The second body arrived at the mortuary eight days later.
Mom and I had spoken little about my sociopathy, but I'd made sure to try harder in school as a way of throwing her off the scent—making, her think about my good traits instead of my disturbing ones. Apparently it worked, because when I came home to the mortuary after school and found them working on the second victim's body, Mom didn't stop me from pulling on an apron and mask and starting to help.
"What's missing?" I asked, holding bottles for Mom as she poured formaldehyde into the pump. Margaret had only a few organs on the side counter, and she was busily sticking them with the trocar and vacuuming them clean. I assumed the rest of the organs were already inside. Mom had covered the body with a sheet, and I didn't want to risk looking under it while she was standing right there. .ij,
"What?" asked Mom, watching the marks on the side of the pump tank as she poured.
"Last time there was a kidney missing," I said. "Which organ is it this time?"
"The organs are all there," she said, laughing. "Give Ron a break—he's not going to lose something every time. I talked to your sister about the paperwork, though, and how she needs to read it a little more closely and tell me about any abnormalities she finds. Sometimes I don't know what to do with that girl."
"But... are you sure?" I asked. The killer had to take something. "Maybe it was the gall bladder, and Ron just thought this guy'd had it removed already, so he didn't notice."
"John, Ron and the police—and the FBI, I should point out—have had this body for more than a week. Forensic experts have gone over it with a fine-toothed comb looking for everything they can find that will let them catch this sicko. If there was an organ missing, they would have noticed."
"He's leaking," I said, pointing at the body's left shoulder.
A bright blue chemical was oozing out from under the sheet, mixed with swirls of clotted blood.
"I thought I patched it better than that," Mom said, capping the formaldehyde and handing it to me. She pulled back the sheet to reveal the shoulder stump, tightly bandaged, the bottom half soaked through with blue-and-purple slime. The arm was gone. "Bother," she said, and started hunting for some more bandages.
"His arm is gone?" I looked up at my Mom. "I asked what was missing, and you didn't think to mention his arm?"
"What?" asked Margaret.
"The killer took the arm," I said, stepping up to the corpse and pulling back the sheet. The abdomen was torn open, like before, but not nearly so grotesquely; the gashes were smaller, and there were fewer of them. The dead farmer—Dave Bird, according to his tag—hadn't been gutted. "The eviscerating and the piling up the organs—he didn't do that this time."
"What are you doing?" said Mom harshly, snatching the sheet from my hand and covering the body back up. "Show some respect!"
I was talking too much, and I knew I was talking too much, but I couldn't stop. It was like my brain had been cut open, and every thought inside was spilling out on the floor.
"I thought he was doing something with the organs," I said, "but he was just sifting through them to find what he wanted.
He wasn't organizing them or playing with them or—"
"John Wayne Cleaver!" Mom said harshly. "What on Earth are you raving about?"
"This changes the whole profile," I said, willing myself to shut up, but my mouth just kept going. My new discovery was too exciting. "It's not what he's doing to the bodies, it's what he's taking from them. Pulling all the guts out was just an easy way to find a kidney, not a death ritual—"
"A death ritual?" asked Mom. Margaret put down the trocar and looked at me; I could feel their eyes boring into me, and I knew I was in trouble. I'd said far too much. "Would you like to explain yourself?" asked Mom.
I needed to play this off somehow, but I was too deep into it. "I was just saying that the killer wasn't playing with the bodies," I said. "That's good, right?"
"You were excited," Mom accused. "You were tickled pink about this man's dead body and the way it was torn open."
"But—"
"I saw joy in your face, John, and I don't think I've' ever seen it before, and it was because of a dead body—a real person, with a real family and a real life, and you can't get enough of it."
"No, that's not—" ,
"Out," Mom said, her voice thick with finality.
"What?"
"Out," she said. "You're not allowed in here anymore."
"You can't do that!" I shouted.
"I'm the owner and your mother," she said, "and you're getting far too worked up about this, and I don't like the way you're acting or the things you're talking about."
"But—"
"I should have done this a long time ago," she said, putting a hand on her hip. "You're restricted from the back room—
Margaret won't let you in either, and I'll let Lauren know, too.
It's time for you to get some normal hobbies and some real ' ' friends, and I don't want to hear any back talk about it."
"Mom!"