My stomach rumbled as I returned to my bedroom to pull on cargo pants and a Coroner’s Office shirt. I yanked open the door of the little fridge to pull out a bottle of the coffee-drink stuff before remembering that I’d downed the last one two days ago. Or was it three? Damn. That bump of feel-terrific energy would’ve been pretty nice right now. Closing the fridge, I got down on my hands and knees and reached up under my bed, feeling for the pill bottle wedged between the springs. I pulled it out, pried the top off, snagged out two white, oblong pills. The rest went back into the bottle and the bottle to its hiding place. Coffee-drinks weren’t the only things that could give me a boost. I pulled a beer out of the fridge, washed the pills down, and stuck the open beer back in the fridge. It’d be flat when I got home, but it was better than wasting it.
Holding my shoes in my hand, I walked as silently as I could to the front door.
“Where the fuck you sneakin’ off to at this hour?”
Shit. I turned to see my dad sitting in the stained recliner, an open beer in his hand. More empties were piled haphazardly beside the chair. He was probably at the bar last night, got kicked out when they closed at four A.M., then kept going when he got home.
“I’m not sneaking out,” I replied. “I got called out to work, and I was trying to keep from waking you up.”
His mouth curled down into a scowl. He was only in his late forties, but a couple of decades of booze combined with a ten-year-old back injury from his time on an offshore oil rig, had him looking a lot older. A scraggly beard tried to cover his sagging jowls, and his light brown eyes seemed perpetually glazed. He had on the same battered jeans he’d been wearing the day before, wedged above his bony hips and under his slight pot belly. No shirt. Just pale, flabby chest and spindly arms.
“Between your phone and the shower, no way to sleep around here.”
“Yeah, well, sorry.” I dropped my shoes on the floor and shoved my feet into them. “Next time I won’t even bother trying to be quiet since I obviously suck at it.” What the hell did he need to be rested and alert for anyway?
“That sicko job of yours paid you yet?” He peered at me as he lit a cigarette. “Or you already spent it on pills?”
Crouching, I yanked my laces tight. “I haven’t been paid yet,” I lied. “Maybe later this week.” I really didn’t want to get into it with him right now. He expected me to give him half of any money I made to cover my “rent” and expenses, which was a load of bull because this stupid old house had been paid for over a decade ago, since it had actually belonged to his parents, and he got it when they died. Plus, he got his disability check every month—also a load of bull—which covered utilities and food and stuff like that. He only wanted my money so he could go get drunk.
It was beside the point that I usually spent my money on getting drunk—or high. It was my damn money, so it should be my damn buzz. Right?
“So, how much do necro-freaks like you get paid?” He asked, still watching me intently.
“Dunno, Dad,” I replied, keeping my attention on the laces of my sneakers. “It’s a special program . . . part of my probation.” More lies. Yesterday I’d been handed a check for my first week’s pay, and I’d about died when I saw the amount. More than double anything I’d ever made anywhere else. I had no intention of ever letting him know what I was making.
“Sounds fucked up to me,” he said. He took a long pull on the beer and chased it with a drag on his cigarette. Ash dribbled onto his hollowed chest, but he made no move to brush it away. “Why the fuck didja sign on for this? Why can’t you keep a real fuckin’ job? Or is that the only place that’d take a pillhead?” He scowled. “Only a freak would wanna touch dead bodies.”
“Well I guess your daughter’s a freak,” I shot back as I stood up. “What does that make you, huh?” It wasn’t the first time he’d called me names. “Freak” was pretty tame by his standards.
I stalked away from him and yanked open the pantry in the kitchen, muttering a curse as a couple of empty pickle jars tumbled out and rolled across the kitchen floor. One of Mom’s “things” had been saving and washing out jars in case she ever wanted to make jelly or pickled who-the-hell-knew-what. I’d never seen her do anything of the sort, which meant we had a couple hundred empty jars stuffed under every cabinet in the damn house. One of these days I was going to actually get around to throwing them all out. Probably about the same time that I cleaned the rest of the kitchen. Yeah, any day now.
I’d eaten pizza last night, but my stomach was acting as if I hadn’t eaten in days. There wasn’t much food in the house, but I managed to find a packet of Pop-Tarts that didn’t look too old. That would have to hold me until I finished at the scene. I was already running late.
My dad muttered something obnoxious under his breath as I headed to the door but I managed to make it out of the house without getting sucked into any more father-daughter bonding. I started to climb into the van, then paused at the sight of an envelope stuck under the windshield wiper. Frowning, I snagged it from beneath the wiper. It was a simple plain white envelope, sealed shut, with nothing written on the outside. I hesitated a few seconds as an unpleasant sense of foreboding shimmered through me, then I ripped it open and unfolded the piece of paper within.
Angel,
If you crave it, eat it. Trust your instincts. It’s cool.
Good luck.
What the fuck? My entire body went cold and my hand shook as I stared down at the note. I had absolutely no doubt that it was from the same person who’d sent me the letter in the hospital. This person obviously knew me and knew where I lived, but it wasn’t the stalker aspect of it that had me freaked out right now.
It was that they had to know what I’d been craving.
“Freak” is right.
I crumpled the note into a tight ball and shoved it deep into a pocket. My heart pounded in a combination of terror and anxiety as I started the van and headed out. No, that was insane. How the hell could anyone know that I’d been fighting the urge to chow down on . . . brains?
Yet what else could the letter possibly be referring to? Usually if I craved something, I ate it. Simple. I didn’t need anyone else to tell me it was okay and that I should go for it.
But I’d been craving brains. The smell was like chocolate and cookies and biscuits and gravy and everything else that was delicious. It damn near drove me crazy every time I had to touch one. I’d been fighting the cravings the way I’d never fought the urge to take drugs or get drunk.
As if to taunt me, my stomach chose that moment to snarl again. Stop it! I silently wailed. I ripped the packet of Pop-Tarts open with my teeth and ate them as quickly as I could, even though they were so stale and tasteless it was like eating cardboard. Maybe the uppers I’d taken would help. They’d always done a good job of killing my appetite in the past, so hopefully they’d help kill this screwed up hunger.
Or maybe I just needed crazy-meds instead.
If you crave it, eat it. I shook my head. I’d gotten comfy with the thought that this job was a substitute for rehab, but this letter threw that completely out of whack. Why on earth would it ever be all right to give in to that?
No. It didn’t make sense. It had to be referring to something else. A dull anger began to form in my gut. Why the hell couldn’t Anonymous Letter Guy simply tell me what the hell was going on?
I struggled to put the whole craziness out of my head as I focused on getting to the scene in a timely manner. Fortunately the van had a GPS which efficiently guided me to the address Derrel had texted—a one-story brick house in the sort of upper middle-class neighborhood I’d once hoped to live in. An ambulance and a police car occupied the driveway, and a black Dodge Durango with the Coroner’s Office logo on the side was parked at the curb behind a maroon Ford Taurus with so many lights in the windows and antennas on the back that it was screamingly obvious it belonged to a detective. Why the hell did they call them “unmarked” cars when it was obvious to anyone with eyes that it was a police car?
I pulled in behind the Durango, but paused before getting out and surreptitiously slathered more deodorant into my pits. I could still smell myself. It wasn’t overpowering or anything, but I couldn’t seem to shake the faint whiff of yuck—the same kinda sickly, almost sweet, rotting flesh smell of a decomposing body. I was also so hungry I was ready to eat the damn steering wheel, and the Pop-Tarts hadn’t made the slightest difference. It didn’t feel as if the pills had kicked in at all, which was really strange since I could usually count on feeling the effect within about ten minutes, and it had easily been half an hour.
I hurried up to the house, kicking myself for not bringing more pills with me. Though, with my luck, I’d take more and then overdose again, I thought with a sigh.
The stupid clawing hunger had me so distracted I didn’t even see the low step in front of the house. I tripped and only a sudden strong grip on my arm saved me from a humiliating sprawl.
“Careful there,” a deep voice murmured
I clutched at the hand on my arm as I struggled for enough balance to stand on my own. “Thanks, man,” I said with an embarrassed grimace. I got my feet under me, looked up. And froze. A cop. Shit, it’s a cop.
He released me and stepped back while I fought down the stupid instinctive flare of alarm that shot through me. After two weeks on the job and a few dozen death scenes I should’ve been used to running into cops all the time, but this was the first time I’d been up close and personal with one. Besides, this cop was kinda hot. I didn’t usually go for the men-in-uniform type, but he rocked it. There was no spare fat on this guy. His hair and eyes were both dark, but he didn’t look Italian or Arabic or anything like that. I took a quick glance at his nametag. M. Ivanov. Was that Russian? That would explain—
My thoughts came to a screeching halt. Ivanov. Shit. Marcus Ivanov. This was the cop who’d arrested me for that stolen Prius.