17. Everett
CHAPTER 17
EVERETT
I ’d never had to pick up the body of a person I knew before. Not that I knew Leon—we’d only met face-to-face the one time—but still…that made it worse.
I was good at compartmentalizing. Maybe it was because my brain was always going off on a tangent, but just like I had a hundred tabs open in my phone, it felt like I had a hundred different paths in my mind that I could run down any time. When one thing bothered me or got boring, I diverted into another. It made following through on stuff like paperwork, which never had my attention, really hard sometimes, but it also made it easy for me to dissociate from the reality of a body. Blood, viscera, brain matter, blank expressions on broken faces—these were all things I could mentally shy away from even while I was bagging the body up and getting it to the morgue.
Not this time. This time I couldn’t take my eyes away from Leon’s face, and not just because I didn’t want to look at the mess that was his chest. I’d spoken to that face, heard words come out of that slack mouth. I’d stared into those cloudy eyes and seen an intelligent person staring back at me, and now—it was almost like seeing a stranger, but he wasn’t. Even though I needed to think he was, because no one could know that we’d met.
The M.E. had already left, but there was some kerfuffle with the officer in charge of the scene, so I wasn’t allowed to take the body quite yet. I’d been standing here on the edge of the railroad tracks, a stone’s throw from the club where Kyle and I had met Leon, for the past hour. You’d think that would be enough time for me to calm down, but it wasn’t. Instead, the panic in my chest was getting worse.
It had taken a lot of convincing to get Kyle to stay home. I already knew they weren’t using his company for the cleanup job, and for once I was grateful I wouldn’t see him at a scene. He needed to keep his distance right now, and his brother backed me up on that. I’d promised him I’d come by as soon as I could, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that might be the worst possible thing I could do.
I’d called Leon. My number was on his phone. Had the police confiscated it? Would they even bother to do an investigation, given that the death had been ruled a suicide?
How had they ruled it a suicide? How could it possibly be a suicide? Leon hadn’t seemed anything like suicidal when we’d spoken before. Nervous, sure, duly cautious, but not suicidal. And he’d supposedly shot himself in the chest, which—in a study of over six-hundred and fifty one suicides over a ten year period that I’d read a few years ago, out of a hundred and twenty-one deaths by firearm, eighty-five percent of men who’d used one to kill themselves had shot themselves through the head. The stat was lower for women, but that high percentage for men was consistent across meta studies as well. Men who used a gun to kill themselves were anywhere from seventy-five to ninety-percent likely to shoot themselves through the head.
That didn’t mean he had to make that choice, of course. Given the bottles strewn about the gravelly pit where his body had been found, it was possible that alcohol had impaired his judgement, not to mention his coordination. But…
Suicide. Leon had been ruled a suicide before the medical examiner even got him to the morgue. He’d been ruled a suicide before the most cursory investigation had been finished. Fine, Leon was a drug dealer, very possibly a murderer, and not a nice person overall, but he deserved an actual investigation instead of a quick decision on the part of the detective who’d come to the scene.
It wasn’t Reardon. I was glad, because I wasn’t sure I could look at that guy right now without breaking out in a cold sweat. Instead, it was Detective Jackass—I still didn’t know his actual name—the same guy who’d handled Ricky’s scene.
That couldn’t be a coincidence. The deaths were on opposite sides of the city. Why would Detective Jackass come to both of them, unless someone was pulling strings to make sure the “right” cops showed up to the scene?
“Everett!”
I jumped a little as I realized Dwayne, the crime scene tech, was calling my name. He’d been at Ricky’s death scene, too. Was he part of this conspiracy, or was I starting to see boogeymen where they didn’t exist?
“Jesus, you’re out of it today,” Dwayne said, taking off his gloves and depositing them into the bag at the edge of the taped-off area before wiping his forehead. “I called you three times.”
“Sorry,” I said, then cleared my throat and tried again, because that was barely audible. “I mean, sorry. Got a lot on my mind lately. Is it clear for me to…”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed my body bag and the rolling stretcher I’d use to bring Leon back to the hearse, but Dwayne’s hand on my forearm stopped me cold.
“Something I can help with, man?”
I looked at Dwayne blankly. “What?”
“Whatever’s on your mind. Is it something you need help with?” Dwayne’s broad, affable face was set in an expression of concern. I’d have been touched, if this wasn’t the first time in thirteen body pickups that he’d ever bothered with getting personal. Dwayne wasn’t rude the way a lot of people were, but he didn’t give a crap about me.
He was fishing. He’s in on it. Maybe I was being paranoid, but at this point I felt justified.
“Family stuff,” I said after a moment. “Nothing important, don’t worry.”
“Yeah? You sure I can’t do anything?” He smiled, and it almost looked natural. “I’m a decent listener.”
Where were your listening skills when I had to pick up Mrs. Castellara when she was spread over a five-hundred-foot diameter?
That had been a rough one; the Castellara house had literally blown up, and five people had died as a result. It turned out a nearby fracking well hadn’t been properly sealed once it was “exhausted” and had leaked into the basement. I’d had to take myself off the property to throw up twice, and Dwayne hadn’t done anything other than chuckle and slap me on the back with a “man up, Mulligan.”
Needless to say, he could get fucked right now. “It’ll all work out,” I said, projecting as much confidence as I could. “But the sooner I get back home the better, so…”
“Yeah, sure. Go for it, man.”
The scene was less than four hours old, and I was already taking the body away. Incredible. I stared down at Leon and tried to ignore the feeling of goosebumps sweeping across my body as I rolled him into the bag, sealed it, tagged it, and got him onto the stretcher. I wondered if the bottles nearest to his corpse had even been checked for his fingerprints. I wondered if any of the shoeprints in the gravel were Air Force 1s, and if they were, whether or not they were Leon’s size, or someone else’s. I wondered what Kyle would say about everything.
God, I wanted to be with him. I wanted to be with someone who’d understand how I was feeling. Even more, I wanted to be with someone who’d make me feel better.
Focus, Ev.
I rolled Leon out to the hearse, happily not needing to interact with Dwayne again, since he’d been pulled into conversation with Detective Jackass. I glanced at the pair of them and finally made out the name on the cop’s badge—Adams.
Detective Adams was officially on my shit list.
I secured Leon in the back and checked my orders one last time. He was to go straight to the morgue, no stopover at Mulligan’s Mortuary. If he were really a suicide, that would be suspicious in and of itself. The morgue didn’t have a lot of space, and they served the entire county, so usually only the most pressing cases went straight there. But knowing—well, fine, not completely knowing, but almost as good as—that he’d been murdered, it made a lot more sense.
Did Dr. Klinger know what was going on? Was he in on it? Or was he so busy that he didn’t even have the bandwidth to announce the time of death, and left the investigation side of things up to the cops? But no, M.E.s had to be the ones to give the final verdict when it came to cause of death, didn’t they? So maybe he was involved, or maybe he was being blackmailed, or maybe?—
My brain spun in circles like this all the way to the city morgue. I had half a mind to ask Dr. Klinger about it. Not if he was a member of a police conspiracy covering up murders—I wasn’t that dumb—but whether or not he actually thought Leon’s death was a suicide. Would that be suspicious? That would probably be suspicious, wouldn’t it? Maybe I shouldn’t do that.
I didn’t get a choice in the end. The morgue tech met me at the back of the building, signed the handover paperwork with hardly a glance, and got Leon transferred before the engine cooled. “Thanks, I think that’s it,” she said blithely before turning away and leaving me there in the parking lot, practically paralyzed.
What did I do now?
Go back to Kyle. Talk to him and Colin about this. Tell them who was working the crime scene, who to add to our shit list, who we need to look into. Snuggle up next to him on his oversized couch and see if he’d take a couple of hours to just watch some mindless entertainment so you can finally stop thinking. See if you can convince him to spend the night again, or if you can stay at his place. You want to be with him? You’re an adult, and you don’t have anything else scheduled for the rest of the day. So go be with him.
The part of me that still reflexively obeyed my father’s orders flinched, but all the other parts of me were on board. Maybe I could get stop for some groceries and cook something for him—prove to him that I could make food instead of ordering it all from apps or Waffles?. He probably still had leftover apple pie. What would go good with apple pie? Mom always used to make chicken and dumplings on the nights we had apple pie, so that could be nice.
My phone buzzed with an incoming message as I got into the front seat of the hearse. I checked it, anticipating something from Kyle, but no.
We need to talk. Can I call you?
It was nice of Leanne to check first. Stuart would have just called and left a passive-aggressive message. I called her instead of messaging.
“Hey,” I said, probably too eagerly but I was grateful to have something to take my mind off of my day so far. “What’s up?”
“Bullshit is what’s up.”
Uh-oh. “What kind of bullshit are you talking about?”
“You didn’t pull our business license paperwork, did you?”
“Uh…no?”
“Yes or no, Everett.”
“No!” I had nothing to with the licensing. That was all Dad. “Why?”
“Because there’s no record of the originals at the clerk’s office. I know we got it in weeks ago—I made sure Dad signed off on everything—but they can’t find any evidence of it here.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” Leanne said, sounding stressed. “I’m supposed to meet with Theo in half an hour, and instead I’m stuck in this fucking office arguing about paperwork I know we turned in, and the only thing in our file she’s willing to show me is a series of anonymous complaints against you, of all people.”
People could make anonymous complaints about me? I mean, I guess there had to be a mechanism for complaining, but why not just leave the complaints with my dad? It didn’t make…sense…
“Everett?”
It was another power play by Reardon, or whoever was behind him. Another warning, but in this case it was a warning that could end with my family’s business going under.
“Ev?”
I was going to be responsible for ruining my entire family. What was my dad going to do? The business was his life! Where would we live if we couldn’t afford to stay in the mortuary anymore? What would Leanne and Stuart do?
“ Everett! Hey, it’s okay.” My sister had gone into crisis management mode, I could tell by the tone of her voice. “It’s got to be a mistake. Even if there are a few complaints, that still doesn’t explain the missing paperwork. Something else is going on here.” Suspicion sharpened her voice. “That detective who came by earlier, what was his—Reardon. Detective Reardon.”
Oh fuck, no, I couldn’t let her start digging. “Let me handle it,” I blurted.
“What? No, it’s fine, I’m already here?—”
“But you’ve got a meeting with Theo, right? And the last thing you want is to have to put off a meeting with him because of business bullshit, since that’s what made him break up with you in the first place”—my sister inhaled sharply, but I was too freaked out to backtrack—“and that sucks, so I’d way rather you be on time with him and let me take care of things, since I’m the one the complaints are about in the first place, and maybe they’re not even really complaints! Maybe they’re…um…”
“Everett.”
I firmed my voice. “Seriously, go meet with Theo. I’ll handle things with the clerk and see if they can figure out who misplaced our paperwork. It’s fine. I’ve got this.”
“Well…if you’re sure.”
“I am.” I’m not, I’m so not. “It’s cool.” It sucks. “Go, have fun.” Grab Theo and run for the fucking hills.
“Okay. Thanks, Everett. Let me know what you find out tonight, okay?”
“I will.”
I wouldn’t. I had no idea what to do. Leanne ended the call and I just sat there behind the wheel in the medical examiner’s parking lot, staring at nothing, contemplating the end of everything. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t talk to my family about this. I couldn’t make them all into targets. It was bad enough that Leanne knew Reardon. That Reardon knew Leanne .
I was fucked.
But maybe I wasn’t completely fucked.
I called Kyle.