by R. L. Perry
“Shift change,” I said under my breath.
Milt, picking up on my syllables, wondered about the questions. “What else do you want to know?” he asked.
I stopped in the hallway and looked back into the factory. Through the small glass portal in the steel door I could see the truckers beginning to load the pallets on their refrigerated trucks with jacks. The beautiful woman was sitting in a tiny office—Accounts—weighing a mountain of paper inventory and billings. The stocky kid in the blue coat was readying to press the green button on the control panel, his face dour with the enormity of the work before him.
“Those guys on the trucks have a tough job,” I noted. “Loading and unloading all week from the back of a deep freeze. I guess that’s why they always wear the thermal.”
“I would too,” Milt said. “They even wear the stuff in the summer. Nothing hurts ice faster than heat, of course. Gotta stay cold.”
“What kind of work do they do, otherwise?” I wondered.
“What do you mean?”
“Like . . . how do they like the job, you think? Is it robust? Satisfying?”
Milt shuffled on his feet, pursed his lips to one side. One of the drivers seemed to be watching us through the porthole window as Milt explained. “Well . . . they’re not union,” he said. “They’d like to be.”
“Oh?”
“They didn’t get the support,” Milt explained. “Not from everyone.”
“I see.” Inside the factory, I heard the monster roar to life again, the water surging through its veins, its steel teeth spitting out ice like so many jagged edges of bone. I felt for the vial of melting ice in my pocket, wondered how Blanch was surviving in the forensic lab over the holiday break without Cory and the gang. I knew that if I were lucky, I might bring her something that would prove beneficial to us all.
That, or my hunches were meeting with other dead ends.
I thanked Milt for his time and handed him my business card. “You did a fine job with the Carrington funerals,” I assured him. “And now you’ve got a company to run.”
He smiled, nodded carefully within the context of his thought.
“I don’t suppose you use Clarity ice?” I joked.
“Nothing but the finest,” he answered.
“Well,” I added, choosing my words, “you might want to lay off of the stuff for a day or two. I have a feeling you haven’t seen the last of me.”
“What’s it about?” Milt asked.
“Ice,” I said. “Or what’s in it.”
Chapter Thirty
I was pulling out of the Clarity Ice Company parking lot as David was arriving. He waved to me, uncertain of his next move. But we did manage to pull up next to each other, windows down in the frigid air. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Lance sent me,” David answered. “He thought you might be here. But he couldn’t get away from the office . . . something about waiting for a call from the mayor.”
“He worries too much,” I said.
“Get used to it,” David chided. “He asked me to check on you. Said you were snooping too much.”
“He’ll have to get used to it,” I answered back. “It’s part of my job.”
“I guess this just comes with the engagement,” David said. “But Lance did want me to tell you that he wants you to drop by the precinct. Something more he found out about the strike.”
“What strike?” I asked.
“I thought you knew,” David said. “I found out that the Clarity workers were trying to unionize a few months ago, but they couldn’t get the votes. There’ve been a lot of changes in the company.”
I considered what Milt had told me . . . and what he had protected. Perhaps I was too close to the heat to see the ice melting around me. “How do you know this?” I asked.
“I have friends,” David answered. “And people talk in this town if you put your ear to the rail. You were doing another funeral . . . so I told Lance. You should have listened a little longer. He’s worried.”
I ramped up the heat coming from the car vents and glanced back at the ice company. “I guess the coroner is always the last to know,” I told David.
“What’s that?”
“Never mind,” I said, reaching into my pocket to remove the vial of melting ice I’d removed from the monster. I lifted the plastic container so that David could see it, our breaths twining and untwining momentarily in a ghost-like dance in the space between us. “David . . . I wonder if you have time to do me a little favor?”
“Sure.”
I reached across the brief chasm between our cars and handed him the sample. “Take good care of this,” I told him. “And get it over to the forensic lab ASAP. Blanch is the lady you’ll want to see. She’s a little ragged around the edges, probably find her outside having a smoke. But Cory is on vacation and so she’ll take care of this.”
David grasped the vial and I watched him closely until he placed it inside his coat pocket. “Certainly,” he said. “Any instructions?”
“Just tell her it’s from me . . . and ask her to analyze that sample same as the others. Tell her to get back to me as soon as she can. Preferably today. I need to know what she finds.”
I could tell that David was on the cusp of cracking a joke about the sample vial, but I said, “Gotta go,” before he could get the words out. I rolled up my car window, waited for David to pull away.
Before I could shift into drive, a couple of other cars pulled into the Clarity lot and, as far as I could tell, they were employees—truck drivers most likely—who were arriving a bit late for their shift. The day had worn on, the sun beginning to leak from above the clouds like a sieve, a light drain on the energies and emotions. The clouds were like strands of paste in the sky, thick and exceedingly straight, almost painted on. I noted how the cold seemed to mitigate everything, including the outcomes or our imaginations, and I was swept up once again into the idea that someone was trying to freeze me out of certain discoveries.
I wondered who might be watching us, how the rest of the day might play out. I shifted into drive and eased out onto the road. I angled back along the railroad tracks toward the precinct offices, uncertain if I were leaving certain dangers behind or heading into them.
Chapter Thirty-One
I hated the precinct—the vapid aroma of stale coffee, the bustle of starched uniforms, the lurid stares of certain cops who knew too much about me and my relationship with Lance. But every time I entered those offices I had to remind myself that most people felt equally unnerved on my home turf—especially the thought of cutting into death, draining away vital fluids, putting makeup on a cadaver. As Lance had reminded me many times—we all have our dirty little jobs.
But I didn’t want Lance to worry about me. Worry was never good for a relationship, and so I drove quickly across town and scurried into the precinct for a face-to-face. I was impressed that Lance was giving up on the cell phone communication and opting for more personal time. Neither of us were Luddites, but when it came to spending time with each other, we preferred the inevitable endings.
I strode across the foyer trying to remain nonchalant, but one of Lance’s young Lieutenants couldn’t hold back. “Well,” he said, “if it isn’t Mary Christmas . . . super sleuth.”
“Hi Bobby,” I said, not giving him the satisfaction of a reply. “Just here to see Lance.”
“He’s a lucky man,” Bobby added, hovering over a box of powdered doughnuts.
I pressed on and found Lance sitting behind his small but fashionably messy desk. He was on the telephone, but from the other side of the glass wall I could see him motioning to me. I entered, took a seat opposite, and waited for him to lasso his conversation to a close. When he hung up he smiled at me and said, “I see David found you.”
“Yes,” I said, “but there was nothing to worry about.”
“Maybe so,” Lance answered, “but I don’t want you getting in the middle of a business conflict. David told me that ice
company was embroiled in a union scuffle. And he’s right. It’s no place to be.”
“I was just talking to Milt—the company lawyer,” I assured him. “And I also got an ice sample, too.”
“You’re pressing too much.”
“The Carringtons deserve more than a rudimentary investigation,” I said, wondering how Lance might take my insinuation.
“We’ve got our people on it,” Lance said. “And thanks to you, something is bound to turn up.”
I lifted a dull pencil from the front of Lance’s desk and began tapping it on my knee. My feet were cold and I needed the nervous energy to warm myself. “I gave David the ice sample. He’s at forensics. Blanch will get to work on it. I’m sure she’ll get back to me today.”
More light was draining away from the sky and Lance craned his neck to get a better look at a circle of officers who were gathering around the coffee urn. He spoke hesitantly, his gaze spirited away toward other more pressing matters. “You know you’re stretching your authority,” he said. “This thing of taking ice samples, asking questions on the side.”
“I’m making progress,” was all I said.
Lance sighed. “Then I take it you’ll let me know the results of the tests when you get them?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “We can talk about it tonight . . . over dinner.”
“Should we?”
“Don’t we always discuss work?”
“We wouldn’t have to,” Lance reminded me, his eyes telling me that he would prefer a different denouement.
I tapped the pencil on the edge of Lance’s desk. “Sometimes I feel like we’re never truly alone . . . like we’re always carrying other people with us, wherever we go.”
Lance nodded, agreeing with me. He was in his element, his place—but, all considerations aside, he was trying to work the angles and the answers in his mind. “Look at the lives we’ve chosen,” he said eventually. “I had to propose to you in the morgue parking lot in the middle of the coldest winter on record. And now we’re looking for suspects. I’m trying to keep people from dying and you’re always burying them.”
“It doesn’t always have to be this way,” I said.
“So what’s the answer?”
“We can get this off of our plates as quickly as possible,” I suggested.
Lance shuffled some papers on his desk and glanced at the clock on the wall. I hoped he was counting the minutes until we could be together again. “My experience,” Lance added, “is that these things have a tendency to drag out for months . . . even years. It’s not always easy to find answers.”
“Someone didn’t like the Carringtons,” I said. “Eventually they’ll have to come in from the cold.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“If there’s anything I know,” I reminded Lance, “it’s ice. Don’t get me started on the metaphors.”
My feet were busy under my chair, cold and nervous. I couldn’t get warm.
Lance stood up and eased toward me, taking me into his arms. I put my head on his chest, feeling the beating of his heart through his slightly wrinkled uniform. I could feel myself in his embrace, knowing too well the lure of his energy, the marvel of his hands. “You’re frozen,” he whispered.
I didn’t care about the prying eyes in the precinct, but looked into his eyes and kissed him before I could give him another reason to hold me, to warm me in his arms. I couldn’t let go of him, but when I looked up, I noticed that a few of the cops who were standing around the coffee urn were brazenly envious.
“That’s just a down payment,” I said.
“I’ll look forward to collecting the rest later,” Lance told me.
“And I’ve only got one more road to check,” I added. “Blanch should have an answer soon.”
Lance stared hard at me, his hands still draped across my shoulders. “You’re going back no matter what I say.”
“Yes,” I told him. “You know that.”
“You’ll call me?”
I nodded, kissed him again for good measure, and then walked out of the office. “Good luck out there, Mary,” one of the officers said to me as I hurried past.
“Now we know how Lance gets through these long days,” another joked.
I slowed just long enough to hurl back a joke of my own. “Training exercise,” I said.
“How’d Lance do?”
“He gets a high mark,” I said as I slipped through the front door of the precinct and headed into the brisk air. My cheeks were pincushions, my feet still numb from the constant cold, but I pressed on toward the car with resolve and determination.
I had told Lance the truth. I did want to find an answer as quickly as possible. Only thing was, I didn’t know how quickly the answer would find me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I was in the car, driving back to the funeral home, when I realized I had left my cell phone in Milt’s office. The daylight was waning fast, but I doubled back, eager to retrieve my phone and, perhaps, get a verdict from Blanch. I rounded a turn, skidded slightly, but decided to visit the forensic lab first.
All of the candy-stripe clouds had dissipated in the cold and, from the look of the sun beginning to set in the horizon, a new front was emerging in the west—a gray pall that was threatening to cover the night in yet another wave of winter. I considered the ironies of mercury, and hoped the needle wouldn’t dip too low before Lance and I could rendezvous to warm each other.
Christmas was still hanging in the air, too—a kind of festive translucence that offered hope in the darkness. So even in the cold, there was hope looming in the lights around the circle on Meridian Street, and there were, rising occasionally in the streets, warm tufts of vapor from underneath the manhole covers. And as I approached the lab, I realized that Christmas was not yet over—nor the New Year yet begun. Sandwiched between the old and the new, I too felt the pinch of embracing the possibilities while leaving behind the past. Now, so near to discovery, I truly wanted to experience another miracle.
Hurried and worn, I knew I was wearing out my welcome with Blanch—and, as Lance has noted, also stretching the limitations of my coroner’s role. I slid into the forensic lot, parked, and scurried through the back door as soon as Blanch opened it, the warmth inside pressing over me like a blanket.
“Good God,” Blanch said, shutting the door behind me. “You don’t know when to quit.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, shivering in my boots. “But I just had to see if you’ve had a chance to analyze that ice from the factory. I don’t want us to be in the middle of a health scare.”
Blanch plucked the unlit cigarette from her lower lip and slid it neatly back into the pack. “Relax,” she said, “that David character told me how important it was. What’s his deal?”
“He’s a bit excitable,” I told her, “but you can trust him.”
Blanch motioned for me to follow her into the bowels of the lab. “Let’s get out of this cold foyer,” Blanch said. “Let’s get in here with the dead bodies where it’s warmer.”
I laughed, appreciating her sense of humor, and her inside joke. She was beginning to appreciate my work, too—even if it involved bringing her the dead. We padded through another set of doors and stood around one of the dissecting tables, among vials of formaldehyde and test tubes filled with cobalt blue chemicals and red dyes. There was an odd aroma in the air—a mixture of organics and synthetics, of perfume and rot. Not much different than the odors in my embalming room, I felt at ease in the cloud.
“It doesn’t take long to test water, not if you know what you’re looking for,” Blanch began. “And I had a pretty good idea of our sources.”
Blanch pointed to my plastic vial, still poised on the counter-top next to her microscope and a few drabs of testing compounds. “It’s a small sample,” she added, “but I can say with assurance that it’s clear. No Listeria here. No mercury.”
“Thank God,” I said.
“Is that what you were hoping for?”
“Yes,” I said. “And no.”
Blanch lifted an eyebrow.
“At least there’s no health risk, nothing in the ice going outside the plant. That helps me narrow the field a great deal.”
Blanch nodded, another piece of her law enforcement background showing through her hardscrabble grit. “Narrowing the field is good,” she said. “That’s what I do.”
I shook Blanch’s dry, leathery hand. “Thanks for everything,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been consuming your time these past two days.”
“Not really,” Blanch answered. “It’s been slow . . . although, I can’t wait for Corey and some of the guys to get back. These Christmas breaks can be hell, but it was my turn to take the shift. But if Corey doesn’t bring me back some Florida sunshine, I’m going to be pissed.”
I laughed, shook her hand again, and then headed for the door.
“Mary,” Blanch blurted out before I could exit. “Do you want your sample kit?”
I stopped, my hand pressed against the door. “No,” I answered, “just hang onto it. I’ll get it later.”
Blanch smiled, her canine teeth yellow from the Camels. “I can believe that,” she said. “I guess there will always be a later in your line of work . . . and mine. Let’s just hope it’s not too soon.”
“It’s a deal.”
“And Mary,” Blanch hurried, “tell that David character that he needs to dress more warmly in the winter. He’s too worried about appearances.”
“Will do,” I said as I leapt, once again, into the jaws of winter.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Although I do not subscribe to the philosophy, many people believe that everything happens for a reason. But that’s a strange view when one considers the ultimate outcome of our lives and that all things end in death and decay. However, I am a firm believer in serendipity—those small outcomes and actions, seemingly insignificant, that can often lead to larger discoveries or purposes.