I should have known this was one bad deal.
Geneva was more than happy to take off a couple minutes early. Must have had a date or something. Dr Chen stayed, though, catching up on charting, so I made excuses to hang around. When I finally had the place to myself, I brought out the body and said the opening prayers. TheOur Fatheras the warm-up act, then a plea for strength and forbearance and that I’m equal to the task. Finally, a request that the soul of the deceased will be allowed to walk free from their sins.
I started the prayers anyway, but before I got to the part about forgiving our trespasses, I got sucked into the mind of a guy who’d been really, really shitty.
He was mean, selfish, and greedy, which wasn’t a huge surprise. A lot of us are. The murder, though, was something new.
He’d killed a woman, and he fucking enjoyed it.
The memory roils my gut until I’m ready to puke.Shit. I can’t throw up or the sins will get on the floor. I don’t even know what that would do to me, or the floor, or whoever has to work here tomorrow, so I grit my teeth, fingers interlaced on top of my head, and swallow down the bile.
Used to be, after the eating, my father and grand-whatever parents would sit with the body for the whole night. Best-case scenario, I can only manage a couple of hours. With this guy, there’s no fucking way I’m going to stick around any longer than I absolutely have to. Damon’s arrival is almost a relief.
Almost.
I mean, any interruption would have been a blessing, but Damon can tell right off that something’s wrong. For one, I’ve probably got saltine crumbs on my face. Sure as hell can’texplain things to him, though. Instead, I act the asshole until he and his nurse friend take off, and then I go to work.
See, as a morgue tech, I’m in the corner documenting while the cops poke and prod a crime victim, taking blood and hair and stuff for evidence.
Evidence?Wait. My heart’s racing so fucking fast it makes my ears ring. I drop into the nearest chair and put my head between my knees. I’m not a damn cop and I have no business thinking in terms ofcrimeandevidence.
Except I’d seen a young woman at the moment of her death, her blond hair back-combed and sprayed in a perfect ’80s crown, her eyes growing wide as the realization hits, and then dimming.
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my ever-loving god.
Jaw clenched so I don’t scream, I force myself to rewind the scene. Her hair dates her, and her shirt is a blur of bright pink, maybe one of those polos with the alligator. That’s it. That’s all I got. The area around her is also pretty nondescript. Outdoors, probably. I let myself sink deeper. Cold. Damp. Pine and mud. So maybe somewhere around here, though it could be any time of year except maybe July or August.
Rational thought gives way to absolute panic. I can’t breathe. I can’t even see.I was doing you a favor, man. Showing me your shitty-ass memory was fucking cruel.
I drag in as much air as my lungs can hold and let it go slowly. Freaking out can only last for so long and then I gotta conjure some kind of plan. Because yeah, I know the guy’s name—James Smith—and I know he murdered a woman.
And I know that memory’s gonna haunt me unless I figure out who she was and what the hell happened to her.
I mean, Iknowwhat happened to her. Fuck. I saw it. But where? And when? Why? For all I know, maybe Murder Dude was convicted and did his time.
I don’t believe that, though. I’d poked through his chart while the doc did his autopsy, and there were no social work notes that indicated he’d had any kind of criminal history. Nothing much in his history at all, except that he’d lost a fight with a car.
If I call in an anonymous tip, will the cops even follow up? It’s not like I can tell them I saw him off a woman while I was absolving him of his sins.
Anger chases the nausea away.Rage. My head starts to throb. I’d sent some asshole murderer off to the hereafter with a clean slate. None of Dad’s little lessons covered that level of bullshit.
Another deep breath doesn’t do jack to slow my heartbeat or soften the pickax that’s hammering my brain. The body of James Smith will be here at least until tomorrow afternoon while some poor ICU social worker tries to figure out where to send him next. My guess is we’d already know if there was family involved, so likely the body’ll go to Mount Olivet down in Renton for cremation.
And if the cops don’t get here before that, they won’t have any evidence.
I take one more deep breath and make a decision. There’s a real-ass pay phone at the light rail station on Broadway, and just in case, I can trim the dude’s nails and hair to save some of his DNA. No point in trying to draw blood since it’s coagulated by now. Besides, they’ve probably got some on hold in the lab from his ICU stay. Working quickly so I won’t second-guess myself, I drag him back out of the cooler.
His nails are long, with half-moons of dark brown crud underneath them. I trim his pinkies and drop the bits in a sterile specimen cup. If anyone does care to look, hopefully they’ll think he liked having one short nail on each hand or something. I trim some hair, too, letting it fall on top of the nails in the cup, andscrew the green plastic lid closed. I don’t know why I’m doing this. There’s no way anything I collect will count as legitimate evidence and it will probably only get me in trouble.
Can’t stand to do nothing, though.
His sins weigh on me while I work. I mean, sins do carry a weight, and this guy’s are like a twenty-pound bag of flour strapped to my back. I’m off work for the weekend, which should make me happy. Instead, I worry about what three days spent rattling around in my own head will do to me.
Nothing good. That’s for damned sure.
Plus, I gotta do it without cigarettes, althoughhello, it seems like murder should count as extenuating circumstances. As soon as that thought forms in my mind, the need for a smoke grabs me by the throat. It’s my penance, though. There’s nothing quite like denying myself a cigarette to make me really feel it.
Fuck.
