Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
"Roger."
Hess watched her slide the
two smaller ends of a metal joint into the cut of the artery and connect the
tube to a black hose coming from a machine. It was like setting up a drip irrigator
for your tomatoes. Bonnie flipped a switch on the machine. A moment later it
was
chunka-thunking.
Hess noted that the
machine was a Porti-Boy. It looked kind of like a giant blender. The clear
canister on the top held the embalming fluid that Bonnie had chosen. There were
controls and indicators for flow and pressure. Bonnie looked at the dials, then
down at the body, setting one gloved hand on his thigh, the other on his
shoulder.
"I'd like to start a
little early on the massage, Al. I want this to be the best embalming in the
history of Western civilization."
"Go ahead,
then."
Hess watched as Bonnie
squeezed something onto her left palm, added some water from the counter
faucet, then rubbed her hands together and applied them to the dead man's right
breast. Palms down and fingers together, she began kneading the tissue. She
started in a tight circle and spread slowly outward, glancing up every few seconds
to check the Porti-Boy.
"Detective, what
Bonnie's doing now is helping the PSX work in. The pressure of the machine
pushes the fluid through the entire arterial system—right down to the level of
the capillaries. Then, of course, it backs into the veinous system and
eventually moves into the large veins. What we're looking for are distribution
and diffusion. Massage helps the fluid proceed evenly and easily. It overcomes
clots and obstructions. It's an overlooked aspect of good embalming. We know
we're ready for the next step when the veins in the forehead start to swell,
the eyelids engorge, and a natural color begins returning to the face. It's
almost like they're coming alive again."
"Boy, I
wish," said Bonnie. "I'd make a fortune."
Bobb took Hess into a
small back room that was lined on three sides with shelves. The shelves held
scores of bottles, all labeled. There were cases stacked against the other
wall.
"These
are the solutions," he said. "Most are formaldehyde based, but there
are others. Glutaraldehyde is becoming popular
these days. They're mixed with humectants in most cases, then diluted.
There's an embalming fluid for almost every circumstance. For instance, this
one."
Bobb handed Hess a dark
plastic bottle of Specialist Embalming Fluid. The label said it was
"specially formulated for 'floaters,' burned, decomposed, frozen or
refrigerated bodies." He set the bottle back on the shelf and read more
labels: Champion, Embalmers' Supply, Dodge, Naturo.
Back at Bonnie's station,
she was massaging the old man's face, both hands up on his cheeks. It looked
like she was imploring him. Hess could see the temporal veins starting to
fill.
"The color is
beginning to come to the face," said Bobb. "That means he's filled
with so much blood and solution that he's basically full. So you're ready to
start draining, Bon. Find that jugular and open her right up."
Bonnie gave him a
remonstrative glance over her mask. She looked at Hess and winked. He watched
her take up the scalpel again, open the neck, deftly pull out the jugular with
the hook. With one hand she pulled and "v"-ed the vein toward the
table drain. With the other she cut it in half with a pair of scissors. She
controlled the flow with finger pressure.
"You'll see the
pressure inside release almost immediately," said Bobb. "Right now,
the solution is pushing the blood out. The draining process should take around
ten minutes in normal temperatures. A good embalmer will continue the massage,
in order to move the fluid further in."
Bonnie was already at work
again with her hands, rubbing them over the lifeless gray flesh in opposing
circles. The man's head and feet rocked and his thin white hair lifted in the
breeze from the air conditioner.
The color returned to his
face. Hess didn't notice it by the degrees by which it surely had come, but
rather he saw it all at once: the gray skin turned natural again, the stony complexion
become flushed and natural, the lips swelling with color. It was like a switch
had been thrown.
"Oh," said
Bonnie. "There we are." She worked the hollows of his cheeks and his
temples, his forehead and chin, under the eyes, his ears and nose and mouth.
Then down the neck to the shoulders and arms and chest.
Hess stared. He was
suddenly dizzy. It was easy to see Janet Kane or Lael Jillson in front of him
now, easy to imagine that Bonnie was the Purse Snatcher and a beautiful young
woman was coming to life beneath his patient and expert hands. Then Hess
blinked, and the body before him was simply a dead old man's. But a second later
it was Lael Jillson. He looked at Bonnie and she was a handsome man with long
blond hair and a mustache and remorseful eyes. Then she was Bonnie again and
Hess suddenly felt something very strong for her, a desire to defend and
enhance and help her in a sometimes violent world. He wanted to see her
triumph. It was a surprisingly powerful feeling. He knew it was absolutely
inappropriate but there it was anyhow, filling his body like something pumped
in. It made his heart beat fast and his muscles feel strong and urgent. It had
as much to do with Bonnie and his impulse to love as it had to do with the
Purse Snatcher and the old man supine in front of him and his own certain but
unscheduled death. When he looked down at the man again it was Merci Rayborn and
he was doing Bonnie's job, with caring, desiring hands. Her dark nipples rose
after his fingers passed over them.
"I'm
going outside," he said.
I'll go
with you," said Bobb.
"Don't
bother."
"Let me show you
where the door
is ... "
Outside Hess bent in the
shade of a big pepper tree, his hands on his knees and his head up like an
umpire but breathing hard and sweating coldly. His shirt felt wet under his
sport coat and his shoulder strap slid on the damp fabric. He looked back at
the campus buildings shimmering as if in a heat wave, outlined in a blue light
that grew brighter until he blinked, then got brighter until he blinked again.
He closed them and thought of where he had just come from and saw this time
that the lifeless body back there was his and the hands bringing him back from
the dead belonged to Merci.
He felt the air going in
and out of his lung and a third, filling them up and purging fully, but it was
like he wasn't getting the right thing, like the air was mixed wrong, or maybe
there just wasn't enough of it getting in. He asked himself what he expected
from fifty fucking years of smoking like there was no tomorrow. Help me get
through this, he thought: just help me beat this thing and I'll be good
forever. Forever. I honestly do swear I'll do whatever you want.
He opened his eyes and
looked down at the grass but there were naked gray bodies upon it. He saw Lael
and Janet and Ronnie and Merci and Bonnie and himself. And the old man and his
father and Barbara and Lottie and Joanna. There was a kid in a cowboy shirt
standing beside them with a blank look on his face: Tim Hess, age eight.
Lightning cracked blue and rain splattered down on them all with drops bright
and heavy as mercury. Young Tim had a green garden hose in his hand, gushing water.
He rinsed everybody off then gave the hose to himself fifty-nine years later
and the old once-dead Hess rose and drank from it and said he was going to give
everyone else a drink, too.
Then Hess saw nothing
but the green Bermuda grass beneath the tree and the pink pepper hulls lying by
the trunk and his own bent shadow leaning away from the sun. His heart was way
up in his throat somewhere and he could feel hot drops of something running
down his cheeks and see them splat against the pepper shells where they fell.
He heard himself panting. He felt an erection in his briefs, something that
seemed no more related to this moment than the north rim of the Grand Canyon or
UFOs. He smelled himself—a blend of man, chemicals, death and terror of death
that he'd never smelled before.
"Detective? Mr.
Hess? Al told me to come out and check on you. You okay? It's the chemicals.
One time I was setting features on this lady and then I was just lying there
looking up at the lights. You okay?"
"Sure I
am."
"You're white and
trembling."
"Breakfast.
Skipped it, 1 mean."
"Ah, come on.
Quit being such a tough guy. Here, sit down in the shade. Just breathe even and
keep your eyes up on the horizon. Think about your wife or your grandkids or
someone you love."
Hess took a knee. His
eyes were burning still but he couldn't let himself wipe them. He was confused
by his arousal and ashamed of it and happy to hide it from the girl. Bonnie
squatted across from him.
"Don't,"
Hess heard himself say.
"Don't what?"
"Don't ever."
"Ever
what?"
"Let anything bad happen
to you."
Two hours later Hess was still in the Department of
Mortuary Science, setting aside the last file. He was exhausted and his neck
felt like cold metal and the words he had been reading sometimes blurred and
jumped off the pages. He thought to pick a word off the desk and put it back on
the paper before he understood how spent he was.
For two hours Hess had
looked at every photograph and name of every Department of Mortuary Science
student graduated from Cypress College in the last decade. Four hundred and fourteen.
Based on age and
appearance Hess came up with eighteen maybes, but nothing hot. None of the
maybes wore long hair and a mustache. Bobb explained that they had a professional
dress code the students had to follow when they were here. And few homes would
hire an embalmer with a less than conventional appearance. Hess gathered that
the college had screened all students for felony records before admission, so
he knew his chances of stubbing his toe on a creep who'd been looking to learn
a trade weren't great. But, he thought, cracks were there to be slipped
through.
Bobb was also kind enough to call a friend at the
state Morticians' Licensing Board, who agreed to supply Hess with a complete
listing of Southern California undertakers. It would be on Hess's fax machine
by the end of the workday. If he wanted faces, he'd have to come up to
Sacramento—the black-and-white two-by-twos didn't transmit well at all.
• • •
The DMV 1028 list was on
his desk when Hess got in that afternoon. He checked the names against their
possibles from the Sex Offenders Registry, the department graduates and the
outstanding warrants listing kept by the Sheriff's Department.
Nothing added up. He
wondered if he could get a list of embalming machine buyers, tick them off
against the van owners, maybe get a hit.
What he had for sure was
312 panel vans registered in Orange County. This didn't include the commercial
ones. He circled the males, which left 224. If he could get Brighton to cut
loose twenty-two deputies to run down ten vans each and check the tires, they
could have it nailed in two shifts if they went fast—three if it went slowly.
Brighton's secretary said
he'd be in a meeting for the next hour.
Hess phoned Southern
California Embalming Supply Company, the regional dealer for the Porti-Boy,
Sawyer and several other embalming machines. In fact, they carried every major
brand and some minor ones. He asked the president for a list of embalming
machine buyers in the last year in Southern California. He explained that he
wanted to run the names against the state board licensees.
The president was a
pleasant sounding man who seemed to listen carefully to what Hess was saying.
His name was Bart
Young. He very politely refused Hess's request for a
customer list reaching back one year. Young said it would be a violation of
trust. In the end all Hess could do was press his home and office phone numbers
upon the fellow, and ask to have Young's home number in return. If you framed
the request right, giving a home phone became a small atonement for not giving
something better. Hess believed in home phones because he did some of his best
thinking at night, and he wasn't afraid to intrude so long as he had a reason.
He made a note on his desk calendar to call Young every day until he gave up
the names.
An hour later Brighton
approved the manpower shift and got an assistant to make the assignments. The
first shift of tire checkers would hit the streets in four hours.
It was almost five o'clock when Bobb's friend at the
state Morticians' Licensing Board faxed over the current list of Southern
California embalmers. Hess settled down with it, his eyes tired and his vision
blurring, long enough to find no matches at all with panel van owners,
registered sex offenders or hotsheet fugitives.
• • •
He got his second dose of
chest radiation after work. The doctor took some blood before the treatment,
said he wanted to check the white cell level—it could rise or fall during
chemotherapy and radiation—and it was important to keep an eye on things. He
seemed surprised that Hess was working but said it was probably good. His tone
of voice suggested to Hess that it mattered not one bit whether he was working
or not because the outcome of all this was determined and unchangeable. He
could be training for a marathon for all the radiation specialist cared. Hess
thought of the oncologist's statement that the average life span of a human
being with a small cell cancer in the lung was nine weeks, but reminded himself
that his was caught early, his was relatively small, his was surgically
removed, his scans and X rays since the surgery had come up clean.