicle ahead of him,” the kid said with a perfectly straight face. “He hit his brakes but couldn’t stop. The Hummer hit the zombie. The Lexus rear-ended the Hummer. The Caprice rear-ended the Lexus. No serious injuries or fatalities—other than the zombie.”

“You had me at ‘a zombie jumped out of the trunk,’” Liska said.

“A zombie,” Kovac said flatly.

Shaking his head, he walked toward the small knot of people hovering around the body in the middle of the road. The crime scene team was taking photographs. A couple of state troopers were working the accident, taking measurements of the road, of the distances between the vehicles.

Steve Culbertson, the ME’s investigator, spotted Kovac and started toward him. He was lean and slightly scruffy, with salt-and-pepper beard stubble and the narrow, shifty eyes of a coyote. He always had the look of a man who might open up one side of his topcoat and try to sell you a hot watch.

“Steve, if I got called out here for a traffic fatality, I’m gonna kick somebody’s ass,” Kovac said. “It’s too fucking cold for this shit. The hair in my nose is frozen.”

“Tell me about it. Try to get an accurate temp on a corpse on a night like this.”

“I don’t want to hear about your social life.”

“Very funny.”

“So a zombie falls out of the trunk of a car . . . ?”

“I don’t have a punch line, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Culbertson said. “But I will quote my favorite movie: This was no boating accident.”

Kovac arched a brow. “My vic was attacked by a great white shark?”

Culbertson cast an ironic look at the giant white Hummer. “Hit by one. But I don’t think that was the worst of her problems. Have a look.”

Kovac had seen more dead bodies than he could count: men, women, children; victims of shootings, stabbings, strangulations, beatings; fresh corpses and bodies that had been left for days in the trunks of cars in the dead of summer. But he had never seen anything quite like this.