by Ivy Thorne
“I’ll give them a call first thing tomorrow before I transfer him there,” she told Detective Wiggins.
“Good. Thank you,” he said. “I see you’ve met Detective Dane Read. Nice of you to offer your help, Read,” he said to Dane. He then left them alone to complete the removal.
Marla smoothed the tarp over the carpet at Reggie’s feet. It occurred to her that she’d never once seen the top floor of the house, even while she’d lived in the bottom half. Now that it had been raided by forensic personnel in search of clues, it looked as though Reggie had been robbed.
Dane noticed Marla’s hesitation and said, “If you’re wondering, he wasn’t killed by someone trying to steal from him. The place only looks that way because −“
“You were searching for clues that could explain his death. I know,” Martha interrupted him.
She took Reggie by his ankles. Dane grabbed his wrists. Luckily, Reggie wasn’t an overweight man, but he still was heavy.
“Okay,” Martha said, groaning, “now pull downward and slide him off of the chair onto the tarp.”
The movement of Reggie’s body caused more blood to dribble from his wound. Dane heaved a sigh once they’d managed to position his body onto the tarp.
“Poor guy,” he said. “When we got here the television was on. He’d been watching it when he was murdered. At least that’s what it looked like. Whoever killed him must have snuck up behind him while he was focused on the TV and slit his throat. Again, that’s just what it looked like.”
“The rigor hasn’t set in either,” Marla said. She knelt by Reggie’s body, inspecting the look on his face, which was surprisingly peaceful.
“Pardon?”
“Unless he was sleeping when his throat was cut, I doubt he would have died with his eyes closed. Someone closed his eyelids after he died. A lot of people die with their eyes open. Because of the chemical change that occurs in the body after it dies, the muscles stiffen, making it difficult to close the eyelids and keep them closed,” Marla explained. “I use something called eye caps to keep the eyelids from coming open.”
Dane blinked at her. There was a moment of awkward silence. Marla wondered if she’d gone too far with her explanation.
Chapter 2
“No one from the police department closed the eyes,” Dane said. “That’s interesting. Maybe it was the murderer. I’ll be sure to bring this up to my superiors.” He shivered violently, apologizing immediately afterward. “The idea of a murderer closing the eyes of their victim gives me the creeps,” he said.
“It is creepy,” Marla agreed.
She was trying to hide the pride that was bubbling within her. She ducked her head as she felt her cheeks flush. She’d managed to impress Dane with her knowledge. Perhaps she’d also be able to make Dane laugh. So far, he’d remained stoic and professional. Marla wanted to find out who he was, personally.
“When I was a kid,” she continued, “I just assumed people died with their eyes closed. It freaked me out, later on, to learn that this is not the case. I’ve seen lots of dead people with their eyes wide open. It’s almost as if they’re surprised to be dead.”
“I see,” Dane responded. “That’s, erm, interesting,” he said, although he didn’t sound as though he actually was interested.
I think I’ve just creeped him out, Marla concluded. She swore at herself. Somehow she’d managed to unsettle a homicide detective in the presence of a brutally murdered body.
The tarp that held Reggie had a cloth handles on either side. Marla grabbed one while Dane grabbed the other. Together, they slid him through his living room to the set of stairs that led down to the exit. It was when they reached the top of the stairs that Marla thought of a joke she’d been told by another funeral director she’d previously worked with. She had no idea whether Dane was the sort of person who’d appreciate it, but she decided she’d find out.
“Do you know the term used to describe transporting a dead man on a tarp down the stairs?” Marla asked Dane.
He looked at her curiously. “No.”
“It’s called the luge,” she answered, with a coy smile.
To her embarrassment, Dane did not respond to the joke with laughter. Instead, he continued staring at her as though she’d just committed a social faux pas, which she had.
“You know, because when you do the luge you’re lying flat on your back and riding down…” Marla abandoned her attempt at explaining the joke when she saw the unamused look on Dane’s face. “Never mind.”
Marla swore at herself. I screwed that up! Now he probably thinks I’mthe biggest freak in town!
Often funeral directors made dark jokes to cope with all the grief that surrounded the job. Many other people in her industry would have found the luge joke funny. Dane, however, wasn’t a funeral director. Marla often forgot that most people didn’t have to deal with the dead or bereaved. Therefore, dark jokes weren’t part of their everyday life. Any sort of discussion about what was seen in an embalming room was out of the question for people who weren’t in that industry. Marla often had trouble getting this information through her head.
When it came to dealing with families who just had lost a loved one, Marla’s colleague and friend, Jackie Conrad, was the best. Marla mostly dealt with the embalming side of things at the funeral home, though she wanted to be able to do arrangements. The only thing stopping her was her social awkwardness. She hoped, with a bit of schooling from Jackie, she’d be able to not only deal with the dead, but the living too.
Dane cleared his throat, awkwardly. “I’m going to find a few other people to help us with this,” he announced.
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Marla said. “It would be good to have at least two others to assist on either side of the body.”
Marla had been in many situations where she had been alone when she had to transfer a heavy dead body. She wasn’t at all a weak person. Athletic and lean, Marla was capable of lifting heavy loads. But, realistically, there was no way a woman of her stature could lift a three-hundred-pound man on her own. For this reason, Marla made use of whoever she could find who was willing and able to help. This usually meant security guards and hospital workers.
Dane returned with two other male officers. Both men appeared quite strong, so Marla instructed them to take hold of the handles on the tarp’s upper section, where the bulk of Reggie’s body was. She then told Dane to join her at the lower end. Slowly, they moved Reggie’s body down the stairs.
At the bottom, Marla lowered the stretcher so it was parallel with the ground. The officers helped her lift the body onto the stretcher before assisting her with raising it to its regular height. She thanked them for their help before dismissing them.
“Would you like me to help guide the stretcher to the van?” Dane asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Marla was glad Dane had decided to stay by her side. She took his willingness to help her as a sign that her poorly timed joke hadn’t completely turned him off toward her.
“You know,” she said as they wheeled the stretcher down the driveway, “I once walked in on a body that was murdered in the same way as Reggie was.”
“Really?” Dane appeared interested. “It didn’t happen to be the body of −-“
Marla nodded her head. “It was Jared Hopkins, yeah. He was killed by Slasher Saul. I noticed his body because I lived in the apartment next to his girlfriend, Jessica.”
Dane was agape. “I keep hearing about this Slasher Saul from the other detectives. I’m new to this town so I’m not familiar with the case. I only just moved here at the start of the summer to take up a rookie detective position. We arrived here a couple of hours before you did to study the crime scene. We found no signs of a murder weapon or a break-in. I’ve been told this scene bears a similarity to the scene where Jared was found. ”
“That’s right,” Marla said.
She was happy to fill in Dane on the details. She told him that Slasher Saul was a troub
led young man who’d killed Jared out of jealousy. Saul was once Jessica’s boyfriend. He’d discovered where Jessica had moved with her new boyfriend and had snuck into the building. Jessica had been out of the apartment for work and had left the door unlocked. Wallsberg never had been known to be a dangerous place, and so people had often left their doors unlocked. Naturally, that all had changed once people learned about Slasher Saul.
“Honestly, if I hadn’t stumbled upon Jared’s murdered body and called the police, I never would have become interested in funeral services,” Marla said to Dane. “At the time I was only eighteen and didn’t know what I’d wanted to do with my life. I did a lot of research about the Slasher Saul case, as well as death and the funeral process. I’d found it fascinating.”
Dane hummed in thought. “I find it intriguing that you coincidentally were summoned to remove a body that was murdered the same way as a body you’d witnessed years ago. Not only that, but it’s also a hell of a coincidence that you used to live here.”
Dane studied Marla for a moment, his hand stroking his chin. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the way he was looking at her. It was almost as if he was suspicious of her. Either that, or he was checking her out. Marla preferred the latter.
“The universe works in strange and mysterious ways,” she said.
The two of them had reached the back of the van. Marla locked the wheels of the stretcher and opened the back doors. The van had a driver’s seat and a passenger’s seat but no back seats. This allowed room for a body. Dane made a move to help her.
“I can take it from here,” she told him. She unlocked the wheels and pushed the stretcher head in until the wheels made contact with the back of the van. She then pushed a lever to collapse the wheels, allowing her to push the stretcher into the van.
“Thanks for your help,” Marla said.
Dane nodded. “You’re welcome.” He reached into the pocket of the police-issued jacket he was wearing, removing a card. “This is the number of the police station, with my extension. If you think of anything that could be helpful to our case, feel free to give me a call.”
Marla accepted the card. She felt hot all over, though it wasn’t a particularly hot night. She watched as Dane walked away. The back of him looked just as good as the front of him.
She sighed dreamily as she closed the trunk and entered the van.
Don’t you worry, Dane, I’ll find some reason to see you again!
***
Being in the funeral home alone at night was an eerie experience. After years of working in the industry, one would think she’d get used to the feeling, but she hadn’t. As she entered the dark elevator that led to the embalming room, she felt a shiver go up her spine.
The elevator was an industrial one designed to hold heavy loads. Marla and the workers at Oswald Funeral Home used it to transport the deceased, caskets, and other thingsto different floors of the building. It also was more fun to take the elevator than climb the stairs, in the light of the day that is.
The minute she stepped out of the elevator she flicked on the lights, making the atmosphere much less ominous.
The embalming room where she spent the majority of her time working was a white-walled space with several stainless steel tables. Outside of the embalming room was a room called the holding room. This was where embalmed bodies would remain wrapped in sheets and resting on tables patiently awaiting their time to be dressed and placed in a casket for their service.
Whenever a body was removed, it was protocol for the funeral director who performed the removal to transfer the body onto a table. Seeing as Marla was planning on driving the body to the forensic lab first thing in the morning, she simply wheeled the stretcher into the embalming room and left it. Because she’d taken the van to her place for the night, she could have left the body in the back and gone directly to her place, but there was something about having a dead body in her driveway that made her uncomfortable. That, plus the van being unable to keep the body cool, convinced her the embalming room was the best place for Reggie to rest.
Good thing Speckleman didn’t remove this body! Marla thought as she returned to the van.
David Speckleman was another of Marla’s coworkers. He embalmed quite often with Marla, and she hated it. Speckleman was a lazy worker and he wasn’t particularly bright. If he’d been the one to remove Reggie’s body, he’d have driven directly back to his place with the man’s body still in the van.
By the time the morning came, the body would be in advanced stages of decomposition due to the summer heat. Marla knew two environmental factors sped up decay: moisture and heat. If he had done that and the boss had found out, there was no doubt he’d be fired. The only reason Specklemanhadn’t been fired yet was he was good at keeping his devastating short-cuts a secret.
The worst thing about Speckleman was he was able to sit down with families and arrange funerals when Marla wasn’t. He never let Marla hear the end of that. While it was true that Marla was much younger than Speckleman and much less experienced in the field, she knew she could interact respectfully with others. She just needed to practice.
One would think she’d have received the necessary training to interact with families during her internship. Sadly, this had not been the case. One of the requirements to become a funeral director was to complete a year’s internship at a funeral home. During her internship, Marla had been bounced around different places, never able to settle into one before having to switch to another.
This had been due to her superiors having a lack of interest in helping her grow. Instead of teaching Marla the right way to do something after making a mistake, she either would be fired for the mistake or forced to quit. Her journey from intern to the licensed funeral director she was now had been a stressful one. She was beyond thankful she’d landed a position with Oswald’s.
Perhaps the best way to perfect her social skills was to sit down with Jackie during a slow day at the funeral home and do a mock arrangement. Jackie would act as the client and Marla the funeral director, guiding her through the service options. All Marla had to do was prove to her employer, Mr. Oswald, that she was ready for more responsibilities besides embalming and removals.
Just don’t make any morbid jokes while discussing options, Marla told herself.
She’d sat in on arrangements before, as well as acted as an assistant during the meetings. Never had she spoken alone with a family. It was discouraging to Marla to think that she was now more than five years into her career and never had been permitted to conduct an arrangement. It made her feel as though she was a social pariah − the kind of person who lived all bent over at the top of a creepy clock tower.
Quit fussing about it! Marla thought.
She now was curled up in her bed trying to fall asleep before she had to get up again. Once Marla was up, she found it difficult to get back to sleep. When she finally did manage to fall asleep, she felt as though she’d only just closed her eyes when she heard her alarm blaring.
With a hefty groan, she rolled out of bed. The beginning of her workday started at nine. It was now twenty minutes after eight.
So much for breakfast.
Marla dressed in her suit, brushed her teeth, and hurried out the door. Every job had its drawbacks. One of those for Marla was having to dress in the same drab attire every day. When she’d graduated middle school and been in search of a high school to attend, she’d purposefully gone with one that didn’t force her to wear an ugly uniform. On the plus side, Marla didn’t have to put any thought into what she was going to wear every day.
She pulled into the funeral home parking lot at the same time as Jackie.
Jackie peered through the back windows of the van. She pulled her sunglasses over her head as she did so.
“Hey, you did a removal last night,” she remarked after noticing the absence of the stretcher.