Chapter Six
Damon
Your boyfriend’s acting strange again.”
“Uh, hello?” I don’t recognize the voice, and I have no idea what she’s talking about. The only reason I answered mypersonal cell phonewas the call’s St. Nowhere prefix.
“It’s Geneva, from downstairs.” She’s whispering.
“What’s going on?”
“Are you still working?”
I’m getting annoyed. “For about ten more minutes.”
“He’s jumpy as a cat and he’s talking to bodies. I want to get him to tell me what’s going on, but not by myself. Come down here.”
And... she hangs up. I slap the desktop, making Tolliver jump. We’d been running the patient census so I can go home. Clearly that’s going to have to wait. “I’m going to run down to the morgue real quick. I’ll check with you before I leave.”
He squints at me, like he can’t decide whether to be worried or not. “Everything okay?”
“I’ll know in a few.”
Of course I’m going down there, so I leave before he can ask any more stupid questions. I’m hungry, it’s cold enough that myshoulder’s aching, and I want to know how Geneva from the morgue got my phone number.
More than that, I want to know what the hell is going on.
When I arrive, I peek through the glass window in the right-hand door. A couple of emergency lights are bright enough to show me that Ezra’s standing next to a body that’s half out of the cooler. His head is bowed, his lips are moving, and Geneva was right. Something weird is going on. I give him a couple more seconds, long enough for him to take something from the corpse’s chest. His shoulders hunch like he’s afraid he’s going to be hit.
I push the door open.
“Blessed is the one whose transgressions are—fuck.” Ezra springs away from the corpse. Geneva comes through the door to the autopsy suite and, giving us both a wild look, Ezra stuffs whatever it is into his mouth.
“What the actual fuck are you doing?” Geneva’s frown is fierce, but the crease in her brow shows her concern. Ezra doesn’t respond, at least not right away, and even in the semi-darkness I can see that he’s chewing something.
“Come on, man. This is not good,” she says.
Ezra blocks her move toward the corpse. “Let me,” he says, the words muffled, and with efficient movements, he zips up the bag and pushes the body back into the cooler.
Shaking her head, Geneva crosses the room and flips on the overhead lights. “I don’t guess you’ll tell us what’s going on.”
“I was praying.”
“Praying?” I manage to stifle most of my surprised laughter.
“Praying.” There’s an edge of defiance in his voice, despite looking like a weak sneeze will tip him over. “Why were y’all spying on me?”
Geneva flops into the nearest chair. “Dude, you’ve been acting the freak all day.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been fine.”
He’s glancing between the two of us, a little frantic, like a player caught in a rundown between first and second base.
And one of us is going to tag him out.
Geneva’s snort echoes my skepticism. “So you, what? Hang around here late at night to pray over the bodies like some kind of atheistic minister?”
He’s silent for a couple beats, his throat working like he’s trying to swallow down whatever it was he ate. “Yup.”
