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By the time I made it back to the funeral home, Mrs. Perry was tucked comfortably next to Reverend Oglesby, and her daughter was drinking hot tea in my office. Mrs. Perry had been ninety-six years old at the time of her death, so her daughter wasn’t exactly a spring chicken, but she’d made the decisions for her mother’s interment with an efficient decisiveness I had to admire. We were done with the paperwork within half an hour, and I was left alone with my bodies, a full pot of coffee, and a hefty check for services. I tried calling Vaughn one more time, but it went to voicemail again, so I sent him a text.
Call me ASAP.
It was going on five o’clock by the time I started preparing Mrs. Perry’s body. It was cold down in the lab, and I shivered as I donned a white surgical gown and blue gloves. I pulled her out of the refrigeration unit and got her transferred over to the special table I used for embalming with no problems. Mrs. Perry had shrunken with age, and she looked almost childlike under the white sheet I’d placed over her, but when I pulled it back there was nothing but the frail remains of a ninety-six year old woman—sagging skin and liver spots included.
I spritzed the body with disinfectant and wiped her down. The quiet hum of the ventilator was starting to get to me, so I went and turned on the radio. I figured the dead had an eternity to listen to Bach or harp song, so I cranked Soundgarden and went back to my work.
There are a lot of steps that go into preparing a body so it can be seen by friends and family. Death causes all sorts of abnormalities to occur—especially with the eyelids and joints and mouth. Most people don’t know that I have to staple a person’s gums together to keep the mouth closed. They probably don’t want to know. I did quick work with the staple gun and stuffed Mrs. Perry’s mouth with cotton before stepping back to check my work.
I’d gotten much faster at embalming over the last two years. Even being gone the last few months hadn’t taken away the skill. I mixed the embalming chemicals together, and the smell that made Jack heave filled the air. I’d have to take a shower—anothershower—before I met with him again. It was a smell that clung to everything like thick syrup. It’s the reason I always used lemon soap. The acid cut through the layers.
I sliced open the skin above Mrs. Perry’s clavicle and again at the neck and hunted for the carotid artery so I could tie it off and start the embalming process. It was messy work, preparing the dead for burial, but everything went smoothly and the body drained and filled as it was supposed to, the proper fluids filling the wells built into each side of the table.
Embalming someone isn’t a terribly long process, so I let the machine run its course, and then I sewed her back up and slathered her in lotion so her skin wouldn’t be dry when it was time to put on makeup. I rolled her back into the refrigeration unit and pulled out George Murphy.
I changed my gown and gloves, and then went over to refresh my coffee cup. The stacks of boxes I’d brought in from the Suburban taunted me from the corner of the room. I needed to burn them. But part of me knew I couldn’t do that until I’d been through every scrap of paper and evidence in those boxes. I had a right to know exactly who my parents had been. And I had a right to give myself some kind of closure, even if it was finding out things I didn’t particularly want to know.
I cut off George’s clothes and went through all his pockets, documenting the contents as I went. It was all very routine, but then I came to his front right pocket and I froze as I pulled out a gold wedding band. My job required me to compartmentalize the things I saw in my job—to put away the atrocities and the carnage and focus only on the job. But something inside me broke as I held that small ring of precious metal in the palm of my hand.
George had kept that symbol with him always, even after his wife had left him for someone else and died as she’d made her escape. It was a heartbreaking reminder of the frailty of human life, and that the person laying in front of me had been real—with real thoughts and emotions—and at the end, real suffering.
I carefully placed the gold band in a small plastic baggie and put it with the rest of his things to give to his family, and then I turned back to the body to start the examination.
I got him cleaned up and started my external examination, documenting everything I came across, including the tattoo on his tricep. Three-point crown. Not five. I finished and ran him through x-rays, not expecting to find anything, but not expecting is what always led to surprises.
“What the hell?”
I saw what looked like crumpled paper in his trachea, so I grabbed my forceps and adjusted the light. I opened his mouth carefully and tilted back his head and I could barely see the corner of what I’d seen on the x-rays. I used the forceps and gently reached in to pull it out.
I took it to the counter and opened it up. It was a photograph, slightly faded and a little worse for wear, but I recognized Murphy’s Auto Shop. There was a smattering of people standing in front of the bays—some were mechanics—but it was mostly local men. The auto shop had always been a gathering place, and I didn’t see anything incriminating or suspect in the photo. It looked like any other day at that particular spot. Nothing in Bloody Mary really changed. I had the proof in my hand.
I grabbed an evidence bag and logged and dated the information on the outside before placing the photo inside. It wasn’t until then that I noticed Frank Greenbaum and Jesse Fife in the photo. It didn’t explain anything really. It just meant the photo was eight to ten years old, since Frank and Jesse had both passed on—both of natural causes—some time back. I’d been away at college when Frank had died, but I’d been back home for the Christmas holidays when Jesse had gone, so I’d had to help my parents with his interment. I looked closely at all the others in the photograph, but didn’t see anyone else who made me think there was anything out of the ordinary happening.
The rest of George’s body didn’t give me any more clues to his murder, and the autopsy didn’t take nearly as long as normal since most of his brain was missing. His tox screen came back negative, and there were no abnormalities internally that I could find. Gunshot to the head was official COD, and there was no amount of putty in the world that would make George presentable for an open coffin. It was a little sad to think George would probably be going into the plot next to the one we’d dug for his wife only a few months before.
I put George away and then went to use the shower in the bathroom attached to my office. I scrubbed and washed my hair twice, and I didn’t get any whiffs of embalming fluid when I got out and dried off. I grabbed the extra pair of clean clothes I kept inside the office closet, and yanked on jeans and a long-sleeved black Henley. I set my boots out on the side porch to air out, and grabbed my tennis shoes instead.
I tried calling Jack to let him know about the photograph, but it went directly to voicemail. I had no idea where he was, but I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him to come to me. I needed to get out. Seeing those boxes in the lab had ideas forming in my head, and I knew if I stayed at the funeral home, I’d be ripping into them to read what was on the inside. I’d already seen some of it. I just wasn’t sure it was the right time to look at the rest. Maybe I was just a coward.
I checked my phone for the twentieth time in ten minutes and saw I had no messages, either from Vaughn or from Jack, so I grabbed the photograph and my bag and headed for the Suburban. I knew exactly what I had to do and where I was going. It was past time I faced my demons. Maybe once I did I could finally find peace.
Chapter Fourteen
The darkness was coming later and later in the day as spring neared, and today of all days, I was thankful for it. The clouds had grown gray and angry while I’d been cooped up with George and Mrs. Perry, and they roiled dangerously even as thunder rumbled in the distance.
My fingers tightened on the wheel at the crossroads of Queen Mary and Heresy, but I pushed ahead and turned left on the rutted path. The inside of the Suburban seemed to be getting smaller and smaller the closer I got, so I rolled down the windows for some fresh air. The smell of the water from the Potomac was strong, especially with a storm rolling in, and the wind had picked up so the trees arced towards the ground and my hair whipped around my face.
I hadn’t realized I’d arrived until I saw the line of trees at the dead end just past the turn into my driveway. I stopped there in the middle of the road and stared at the house in disbelief. Jackhadbeen busy while I’d been away.
The old Victorian had been built in the early part of the twentieth century, and when I’d left Bloody Mary four months ago it had looked its age. But now, everything looked right. At least on the surface. The roof had been repaired, the rotted wood had been replaced and repainted a bright white, and the sagging porch had been rebuilt and painted a dark navy to match the new shutters. There were no broken windows. And I knew the inside would be fixed as well.
But beneath it all, it was still the same old house.
I stumbled from the Suburban and walked up the graveled drive. Someone had cleared out the weeds and overgrown brush, but I hardly noticed. I’d left my coat in the car, and the wind was vicious as it cut through my shirt to the skin. But I just wrapped my arms around myself and stared.
I’d grown up in the house. A house that had held nothing but lies and deceit. A house that had already been drenched in blood before my own brush with death a few months before. And I knew no matter how many coats of paint now covered those walls, the blood would always be there. I thought of Brody—of the man I’d wanted to love. But I’d been incapable of forcing the emotion. I thought of my parents who’d made me that way.
The first drops of rain started to fall at the same time I heard the tires of another car approaching. A car door slammed and footsteps crunched across the gravel, but I didn’t turn around. I knew it was Jack, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the house. And I couldn’t bear to face him when I told him what needed to be said. The footsteps stilled behind me, as if he were unsure how to proceed.
