Working Stiff (6 page)

“Bryn,” he said, still using that soothing working-hours voice. “Well. This is a surprise. We thought you’d already left, especially after the day you’ve had.”

“I got caught up in reading over the materials. There’re a lot of things to learn. I’m sorry if I broke any rules…. I’m not putting in for overtime, I promise.”

She felt nervous, and she knew he could see it—but hopefully, he’d put it down to the natural uneasiness of a new employee caught doing something slightly odd, and
God
, how had she gotten herself into this, anyway? Working with the dead was supposed to be
peaceful
. That was the whole point.

The silence seemed to stretch on. Bryn felt sweat break out under her arms. She had a choice to make—tell Fairview about Joe Fideli’s quiet infiltration, or stay quiet and risk being wrong about him.
He’s a man with a gun, skulking around at night. You should tell Fairview
.

And she would have … except that he said, “Did you go into the preparation room after Mr. Watson left tonight, Bryn?”

“Why?”

“We have a silent alarm that operates when we’re off premises. To prevent any, ah, tampering with the bodies. I’ve turned it off now, since we’re here.” Fairview’s eyes were in shadow, his face rendered into a blank mask by the lighting in the parking lot. There was nothing in his voice, either, but Bryn’s instincts screamed that there was something wrong. Very wrong.

“I realized that Freddy left Mr. Granberry out on the table,” she said. “I just went in to put him in the freezer. I hope I didn’t do anything wrong. I do have the keys. Nobody told me the area was off-limits.”

“Oh, it’s not—not normally, of course. I was just concerned, based on the alarm.” Fairview smiled. “Why don’t you come on back inside, my dear? It’s chilly out here at night, and the fog’s coming in.”

He was right; she was shivering, and the gray mist had rolled over the coast and faded out the lights of the town in the distance. Even the bus-stop lights seemed smeared and indistinct.

“I need to get home,” she said. “The last bus is on the way any moment.”

“Oh, no need to worry about that,” Fairview said. “I’ll drive you home, Bryn. But come back inside; have some coffee. I have something I need to discuss with you first.”

She swallowed. The night felt dark, deep, and icily empty; she was fifty feet from the bus stop, but the shelter was empty at this hour, and although there were cars going by on the road, they weren’t going to notice anything happening here. Running seemed stupid. At best, it would let him know she suspected something was going on inside; at worst, at least Joe Fideli was somewhere nearby, with his gun.

She wasn’t sure why, but she felt that she trusted Fideli more than the man who’d hired her. The man she’d admired so much for his compassion and composure just this morning. Standing here in the chilly dark, watching his face, she thought he might be more of a killer than the guy with the gun.

The thought of lying cold on one of those trays robbed her of the will to run—not that there was anywhere to go; the bus wasn’t even in view. She stayed where she was as Mr. Fairview descended the steps and came toward her. He took her arm and escorted her back into the mortuary.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said, still using that soothing professional tone. “I just want to explain about some of our procedures, Bryn. You’re in no trouble, I promise. If you’d wait in your office for a bit, I have to meet with someone else first. I’ll come right up, and after we’ve talked I’ll give you a ride home. I hate making you wait out there in the dark. It’s just not safe.”

“Okay,” she said. This was a really bad idea, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do except go along with him. Mr. Fairview hustled her, quietly and irresistibly, back into the mortuary and down the hall to her office. She fumbled with the keys and opened it, and Mr. Fairview gave her a reassuring smile.

“Just a few minutes,” he assured her, and closed the door. She listened, but couldn’t hear a thing … and then she heard his footsteps on the stairs leading down to the basement.

I really need to get out of here
. Whatever the hell was going on, it wasn’t her business. Not at all. In fact, Bryn decided then and there that she was officially quitting. She could get another job, and she could get it at some big-city mortuary where there were lots of people coming and going.

Someplace
sane
.

She was heading for the door when the bell rang, and a new person came in the front. Bryn ducked into the shadows, holding her breath, and a man and woman she didn’t know walked into the foyer. The woman didn’t look well; she was sweating, trembling, and had to be supported as she moved.
Terminally ill? Maybe a late-night consultation?

The couple went straight for the basement stairs. Bryn frowned, watching them, and then looked at the front door. It was like Grand Central; one more bell ringing wouldn’t matter now, right? And she could just run. Run like hell, flag down a car, get out of here …

Except now she was curious. Deeply curious. Was Fideli right? Were they running some kind of drug lab down there? Fairview had talked about how trade had fallen off. She supposed he’d do almost anything to keep the family business going.

She walked over to the basement door and eased it open a crack. Just to listen. The problem was, although she could hear voices, they weren’t very loud, and she missed more than half of what was being said.

She came out onto the landing.

Down a couple of steps, very quietly.

Then all the way down, drawn by what the voices were saying.

“… need it!” a man’s voice was saying. Not Freddy or Mr. Fairview, or even Joe … She was hearing the man who’d come in with the sick lady, Bryn guessed. “I know that’s not the amount we agreed on, but it’s all we have; please, she needs the shot right now….”

“This isn’t a charity hospital, Mr. Jones,” Mr. Fairview’s voice said, rich with regret and sympathy. “I’m afraid that miracles are, by their very definition, rare—and rare means expensive. The terms were spelled out for you clearly, weren’t they? Ten thousand up front, and five hundred dollars cash per shot?”

“I can get it for you; it’s just … it’s thirty-five hundred a week….”

“Thirty-five hundred a week to keep your beloved wife alive,” Mr. Fairview said. “I have to believe that you value her life more than the money, sir. And I must urge you to act quickly. She’s clearly missed at least one dose, possibly two, and she is looking very distressed. After four days, the skin begins to slip; muscles loosen. It’s a very nasty process.”

Bryn couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Joe Fideli had been right: her boss
was
selling drugs—bad ones. And they were extorting money from sick, desperate people.

It was
horrible
.

“I’m very sorry,” Mr. Fairview continued. “But I really must have cash in hand before I can give her the shot. This was made clear to you from the very beginning.”

“I lost my job,” the man said. It sounded like he was crying. “I can’t … We already had to give up our house. I can’t afford to pay you this much. Please. Please don’t let her die! We’ve got
kids
!”

There was a second of silence. “I’m afraid that even though we talked about this, you still don’t understand. She’s
dead
, Mr. Jones. We haven’t made her living. I explained to you that you were simply delaying the inevitable dissolution, and now it appears that the inevitable is upon you.”

Not only were they selling some hard-core drug; they were bilking people. How could Fairview possibly be telling people he was bringing back the dead? Who’d believe that? Maybe the drug induced some kind of coma, then woke up the addicts…. It didn’t really matter. Bryn felt deeply sickened. She’d been trained to
help
people in their darkest, worst moments, and this was an obscene, horrible perversion of what she’d believed. A betrayal of the worst kind.

She turned to go back up the steps, but a shadow blocked her path at the top of the stairs. She had a moment of déjà vu, but it wasn’t Joe Fideli.

It was, unfortunately, Freddy Watson.

He descended the stairs faster than she could scramble backward, and grabbed her by the arm in a crushing grip. She tried to knee him in the groin, but he was obviously an old hand at that one; her patella caught the meaty part of his thigh instead, and then he was shoving her off balance, turning her, and locking his arm around her throat. She tried to stamp on his feet, but her Payless heels weren’t that sturdy. He just laughed in her ear and dragged her, off balance, through the double doors into the prep room.

“Surprise visitor,” he said, and it obviously was, to the three people standing there. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Mr. Fairview.

Mr. Fairview looked wearily disgusted. “I left her upstairs. And, Freddy, I thought you were supposed to scare her off from snooping around down here.”

“I did,” Freddy said. “I played the Big Bad Wolf as hard as I could, but she’s tougher than she looks. I caught her listening on the stairs.”

“Really? What did you hear, Bryn?” Mr. Fairview asked.

“Nothing,” she said, and tried to jam her elbow back into Freddy’s ribs. That worked well enough that he let up on the grip, and she slipped away and put the prep table between them. “He attacked me!”

“Yes, well, he does have impulse-control issues,” Mr. Fairview said. “It’s the reason I can’t have him doing intakes. He doesn’t inspire confidence in others. And I don’t believe you, Bryn.”

“You
saw
—”

“Not about the attack; about what you overheard. You did hear something. The question is what, and how much you understand.”

On the second prep table, Mr. Fairview had a leather case open, with a small bottle of some injectable drug nestled in padding, along with a syringe.

Mr. Jones was taking advantage of Bryn’s entrance to edge closer and closer to it. Now he grabbed the case, ripped the cap off the syringe, and quickly filled the chamber from the vial of liquid.

Mr. Fairview slapped it out of his hand. The syringe skittered across the floor, and Mr. Fairview stepped on it, cracking the plastic and leaving a wet smear on the tile floor as the drug leaked out.

Then he took out a gun from a drawer next to him and aimed it at Mr. Jones’s chest, and pulled the trigger three times, the booms shockingly loud in the tiled room.

Before Mr. Jones fell, Bryn bolted for the door. Freddy grabbed her and pressed her up against the wall just as Mr. Jones hit the tile floor, light already fading from his wide, surprised eyes. His wife cried out and dropped down next to him, but after a second of horrified staring, she scrabbled for the vial of the drug held loosely in his dead hand.

Mr. Fairview scooped it neatly away. “Freddy,” he said. “Stop playing with the new girl and take care of all this mess, please.”

“Yes, boss.” Freddy let go of Bryn and hit her. Hard. She saw darkness and flaming stars, and the world tilted sideways on her.

Cold floor.

By the time she got her eyes open again, Freddy was at the shelves. He yanked open a drawer and pulled out two body bags. Then, after a glance at Bryn, he added a third.

He unrolled the first one on the floor, dragged Mr. Jones over, and zipped him inside.

Bryn scrambled in slow motion to her feet, fought for balance, and staggered for the door, but Mr. Fairview was already there, and the sight of the gun made her slow and stop. She knew he’d shoot her.

She’d already seen the proof.

“How much do you know?” Fairview asked her. “Who are you working for?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!
Let me go!
” Her heart was hammering. Fear screamed at her to stay still, but she knew fear was going to get her killed. She needed to go back to her training. She needed to
think
. She had no idea what had happened to Joe Fideli, but if he hadn’t already shown up, she had no reason to think he’d come riding to the rescue in time to save her now.

Freddy finished zipping Mr. Jones into his storage bag, and then unrolled a second one. Bryn caught her breath as he grabbed Mrs. Jones by the arm and dragged her over onto the plastic. The woman slapped at him weakly, but she just couldn’t fight back.

He was zipping her into the body bag,
still alive
.

“No!” Bryn blurted, and lunged toward them to let the woman out. Freddy punched her, a true, no-holds-barred impact that sent another wave of blackness over her in a sticky, cold flood. She stayed upright somehow, and raised her fingers to her mouth. They came away bloody.

And just like that, her training came back to her, like a ghost returning to her body. The fear went away and the pain got blocked. She altered her balance, wishing for body armor, for boots, for a knife and a gun and all the things she didn’t have. Then she let that fall away.

She’d manage.

Freddy’s eyes were cold and avid. “She’s not like you thought. Look at her. She’s a fighter.”

“I can see that, Freddy.”

“I’m going to have to kill her.”

Fairview sighed. “I really can’t keep replacing people. It’s just impossible, the recruiting fees; you have no idea.”

“So don’t replace her,” Freddy said. “Kill her and give her the shot. She’ll be just as reliable as I am, after. Bonus points—you get to have special fun with her, too.”

Mr. Fairview smiled, but it looked bitter and pinched. “I hardly have enough to keep you fresh, plus our retail stock. You know that. And I still have Mr. Garcia to contend with, which is entirely your fault.”

Garcia. That name rang a bell, something immediate…. They’d mentioned, during her hiring process, that she was replacing a man named Cesar Garcia, who’d left town.

Maybe he hadn’t left town at all.

“He’s nearly done.” Freddy shrugged. “It’s been five days since his last shot. He won’t last the night.”