Authors: Todd Ritter
“As you know,” she said, “whoever killed George also tried to embalm him. In order to understand how and why, we need to see the whole embalming process. From start to finish.”
She knew it was an odd request. So odd, in fact, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Art flatly refused. But he seemed to understand the strangeness of the situation. Without thinking it over, he said, “Certainly.”
He led them to the funeral home’s basement, guiding them to a small changing room under the steps. Kat went first, stripping down to her T-shirt and trousers and slipping on surgical scrubs that matched Art’s own. She topped off the absurd outfit with a blue cap over her hair and paper booties on her shoes.
As Kat left the changing area open for Nick, Art called to her from the embalming room, which sat to her immediate left.
“Come right on in.”
Kat wanted to leave the embalming room as soon as she entered it. The white-tiled space was cold, for one thing, the chill instantly forming goose bumps on her arms. It also was eerily immaculate, as clean and sterile as an operating room. As she looked around, the scent of ammonia and formaldehyde tickled her nose and stuck to the back of her throat.
In the center of the room was a body lying on a stainless steel table. Large lights hung over the corpse, casting a brutal, white glow onto it. Beneath the table, the concrete floor gently slanted to a conspicuous drain.
“This is where we do it,” Art said, standing next to the table.
Kat couldn’t take her eyes off the body. It belonged to an elderly woman with a white sheet draped over everything but her head and bare feet. It took Kat a moment to realize she knew the woman, causing her to gasp when recognition hit.
“That’s Barbara Hanover.”
Art confirmed it with a solemn nod. “She died in her sleep during the night.”
As a little girl, Kat had purchased candy from Mrs. Hanover every Saturday at the store she ran with her husband. She had been a jovial woman, quick with a smile and a free Jolly Rancher. Standing in the same room as her corpse, Kat felt like she was violating the woman in unspeakable ways.
She was grateful when Nick finally entered the embalming room. His new uniform of crisp scrubs gave her something other than Mrs. Hanover’s body to look at.
“I’m assuming both of you know very little about the embalming process,” Art said.
“Nothing at all,” Nick said, answering for both of them. “But I understand it’s very important.”
The mortician beamed. “Oh, it is. The most important aspect of my job is creating a memory picture for the family of
the deceased to take with them. They find it helps with the grieving process.”
Kat recalled the way both her mother and father had looked in their caskets. Contrary to what Arthur McNeil thought, it didn’t help her one bit. The images were something she wished she could forget.
The door to the embalming room opened and Art’s son, Robert, emerged, also dressed in scrubs. Unlike the rest of them, he wore a rubber apron tight around his torso.
“What are they doing here?” he asked, his voice harsh in the hushed atmosphere of the embalming room.
Kat graduated high school a class behind Bob, and the intervening years hadn’t changed him one bit. The polar opposite of his father, he was without manners of any stripe. Kat knew part of Bob’s rudeness stemmed from his lifelong outcast status. He was an ungainly, unattractive boy, whose social life didn’t benefit any from living above a funeral home.
Things only got worse for Bob when he turned ten, the year his mother, no longer able to live among the dead, decided to become one of them. Wearing three layers of heavy clothes, a brick shoved into every pocket, she threw herself into Lake Squall, the water quickly consuming her.
Leota McNeil stayed underwater for three days. When she finally floated to the surface, Kat’s father was unlucky enough to find her.
Kat vividly remembered the conversation that took place that night at the dinner table. Her father doled out details to her mother, who clucked with sympathy. He then turned to Kat and said, “Be nice to Robert McNeil the next time you see him at school. Give him a little smile in the halls.”
The next day, to everyone’s surprise, Bob showed up at school, thudding through the halls with the same old chip on his shoulder. When he neared her, Kat recalled her father’s
words and forced a smile. Bob ignored it, giving her a withering glance as he barreled on by.
It surprised no one when he went into the family business after high school. The general thinking was that Bob McNeil had to work with the dead because he didn’t know how to act among the living. They also suspected that he continued to reside with his father because Art was the only person who could tolerate him.
“Chief Campbell and Lieutenant Donnelly are here to observe the embalming process,” Art said, as his son moved deeper into the embalming room. “You will extend them every courtesy, understand?”
He then turned to Kat. “Despite his ornery mood, I know Robert will be a huge help. He always is. I’ve found that children of single parents are especially attuned to the needs of the remaining parent. Like your son, for instance. How
is
James?”
“He’s doing great,” Kat said.
Art seemed pleased by the news. “I’m happy to hear that. James is such a good boy. Very special. You should be proud of him.”
She assured him she was, which satisfied Art. With a smile and a wave, he said, “It was a pleasure seeing you again, Kat. And very nice meeting you, Lieutenant. Be sure to ask Robert any question you want.”
“You’re leaving?”
The nervousness in Kat’s voice was obvious to both father and son, but she couldn’t help it. Bob McNeil was the last person she wanted to be with in an embalming room.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Art said. “I work days. Robert works nights. But truth be told, he’s a better embalmer than I’ve ever been. You’re in good hands.”
Arthur departed, leaving Kat and Nick alone with one corpse and one mortician. It was like school all over again, with the mere presence of Bob McNeil creeping her out.
“How have you been, Bob?” she asked, trying to make an effort to sound casual and friendly.
The mortician wasn’t buying any of it. Slipping a surgical mask over his nose and mouth, he said, “You ready?”
With the mask and cap on, the only part of Bob’s face still visible were his too-large eyes. They were exaggerated further by the pair of Coke-bottle glasses he was forced to wear beginning in junior high. The lenses caused his eyes to look positively huge, which always made Kat think of a deranged Muppet.
“I guess we are,” she said. “How long do you think this will take?”
“Not long. This one should be pretty easy. She’s in good shape. Bodies that are really banged up or autopsied like George take much longer.”
Bob whipped off the white sheet, leaving the body of Barbara Hanover fully exposed, with every wrinkle and sag on her chalk-colored skin visible. Nearby sat a stainless steel tray on wheeled legs, which he pulled to his side. Arranged on the tray were plastic bottles, a few folded towels, and medical instruments of various shapes and sizes. Within seconds, Bob was dipping a sponge attached to a wooden stick into a sudsy fluid. He then used it to swab the body.
“What are you doing?” Kat asked, oddly fascinated by the way Bob efficiently wiped down the body.
“Cleaning her,” he replied, the sponge sliding over the corpse’s drooping breasts. “I’m using a germicide. Kills off bacteria.”
When he finished with the skin, Bob dipped a smaller sponge attached to a longer stick into the cleaning solution. This he used to swab first inside the corpse’s mouth and then in each nostril.
With the cleaning over, he began to knead the body, his hands working down its arms and legs.
“This loosens things up,” he said, moving to the shoulders. “Rigor mortis makes the corpse tight.”
“Is this done to all the bodies?” Nick asked.
“For the most part. Some are in better shape than others, but all need a little work.”
He rubbed a greasy, butter-colored lotion onto the corpse’s hands, massaging it into the skin at the knuckles and on the surface of the palms. He then did the same thing to the face, rubbing the lotion deep into the wrinkles on Mrs. Hanover’s cheeks and forehead.
“Moisturizer,” he said. “Keeps things soft.”
“When does the actual embalming begin?” Nick asked.
“In a minute. I need to set the features first.”
“What does that involve?”
“Arranging the face to prepare it for viewing.”
As he spoke, Bob shoved a clot of cotton into Barbara Hanover’s nostrils. He then took a large clump of it and, holding the mouth open, placed it deep in the back of her throat.
“The cotton blocks any leakage,” he said. “That’s the first step. The eyes are next.”
From the tray, he picked up a concave disc made of white plastic. One side of it was smooth, the other studded with small V-shaped hooks.
“This is an eye cap. Sometimes the eyes don’t stay closed. Because the last thing you want is a corpse’s eyes coming open during the viewing, we have to force them shut. In the old days, they used—”
“Coins,” Kat said, unable to keep her brain from conjuring up the image of twin Honest Abes covering George Winnick’s eyes.
Working on the left one first, Bob pulled the eyelid away and slipped the cap smooth-side down onto the eye itself. He let the eyelid drop onto the studded side, where it stuck to the
cap, staying permanently closed. He then repeated the process with the right eyelid.
“Are the lips next?” Nick asked.
Bob looked at him, grudgingly impressed. “Yes, they are.”
“Is it true that you sew them shut?”
“We do the entire mouth, at the jaw. George’s lips were sewn shut, right?”
Kat replied with a weak nod, recalling the horrible pattern of thread that had overlapped George’s blood-flecked lips.
“Why do you think the killer did that?”
“We don’t know,” Kat said. “We don’t know why he did any of this. But we intend to find out.”
“I’ll show you how the pros do it.”
Bob’s voice was filled with a cold braggadocio that unnerved her. He actually
enjoyed
doing this, she realized with a chill. His tone made that abundantly clear.
She also suspected he was trying to show off in a warped attempt to impress them. His hands worked rapidly, with a flourish common to magicians and blackjack dealers. He wanted them to notice the nimbleness of his fingers. It was impossible not to. Despite all of his flaws, Bob McNeil was an expert at his job.
Next, he removed a needle from the tray. It was long—almost six inches—and curved slightly at the end.
“Watch this,” he said, threading it with heavy suture string.
Kat winced as Bob parted the lips then poked the needle through the lower gums of the corpse’s mouth. With his fingers inside the mouth, he shoved the needle through the upper jaw and into the right nostril, pulling the thread through. He next thrust the needle through the nose’s septum and pushed it down through the left nostril. After taking the needle through the upper jaw again and back to the bottom gums, he tugged, pulling both sets of jaws tightly together.
“That’s how it’s done.”
Pleased with his work, Bob picked up a crescent-shaped device made of transparent plastic. Just like the eye caps, one side contained small ridges designed to hold flesh in place.
“This is the mouth form,” he said, as he parted Mrs. Hanover’s lips to place the device over her teeth. Lowering the lips onto it, he delicately shaped them until they lay flat against each other.
Finished, he clapped his hands together and announced, “Now, we embalm.”
A second wheeled tray stood in the corner. On top of it sat a chunky, box-shaped appliance with two knobs flanking a half-circle meter. A rubber hose, yellowed by age and chemicals, stuck out of the side. Sitting on top was a rectangular basin capped with a stainless steel lid.
“Is that the embalming machine?” Kat asked, slightly horrified by the antique look of it.
“It is.”
Bob retreated to a cabinet along the wall, removing several bottles of liquid, all marked with the jagged symbol designating them as hazardous materials. Slipping on heavy-duty latex gloves, he turned to them and said, “Put your masks on. Take shallow breaths. And for God’s sake, stand back.”
Both of them took the warning seriously, moving backward in large steps until their spines touched the wall. When Bob opened one of the bottles, Kat slipped the mask over her nose and mouth before covering them with both hands.
Bob spent a few moments measuring and pouring liquids into the cylinder. Every so often, he glanced at the body, deciding how much he would need and of what kind. He was unfazed by the chemicals, although they were so strong Kat smelled them through both the mask and her laced fingers.
Voice muffled by the double barrier, she asked, “What are you mixing?”
“Arterial fluid, coinjection fluid, and just plain water.”
Nick gave the next question. “What’s coinjection fluid?”