Page 4 of Crown of Death
Twenty-four minutes later, I unlock the doors and walk into the funeral home. Down the stairs I trudge, still hardly able to keep my eyes open. I hang my bag on the hook and pull on my labcoat.
“You said it’d be twenty minutes,” Em growls as I push through the double doors. “That was five minutesago.”
“My alarm said it was supposed to be three hours from now,” I say as I pull on some gloves. “We can’t all get what wewant.”
I turn, and see the body that Emmanuel is trying to workon.
I saytrying, because the poor woman is resting on the table in two pieces, the rest of her inribbons.
“Holy hell,” I breathe as I walk over, taking herin.
Her head has been torn from her body. It nearly looks like it wasbittenoff. The skin of her neck, though now gray and flat from loss of water, is torn and obviously ripped. The rest of her lies just below the head. She’s covered from head to toe in bruises andscratches.
I see four indents and then long scratch marks. As if she were grabbed, tried to run, only the assailant didn’t letgo.
These marks are all over herbody.
Her fingernails are broken and ragged, tornoff.
“She fought hard,” I say, taking her hand and holding it, looking at how some of them are broken cleanoff.
“Yes, she did,” Em agrees, pausing, looking at this poor woman. “Every bit of her shows signs of beating. Like whoever did this played with her first. Like a cat and itsprey.”
“Have the police caught who did this?” Iask.
I’ve seen some pretty rough things down here in the basement of the mortuary. A lot of blood. Other bodily fluids. Gunshots. Rope burns aroundnecks.
But even my stomach turns at the sight of thiswoman.
Emmanuel shakes his head. “Not yet. But the family is desperate to give her closure. To move on. Her body has been with the coroner for two weeks already. They just released it to me this morning. Family wants to bury hertomorrow.”
“Open casket?” I ask inhorror.
Emmanuel’s gray eyes slide over to mine, and his own face a little pale,nods.
I let out a slow breath between my lips. Inod.
And we get towork.
Having to deal with Shylock and giving him most of my money was bad enough. And nowthis…
The news is filled with all kinds of horrible things that lead to dead people. Explosions. War. Massshootings.
Sometimes you see pictures of bodies scattered about. Maybe all their parts aren’t still connected to them. Your stomach turns. You say a littleprayer.
Your life moveson.
Those bodies move on,too.
To people like Emmanuel andmyself.
We do the best we can to put them back together. To make them look like they once did. So that those loved ones still here in this life can moveon.
One square inch of her at a time, we move. Stitching up. Using wax to close over parts of her that cannot be pieced together. We usetubesof makeup. Carefully, so carefully not to pull any of it out, because it’s been so much time, we brush her hair and carefully arrangeit.
We return her head atop her shoulders. For hours we work on making it look like there aren’t huge chunks of flesh missing. We cover it allup.
“Who would do this?” I say in a whisper. Half to Emmanuel. Half to this woman. As if she could answer me and tell me the horrific truths of what she saw in her finalmoments.