Working Stiff (3 page)

I
'm not sure what haute couture dictates for night spying, but it really doesn't matter since my choices are severely limited. In my hasty flight from the house two months ago, I shoved what I could into a couple of suitcases. Several times I've thought about going back to retrieve more stuff—I still have my key, so it would be simple enough to get in, assuming David hasn't done something drastic like change the locks. But I'm afraid. Not of David, but of myself and the strength of my convictions. Loneliness is a powerful motivator.

Fortunately, the meager clothing I do have includes a pair of black slacks and a black turtleneck. Worried that my blond hair will shine like a beacon in the night, I'm delighted I also have a brown scarf among my absconded treasures. I dress, tie the scarf around my head, and then give myself a quick perusal in the mirror. I look like the bastard love child of Mrs. Peele and Zorro but it will have to do.

It's early October and the night air has a bracing bite to it. Halfway through the woods my nose starts to run and I swipe at it with my sleeve, leaving a shimmering slug trail that glistens in the light of the full moon. Soon I am standing behind a tree at the edge of Izzy's property, gazing across a wide expanse of yard at a lit window in what used to be my home. The blinds are drawn, but unless David or his new hussy has seen fit to replace them, I know there is a small gap on one side. David may be good at fixing people, but when it comes to household projects he is sadly inept. When he installed the brackets for the blinds—a project he insisted on doing himself so he wouldn't have to pay someone else—he got one of the brackets half an inch higher than the other. As a result, the blinds hang at an angle, leaving a narrow gap on one side of the windowsill.

I glance over at the driveway and see a gray BMW parked next to David's Porsche; Karen Owenby drives a gray BMW.

I make my way across the yard knowing the house is set far enough back from the road that no one driving by can see me. When I reach the window, the bottom of it looms tauntingly a foot above my head, and after trying a couple of jumps I realize I'll never get high enough long enough to see anything. Frustrated but determined, I skirt around the house and find a wheelbarrow in the backyard with a small pile of pine bark mulch in it. I steer it around front, park it beneath the window, climb atop the mulch, and peer through the glass.

David is sprawled on the couch in front of the gas fire-place, his legs extended in front of him, the amber light from the sterile flame dancing across his face and making his blond hair shimmer. I can tell he is restless; one foot keeps time to some imaginary beat and his face bears an expression of tired impatience. A shadow falls over him as a dark-haired figure steps up to the couch: Karen Owenby.

She doesn't look very happy—in fact, it looks as if she and David are having one hell of a row—and I try to find some solace in that even as I feel the last tenuous threads of my heart give way. Karen is pacing back and forth in front of the couch, pausing occasionally to wag a finger in David's direction. The house is too well built for me to hear what she is saying, but the shrill tone of her words is unmistakable.

She pauses a moment, hands on her hips, torso bent forward, her jaw flapping a mile a minute. And I see David's expression change; his brow draws down in anger, his eyes narrow to an icy glint. He pushes off the couch suddenly, making Karen backpedal so fast she nearly falls. David grabs her by the shoulders, and at first I think he is trying to keep her from toppling over. Then I realize he isn't steadying her, he's shaking her.

Karen's hand whips up and slaps his cheek so hard I can hear the
thwack
of skin against skin from outside. As David's face darkens, Karen spins away from him, grabs her coat from the chair, and hurries toward the front door. I spend a few seconds relishing the quickly reddening handprint on David's face before it dawns on me that Karen is leaving and that I'll be in plain sight from the front porch should she happen to glance in my direction.

What's more, David is right behind her.

Panicking, I step back to climb out of the wheelbarrow, misjudge the distance, and hit the edge of it instead, tipping it over. My legs straddle the bed like a saddle and I come down hard on the edge, sending a lightning bolt of pain from my crotch all the way up to my teeth. For several agonizing seconds I am frozen, my teeth clenched tighter than a patient with lockjaw. I am unable to move, unable to breathe, and my ankle, which is half mangled in the metal framework beneath the bed of the wheelbarrow, throbs with a growing tempo. I bite back a scream that's trying to box its way out of my lungs and hold perfectly still, praying I won't be seen.

Above the ringing in my ears, I hear Karen yell, “You'll be sorry, David. Don't do it or you'll be sorry.” David's only response is to slam the door. I watch Karen march down the driveway and climb into her car, and as soon as the engine turns over, I disentangle my foot and slide off the wheelbarrow into a heap on the ground.

The pain is incredible and I make a quick deal with God, promising to cut off my right arm if she'll just toss down a syringe full of morphine. Then I quickly amend that to my left arm, realizing I will need the right one to administer the shot. But either God has better things to do or the fact that I haven't been to church in twenty years has her feeling less than generous.

After a few minutes of quiet agony, I struggle to my feet and lurch home. I briefly consider running a bath and soaking for an hour or so to ease the aches, but it sounds like too much work. Besides, my injuries go beyond the mere physical; my emotions feel as raw and abused as my crotch.

Sleep beckons and I figure a night of rest will not only get me through the worst of the physical pain, it will allow me to bury my emotions inside a cloud of oblivion. I limp into the bedroom, strip my slacks and underwear off in one fell swoop, gingerly kick them away, and then ease myself into bed still wearing my shirt and bra. As my head hits the pillow, I feel something hard poke me. I reach up, pull a chunk of mulch from my hair, and toss it onto the floor. I'm about to turn out the light when it hits me.

I sit up and pat my head, even though I already know what I'll find…or rather what I
won't
find. Frantic, I look around the bedroom, but there is no sign of the scarf anywhere. Grunting with pain, I crawl out of bed and retrace my steps to the front door, peering through the window at the porch. Nothing.

Shit.

I pray the scarf dropped in the woods somewhere and isn't lying beneath the window next to the wheelbarrow.
Oh, God. The wheelbarrow!

I groan and briefly consider going back to eliminate the evidence of my visit but the pain between my legs wins out. Morning will be soon enough, I decide. Instead, I gimp my way to the bathroom, swallow a handful of aspirin, and head back to bed.

I'm asleep in ten minutes flat; humiliation is very exhausting.

T
he shrill chirp of a beeper brings me instantly awake. I sit bolt upright in the bed and reach over to turn on the light. Years of pulling on-call duty in the OR have trained me well, but for a second or two I'm confused. Part of my mind is telling me to get dressed and drive to the hospital, but another part reminds me that I don't work there anymore. Still another part wonders why it feels like I'm about to give birth to a bowling ball. Wincing against the pain, I hang my legs over the edge of the bed and grab the beeper.

It's Izzy. I know that without looking at the readout since he's the one who gave me the damned thing in the first place, in case he got a call. I mumble a curse, first at him, then at myself for being dumb enough to give in to his stupid idea.

Glancing at the clock I see that it's just past three in the morning—an inhuman hour by anyone's standards—and decide to ignore the page. I can't call Izzy anyway; I never bothered to have the phone turned on since my original plan was to stay in the cottage for no more than a few days. And I figure if I don't show up, Izzy will just go on without me. So I might as well go back to sleep. Pleased with my decision, I ease back into bed and pull the covers up. The next thing I know, Izzy is standing over me, shaking my shoulder.

“Come on, Mattie. Get up. We have a call. A homicide.”

“I don't want a call,” I whine, throwing off his hand and burrowing deeper under the covers. “And I sure as hell don't want a homicide.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, Izzy. I assure you, I don't.”

“Get up.”

“It's three in the morning. Can't these criminals honor banker's hours?”

“Come on. Dom's making coffee, if that will help. It won't be so bad once we're there. You know how it is. Once you're up and moving, it's a piece of cake.”

Easy for him to say. He doesn't have a hematoma the size of Texas in his crotch.

“Just go on without me,” I tell him. “I'll catch the next one.” He steps closer and starts to make a grab for my covers but I stop him cold by saying, “I'm naked from the waist down.”

He backs up like I pulled a gun on him, his hands held out in front of him. “Fine, if you want to play hardball, I will too. If you don't get up, I'll start telling people your real name.”

Moaning, I roll over, give him a dirty look, and sit up, feeling a million muscles scream in agony. My right leg, the one with the mangled ankle, is numb clear to the thigh.

He bends over, picks my pants up from the floor, and tosses them at me. “Put these on and let's go.”

I stare at the pants a minute, my bleary mind still struggling to come fully awake. “How'd you get in here?” I ask.

“I have a key, remember? But that's beside the point since you didn't bother to lock the door.” He eyes me warily a moment, then asks, “What the hell is that in your hair?”

I reach up and pull out several small pieces of mulch. Tossing them on the floor, I say, “New hair treatment. This herbal stuff is all the rage now, you know.”

He stares at me, then shakes his head and turns away. “I'll be waiting in the living room. Hurry please.”

I'm feeling cranky so I give a petulant stomp of my foot once for good measure, then swallow down a shriek of pain when I discover that my injured ankle isn't nearly as numb as I thought. Once the stars go out, I start pulling on my slacks and have my bad leg in before I realize I've forgotten my panties. I look around on the floor, don't see them, and figure they must be under the bed. Getting them will mean kneeling down, and I'm not too keen on that idea. As stiff as my body feels, I'm afraid I won't be able to get back up again, and the thought of having to call to Izzy for help while I'm on the floor with my naked ass in the air isn't very appealing. The dresser is across the room and I eye it for a second before deciding to go commando. At least I won't have to worry about unsightly panty lines.

Five minutes later I've plucked the rest of the mulch from my hair and we are on our way, Izzy behind the wheel. His car, a 1963 Chevy Impala, fully restored, has a bench front seat. In order to reach the pedals, Izzy has the seat up as far as it will go, which leaves me scrunched like a pretzel, my knees just under my chin. One good bump and I'll have teeth coming out my nose.

“What have we got?” I ask, finally awake enough to remember that my job now entails messing with dead bodies.

“A residential break-in, possibly a robbery. There's one victim—a woman.”

I nod thoughtfully, as if such a scenario is a part of everyday business, but the truth is, Izzy's words strike fear in my heart. Things like this aren't supposed to happen in small-town America. I console myself with the thought that it probably happened in a bad section of town, the result of bad people doing bad things, like a drug deal gone wrong. But then Izzy pulls up in front of a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Several police cars, an ambulance, and four or five other cars are parked willy-nilly out front, the darkened, quiet light bars on the official vehicles serving as a grim testament to the situation inside. On a nearby lawn, a small cluster of neighbors congregate, whispering and gawking.

After I climb out of the car, Izzy reaches over, opens the glove box, and removes a small, plastic wallet. He hands it to me and says, “Keep this with you at all times. You never know when it might come in handy.”

I flip the wallet open and see an ID card with my picture on it—the same picture that is on my driver's license, I note. It identifies me as a deputy coroner for the county but lest there be any doubt, there is also a shiny, brass-colored badge in the wallet with
DEPUTY CORONER
written across the top in bright blue. Izzy obviously didn't waste any time once I agreed to go out on a call with him, and I'm tempted to act annoyed at his presumptuousness. But the badge is kind of cool looking and, in an odd way, it makes me feel important. So I hook the wallet in the waist of my pants with the badge showing and follow Izzy toward the house.

Normally, my long-legged stride puts me yards ahead of his stubby-legged one, but tonight it is all I can do to keep up. I think my bowling ball may be crowning and the numbness in my right leg is rapidly receding—something I'm not at all sure is a good thing. Izzy pauses on the porch, reaches into the black suitcase he is carrying, and hands me a pair of latex gloves.

“Put these on,” he says. “Then stick your hands in your pockets and keep them there unless I ask you to do something. Don't touch anything.”

I do what he says, thrusting my hands into my pants' pockets and trying to look like I know what I'm doing. A uniformed police officer meets us at the door, nods at Izzy, and then waves us into the house. Two steps later I catch my first whiff of death—a smell I've come to know during my years working the ER. It's a distinctly unpleasant scent, a mix of blood and other bodily excretes that are released when sphincters relax.

The house is a nice one, tastefully decorated in a contemporary fashion with thick carpet that cushions my aching feet. As we pass through a formal living room into a family room, I feel something odd near my injured ankle where the nerve endings are now rapidly coming to life. I glance down to see the bottom eight inches of my pant leg bulging on one side, as if my calf is sporting a woody. Only, this woody is composed of white cotton edged in elastic, a small portion of which is peeking out just above my shoe.

I've found my missing underwear.

After a quick glance around to be sure no one is watching, I do a little Riverdance maneuver and the panties slide the rest of the way out, settling on the floor between my foot and a nearby chair. I am about to snatch them up when I hear a voice say, “Hey, Izzy!” and sense someone approaching.

With one quick flick of my foot I kick the panties under the chair, and then look up to see who's coming. My eyes lock in on a tall man with a craggy but handsome face and a head of thick, black hair. He steps up to Izzy and briefly shakes his hand, then turns his gaze toward me. As I take in blue eyes, black lashes, and a stature of at least six-four, my heart rate speeds up a notch or two.

“This is Mattie Winston, my new deputy coroner,” Izzy says, making the introductions. “Mattie, this is Detective Steve Hurley. He's with Homicide.”

Kill me now.

“Pleasure to meet you,” I say, extending a gloved hand over Izzy's shoulder and praying I won't drool. Hurley grabs my hand and gives it a brief squeeze. My face flushes hot, then the heat spreads. I wonder if Detective Hurley has ever investigated a case of spontaneous combustion before, or if I'm about to become his first.

“Have you ever processed a homicide scene before?” Hurley asks.

“No, I—”

“She's a nurse,” Izzy says. “Worked at Mercy up until a couple of months ago.”

I can't figure out if this is a good thing or not, or even what relevance it has. Apparently, neither can Hurley. His brows draw down in puzzlement for a second, but then he shrugs and says, “Whatever. Just be careful what you touch.” With that, he turns away and heads toward a group of people huddled together in the middle of the room.

I steal a glance toward the floor, relieved to see that my panties are well out of sight, and then follow Izzy into the room as I wonder how I'm going to get the panties back. A second later, the huddle of people opens up to let Izzy through and all thoughts of my underwear flee my mind.

Lying on the floor in front of me with a bullet hole in her chest is Karen Owenby.