He’d added the twenty-five-foot walkway. It was crazy going even that short distance in a suit and tie and getting sweaty from the humidity or drenched from a downpour. He insisted on presenting a clean, crisply pressed appearance. Likewise, his entire place was kept meticulously.
The public areas—the viewing rooms and visitors’ lounge—were vacuumed daily, stocked with fresh flowers, furniture aligned at straight angles with ample room for foot traffic as well as coffin traffic. Even the back area that included the embalming room and walk-in refrigerator was spotless. The stainless-steel tables and shelves gleamed. The white linoleum floors and porcelain basins always had a glossy finish. The state inspectors constantly praised Scott and told him they wished all the places they had to inspect looked this good.
Now as he pulled up to the back door his eyes darted around, looking for a vehicle. Joe Black had been driving something different every time they’d met. Scott figured he must use various leased cars or perhaps rentals. Last night Joe had walked up the beach so Scott hadn’t even seen what he was driving. But there wasn’t a vehicle anywhere in sight. Could he have finished already? Or maybe he hadn’t started yet.
Scott disarmed the alarm system and had his key in the door when he heard something rattling against the back of the building. He stopped and leaned around the corner. A rusted old shopping cart had been wedged between the trunk of a magnolia tree and his Dumpster.
Damn! He hated people snooping around his property, leaving trash. It cost money to empty that frickin’ Dumpster.
He was shaking his head, still cursing under his breath, when he went inside. He immediately reset the alarm.
Scott understood that there were specific reasons why he had become a mortician. He didn’t really like working with people. Sure, he had to advise and guide the bereaved, but it was easier to work with people when they were at their most vulnerable. They automatically looked to him as the expert. There was a built-in respect that came with the job title.
He actually didn’t mind working with dead people. Trish insisted that much of what he did was creepy and gross: the makeup, hairstyling, and clothes. Sometimes he had to paint the skin or sew up leaking orifices. And there were the plastic lenses he inserted beneath the eyelids to keep the eyes from popping open in the middle of a memorial.
Even the blood didn’t bother him. You drained it out and replaced it with embalming fluid. Oh sure, you couldn’t avoid blood leaking out sometimes, but it never sprayed or splattered like it did from a live, pumping heart. And yet, despite all the awkward and messy jobs Scott had done, nothing had prepared him for what he saw.
He backed up and stayed in the doorway, his hand pressed against the wall, needing it to steady himself.
Pink liquid pooled on the white linoleum floor and filled the troughs alongside the stainless-steel tables. A cardboard box blocked his entry, the type Scott used for bodies transported to the crematory, only this one held wadded-up bundles of clothes. On one of the tables lay a torso—the head, arms, and legs gone. On the other lay a corpse. It looked peaceful until Scott realized its knees and feet were cut and in between its legs.
Joe Black stood at the counter. When he turned around, Scott saw the front of his lab gown, his latex gloves, and his shoe covers, all soaked with blood.
“Oh hey, Scott, you’re just in time. I could use some help.”
CHAPTER 14
Scott Larsen hadn’t taken time to change out of his suit from Sunday-morning service at First United Christ. Trish was used to him dropping her off at home before he headed over to the funeral home, but this morning she had been on edge about the hurricane.
“We need to start thinking about what we’re going to do,” she nagged at him all the way home. “We probably need some plywood to board up the patio doors.”
“The thing hasn’t even gotten into the Gulf yet,” Scott had countered.
He was impatient with all this worry over something that might not even come their way. Besides, he hated leaving Joe Black the run of his embalming room. The guy insisted Scott give him a key and security code so he could start work. Other than accepting delivery and providing temporary cold storage of a few specimens for Black to pick up en route to one of his doctors’ conferences, this was their first real business dealing.