Chapter Five #2
Munch gagged again, and now Bull looked like he might puke. “Jesus Christ, prospect.”
Humpty walked over, took one look inside, then turned toward Jackson. “The fuck, man? You brought us a coffin with the damn customer still in it?”
Jackson stared at him. “What?”
Humpty pointed. “Return to fucking sender.”
Jackson stepped forward. The second he saw inside, his face changed. “Holy shit.” He stumbled back. “What the fuck?”
“Good question,” I said.
“No.” He shook his head. “No fucking way.”
“You drove it here,” Dealer said.
“I didn’t know there was somebody in it!” Jackson insisted.
“How the fuck did you not smell him?” I asked.
“The truck’s closed up, Bone. I was in the fucking cab!”
“Nobody checked it before loading it?” Taco wondered.
Jackson held up his hands. “I didn’t. Why the fuck would I? They told me it was a damaged casket coming back to Grave Casket.”
Hose pushed through the guys. “Move.”
Munch immediately moved. Probably the fastest he’d followed an order since he’d started prospecting.
Hose pulled a pair of gloves from his back pocket.
I looked at him. “You just carry those around?”
“I’m surrounded by you assholes.”
Fair enough.
He snapped them on and moved closer to the coffin. The rest of us instinctively moved farther away. Hose didn’t seem bothered by the smell, or he was better at pretending.
He leaned over the body. “Male.”
“We got that far, Doc,” Taco muttered.
“Shut up.” Hose looked over the man’s face and neck without touching him at first. “Bloating’s pretty advanced. Skin’s slipping in places.”
Munch made a strangled sound.
Hose looked over his shoulder. “You want to go outside?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Hose turned back.
Munch immediately stepped behind Bull.
I would’ve laughed if there wasn’t a dead fucking man decomposing inside one of my coffins.
“How long?” I asked.
Hose studied him. “Hard to be exact without knowing where he’s been kept. Temperature changes everything.”
“Guess.”
“Four days. Five maybe. Could be more if he was kept cold part of the time.”
Jackson dragged both hands over his face. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
I watched him. He looked genuinely shaken, but that didn’t mean shit. People could fake being surprised. They could fake panic. They could fake just about anything when they knew someone was watching.
“Tell me exactly what happened at the yard,” I ordered.
Jackson looked at me. “I already did.”
“Do it again.”
He swallowed. “I pulled into Milwaukee. They unloaded what I brought. I was waiting on the paperwork when one of the dock guys came over and said they had a Grave Casket return.”
“Name?”
“I don’t fucking know.”
“You’ve seen him before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“There are a lot of guys working that place, Bone,” he wailed.
“What’d he look like?”
Jackson blinked. “Uh...white guy. Maybe forty. Brown hair. Had a beard.”
“That narrows it the fuck down.”
“I wasn’t memorizing his face. I thought he was giving me a goddamn coffin.”
“He was.”
Jackson looked into the casket. “With a fucking dead guy in it.”
“Everybody back up,” I ordered.
Nobody argued.
I looked at Hose. “Get him into the back room.”
Hose nodded. “Don’t touch anything you don’t have to. I want to know who he is, how he died, and anything else you can figure out.”
“I’m a medic, Bone, not a fucking medical examiner.”
“Today you’re both.”
“Great,” Hose grunted.
“Humpty, help him.”
Humpty sighed. “Why me?”
“Because I said so.”
“Good reason,” he chuckled.
“Bull, Munch, Taco, Dealer. You four get the new coffins loaded.”
Munch stared at me. “Can I get some air first?”
“No.”
He swallowed hard. “Yep. Okay.”
Taco slapped him on the back. “Don’t breathe through your mouth.”
Munch glared at him. “Fuck you.”
Dealer grabbed one end of the cart holding the first outgoing coffin. “Move.”
The guys got to work.
Myth stepped beside me. “I’ll ride back to Milwaukee with Jackson.”
I looked at him. “Good.”
“We’ll find out who put that coffin on his truck, and who signed off on it,” he offered.
“Yeah.”
Jackson shook his head. “I’m telling you, I didn’t fucking know.”
“I heard you.” But I didn’t know if I believed him yet.
“You think I would’ve driven a dead body straight to your fucking door if I knew it was back there?”
“I don’t know what you’d do, Jackson.”
His jaw tightened.
I’d known him for years. Trusted him enough to haul for us, but trust wasn’t blind. Not in my world.
Myth clapped Jackson on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go figure out what the hell happened.”
Jackson looked at the coffin one more time. “Jesus.”
Myth would get him calmed down. He’d also pay attention to every word Jackson said on the drive back to Milwaukee.
If the story changed, I’d know.
Behind me, Humpty and Hose started rolling the coffin toward the back of the warehouse.
The smell followed it. Munch gagged again, and Dealer shouted at him to get his shit together.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cigarettes. I stuck one between my lips, flicked my lighter, and drew the smoke deep into my lungs. Didn’t do shit for the smell.
I stood there watching Hose and Humpty wheel the dead man away.
Three days ago, everything had been running exactly the way it was supposed to. Now somebody had sent a rotting corpse into my warehouse inside one of our coffins.
I took another drag from my cigarette. What the fuck was going on?