Stay in Your Lane!

1. Everett

CHAPTER 1

EVERETT

“ H ere, kitty.” I stretched my hand toward the patchy, piebald cat under a scrubby azalea bush about five feet away. “Hey, kitty kitty…”

The cat looked unamused. I crouched down and duck-walked a little closer. “You look like a nice cat.”

The hell I am, the cat seemed to say, flicking its right ear at me before turning its head away. It hadn’t run yet, though, so…

“I bet you’d like some pets, right?” It would be nice if the cat wanted some petting, seeing as how I’d been waiting just beyond the boundaries of the scene for the last forty-five minutes and had turned my phone off half an hour ago to save the last of its battery. Petting a cat would be more interesting than staring at my feet, or wondering what that weird smell was, or?—

Yeah, anyway. Where was I? “Kitty, kitty, kitty…”

The cop with the clipboard standing a few meters away from me snorted. “Dumbass,” he said under his breath as he glanced at his watch.

I ignored him. Guys like that were guys who didn’t deserve my attention, or deserve to pet random cats. I got a little closer. “C’mere kitten…”

To my delight, the cat slowly emerged from under the bush. It took a few steps toward me, then sat down and began to groom its face with its paw, not deigning to make eye contact. Still, it was progress. “Just a little pet,” I wheedled as I crawled closer. “Just the top of your cute little head.” Closer…closer… When I reached out again, I could barely touch the cat’s closest ear. “Sweet kitty…” It turned to look at me, a purr starting up in its belly, and I grinned as I sank my fingertips into its fur. “What a good kitty you a?—”

BANG!

The door to the doublewide trailer thirty feet away slammed open and one of the crime scene technicians came out. The cat hissed, then batted at my hand before running across the street and disappearing behind another trailer. I watched it go with a sigh, then stared down at the scratches on my wrist that were starting to bead up with blood. Ow.

“Better fix those up before you go in,” the cop said. “You don’t want to contaminate the crime scene.”

“Yeah.” Duh, I know that. I had been transporting bodies for almost a decade, ever since my dad decided I was old enough to work for the family business. Mulligan’s Mortuary Services did everything from refrigeration and death certificate filing to funerary services and floral arranging. The point was, I was an old hand when it came to appropriate behavior at an active crime scene, which this definitely was.

“C’mon in, Everett, the M.E. is done with the body for now,” the tech called over to me. “Don’t forget gloves and booties.”

“I won’t.” I headed for the hearse to get a pair of each.

“A mask might be a good idea too,” the tech added.

Oh boy. It was going to be that kind of scene. Gloves were standard, but I was only asked to wear masks for a few reasons—bad insect activity, a truly awful smell, or lots of liquid that they didn’t want to risk contaminating. Ew . It was a good thing I’d volunteered for this body instead of Leanne. My sister couldn’t handle big messes in small areas, and a trailer, even a double-wide, would qualify as a small area.

I used an alcohol wipe on the scratches, wincing at the sting, then covered it with a bandage. I put on a clean pair of gloves and grabbed a mask, some booties, a bag, a tag, and a handful of the special zip-ties we used to close the bags, then headed for the scene commander.

The cop handed over the clipboard. “Sign in.”

“Gotcha.” I signed, put in the date and exact time, then got my mask on. Booties came next, then I headed for the tech who was waiting by the door. The wooden stairs creaked ominously as I climbed the four steps to the door, which the tech was holding open for me. “Hey, Dwayne.”

“Everett.” He nodded, more grim than congenial. “Be careful in there, okay? We’ve documented everything, but suicide by shotgun is always a fucking mess.”

“Oh, dude.” My eyes widened. “Seriously?”

Dwayne shrugged. “I mean, I’m no detective, but that’s what they’re saying, and it looks…just, be careful.”

“I will.” I stepped inside, wondering if I should have put on a full hazmat suit. Scene contamination might not be a huge concern if it was a suicide, but a shotgun meant pieces of the deceased could end up all over the place.

“Are they here yet?” someone yelled from deeper in the trailer.

“He’s here,” Dwayne called out. He pointed down the hallway. “Last door on the right.”

I moved carefully toward the back, checking where I was stepping just in case there was something notable in the hall. No evidence had been cordoned off, but?—

A smear on the wall caught my attention. It was about elbow-height, the only thing at that height the whole length of the hall. Pictures lined the wall above it, all of them depicting the same young woman. Some showed her and a man. Quite a few had her or both of them with a cute baby. None of the photos had been disturbed, but here was this weird reddish-brown stain that appeared kind of fresh, and…

“Dude.” I turned back toward Dwayne. “There’s blood on the wall.”

He looked where I was pointing, then shrugged again. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the deceased.”

“But it’s blood.”

Dwayne rolled his eyes. “Just go to the bedroom, Everett. You’ll see what I mean.”

Would I, though? I made it down the hall, turned to the right, and?—

Oh wow. Yeah. Okay. That was a lot of blood. Like, wow. And that was— huh . The dead dude was missing everything from his upper jaw to the top of his head. That had been one big fucking shotgun shell.

There were two other people in the cramped bedroom. One of them was the medical examiner, recognizable by the fact that he always wore the same navy suit no matter what season, temperature, or location he was in. The other was a plainclothes cop—probably a detective—standing by the closet and radiating impatience.

“Finally,” he said as he caught sight of me. “It’s past time to get this body out of here.”

I kinda wanted to say “Dude, I’ve been waiting outside” but my mom always told me silence was golden. Forgetting that usually led to raised voices, so I just nodded, then faced the M.E.

“I’ll send for the body in another day or so,” he said.

“Cool.”

The detective turned to stare at me. “‘Cool’? You think dead people are cool?” he asked, attitude in every word.

Great. Super awesome. I loved working with cops who were determined to misunderstand me. “No,” I replied, then looked back at the M.E. “Got it, Dr. Klinger.”

He nodded. “Say hello to your father for me, Mr. Mulligan.” Then he was gone, leaving me with Detective Jackass.

“Get him out quick,” he said, turning a little green behind his mask. “It fucking stinks in here. The sooner we get the cleaners in, the better.” He left the room then, muttering, “Or just burn this whole damn trailer to the ground.”

Well, that would be a bad way to handle a crime scene. I turned my attention back to the body. It wouldn’t be too hard to bag him up. His feet were right here, practically at the edge of the bedroom door, while his upper body was draped across the bottom of the bed. He was wearing pants—that was nice—but no shirt. I glanced at his bare torso before reaching for my bag, then stopped and looked again.

Circle circle circle line…circle circle…

I knew that pattern. My brother Stuart had complained for three years about wanting a pair of shoes like that until my parents gave in and bought him a pair of Nike Air Force 1s for Christmas. Our mom died a week later, though, so I’m not sure he ever actually ended up wearing them.

Still. Air Force 1s were expensive sneakers, hundreds of dollars a pair. I scanned the room for any sign of them, but all I saw was a pair of ratty brown sneakers in the corner of the closet. Still, this seemed important, so… “Excuse me?”

It wasn’t the detective who came back in, it was Dwayne. “Finished alre—c’mon, Everett,” he groaned. “Can we get this done already? The stretcher is waiting!”

“Thanks, but.” I pointed at the deceased. “This was called a suicide, right? So why is there a shoeprint on the guy’s chest?”

Dwayne sighed. “The man was very clearly an addict. Or did you miss the little shrine in the corner there?”

No, I’d seen the heroin paraphernalia, but still. That made it even weirder. “Why would someone who could afford Air Force 1s come and kick a guy like this in the chest?”

“It could have happened at any time.”

I shook my head. “That’s not how bruising works.” That, plus the blood in the hall…I was getting uneasy. “Are you sure this is a suicide?”

Dwayne pointed a finger at me. “Wouldn’t you want to kill yourself if you lived in a hovel like this?”

“No.” It wasn’t that bad of a trailer, honestly. Grubby, yeah, and old, but the neighborhood had cats, so…

“Just do your job and get the body out before someone complains, okay?” Dwayne left again, and I turned back to the deceased.

Dude. No. It was too weird to ignore. I couldn’t get it out of my head now that I’d seen the bruise. In fact, checking over the rest of the body, I was beginning to see other things that seemed out of place. There were cuts and bruises on the guy’s forearms. Sure, bruises weren’t weird on a heroin user, but these weren’t track marks and they weren’t focused around the veins. Two of the knuckles on his right hand were torn and bloody, too. It kind of blended into the blood splattered all over the scene, but…

That was the kind of wound you got when you punched something harder than your hand. I knew, because I’d gone through a kung fu master phase when I was a teenager and tried to toughen myself up by punching a tree in my back yard. I broke two bones in my hand before I admitted defeat, and my knuckles had been a mess.

I needed to get this man out of here, I knew I did. But…if this was a suicide, it was a weird fucking suicide. Someone ought to take another look at this. Not me , although I kind of wanted to check around now that I had this bug in my brain, but someone. And how could they do that if the body had been removed?

That was when I did something really bad. I didn’t even stop to think about it, I just reached into my pocket, grabbed my phone, turned on the camera, and snapped a photo of the dead man’s chest. I made sure the whorls of the pattern were clear, then got photos of his arms, hands, and the base of his neck just in case I’d missed something. I’d go take a picture of the blood in the hall, but Dwayne was there right now, and he’d probably get upset if he saw what I was doing, so…

Maybe I could come back later. After the scene was released but before the cleaners got here. Yeah…I could?—

“Everett!”

“Uh-huh, on it!”

It wasn’t hard to get the deceased’s body—most of it—into the bag. He was a pretty skinny guy, and I had a system after doing this for so long. I started with the bag turned inside out, slipped it over the feet and up the legs, did one long slide up the torso as I pulled it forward to get the head in, and there I was with a fairly clean body bag and all the parts where they should be.

Well…okay, so I had to scoop some stuff off the bed, and some more off the wall. I could have gotten more but it would have taken, like, a spatula, and Dwayne was getting anxious and the detective was being shouty, so that was all I got. Dwayne helped me load the body up on the stretcher and move it out, but I still managed to get a covert shot of the blood on the wall as we went.

I tried bringing it up one more time. “Seriously, dude, this spot is weird. Why would there be blood out here?”

Dwayne sighed as he turned to me. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s from one of the paramedics? Maybe the guy is just a raging junkie who got a bloody nose before he decided to end it all? I don’t know and I don’t care.”

You should care.

It bothered me that he didn’t. A person had died and the shit surrounding his death was way weird, but it seemed like no one really gave a damn. I knew all too well how fast and how far people could fall when things got hard; one incident could lead to another, to another, and all of a sudden all the good things in your life started going down like dominoes. My family’s funeral home was responsible for cremating every unclaimed person in the county, and no matter what, my mom had taught us that every person who came to us deserved decent treatment and a memorial, however brief.

“You got it from here?” Dwayne asked at the edge of the scene as we stripped off gloves and masks.

“Yeah.” I used a bunch of wipes to clean off the bits that had gotten on the outside of the body bag before getting rid of my own gloves, then threw it all away into the trash bag next to the scene commander.

“Finally,” the scene commander muttered. “Sign here.”

I signed, took my body, and headed for the hearse. Part of me was relieved to see it still sitting where I’d parked it, even though I double-checked my pocket to make sure I had the keys before leaving it here. Your hearse gets taken for a joyride once by a thrill-seeking teenage delinquent and you never hear the end of it. At least it had been empty.

I opened the back and slid the stretcher inside, locking it smoothly in place on the rails in the back. I made sure the body was strapped down tight, then closed up and got into the front seat, waved to Dwayne, and headed out.

The drive back to Mulligan’s Mortuary Services was enough time for me to confirm that, yeah, I wasn’t done with this. I couldn’t be. The scene was just too strange. The shoeprint on his chest, the defensive wounds on his hands and forearms, and the blood stain in the hall…a paramedic wouldn’t leave that, would they? They wouldn’t even need to touch him to declare him dead —not with most of his head missing. And why would their hand be up at elbow level as they walked out? It wouldn’t have come from the medical examiner, either; he knew better than that. Right?

I needed another look. Soon the scene would be released, and my shift was almost over too, so once I got this guy in the morgue I could go grab a quick bite at Waffles?, then go back to the scene and get some more pictures before everything was cleaned up.

Super illegal, dude. So super illegal.

But not as illegal as me taking photos of the body itself, so…yay for me?

I parked at the back of Mulligan’s and brought the body in immediately. I’d learned the hard way not to get distracted when I had a corpse on my hands.

“You’re late,” my sister called out from where she was prepping someone for burial in the room next to cold storage. “Stop for a burger on the way?”

I groaned. “That was one time and I was sixteen! ” I would never live that down. When we were old and gray, my older siblings would still bring up the time the munchies got the better of me during a job. I ignored my sister’s cackling and transferred the body to a cold compartment, then locked it in and noted the number in the computer.

There. Done. Now I could go get some food and satisfy my curiosity at the same time. Maybe I should go back to the scene first, though. There was no telling when they’d release it, after all, and?—

“Earth to Everett.” I startled as my brother’s palm impacted the back of my head. “Keys, please.”

“Shit, you could just ask,” I muttered as I handed over the keys to the hearse.

He took them with a satisfied expression. “I did. Twice. You didn’t seem to hear me, so I had to resort to drastic measures.” He turned and left for the back lot before I could manage a comeback, like usual. Stuart was obsessed with our vehicles; I swear he’d rather be running an auto body and detailing shop than working in mortuary services. He did all the long-distance delivery, sometimes driving bodies across state lines, and he washed our two hearses every single day, keeping them gleaming.

“Don’t mind him,” Leanne said as she removed curlers from Mrs. Martin’s pure white hair. “He’s been jerky all day.”

I shrugged and went to stand beside her. “She looks great,” I said appreciatively. Mrs. Martin’s funeral was tomorrow, and Leanne always made sure our clients looked their best at viewings.

“Thanks,” she said absently as she began to brush out Mrs. Martin’s hair.

I glanced at the clock. “Don’t you have dinner with Theo in half an hour?”

“I did, but I canceled. I’ve got too much to do here tonight.”

Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember the last date my sister and her fiancé had gone on. “I can cover for you here. Go.” A second later I remembered my crime scene. Shit. But I’d made the offer, and?—

“No, that’s all right. You’re not as good at the makeup. I’ll handle it.”

I stepped back, stung. “I’m good at it,” I protested. “Not as good as you, but?—”

“It’s fine.” She met me with a vague smile. “You go. I’ve got this.”

“O…kay.” I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth or whatever, but it sucked that my family still thought I was unreliable after I was the only one of them to get a damn degree in this field. Mom had taught Stuart and Leanne what she knew, and Dad had pitched in too, but by the time I was old enough to learn from her she was gone, and Dad didn’t have the heart to train me by then.

Whatever, it was fine. I glanced at my phone as I trudged up the stairs to the family quarters on the second floor. Plenty of time for me to change out of the branded clothes, get a quick shower, and get back to the scene before it was cleaned up.

Sweet.