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“Okay. Fine.”
“Great! Call me when you get off work tomorrow. We’ll drive over together.”
“Can’t wait.”
“Liar,” he said, then hung up.
I continued on to the morgue. The Coroner’s Office building was damn near the exact opposite of NuQuesCor. Two stories, wood and brick exterior, lots of windows, and attractive yet subtle landscaping. This facility was fairly new, and one of the main goals had been that the design not be stark and scary but as warm and comfortable as possible. Made perfect sense to me. Hell, if nice carpet and neatly trimmed shrubbery helped people deal with the loss of a loved one, I was all for it.
The morgue portion of the building was on the far back end and wasn’t quite as warm and welcoming. The general public never saw this entrance, where the bodies went in for autopsy and came out on their way to the funeral home. Just one more step in the machine of death. Even when it was necessary for next of kin to identify a loved one, the death investigators preferred to use pictures instead of having them actually see the body. Much less traumatic for everyone involved.
The back parking lot was empty except for my piece of crap little Honda parked on the far side of the small lot. I glanced at my watch. Nine p.m. Marcus’s warning remained foremost in my mind. I made sure to do a careful scan of my surroundings before I parked the van as close to the building as I could. My nerves hovered on a knife’s edge as I pulled the stretcher out and swiped my ID card at the door, and I didn’t relax until I got myself and both bodies safely inside with the door closed behind me.
The scent of the morgue surrounded me like an old friend. An old, dead friend who’d been steeped in formalin and cleaning products. I wasted no time getting the bodies into the cooler and properly logged in, as well as the property from the security guard recorded and deposited into the small safe. Then I breathed a sigh of relief, returned to the outer office, and plopped myself down at the computer. Yeah, some people might think it was weird that I enjoyed the peace and quiet of the morgue, but I was probably the last person to be freaked out at the thought of sharing a room with dead people. Besides, I didn’t have a computer at home, and this was a helluva lot easier than trying to use a computer at the library. Most of theirs were ancient and slow, plus I hated having to wait my turn and then having my time limited.
I could use the morgue computer 24/7, and all I had to do was put up with the way the place smelled.
I diddled around for a little while looking at funny pictures and reading some local news online, then got down to the business at hand: figuring out what I had to do to take, and pass, the GED. After about half an hour I had the information I needed as far as how to schedule a test, but I also had a fairly solid idea of what sort of stuff was on it—and how much of it I didn’t know. But unless I want to spend the rest of my life on probation, I don’t have much choice, do I?
With reckless disregard of Coroner’s Office resources, I printed off stacks of practice tests and study guides, gathered it all up and then headed for the door. I knew how I’d be spending the rest of my free time.
I yanked the door open, then let out a choked cry as a masked someone dressed all in black shoved me hard in the chest. I staggered and landed in a sprawl on my back as papers went everywhere. I began to scrabble back to my feet, then froze at the sight of the gun pointed at me.
“Get up,” the man holding the gun ordered.
At first I thought that my attacker was Ed. It was the fact that he didn’t instantly shoot me that gave me the first clue that it wasn’t. I was pretty sure Ed wouldn’t be giving me any more chances to get the drop on him. But then the oddness of seeing someone in a ski mask in south Louisiana threw me so badly that I damn near forgot there was a gun pointed at me and instead I mentally flailed for some logical reason he could be wearing a ski mask. Okay, so it was a little chilly, but a ski mask was a bit of overkill, wasn’t it? Or maybe it was one of those baklava thingies. No, not baklava—that’s some sort of Greek pastry. Shit. Focus, Angel!
My pulse thudded as I scrambled to my feet. About three feet separated us. Could I take him? I was somewhat well fed on brains, but not tanked all the way up and certainly not overloaded to the point where I had super zombie speed. He looked pretty well built—taller than me by a good bit and broad-shouldered. On the other hand I knew what it was like to get shot. While I was trying to stop Ed from killing Marcus and chopping off his head, Ed had shot me twice in the chest—an experience I really had no desire to repeat, ’cause, yeah, it hurt.
But if this wasn’t Ed, who was it and what the fuck was going on?
“The body,” he said, with a jerk of the gun toward the hallway. “Open the cooler and give it to me. Or I kill you,” he added, tone so even that I had zero doubt that he would.
A thousand scenarios flashed through my head of me fighting him off, but I discarded them as quickly as they crowded into my skull. I wasn’t fast enough right now to get to him before he could shoot me, or strong enough to fight him off even if I could. And while I didn’t really fear getting shot—or rather, I didn’t fear dying from being shot—it would slow me down enough that I might not be able to stop him from taking the body he was after, in which case I’d have been shot for nothing. Besides, I knew there were security cameras covering the parking lot and the door to the morgue. I didn’t have to get shot. The evidence of this guy forcing his way in would be on that tape. Or hard drive. Or whatever it was that security cameras used now. And if I did get shot, I’d have to go out to the van to get one of my brain slushies out of my cooler. That would be recorded. Plus, I’d have to clean up the blood before anyone saw it to avoid having to explain how I could be shot and yet not have any gunshot wounds. Oh, and I didn’t have a change of clothes…
Much easier to simply avoid the whole “getting shot” thing.
Taking a deep breath, I turned and walked down the hallway to the cooler, my shoulder blades prickling the entire way. After punching in my code on the touchpad, I pulled the door open and stepped back.
He didn’t take the bait. “Bring the body out,” he said in a low pleasant voice, as if he was offering to carry my groceries for me.
I couldn’t help but scowl. If he was going to steal my body, why did I have to do all the work?
“Which body?” I asked. “I picked up two tonight.”
“Kearny.”
Stepping into the cooler, I was briefly tempted to give him the wrong body, but then figured that he’d surely check. This guy was cool as ice and wouldn’t be fooled that easily. Besides, the body of the guy we scraped up out at the factory was already pretty damn smelly, and he’d be able to tell even without opening the bag.
I gave the appropriate body bag a yank and hauled it out onto one of the gurneys, then pushed it out and into the hallway. “What now? Do you want me to bring it to your car for you?” I couldn’t quite keep the obnoxious out of my voice.
He surprised me by chuckling. “Now that would be rude of me,” he said. “To the door will be sufficient.”
Scowling, I went ahead and pushed the gurney and its cargo to the door.
“That’s good enough,” he said. “Now if you’d please turn around and face the wall.”
My pulse jumped as I met his eyes. There was nothing there—no emotion or stress. If he wanted me to face the wall so that he could shoot me in the back of the head, then there was a good chance I could actually die from that, especially since there was no one around to give me enough brains to help me survive that sort of thing. No, my body would be found by Nick or whoever was coming on in the morning, and they’d assume I was dead-for-real. I’d probably be autopsied and all that shit. And, godalmighty, would I be aware of that? Or would I wake up, starving and willing to attack anyone nearby, such as Nick or, worse, Dr. Leblanc?
