by Brad Meltzer
Brown
Nola
“And here are her personal effects,” Dino said, handing the driver a pouch filled with a set of keys, a cigarette lighter, and an old BlackBerry from the bowling alley’s lost and found.
“Got it. Great,” the driver said, marking it off on his own checklist and sliding into the front seat. “So I pick up the military escort around front?” he added.
“Actually, I’ll be escorting today,” Zig said, tightening his tie and pulling his blue blazer from a nearby chair.
“I thought the escorts had to be soldiers,” the driver said.
“Or someone from Dover,” Zig shot back. “In this case, I knew the deceased. She’s a friend of the family.”
There was a loud thunk as Zig slammed the trunk shut. Before he could reach the passenger seat, Dino grabbed him by the arm. “You know we can just follow the hearse in your car,” Dino whispered.
“And tip off the people we’re actually looking for? In case you didn’t notice, they stole Nola’s body.”
“Then you should report that!” Dino hissed.
“To whom? Colonel Hsu? Master Guns? No offense, but for Nola to be rushed out of Dover that quickly, both of them had to’ve okayed it—or at least known about it. Just like they did on the night she came in.”
“Then track that other hearse—the one that took the body. When they drove off base, Dover cameras should’ve gotten a shot of their license plate.”
“Do you really think anyone will give me access to that footage? Pay attention, Dino. Whoever pulled this off, they’re the same people who faked the fingerprints and rushed Nola’s supposed corpse so quickly through the system. And they’re the same ones who made sure her body was dressed early this morning and whisked it off an hour ago. And you know the only people who can pull that off?”
“The people who run this place,” Dino whispered, staring through the hearse’s back window, at the empty casket marked Brown, Nola.
“Believe me, we may not know the why yet, but someone wants this body.”
“We don’t have a body!”
“They don’t know that! Whoever was in that other hearse, they’re driving around with a casket. So when the Dover big board lights up and says that we just left the base with another casket that has another Nola body, trust me, they’ll start wondering if they’re the ones who got the fake. Someone’s gonna come running. At the very least, by the time we get to Longwood, we’ll see who’s waiting for us at the funeral home.”
“If…” Dino said.
Zig knew what he meant. If Zig made it to the funeral home.
For the better part of his professional life, Zig spent his days with the dead. He cleaned them, scrubbed them, cut their nails, and lovingly rebuilt them. But here, with Nola, a woman who was very much alive, it was Zig’s first chance to actually save someone. Someone who once saved and helped him—and who he’d tried to help too. Back then, he’d failed. Right now, she was definitely in trouble. He wouldn’t fail her again.
“You sure this girl’s worth it?” Dino finally asked.
Zig locked eyes with his old friend. He didn’t have to say it.
“All set?” Zig finally called out to the driver, sliding into the passenger seat and checking the side mirror to see if anyone was watching.
All clear. For now.
“Next stop, Longwood Funeral Home,” the driver from Longwood said, turning the ignition.
Zig took another look at the side-view mirror. Still clear.
From this angle, he had no idea what was coming.
17
Zig thought he was prepared. For nearly two hours now, as they headed up DE-1, he’d been sitting there, fidgeting with his tie, counting the highway exit signs, bracing for this return to Ekron, his hometown. He knew so many memories were about to be stirred up, memories of his younger life, his married life…and of course, memories of his Magpie.
Ekron was where his daughter was born. Where she learned to ride a bike. Where she crashed. Broke her arm. Broke her other arm in dance class. Where she hid in a tree for four hours during hide-and-seek—Zig actually called the sheriff—until Magpie revealed herself as the best of hiders. Where she threw up in The Luncheonette—that was its name, The Luncheonette—the first time she ever tried eggs.
During the first few years after the funeral, Zig saw his daughter everywhere, whether he wanted to or not. These days, the opposite was true. Magpie was still there, he could always feel her there, but she was elsewhere too, off in the ether, until a conscious thought, a memory, a song, brought her instantly back.
He could feel it right now…her coming back, slowly, as they left the highway, as four lanes became two, as rural Delaware gave way to rural Pennsylvania—separated by a rusty mobile home on the Delaware side—and the scenery turned familiar.
“Maybe we should take Third Street,” Zig offered. But it was too late, and there they were, rolling toward the one place he was hoping to avoid: the white headstones of Octavius Cemetery, where all those years ago, Zig buried his daughter.
“How old was she?” the driver with the mustache—his name was Stevie—asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Her,” Stevie said, pointing a thumb over his own shoulder, toward the casket in back. “Sergeant Brown. What was she, twenty-six?” Stevie was in his thirties, thick fingers, crow’s-feet around the eyes. Even in a small-town funeral home, there were plenty of things to squint away from. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“What’re you talking about? You drive a hearse,” Zig said. “Don’t you see the same every day?”
“No, here at Longwood, we get people in their eighties, their nineties. People who know it’s coming. Sometimes we get a few like Walter Harris, who was fifty-one when he had his heart attack—and a few years back, we had this young boy who went swimming and…” Stevie stopped himself. “What a horror.”
It was no different when Maggie was mentioned. People felt the need to editorialize with the same useless words. A horror. A tragedy. Can’t imagine.
“Regardless, cases like that are one in a million,” Stevie added. “But to do what you do at Dover—twenty-year-old soldiers…just kids…every day…” He tried to finish the sentence, but again never got there.
Zig nodded, now eyeing the passing headstones of the cemetery, all of them blurring together in a jagged line. He wondered if the groundskeepers put out the fresh flowers he paid for each month. He should check. He wanted to check. Wanted to see her. Usually, he dreaded coming here. But that was the real secret about loss in the long term.
After Maggie’s death, it tore Zig apart to visit places like the Jersey Shore, where they used to take their daughter on vacation. Years later, though, a new trip to the Shore brought back the best of memories—flying a giant butterfly kite, finding her stealthily tucked away under a lounge chair during yet another game of hide-and-seek, and eating bad pizza and fantastic soft ice cream, a rainbow-sprinkles mustache on her face—returning small pieces of her, like a reward. It was the same here today, Zig now flush with thoughts of the fall trees, all orange and yellow, when Maggie was born. Indeed, memories that once ripped his heart open in the early days of loss were, years later, what eventually came back and comforted him. Zig was, for this moment, happy.
It wouldn’t last.
“Final stop,” the driver announced as they turned down Legion Drive and headed for the wide one-story gray building directly next to the firehouse. The sign was new, but the green-and-white script was exactly the same: Longwood Funeral Home. “Welcome back,” Stevie said.
Zig turned. “How’d you know that?”
“Know what?”
“That I’m from here. You said, welcome back. But I never told you that I lived here…that I worked here.”
“I looked you up.”
“Why?”
Stevie pushed a button on the overhead console. The garage door of the funeral home slowly rose as the hearse rolled inside.
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“I asked you a question,” Zig insisted, reaching for his knife.
Inside, an automatic light popped on. There were stacks of orange traffic cones, a neatly wrapped rubber hose, and gallons of detergent for washing the hearse, which always needed to be spotless. On Zig’s right were two metal coffins, both of them on steel casket carts.
Stevie cut the engine, finally turning toward Zig. His eyes were two bricks of coal. “You should go inside.”
“What’re you talking about?” Zig asked.
“Someone’s waiting for you.”
18
Zig knew that smell. Stale potpourri and Carpet Fresh. It was a trick of his old boss, a way to convince people they were coming to a real house as opposed to a house of death. As with nearly everything in a funeral home, it was another lie.
“Anybody here…?” Zig called out, heading slowly down the wide hallway that connected the garage with the rest of the house. His hand was in his pocket, on his knife. “Hello?”
No one answered.
Zig kicked himself for not seeing this coming. When the bodies of fallen soldiers were returned to their hometowns, the local funeral home was usually covered in flowers and American flags. People came out. Police cars and fire trucks greeted the hearse like it was a parade. Here at Longwood, though, everything was silent. When they first drove up, Zig assumed it was because Nola hadn’t lived here in years, or that she’d changed her arrangements so recently. But now, it finally made sense. Someone here kept it quiet on purpose.
“I’m here. You got what you want,” Zig said, passing the stairs to the basement, where the embalming room was.
He felt the old lump in his throat at the sight of the basement. He’d seen his first dead body down in that room. Actually, that wasn’t true. At eleven years old, he’d found his grandmother dead in the big yellow easy chair in their living room, her skin porcelain white, her eye shadow bright blue, her perfume as potent as ever.
Years later, Zig learned his trade in this basement. He worked on bodies in this basement, learned where to inject the embalming fluid in someone’s cheeks so their smile was just right—never too big of a smile, no one wanted a clown—just enough for the “pleasant look,” his boss, Raymond, used to call it. And one day, in this same basement, Zig stood there, staring down at a zipped vinyl body bag, the corpse inside so small, it nearly looked empty.
He’d told everyone he wanted to work on Maggie himself. The damage was so bad. His wife fought him on it, begged him, but he told her this was his privilege, that there was no greater honor than putting to rest those you love.
It was, simply put, a disaster.
As Zig unzipped the bag, just the sight of his daughter’s light brown curls… That was it. When you lose someone close—someone who was bound to your soul—there’s a moment when the tears come. Not the standard tears, where you cry and hug, and then the funeral’s over and you go back to work thinking, I really need to make some changes and appreciate life more.
No, these are the tears that sneak up on you, that catch you off guard and quickly swirl into a vortex in your throat and chest, robbing your breath and bringing on a cry like you’ve never cried before, a gasping, wrenching sob that rips at your belly, your core, at every belief you’ve ever held about the universe. Forget sadness. This was despair.
Zig, on that August night, had that cry right here, down those stairs in that basement, standing over his daughter’s body. It was a moment he was reliving now as he pushed through a closed door and found himself in the back of the reception room.
There was a quiet click behind him. Someone holding a gun.
Zig turned.
She was tall and had pointy features. Beautiful and sharp. Her hair was straight, white with a dyed single black streak. On closer glance, her white hair wasn’t the color of things old; it was more silver, the color of the moon. She looked nothing like her old self. But there was no mistaking those black eyes with flecks of gold, no mistaking that scar on her ear.
“Hands. Now,” Nola Brown said, aiming her gun at Zig’s face.
19
This was Nola when she was twenty-six.
“Empty your pockets,” she insisted.
“You think I’m armed?” he asked, flashing a grin.
“Stop talking.” Nola didn’t know this man. Had no idea his name was Zig. But she knew this: She didn’t like charmers—and she didn’t like him.
“Your knife,” she said, pointing her gun toward his hip. “Right pocket.”
Zig paused, looking confused.
Nola saw it the moment Zig entered the room. At the first sign of panic, his hands didn’t go to his waist, his chest, or even his ankle—all places for a gun. He went for his pants pocket. Pepper spray? No, he was too old, probably too proud. Had to be a knife.
On a nearby podium, Zig dumped his keys and his folding knife. A SOG Trident Elite. Big blade. Typical military machoness—though the way his shoulders sagged, she wasn’t convinced he was military. As for the knife, it was modified with a deep groove in the top of the blade so it could be opened as it was removed from his pocket. It also did extra damage, adding a puncture to every slice. Maybe he used it at work. Nola made a mental note.
“What about the key?” she added.
“I gave you my keys. They’re right—”
“The other key. The real one.” She raised her gun to Zig’s chest, but he barely stepped back, barely even reacted. Like he hadn’t even heard the words.
She took a closer look at him. Fifty years old. No wedding band, but still good-looking, a fact he was keenly aware of, based on the way he jutted his chin, like he led with his face. Still, he had hair on his ears, plus a few strays in his eyebrows. Signs of a man living alone, or at least someone dating around so much, every girl was too new to pluck them for him yet.
What Nola noticed most were the dark circles under his eyes, like half-moons on his face. There was a twinkle in his gaze, but also an eerie sadness. And the way he was looking at her… No. Not just looking. Scrutinizing. Recognizing.
“Nola,” he finally said.
She stayed silent, gun still on him, finger tightening on the trigger.
“Nola, it’s me. I know you from when you’re little.” He stepped toward her. He had a stillness about him, even as he moved. A leader, but also a liar.
“I’ve never seen you before in my life.” She pulled the slide back, cocking the gun and pointing it at his neck. “Now gimme the key.”
“I don’t understand. The key for what?”
“For the coffin.”
“You mean the coffin you’re supposed to be in? Wooden coffins don’t have keys. There’s just a latch,” he explained. “Besides, the coffin’s empty. The body’s gone.”
Nola studied him. He did this thing before he spoke, touching his tongue to his right incisor. Sign of the truth or sign of a lie. “Tell me what you want,” she said.
No tongue, no incisor. “I want to know what’s going on—and what happened to those people on the plane.” Had to be truth. And then, tongue to incisor: “Tell me that and I’ll show you where the body is.”
Nola stood there a moment, motioning him toward her. As Zig got close, her hand shot out in a blur, palm up, her four long fingers straight like a spear, which she drove under his ribcage, aiming for—
There. His liver.
“What in the f—?”
The vomit came so quickly, he never got the words out.
“Huuuuch!”
Gasping for air, Zig collapsed on his knees as hunks of his morning toast sprayed across the carpet. Nola learned that one from her dad, who once kicked her so hard in the liver, she tasted blood.
Stuffing her gun in the back of her pants, Nola stormed out of the room, back toward the garage.
Zig yelled something behind her. She didn’t care.
Reaching the hearse, she ripped open the back door, revealing the flag-covered casket. At the foot of it was a metal nameplate:
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Brown
Nola
She stared at it, reading her own name twice, then tore the flag off the casket and yanked the casket toward her. Just from the weight, she knew. But still…she had to see for herself.
She gave the casket another yank, then another, which, like a see-saw tipping, sent the casket falling to the ground. There was a dull thud as the foot of it hit the concrete.
Kllk. Kllk.
The latches were easy to find. The casket lid was heavy, but as she pried it open and saw the first hints of the satin liner inside…
Empty.
Enraged, Nola slammed the lid shut, ramming it so hard, it let out a thunderclap that echoed off the garage door and vibrated against her chest. Still, she never said a word, never screamed, never yelled. Silent Nola learned that long ago. It never did any good. Especially when someone was watching.
Mongol…Faber…Staedtler…Ticonderoga…Swan. Nola mentally rolled through the list, using the meditation technique the psychologists gave her. For when the rage got to be too much. Mongol…Faber…Staedtler…Ticonderoga…Swan. It wasn’t helping.
“You lied to me before,” she growled. “You have no idea where her body is.”
“Y’know, for someone who just made me spew all over the carpet in a funeral home, you really have an awkward way of saying ‘I’m sorry,’” Zig said, standing in the threshold that led back into the house.
“That wasn’t an apology.”
“So I gathered. I’m not your enemy here, Nola. I actually came to help.”
Nola stayed silent, staring into the back of the hearse. Mongol…Faber…Staedtler—
“Are you listening?” Zig asked. “You obviously paid the hearse driver to pick up the casket, which was a bust. Someone else took the body you’re looking for. I’m offering assistance and you’ve got nothing else to say?”
Nola kept her back to him, like he wasn’t there. She was still staring into the hearse, at the metal rollers, at the straps, at the nicks in the leather, at the front seats, at the two cups of coffee in the cup holders. She pulled out a small notepad and pencil from her pocket.
