“I saw it,” I said with a sour twist of my mouth.
“It’s bullshit. Try not to let it get to you too badly. They’re only writing crap like that because it’s election season, and they’re trying to stir up some controversy.”
I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it. Then tried again. “I thought you hated me.”
His lip curled with mild disdain. “I don’t hate you. I just don’t like you. Big difference. But I do hate assholes, and that reporter is an asshole. Airing your shit in the paper like that is bullshit.”
I fought for a smile, but it wasn’t happening, so I settled for a nod. “Thanks.” And then, because I had absolutely no idea how the hell else to respond to all that, I simply nodded again and continued on out with the stretcher.
Marcus pulled up as I reached the van. I yanked the back doors open and slid the stretcher in, then turned to him as he leaped out of his car and jogged up to me, agony written across his features. “Angel, it is true? Is Marianne…?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s her. I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else I could say that could get rid of the grief on his face. And I didn’t know how much was for Marianne or for the thought that Ed had done this.
He gave a shuddering sigh and sank to sit on the curb, burying his head in his hands. “God damn Ed,” he said hoarsely. “I swear I’ll kill him if I ever see him again. She didn’t deserve this.”
I slowly closed the van doors, then leaned back against them. “Why do you think it was Ed?”
He lifted his head, gave me a perplexed look. “What are you talking about? Angel, who the hell else could it have been? We know Ed went off the deep end.”
I frowned but didn’t argue the point. Marcus wasn’t in any state of mind to listen to anything right now. But for some reason I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Ed had “gone off the deep end,” at least not to such a degree that he would start killing non-zombies. And a single gunshot to the head? If he’d killed her because he was crazy, wouldn’t it have been a lot more violent? Wouldn’t there have been a fight, or struggle, or something?
But those arguments could be raised another time when the emotional wound wasn’t quite so raw. For now I kept my mouth shut, sat down on the curb beside him, and put my arms around him while he wept on my shoulder.
Chapter 9
The autopsy of Marianne was brutal. Not the actual procedure, but the general mood of the room. There was none of the usual joking or conversation that usually helped lighten the atmosphere. The humor that we used as a self-defense against the horror of what we had to do was gone. In some ways it was worse than when we had a kid come through.
Also, we had several observers, which further dampened the mood. Detective Abadie was present since it was his case, but Captain Pierson was also there, silently watching from a discreet distance away while Sean, the crime scene tech, took numerous pictures.
I’d been working with Dr. Leblanc, the parish forensic pathologist, for about two months now, and I prided myself on the fact that I was getting to the point where I could almost anticipate his needs, like a well-trained surgeon’s assistant, or some shit like that. Not that I knew crap about surgery—only what I’d seen on TV—but in those shows there was always some nurse or whatever standing right beside the doctor while he snapped out things like, “clamp!” or “scalpel!” Of course, considering how much the reality of police work and death investigation varied from what I’d seen on TV, there was every chance that the medical shows I watched were just as inaccurate.
I didn’t hand instruments to him or anything, but I knew his routine—which helped keep me from dropping things or doing anything equally idiotic with people watching.
“Why are they all here?” I murmured to Dr. Leblanc at one point.
He breathed a soft sigh. “It’s going to be rather high profile since the number one suspect is her boyfriend—”
“—Who also happens to be the number one suspect in the beheading murders,” I finished for him.
He nodded gravely and bent back to his examination. Together we removed the bags from Marianne’s hands and allowed Sean to take detailed pictures of them. I didn’t see any sign that she’d clawed or scratched anyone, but Dr. Leblanc still took scrapings from beneath the nails, and then clipped the nails and collected them in a small paper envelope. I assumed it would be sent to the DNA lab to be compared to whatever suspect they came up with. Ed most likely. Did they even have his DNA to compare it to? I worried over that for several minutes until I finally realized it was a stupid thing to worry about. Let the detectives figure out how to handle that detail.
It was my job to cut the heads open on bodies, but Dr. Leblanc assisted on this one since Marianne had been shot in the head. My respect and admiration for him soared as he carefully walked me through the process of doing it in a way that preserved the evidence of the bullet wounds in the skull. I was insanely aware of the presence of watchers, but somehow Dr. Leblanc made it seem as if I was doing him a favor and completely in control, instead of having to be, essentially, told step by step what to do. It didn’t even bother me that I kept having to pause so that Sean could take pictures of the wounds.
I gently tipped the brain out and set it in the bed of the scale, then returned to the now-empty skull.
“The forehead wound is definitely the entry point,” Dr. Leblanc said in a normal voice, gesturing the observers over. “See how it’s concave on the inside of the skull?” He pointed to the beveled edges, while Sean took more pictures.
“Like when you shoot a BB through a glass window,” I said, then flushed, certain I’d said something moronic.
But Dr. Leblanc gave me an approving smile. “That’s exactly it,” he said. “Don’t ever believe someone who says they can tell from the exterior which are the entry and exit wounds. You almost always have to examine the interior of the skull.”
My flush turned into a glow of pride. I stepped back to give Sean more room to take his pictures, then moved on to help finish up the rest of the autopsy. By the time it was time for me to sew up the Y-incision on her torso, the others had all filed out. I finished up in peace while Dr. Leblanc wrote up his notes, then I carefully put her back in the body bag. After I closed up the big plastic bag that contained all the organs the pathologist had removed and cut samples from, I set that in the body bag as well, between her legs. That’s one brain that I won’t eat, I decided as I wheeled the body back to the cooler. There was no way I could eat someone I’d known and liked.
Dr. Leblanc was ready and waiting for me when I returned to the cutting room with the next body of the day: a twenty-something man who’d most likely died of a drug overdose. Those still gave me a chill whenever I had to deal with one. There but for the grace of god go I and all that shit, though I rather doubted that god had anything to do with me being turned into a zombie. Though, if I hadn’t been turned that night, I would’ve definitely died. I’d already been high as a kite when my would-be rapist had slipped Rohypnol into my drink. When I’d fallen unconscious and started having trouble breathing, he’d panicked and was on his way to take me out to the swamp to dump my body when he took a curve too fast and wrecked his car. Either the drug overdose or my injuries would have been more than enough to kill me if Marcus hadn’t seen the crash and decided on the spot to do the only thing that could possibly save me.
I got the body of the overdose victim onto the table and prepped while Dr. Leblanc made his initial observations and jotted notes on his pad. I stepped back as he picked up a scalpel off the sideboard, but to my surprise he extended it to me, handle first.
I automatically took it, looked stupidly down at it, then back up to him. “Um. You’re kidding, right? You want me to cut him open?”
“You can do this, Angel,” he assured me. “You’re a tough, no-nonsense chick with an iron stomach. You’ve watched me do it a few hundred times. Now, cut that body open.”
I made a face. “Why can’t I j
ust stick to cutting heads?” I said. I might have whined a little bit.
Dr. Leblanc chuckled. “Because I’m lazy.”
“Hardly!”
“How about, because you’re fully capable of doing it, therefore you should.”
I scowled down at the scalpel in my hand. The pathologist had been dropping hints for a while now that he would soon start having me participate more in the autopsies—a statement I hadn’t really understood until now. “I’m fully capable of doing many things that I probably shouldn’t,” I said.
A smile quirked his lips. “I trust that you have the judgment to apply proper discretion. Besides, what you really are is fully capable of being more than a simple morgue tech. There are some agencies where the morgue assistant—or the diener—does almost all of the work of opening the body up and pulling the organs out, whereupon the pathologist simply comes over and takes a look and cuts his samples off.” He gestured to the body lying on the metal table. “A bit more training and you could probably get to that point.”
I stepped grudgingly up to the body. “Okay, so maybe you are being lazy.”
He chuckled. “Curses! Here I thought I was being convincing in my mentor persona.”
“Nope. I see right through you,” I replied, but the truth was that any time Dr. Leblanc made one of those comments it warmed my crusty little soul more than I could have ever explained. More than anyone else in my life, I felt that Dr. Leblanc truly thought I was smart and had potential.
“Dieners make more money,” he added with a sly wink.
“Well why the hell didn’t you just say that to begin with?” I replied, raising the scalpel.
I found myself wincing as I pressed the scalpel into the skin, which was a bit silly since I was used to cutting the heads open. That involved slicing the scalp from ear to ear over the top of the head, peeling the scalp back, and then taking a bone saw and cutting the top of the skull off, thus exposing the lovely, luscious brain.
Yeah, so it probably wasn’t lovely and luscious to most people. But ever since I’d been turned into a zombie the sight of brains got my mouth watering as much as fried pickles and a roast beef po-boy did.
Following Dr. Leblanc’s murmured instructions, I made two incisions from the outer edge of the collar bones to the middle of the sternum, then carefully sliced the rest of the way down the torso.
“Be careful not to nick the bowels,” he cautioned as I maneuvered the scalpel around the belly button. “That’s never fun.”
I gave a short little nod as I crept the scalpel down the abdomen at a snail’s pace. A lesser man than Dr. Leblanc would have snatched the blade from me in frustration at how slow I was going, but he didn’t seem to have the slightest bit of impatience. I fucking adored Dr. Leblanc.
I finally pulled the scalpel free as I reached the pubic bone. “Holy shit,” I said. “I just cut someone open.”
“That you did!” he said, giving me a pat on the back. “Next thing you know you’ll be doing surgery.”
Snorting, I handed the scalpel back to him. “God help anyone who has me as a surgeon.”
He quickly filleted the flesh back from the ribs, then stood back while I took a pair of pruning shears and crunched through ribs and sternum to remove a large triangular section of ribs. “I’ll give you a pass on the surgeon thing for now. But only for now.” He glanced up at me. “I didn’t go to med school until I was in my late thirties. And I wasn’t even the oldest in my class.”
“Uh, I think I should get through the GED first.”
“Fair enough. How’s that going?”
“All right,” I said, but apparently I didn’t sound very convincing. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Okay, I only recently found out that passing the test is one of the conditions of my probation,” I continued, wincing. “Which means I get to see if I can make up for five years of being an ignorant slacker in a little over a year.”
He shrugged as he pulled the lungs out and set them on a cutting board. “I have the utmost faith in you. And what will happen if you fail? Do you truly think you’ll be tossed in jail, or isn’t it more likely that your probation would simply be extended until you pass?”
I let out a gusty sigh. “Well…it would most likely be extended. Which means I’d keep studying and try again.”
“Ah, that’s my girl,” he said. “You’re too tough to let a little setback like that defeat you.” He met my eyes. “Not that I think you’re going to fail, mind you. You’ve done a good job of surviving these past few months,” he said. “You’ve turned your life around in ways that you probably never imagined.”
“I had some help,” I said, managing a weak smile. “I mean, I don’t think I could have done it on my own.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But I think you’re past that now. You don’t need help surviving, do you?”
I started to protest, but then I had to stop and consider. “No, I think I have that much down pat. But at the same time it would really suck to not have people around who have my back, y’know?”
He smiled, gave a nod. “Yes, we all need that. However, I believe it’s time for you to take the next step.”
I gave him a blank look. “Er, what would that be? You mean learning how to cut bodies?”
He chuckled low. “That’s a start, but I’m talking in more of a metaphysical sense.” He set the scalpel down, crossed his arms and leaned back against the sink. “You’ve spent this time surviving. But that’s just existing. You can do more. Now it’s time for you to thrive.”
I didn’t even know how to respond to that. Finally I said, “Okay.”
We continued the autopsy, but I found myself thinking about what Dr. Leblanc had said. He was right, and in more ways than he probably knew. I had the potential to live a very long time. Was I going to stay an uneducated goob forever?
I guess that’s up to me.
After I finished cleaning up I swiped the brain of the overdose guy and stuck that container in the cooler in the trunk of my car while retrieving my other container—the one that held my actual dinner. It, too, contained brains, but they were cleverly mixed in with broccoli and stir fry sauce and various other stuff that made the whole thing that much more yummy. Sure, I had no trouble eating brains straight-up, but making the whole thing somewhat gourmet not only made it easier to hide but also kept me feeling more, well, human.
Nick came in as I was finishing eating. There were three of us morgue tech/van driver types, and Nick had been the one who’d trained me. He only topped me by a couple of inches, and in some scenarios could possibly be considered good-looking. He had nice hair and green eyes, but those tended to be offset by the fact that he always seemed to be smirking. He could be a smarmy little shit at times, but every now and then a glimmer of “Nice Nick” peeked through.
He gave a glance to my almost empty container. “Smells good. You cook?”
I gulped down the last pieces, then snapped the lid back onto the container and stuffed it down into my bag. “Sorta. I just throw a bunch of veggies into a pan with some tofu. Add rice, maybe some sweet and sour sauce.”
Nick made a face. “Tofu. Gah. Give me real meat any day.”
I hid a smile as I gathered up my things. If he only knew. Yet as I left the morgue and headed up to the main building a thought occurred to me that made me stop and laugh.
Nick was grossed out by tofu, but not at the fact that I was eating my dinner not twenty feet from a cooler full of dead bodies.
I grinned and continued on. We’re all monsters here.
Chapter 10
It was tempting to sit back and consider Dr. Leblanc’s words to me and daydream about doing more with my life, but right now finding out about the stolen body was a shitload more important. As dorky as it sounded, my fucking honor was at stake, and unless I got this shit figured out I was going to have a helluva hard time having any sort of decent future.
Therefore, I headed straight for the investigator’s office. Derrel was there,
painstakingly pecking out a report on the computer. He gave me an absent-minded wave with barely a glance up from the screen.
“Angel, why can’t you be more like Nick?” Derrel said with a black scowl.
I could only stare at him for several breaths before I found my voice. “Wh-what? Why do you say that?”
He gave a hmmphing sound. “Because Nick is a godawful fast typist, and Allen has managed to convince the little shit that if he types up all of Allen’s reports it’ll improve his chances of getting a promotion.” He lifted his head and grinned at me.
I returned the grin with relief. “Well, I can’t type, but I can be more of a suck-up if you want.”
Derrel shuddered. “No, please don’t change a damn thing. I’ve already had to fight off a hostile takeover from Monica.”
“A what?”
“Monica wanted to change the shifts so that she was paired with you. I told her to back the hell off. You’re stuck with me, chick.”
I plopped into a chair. “I’m glad to know you love me so much. Now I need you to prove your love by helping me out with something.”
Derrel clicked on something on his screen, then gave me his full attention. “You want to know everything there is to know about the victim from the lab.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Nah. I just know how I’d feel if someone pulled that shit on me.” He gave a rude snort, shook his head. “Frat prank? I don’t know about that.”
“It wasn’t a frat prank,” I said. “Derrel, that was no college punk. I know the cops have no reason to believe me, but I’m not making this up.”
“I don’t believe for one second that you’re making any of this up.”
“I know, and you have no idea how much that means to me,” I said earnestly. “Here’s what I was thinking: The dude who wrote that damn article was getting off on how horrible it was for the family when the remains of their loved ones weren’t cared for and guarded properly. But…has the next of kin for poor Mr. Norman Kearny shown up?”
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