I could feel my face heating. “I, um, need to get inside,” I quickly muttered, avoiding eye contact.
“Of course,” Deputy Ivanov replied. He gave me a neutral smile, then continued on past me and headed toward his car. He hadn’t recognized me. I gave a small sigh of relief, even as a wistful little twinge shot through me. What the hell had I been so worried about? I wasn’t the sort of chick guys like that remembered, and certainly never in a good way.
I pushed aside my stupid disappointment and continued on in, stepping out of the way of the paramedics as they carried gear back to the ambulance. Their presence was routine. Unless a body had very obviously been dead for a while, it was standard to have them run an EKG strip to make absolutely certain the person was solidly dead. I was starting to get the hang of all the various procedures involved when someone died. It wasn’t something I’d ever thought about before. I mean, who really wants to, other than maybe deciding whether you wanted to be buried or cremated?
I waited patiently inside near the front door and tried to ignore my churning gut while I did my best to stay out of the way. Detective Roth stood near the entrance to the kitchen while he talked on his phone. A curvy blonde woman wearing fatigue pants and a shirt with SEPSO Crime Scene printed across the back was crouched by the wall as she carefully packed a camera into a bag. More procedure. Unless someone was under hospice care or in a hospital or nursing home, a detective and a crime scene tech were dispatched to investigate and process the scene. Though I’d already learned that, unless it was clearly foul play, “investigate” meant that the detective took down the decedent’s information and then referred to the coroner’s report; and “process” meant that the crime scene tech took pictures of the scene and the body.
But I guess that makes sense, I thought. Going all out on every dead body would get to be a pain in the butt and a waste of time pretty fast.
I snorted. Look at me, being all understanding about cops. Who’d have thought that would ever happen?
I leaned against the wall, watched as Derrel spoke in soft and comforting tones to the dead man’s wife. For all his imposing size and looks, Derrel had a way of dealing with family and loved ones that was nothing short of a gift. I could hear him gently inquiring about her husband’s medical history and what medications he was on. From what I could overhear it sounded as if the guy had a history of heart disease and had died in his sleep.
I slid further in and peeked down the hall. The bedroom door was open, and I could see the dead man lying on his back in the bed, the sticky pads from the paramedics’ equipment still stuck to him in various spots on his body. He didn’t look very old, maybe in his fifties or so, which meant that he’d be brought in for autopsy—which was why I was here. A geezer in his eighties with a bad heart probably wouldn’t be autopsied unless he had a few bullet holes in him or a knife sticking out of his chest.
I stepped back as one of the paramedics returned. “Forgot my stethoscope,” he explained with a smile as he continued on in to the bedroom. He came back out with it in his hand, then paused in front of me, a slight frown creasing his brow. He looked faintly familiar but the “Quinn” on his nametag didn’t help me out. He was tall and slender, with reddish brown hair and a faint scattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. Not bad-looking at all. I’d probably met him on a different scene sometime in the past two weeks.
He continued to frown down at me. “Something wrong?” I asked, oddly nervous that I’d screwed up somehow.
His expression abruptly cleared, and he gave me a broad smile. “I knew I’d seen you before. You’re looking a lot better now.”
My expression must have echoed the What the hell? going through my head because he chuckled and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m Ed Quinn. I . . . uh,” he lowered his voice. “I worked on you a couple of weeks ago when you were found out on Sweet Bayou Road.”
I could feel my face heating in embarrassment. Found dying of an overdose. “Oh. Great.” Then I grimaced. “I mean, thanks, y’know.”
His smile abruptly shifted to a look of chagrin. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
I shrugged, trying to appear casual. “It’s cool. That’s behind me now.”
“Good to hear.” His gaze swept over me, pausing briefly on the Coroner’s Office logo on my shirt. I could see the question forming in his eyes: How the hell had I managed to land this job? I struggled to think of something plausible but to my relief he seemed to sense my discomfort and left the question unasked. “Well, I gotta run,” he said, glancing toward the door. “Take care of yourself.”
I gave him a nod and a forced smile as he headed out. As soon as he was gone I blew my breath out and leaned back against the wall. Awkward. First the cop who’d arrested me, then the paramedic who’d kept me from accidentally killing myself. I didn’t even want to think what a third thing might be.
I groaned under my breath as a wisp of a too familiar odor reached my nose. Oh yeah, how about stinking like a week-old corpse?
Derrel came over to me with a paper bag in one hand and his keys in the other. I could see his nose twitch but thankfully he didn’t seem to associate the stink with me. “Okay, we’ll be taking him in,” he said. “Would you mind sticking this in the lockbox in the back of the Durango on your way out to get the stretcher and body bag?”
“Sure thing,” I said, taking the bag and keys from him. “What is it?”
“All of his meds. The Coroner’s Office collects them and disposes of them.”
I blinked. It felt like about a dozen bottles in the bag. “They throw it all out?”
Derrel nodded. “I have to count all the pills and log everything first, but yeah, they get incinerated. It’s not like they can be given to anyone else.”
“Gotcha.” I flashed him what I hoped was a nonchalant smile. “Okay, be right back.” I hurried out to the Durango and popped the latch for the back. A metal lockbox was there and a quick search through the keys revealed one that opened it. I paused with the bag in my hand. They can’t be given to anyone else, huh? My pulse thudded as I quickly looked through the pill bottles in the bag. I didn’t recognize most of the drug names. Heart medicines of some sort, I assumed. But there were also some anxiety meds, and even a prescription for my little uppers. And Xanax. A whole damn bottle—and I knew this stuff would be the real thing.
Hunger clawed at me again. Maybe Xanax would make the crazy cravings go away, or at least dull them a bit? It wasn’t as if I was going to take the pills to sell them or anything. That would be stupid. I’d be looking at serious jail time for something like that.
My mouth felt dry as I stood there with the bag in my hand. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the bottle of Xanax out, crumpled the bag shut and shoved it into the box. I started to put the bottle into the pocket of my cargo pants, then paused. What if Derrel had already written down the names of the drugs? Even if he hadn’t actually counted the pills yet, he’d be sure to notice a whole bottle missing.
I’m being a moron, I thought with a scowl. And now I’ve taken too long. He’s going to know something’s up. I’ll be busted for sure.
I quickly crammed the bottle of Xanax back into the bag and shut the lockbox. A strange relief settled over me and I let out a slow sigh. It had been stupid of me to even consider taking the drugs. So far I’d managed to go a whole two weeks without doing something boneheaded. I only had two more weeks to go and then I could be out of this job and away from brains and bodies and all that craziness.
I locked the box and closed the back of the Durango. I turned to get the body bag and stretcher from the van, but stopped dead at the sight of Ivanov leaning against his car and looking straight at me.
My heart gave a guilty leap until I realized that he was talking on his cell phone. And that he wasn’t looking directly at me at all, merely in my general direction. Cripes, Angel. Guilty conscience much?
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I’d taken those pills, he’d have been on me like white on rice.
Chapter 7
More than ready to get the hell out of there, I had the dead guy bagged, on the stretcher, and shoved into the back of the van in record time. Derrel gave me a funny look, but thankfully didn’t say anything about the fact that I was probably looking as guilty as I wasn’t. At least the cop and the paramedics were gone by the time I was ready to load up the body. If Ivanov had still been there, I’d have probably done something stupid like drop the body, finally proving to everyone that I couldn’t be trusted with anything.
As soon as I was on the road and headed to the morgue my tension eased slightly—only to be replaced by a knifing stab of hunger. My hands tightened on the steering wheel, and it didn’t help that I kept thinking I could smell the body in the back of the van. My stomach gave an encouraging growl, and I clenched my teeth as my mouth started to water. Within that skull was such a lovely brain. Maybe I could pull over and use the tire iron to break the skull open, kinda like a coconut. I could scoop out handfuls of that sweet, luscious—
I sucked my breath in, absolutely horrified at the direction of my thoughts. I’d get fired for sure if I showed up at the morgue with a body with a caved-in head. And if I got fired, I’d go to jail for sure, and then—
“Oh, god,” I groaned. I wasn’t horrified at the thought of eating brains. I was worried about how to explain a hole in the corpse’s head.
If you crave it, eat it.
“This is so fucked up,” I muttered. Maybe I was suffering from some weird post-accident trauma. Some lingering hallucination from my overdose? That made as much sense as anything else.
The morgue was empty when I arrived. No surprise, since it was a Sunday. I yanked the stretcher out of the van, wheeled it into the cooler. No, I was not going to bash in this guy’s head. I wasn’t that crazy.