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I let out a long breath. One thing was for sure—I needed to stay the hell away from that dog.
To my shock and surprise, Ben and Mike both helped Derrel and me carry the body bag back to the road. Most of the ranking officers had left which meant I could get the van up close so that we didn’t have to haul the damn thing down the road as well. I gave both detectives super nice smiles in thanks, even though Ben was the one who’d stepped up to help and had then guilted Mike into taking another strap. I wasn’t going to bitch. Sure, I could carry it myself, but why burn up the brains if I didn’t have to?
As I closed the back of the van I saw Marcus out on the street talking on his phone, but I didn’t have a chance to do more than give him a little nod and smile. His expression remained fairly grim, though he returned the nod, and I felt instantly silly for being all smiley and cheerful on such a gruesome murder scene. At least Marianne had caught herself and realized how awful it was to laugh at a death scene. Me, I didn’t even think about it. I’d become totally jaded already. I barely thought of dead bodies as former people anymore.
The thought left me cold. Was that part of the zombie insanity? Maybe it had nothing to do with hunger. Maybe it was part of this virus or whatever, and the longer it was in me the less I’d think of people as people, and it would eventually seem natural to want to bash their heads in.
No, I was being completely stupid. I mean, Kang was still pretty normal, and he was old.
Still, it continued to bother me throughout the day—enough for Dr. Leblanc to notice how quiet I was.
“Something bugging you, Angel?”
I looked up from the computer and began to give a general No, I’m fine denial, then paused. “Well, sort of, but I’m afraid you’ll, um, think I’m weird.”
His eyes flashed with kind humor. “Weirder, you mean?”
I gave a weak laugh. “Yeah, more than usual.”
“What’s up?”
I took a deep breath as I tried to figure out how to say it without sounding like a freak. I really liked Dr. Leblanc—not in a sexy way or anything. Ew! But simply as a nice person who seemed to be willing to try and understand me. I trusted him, and even I could admit that I wasn’t the type to trust many people. I could do that bit of analysis on myself just fine.
“Well, I think I’m becoming kinda cold,” I said. “I mean, I pick up these bodies, and I don’t even think about the fact they were once living people. It doesn’t bug me, and I think it should.” I met his eyes. “Shouldn’t it?”
He patted my shoulder. “Angel, you have a tough and crusty exterior, but you have the kindest, mushiest heart I’ve ever seen. You’re not cold. Thinking of the bodies as non-people is simply a defense mechanism your brain engages to protect you from the horribleness of what we have to do. We all do it.” The smile he gave me was warm and gentle. “We crack jokes and we’re terribly inappropriate because, if we focus on the loss, we’ll lose our minds and won’t be able to do what needs to be done.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Besides, I know you’re not cold.”
“How do you know?” I challenged.
“Because you cry when we get kids through here,” he stated. “No one jokes about the kids. Those are the ones that get to us the most.”
I felt a knot form in my throat. “Yeah,” I said, voice suddenly hoarse.
“You’re human, Angel. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have you here if you weren’t.” He turned and walked away as I stared after him in surprise.
So maybe there were different degrees of monster. I was a monster with a mushy heart.
Chapter 25
I finished up my paperwork, then checked the computer to see if there were any bodies scheduled to be picked up by a funeral home today. None were, but I frowned when I saw that the body of the pizza guy was still in our cooler. It had been almost two weeks. Surely some next of kin had been found by now?
I went looking for Derrel and found him hunched behind the desk in the investigator’s office, his eyes flicking between the screen and the keyboard as he painstakingly pecked out letters.
“Hey, Derrel, ya got a sec?”
He looked up with an almost grateful expression. “If it keeps me from having to fight my way through writing this report, sure.”
I laughed and plopped into the chair in front of the desk. “I’ll try. What’s the deal with the pizza guy? Still no next of kin?”
A grimace flickered across his face. “Well, we’re not sure. There’s some sort of screw-up.”
“Like how?”
He sighed and sat back. “We ran his prints and it came back to a Peter Plescia.”
I nodded. “Right. The pizza guy. So what’s the deal?”
Derrel lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. “The problem is that Peter Plescia is eighty-seven. That is, he would be if he wasn’t supposedly already dead.”
