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  Above the ringing in my ears, I hear Karen yell, “You’ll be sorry, David. Don’t do it or you’ll be sorry.” David’s only response is to slam the door. I watch Karen march down the driveway and climb into her car, and as soon as the engine turns over, I disentangle my foot and slide off the wheelbarrow into a heap on the ground.

  The pain is incredible and I make a quick deal with God, promising to cut off my right arm if she’ll just toss down a syringe full of morphine. Then I quickly amend that to my left arm, realizing I will need the right one to administer the shot. But either God has better things to do or the fact that I haven’t been to church in twenty years has her feeling less than generous.

  After a few minutes of quiet agony, I struggle to my feet and lurch home. I briefly consider running a bath and soaking for an hour or so to ease the aches, but it sounds like too much work. Besides, my injuries go beyond the mere physical; my emotions feel as raw and abused as my crotch.

  Sleep beckons and I figure a night of rest will not only get me through the worst of the physical pain, it will allow me to bury my emotions inside a cloud of oblivion. I limp into the bedroom, strip my slacks and underwear off in one fell swoop, gingerly kick them away, and then ease myself into bed still wearing my shirt and bra. As my head hits the pillow, I feel something hard poke me. I reach up, pull a chunk of mulch from my hair, and toss it onto the floor. I’m about to turn out the light when it hits me.

  I sit up and pat my head, even though I already know what I’ll find…or rather what I won’t find. Frantic, I look around the bedroom, but there is no sign of the scarf anywhere. Grunting with pain, I crawl out of bed and retrace my steps to the front door, peering through the window at the porch. Nothing.

  Shit.

  I pray the scarf dropped in the woods somewhere and isn’t lying beneath the window next to the wheelbarrow. Oh, God. The wheelbarrow!

  I groan and briefly consider going back to eliminate the evidence of my visit but the pain between my legs wins out. Morning will be soon enough, I decide. Instead, I gimp my way to the bathroom, swallow a handful of aspirin, and head back to bed.

  I’m asleep in ten minutes flat; humiliation is very exhausting.

  Chapter 4

  The shrill chirp of a beeper brings me instantly awake. I sit bolt upright in the bed and reach over to turn on the light. Years of pulling on-call duty in the OR have trained me well, but for a second or two I’m confused. Part of my mind is telling me to get dressed and drive to the hospital, but another part reminds me that I don’t work there anymore. Still another part wonders why it feels like I’m about to give birth to a bowling ball. Wincing against the pain, I hang my legs over the edge of the bed and grab the beeper.

  It’s Izzy. I know that without looking at the readout since he’s the one who gave me the damned thing in the first place, in case he got a call. I mumble a curse, first at him, then at myself for being dumb enough to give in to his stupid idea.

  Glancing at the clock I see that it’s just past three in the morning—an inhuman hour by anyone’s standards—and decide to ignore the page. I can’t call Izzy anyway; I never bothered to have the phone turned on since my original plan was to stay in the cottage for no more than a few days. And I figure if I don’t show up, Izzy will just go on without me. So I might as well go back to sleep. Pleased with my decision, I ease back into bed and pull the covers up. The next thing I know, Izzy is standing over me, shaking my shoulder.

  “Come on, Mattie. Get up. We have a call. A homicide.”

  “I don’t want a call,” I whine, throwing off his hand and burrowing deeper under the covers. “And I sure as hell don’t want a homicide.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, Izzy. I assure you, I don’t.”

  “Get up.”

  “It’s three in the morning. Can’t these criminals honor banker’s hours?”

  “Come on. Dom’s making coffee, if that will help. It won’t be so bad once we’re there. You know how it is. Once you’re up and moving, it’s a piece of cake.”

  Easy for him to say. He doesn’t have a hematoma the size of Texas in his crotch.

  “Just go on without me,” I tell him. “I’ll catch the next one.” He steps closer and starts to make a grab for my covers but I stop him cold by saying, “I’m naked from the waist down.”

  He backs up like I pulled a gun on him, his hands held out in front of him. “Fine, if you want to play hardball, I will too. If you don’t get up, I’ll start telling people your real name.”

  Moaning, I roll over, give him a dirty look, and sit up, feeling a million muscles scream in agony. My right leg, the one with the mangled ankle, is numb clear to the thigh.

  He bends over, picks my pants up from the floor, and tosses them at me. “Put these on and let’s go.”

  I stare at the pants a minute, my bleary mind still struggling to come fully awake. “How’d you get in here?” I ask.

  “I have a key, remember? But that’s beside the point since you didn’t bother to lock the door.” He eyes me warily a moment, then asks, “What the hell is that in your hair?”

  I reach up and pull out several small pieces of mulch. Tossing them on the floor, I say, “New hair treatment. This herbal stuff is all the rage now, you know.”

  He stares at me, then shakes his head and turns away. “I’ll be waiting in the living room. Hurry please.”

  I’m feeling cranky so I give a petulant stomp of my foot once for good measure, then swallow down a shriek of pain when I discover that my injured ankle isn’t nearly as numb as I thought. Once the stars go out, I start pulling on my slacks and have my bad leg in before I realize I’ve forgotten my panties. I look around on the floor, don’t see them, and figure they must be under the bed. Getting them will mean kneeling down, and I’m not too keen on that idea. As stiff as my body feels, I’m afraid I won’t be able to get back up again, and the thought of having to call to Izzy for help while I’m on the floor with my naked ass in the air isn’t very appealing. The dresser is across the room and I eye it for a second before deciding to go commando. At least I won’t have to worry about unsightly panty lines.

  Five minutes later I’ve plucked the rest of the mulch from my hair and we are on our way, Izzy behind the wheel. His car, a 1963 Chevy Impala, fully restored, has a bench front seat. In order to reach the pedals, Izzy has the seat up as far as it will go, which leaves me scrunched like a pretzel, my knees just under my chin. One good bump and I’ll have teeth coming out my nose.

  “What have we got?” I ask, finally awake enough to remember that my job now entails messing with dead bodies.

  “A residential break-in, possibly a robbery. There’s one victim—a woman.”

  I nod thoughtfully, as if such a scenario is a part of everyday business, but the truth is, Izzy’s words strike fear in my heart. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in small-town America. I console myself with the thought that it probably happened in a bad section of town, the result of bad people doing bad things, like a drug deal gone wrong. But then Izzy pulls up in front of a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Several police cars, an ambulance, and four or five other cars are parked willy-nilly out front, the darkened, quiet light bars on the official vehicles serving as a grim testament to the situation inside. On a nearby lawn, a small cluster of neighbors congregate, whispering and gawking.

  After I climb out of the car, Izzy reaches over, opens the glove box, and removes a small, plastic wallet. He hands it to me and says, “Keep this with you at all times. You never know when it might come in handy.”

  I flip the wallet open and see an ID card with my picture on it—the same picture that is on my driver’s license, I note. It identifies me as a deputy coroner for the county but lest there be any doubt, there is also a shiny, brass-colored badge in the wallet with DEPUTY CORONER written across the top in bright blue. Izzy obviously didn’t waste any time once I agreed to go out on a call with him,
and I’m tempted to act annoyed at his presumptuousness. But the badge is kind of cool looking and, in an odd way, it makes me feel important. So I hook the wallet in the waist of my pants with the badge showing and follow Izzy toward the house.

  Normally, my long-legged stride puts me yards ahead of his stubby-legged one, but tonight it is all I can do to keep up. I think my bowling ball may be crowning and the numbness in my right leg is rapidly receding—something I’m not at all sure is a good thing. Izzy pauses on the porch, reaches into the black suitcase he is carrying, and hands me a pair of latex gloves.

  “Put these on,” he says. “Then stick your hands in your pockets and keep them there unless I ask you to do something. Don’t touch anything.”

  I do what he says, thrusting my hands into my pants’ pockets and trying to look like I know what I’m doing. A uniformed police officer meets us at the door, nods at Izzy, and then waves us into the house. Two steps later I catch my first whiff of death—a smell I’ve come to know during my years working the ER. It’s a distinctly unpleasant scent, a mix of blood and other bodily excretes that are released when sphincters relax.

  The house is a nice one, tastefully decorated in a contemporary fashion with thick carpet that cushions my aching feet. As we pass through a formal living room into a family room, I feel something odd near my injured ankle where the nerve endings are now rapidly coming to life. I glance down to see the bottom eight inches of my pant leg bulging on one side, as if my calf is sporting a woody. Only, this woody is composed of white cotton edged in elastic, a small portion of which is peeking out just above my shoe.

  I’ve found my missing underwear.

  After a quick glance around to be sure no one is watching, I do a little Riverdance maneuver and the panties slide the rest of the way out, settling on the floor between my foot and a nearby chair. I am about to snatch them up when I hear a voice say, “Hey, Izzy!” and sense someone approaching.

  With one quick flick of my foot I kick the panties under the chair, and then look up to see who’s coming. My eyes lock in on a tall man with a craggy but handsome face and a head of thick, black hair. He steps up to Izzy and briefly shakes his hand, then turns his gaze toward me. As I take in blue eyes, black lashes, and a stature of at least six-four, my heart rate speeds up a notch or two.

  “This is Mattie Winston, my new deputy coroner,” Izzy says, making the introductions. “Mattie, this is Detective Steve Hurley. He’s with Homicide.”

  Kill me now.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” I say, extending a gloved hand over Izzy’s shoulder and praying I won’t drool. Hurley grabs my hand and gives it a brief squeeze. My face flushes hot, then the heat spreads. I wonder if Detective Hurley has ever investigated a case of spontaneous combustion before, or if I’m about to become his first.

  “Have you ever processed a homicide scene before?” Hurley asks.

  “No, I—”

  “She’s a nurse,” Izzy says. “Worked at Mercy up until a couple of months ago.”

  I can’t figure out if this is a good thing or not, or even what relevance it has. Apparently, neither can Hurley. His brows draw down in puzzlement for a second, but then he shrugs and says, “Whatever. Just be careful what you touch.” With that, he turns away and heads toward a group of people huddled together in the middle of the room.

  I steal a glance toward the floor, relieved to see that my panties are well out of sight, and then follow Izzy into the room as I wonder how I’m going to get the panties back. A second later, the huddle of people opens up to let Izzy through and all thoughts of my underwear flee my mind.

  Lying on the floor in front of me with a bullet hole in her chest is Karen Owenby.

  Chapter 5

  I gasp, and everyone in the room turns to stare at me. Detective Hurley gives me a scathing look, which he then turns on Izzy. “Don’t tell me she’s never seen a dead body before.”

  “I’ve seen dead bodies before,” I snap, like this is a good thing. “But I know this one. I mean, I knew her. That’s Karen Owenby.”

  Hurley’s eyes narrow.

  Izzy looks at the dead woman, then at me, then back at her. “Are you sure?” he says, leaning close and whispering into my left breast. “I don’t see any snakes coming out of her head.”

  I give him a shut-up nudge with my elbow and follow it up with the death-ray look I learned from my mother, which zips by harmlessly a good six inches above his head.

  Hurley’s eyes narrow even more, tiny slits with their own death rays emanating from them, straight in my direction. “How do you know her?” he asks.

  “I worked with her at the hospital. She’s a sl—a nurse in the operating room there.”

  Hurley turns and looks at one of the uniformed officers in the group, who nods at him.

  Izzy grabs my elbow and steers me a few feet away. “This really is her?” he says in a low whisper.

  I nod, too numb to speak. In my mind’s eye I can see David shaking Karen by the shoulders only hours before, an expression of dark fury on his face.

  “Look, if you’d rather wait outside, I’ll understand. I didn’t know…”

  I swallow hard and consider his offer. But all my mind can focus on is the scene I witnessed earlier. Finally I shake my head. “I’ll stay,” I manage.

  Izzy eyes me worriedly. “You sure?”

  I nod again, this time with conviction. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Okay, then. Here’s what we do.”

  Izzy first asks Hurley to walk us through what has happened so far. One of the uniformed officers, a guy named Larry whom I know from my days working the ER, explains that a frantic 911 call came in from this address, made by a woman named Susan McNally, the victim’s roommate. Apparently Susan came home from a date and found the victim dead on the floor.

  Larry then explains how he and another officer were the first to arrive and he tells Izzy everything they did to determine the victim’s situation and secure the scene.

  “This information is critical,” Izzy informs me as he scribbles notes in a small pad, “in establishing what led up to the victim’s death. Plus, we need to know everyone who might have had contact with the body. If we find any trace evidence that isn’t from the victim, we need to be able to determine its source and its significance.”

  Izzy walks me through the process of identifying and establishing a perimeter around the body, which includes blood splatters that spread well beyond the immediate area. Someone, most likely the roommate, has already walked through one small pool of blood, tracking it through part of the house before the police arrived. Izzy carefully photographs the blood splatters, the footprints, and finally, the body itself. In addition to the pictures, he draws a sketch of the area in his notebook, showing the general layout of the room, what pieces of furniture are where, and the position and location of the body.

  When this is finished, he removes a package from his suitcase that contains a folded, white, paper sheet, which, when opened to its full size, is some ten feet square. We lay it out alongside Karen’s body so that when we turn her over onto it, any trace evidence that might be clinging to her body will be captured on the sheet, which will then stay with the body until it reaches the morgue.

  Using rubber bands, we secure brown paper bags over Karen’s hands, labeling them with the date and our initials. Izzy explains that this is to preserve any trace evidence that might be found on the hands or beneath the nails, and that paper bags are used rather than plastic ones to prevent moisture buildup, which can damage certain types of evidence.

  As we work, Izzy points out certain details that will help us determine how long Karen has been dead. There is a flattening and clouding of her corneas, and while her skin feels cool to the touch, it still feels warmer than the ambient temperature in the room. Izzy shows me how to assess the degree of rigor mortis that has developed, which in this case, only involves the muscles of the face and jaw. We then turn Karen over onto the sheet and check her back, arms
, and legs for livor mortis—a discoloration of the skin caused by blood pooling. This is complicated by the vast amount of congealing blood clinging to Karen’s back. The bullet’s exit wound is here too—a jagged hole three times the size of the entry wound.

  After assessing all these factors, Izzy makes the pronouncement that Karen has been dead for at least two hours, but probably not more than four.

  I get caught up in the technicalities and science of what we’re doing, forgetting at times that this is the dead body of someone I knew and worked with for more than six years. But every so often the realization that this cooling, empty shell of flesh is Karen Owenby hits me like a cold wave breaking over my back. It is impossible not to identify with her…to wonder if her death was instantaneous, or if she lay there a while knowing she was dying, unable to get help, hoping someone would find her.

  I wonder who hated Karen enough to want her dead. A family member? An acquaintance? The roommate, perhaps?

  David?

  While we work, the people around us go about their own tasks, dusting surfaces for fingerprints, drawing sketches of the scene, taking photographs, and examining every square inch of the place. When we’re finished with our examination, Izzy and I wrap the white sheet around Karen’s body and slide her into a body bag. Two guys from the Johnson Funeral Home have been standing by, waiting for us to finish, and once we have the body bag loaded and closed, they hoist it onto their stretcher so they can carry it to the morgue. They’ve just started wheeling the stretcher toward the door when Hurley hollers out, “Hold it.”

  I turn to look along with everyone else and am horrified to see Hurley on his hands and knees in front of the chair that is hiding my underwear. With his gloved hand, he pulls the panties out and holds them gingerly between two fingers, looking at them as if they are some sort of toxic nuclear waste.