Sally would be able to cover the stitches with a smudge of wax before she applied the foundation, although she would need to take extra care with her airbrush to remove the harsh bruising around the eyes.
With trepidation, Sally reached out and touched the woman’s smooth cheek. The explosion of light and the weightless feeling of leaving her body didn’t come. There was no vision, nothing but the stiffness of cold flesh.
Sally sighed with relief. It had just been a fluke, she thought, a glitch, a weird supernatural blip on her otherwise very dull and normal life. The last thing she needed was to be having visions of her guests at their final moments. That was the sort of thing that used to get women burned at the stake.
Without embalming, Sally didn’t waste any more time. After plugging her iPod into a portable speaker system and choosing a melodic playlist, she got to work cleaning the body with disinfectant soap, washing and styling the auburn hair and applying foundation. Once all Mrs. Higgins’ flaws and stitches were covered, Sally moved on to her true passion of using makeup to achieve a natural look.
When Sally was done, Mrs. Alison Higgins looked serene. To preserve the image, Sally gently covered the woman’s face and hands in a layer of fine cheesecloth. As the family hadn’t yet delivered any fresh clothes, Sally draped the body in a sheet before wheeling it into the large meat locker on the left. That locker was kept at a colder temperature for the un-embalmed and extra care had to be taken to ensure the flesh didn’t overly dehydrate.
As was her habit, Sally brewed a fresh pot of coffee before wheeling out her next guest, Mr. Higgins.
Again, she thought as she sipped her coffee, Jesús had done a wonderful job. Gunshot wounds always brought their own challenges. The small entry wound was usually not a big deal as a simple wax plug and makeup could do wonders, but the large exit wound often posed difficulties depending on its location and the caliber of bullet.
Mr. Higgins was lucky in that the bullet was a small, soft-nosed .38 and it had exited the side of his head above the left ear. This allowed most of the damage to be covered by packing the skull with pressed cotton, stitching the folds of torn scalp back together and adding just a small graft of color-matched wig. The bullet, or more likely a fragment of shattered bone, had nicked the left ear, slicing a healthy chunk from its tip. Jesús had fashioned a replacement out of wax, but it was Sally’s job to make the pale addition match the skin tone of the real ear.
Sally stripped the sheet off Mr. Higgins and dressed him in a plastic diaper before filling a small metal basin with warm water and disinfectant soap. She was just about to wash him when there was a loud knock at the rear door.
Sally glanced at the clock. Time had escaped her. It was already after six.
Curious, Sally rested her bowl on the counter, put her iPod on pause, and climbed the concrete steps to the door.
“Who is it?” she called.
“It’s Jersey, Sally. Can I come in?”
Sally unlocked the three deadbolts and opened the door.
Jersey stood in the alley, the collar of his jacket turned up against a cold drizzle, his mouth set in a firm line.
Sally smiled and beckoned him inside.
“I’m afraid it’s not much warmer in here,” she said.
“That’s okay,” said Jersey. “I dressed in layers.”
As she relocked the deadbolts, Sally felt a coldness emanating from the detective that had nothing to do with the weather. She wondered if he was regretting their stolen kiss.
Jersey walked down the stairs and stopped in front of the body of Mr. Higgins.
“You fixed the wound already,” he said, clearly annoyed. “Can’t even tell there was a gaping big hole in his skull.”
“That’s Jesús’s work,” Sally explained with pride. “He’s very skilled. He has an art exhibit opening next week at a small gallery. Sculpture. Metal and clay, I believe.” She hesitated for just a fraction of a second, but then the words gushed out. “We could go together if you like? I’d love to see what he creates outside of body parts.”
Jersey turned to stare into Sally’s viridescent eyes, but instead of sharing her excitement, his face was as rigid as kiln-fired clay.
“How did you see the license plate?”
Sally took a step back, unsettled by his tone.
“I thought the investigation was closed,” she said. “When your station released the bodies—”
“I still want to know.”
“So it’s personal?”
“I don’t like loose ends. Do you have something to hide?”
Sally crossed to the body of Mr. Higgins and picked up her metal bowl of soapy water.
“I’m not hiding anything,” she said coldly.
“But you’re not telling me everything.”
Sally dipped a sponge into the warm water and washed the corpse’s chest.
“It’s not what you think,” she said.
“And what do I think?”
“That there’s something, I dunno, sinister going on.”
“Is there?” Jersey asked. “It seems an odd coincidence that a woman is murdered outside this funeral home and then the very next day she’s brought here for burial.”
Sally shrugged. “She bought one of our pre-paid packages, or her husband did. For both of them. They’re quite popular.”
Jersey sighed and allowed his face to soften slightly.
“Sally, I want to be honest here. I like you, and I would like to see more of you, but I really need to know what you’re hiding.”
Sally’s voice became very quiet as she absently dabbed her sponge across Mr. Higgins’ stomach. “You’ll think I’m weird.”
Jersey’s façade crumbled. “How much weirder can it get? Every time we meet there’s a dead body between us.”
The birth of a fresh smile froze in place as glowing green words suddenly appeared on Mr. Higgins’ flesh.
Written in a childish scrawl, the message read: He’s here. Run!
17
Sally gasped at the sight of the words.
“Did you write that?” she blurted.
“No! How could I?”
“It must be a horrible joke,” she said. “Somebody at the police morgue, maybe?”
“Not likely, they’re a serious bunch. Does it mean anything to you?”
“You’re the only one here. Do I need to run?”
“No.” Jersey pulled out his phone and snapped a photo of the words even as they began to fade. “I know you weren’t involved, Sally, but I just can’t figure how you saw the car’s plate.”
“It was a guess.”
“A guess?” Jersey was incredulous.
“Well, okay, not a guess exactly. But I didn’t really really see it. Not in the way you mean at least.”
Jersey sighed. “Just spit it out. Please?”
“Okay, but don’t—” Sally took a deep breath, swallowing the unspoken words. Either Jersey would believe her or he wouldn’t. “When I touched her… Mrs. Higgins… in the alley, I just wanted to fix her mouth. It was all… all misaligned, but I had, I don’t know what you’d call it… a vision.”
“A vision?”
“Yes!” Sally snapped, but then blushed, flustered. “I saw the accident through her eyes. I saw the car, the license plate, the two men in the front seat, and then I was hit, or rather she was hit by the car, and I felt her neck break and then I was back in my own body and looking out my own eyes.” Sally sucked in another deep breath. “I know it sounds crazy, and that’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”
Sally closed her eyes and waited. She could hear Jersey breathing. It was steady and deep and the only sound in the room.
“Maybe there’s another explanation,” he said after a moment. “Maybe you saw more than you thought, but in the panic of the situation, a woman dying in front of you, it became muddled… mixed up.”
Sally opened her eyes and fastened onto Jersey’s face.
“It’s happened before,�
�� she said. “It was a long time ago. I was only a child, but…” She paused, struggling, and then shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. “Maybe you’re right,” she added, finding Jersey’s explanation easier to accept. “Maybe I was confused.”
Jersey took a step closer, and Sally thought he was going to reach out and hold her, but he stopped before crossing into her personal space. His eyes narrowed, crinkles deepening like fault lines across a bleak desert.
“Even if you were confused,” he began, “you gave us the correct registration. And now you’re saying there were two men in the front seat?”
Sally glanced down at the body on the gurney. “Mr. Higgins was driving. He looked so sad. But there was another man beside him, talking to him, urging him on.”
“Did you see what this other man looked like?” Jersey asked.
“A nightmare,” she said. “An ugly, ugly nightmare.”
18
Jersey jotted down Sally’s description of the second man. The unusual scarring on his face would make him easy to identify if he had ever been entered into the system. Sally’s explanation of how she had seen him, however, was troubling. The district attorney would never give him an arrest warrant based on a vision.
That was a bridge, he decided, he’d cross at a later time. For now, the most troubling aspect of the crime was the writing on the body.
Most of it had already faded back into the flesh, and he didn’t have any authority to stop Sally from completing her work. He called the lieutenant’s personal cell, but it went straight to voice mail.
Sally agreed to a compromise. She would wash the rest of the body and apply makeup, but would also protect the area with the writing.
After pouring them both a coffee, Sally indicated Jersey could sit on a metal stool off to one side while she returned to work. In her element, Sally moved with the fluid grace of a dancer, and she smiled a lot as though sharing funny stories with her dead.
Jersey found her manner endearing. She was flightier and far less serious than the women he was usually attracted to, although the whole vision thing was disturbing. And, yet, there was a calm radiance about her that made him feel strangely at ease. It was as if when he was in her presence, even if her focus wasn’t trained on him, he never experienced doubt about what an important part he played in her world. Her smile was a lure, but the hook was how she made him feel, and Jersey liked that feeling.
The detective took a long sip of coffee, not entirely positive he wanted to voice aloud the troubling thoughts pinging in his brain. In the end, however, he couldn’t imagine a better sounding board.
“When I first came across our corpse here,” Jersey began, “I mentioned to my partner that he appeared unusually rumpled, like he had been in a rush to get dressed.”
Sally lifted her gaze. “So you’re thinking that maybe Mr. Higgins wrote this message on his skin before he killed himself?”
“That would be one explanation.”
“And another?”
“That the second man you saw wrote the words after he killed him.”
Sally’s eyes grew large. “Why?”
“Who knows? Playing games, maybe.”
Sally’s eyes narrowed. “But if it was murder—”
“Double murder, actually,” said Jersey. “Your description of the scene inside the car makes it sound like Mr. Higgins didn’t necessarily want to drive over his wife, that this second man was making him, or at least encouraging him. Then, with the wife out of the way, the second man kills the driver.”
“But why would someone do that?” Sally asked.
Jersey sighed. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
“Could it be an insurance scam?” Sally ran a tiny comb through Mr. Higgins’ thick eyebrows. “If the wife is insured for a large amount of money and the husband is bored of her, he could have hired someone to kill her.”
Jersey grinned. “Now you’re thinking like a detective. The killer decides he needs some assurance that Higgins won’t go to the cops after his wife is dead, so he makes the husband do the deed.”
“And then,” Sally continues, “the killer double-crosses the husband, but…” Sally wrinkled her nose.
“But?” Jersey encouraged.
“It still doesn’t explain why he’d write a note on the body. It reads like a warning, but a warning for who? The only people who would be likely see it are—”
“The coroner and you,” Jersey finished. “Any psycho ex-boyfriends I need to know about?”
Sally blushed slightly. “None that I left alive.”
“Good to know.” Jersey laughed. “Besides if the note was meant for you, then the killer would need to know the bodies would be transported here.”
“The pre-paid plans,” Sally blurted. “Everything is kept on the computer in Mr. Payne’s office.”
Jersey was impressed, but he could also tell that her imagination was beginning to frighten her. “The message wasn’t meant for you, Sally,” he said with confidence. “Where’s the payoff?”
Sally sighed and the tension eased from her shoulders. “I prefer my job,” she said. “My guests come to me when their story is complete, but yours have had the final pages torn out.”
Sally finished with Mr. Higgins and wheeled him into the large cold room.
“That’s me for the night,” she announced.
“Thank God,” said Jersey. “I was getting tired of looking at wrinkled old flesh.”
“I hope you’re talking about Mr. Higgins!”
Jersey grinned. “So you feel like going for a drink?”
Sally gasped in mock surprise. “Why, detective, are you asking me on a date?”
“If you’ll have me.”
Sally beamed. “I know this great little bakery that pulls its first batch of muffins from the ovens around now.”
Jersey’s stomach gave an audible grumble, which made Sally laugh.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
19
Aedan watched from his vehicle as Sally and the detective left the funeral home. They were walking close together, huddled against a chill rain.
Aedan’s breath fogged the window. He didn’t like this detective’s interest in Sally. The Higgins case was closed. Murder-suicide, end of. Domestic bliss turned homicidal. Happens every day. He couldn’t have made it any cleaner. Sally shouldn’t even have been a blip on the man’s radar after she gave her witness statement.
Could she have told him her secret? The possibility needed to be considered, but could she even comprehend the ramifications of it? Without the interpreter…
No, Aedan thought, this detective was after something else.
Something he could never have.
Salvation.
20
Sally entered her apartment feeling tired and awake in equal measure.
Jiggy ran to meet her at the door with a mixed greeting of purring happiness and pitying mewl.
Sally kicked off her shoes and hung her coat in the closet. “You hungry, baby? I have muffins.”
Sally held up a bag of oatmeal-rhubarb-chocolate-chip muffins, smiling to herself over how Jersey had insisted on buying a dozen fresh from the oven.
The warm chocolate had made a mess of their hands and mouths as they ate. And, if Sally was being honest, added a sweet, electric jolt to the delicious attraction she felt sparking between them. They had walked and talked for hours with no clear destination in mind. But eventually, with her feet aching, Jersey had dropped her in front of her apartment with a lingering, tender kiss and a promise of…
Jiggy looked at the bag of muffins with what appeared to be feline disdain, which made Sally laugh. She knew the cat preferred sour-cream doughnuts.
“Okay, okay,” she relented. “Your usual, milady. Table with a view.”
Sally mixed a batch of crunchy and soft cat food in a bowl and placed it upon Jiggy’s favorite spot, the kitchen windowsill where she also kept a potted catnip plant.
Wi
th the cat content, Sally entered the bathroom and turned on the taps. As the bathtub filled, she headed to her bedroom, stripped off her clothes, and wrapped herself in a white terrycloth robe. With a yawn, she strolled to the kitchen, poured the last of the Chilean wine into a glass, and returned to the bath.
Sipping her wine as the tub continued to fill, Sally studied her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Was she too skinny, she wondered, untying her robe and letting it drop to the floor around her feet. She cupped one of her breasts in her free hand. Were her breasts too small? And what about her hair? It had always been this horrible, ancient white. Did its lack of pigment make her look older than her years? Did it make her less appealing than the blondes or the brunettes or, especially, the redheads? She had always wanted to be a redhead, but her hair never held dye for more than a day.
As she contemplated her appearance, the bathroom filled with steam and the mirror began to change from clear to opaque. It was as if she was becoming invisible.
Sally took another sip of wine and turned toward the tub when something out the corner of her eye made her stop.
She turned back to the mirror and gasped.
A message was scrawled on its surface in the same awkward hand as on the body of Mr. Higgins.
This message read: Do you remember?
21
Jersey was parking in the underground garage of his condo building when his cellphone rang. Hoping it might be Sally calling to say she already missed him, he answered without looking at the display.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, detective?” blasted the voice of his boss, Lieutenant Morrell.
“Err, I—”
“I just received a phone call directly from the mayor. His son’s friend has accused you of interfering with the recently departed Mr. Higgins.”
“Interfering? What the heck does that mean?”
“You were at the funeral home?” Morrell barked.
“Yes, but—”
“I warned you to back off? Didn’t I say the case was closed? So what in darnation were you—”
Speak the Dead Page 7