Death Notice

by Todd Ritter

  The real Deana couldn’t have been further from the image created in his head. In her early thirties, she was slim, well proportioned, and modestly stylish in a black skirt and lavender blouse. She wore her strawberry blond hair pulled back, revealing razor-thin cheekbones, and startling, sparkling blue eyes.

  “What brings you here today?” she asked.

  Henry didn’t know, which was made obvious by his refusal to take one more step inside.

  “I was jogging,” he said.

  Deana ran her gaze up and down his body, lingering on his chest, his stomach, his crotch. The boldness of her stare made Henry pulse with excitement, as did the sultry tone of her voice when she said, “I can see that.”

  “When I passed by, I thought I would stop in and say hello. Since you’ve told me I never do that.”

  “You don’t,” Deana said. “And thanks. That was sweet of you.”

  Oddly, Henry felt more awkward chatting with Deana than he did telling Chief Campbell about George Winnick’s death notice. That was being helpful, a good citizen. This was something entirely different. This was, Henry guessed, flirting.

  “I just want you to know,” Deana said, her smile radiating a kind patience, “that my offer is still on the table.”

  “What offer?”

  “Lunch. I think it might be fun, since we’re coworkers in a weird way.”

  That was true. Henry talked to Deana more than anyone at the Gazette. And she seemed friendly enough, with no hidden agenda except to get to know him better. Plus, he thought it would be nice just once to break out of his safe routine.

  “A great sushi place just opened up on Main,” Deana said. “We could try it out one day.”

  Henry was on the verge of saying yes. He felt the muscles in the back of his neck loosen, preparing for the nod to follow. But then something on the wall caught his eye. It was a mirror—large and gilded—and framed in its center was his reflection.

  Staring at his own image, Henry suddenly felt foolish. He was in excellent shape, yes. But his face—that was unacceptable. And the more that Deana smiled benevolently at him, the more Henry became convinced that her motives were suspect. She wasn’t interested in him. Just like the patrons of a freak show, she was interested in his face. Its lines and scars and deformities.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Henry said, breaking his gaze from the mirror. “But thank you for the invitation.”

  He regretted stepping foot into the funeral home. It was a bad idea, he realized. And now he was eager to leave.

  He turned and reached for the door, surprised to see it was already halfway open. Someone was on the other side, pushing the door so forcefully Henry had to hop backward to avoid being struck by it. That’s when Kat Campbell burst inside, riding a gust of frigid air.

  With her was a man Henry had never seen before. Although he was dressed in civilian clothes, Henry assumed he was a cop of some sort. He and the chief shared identical scowls as they passed, barely noticing his presence.

  Henry nodded a wordless greeting and exited the funeral home. Crossing the front porch, he heard Kat through the open door ask, “Are Art and Bob here?”

  “Arthur is,” Deana told her. “Is something wrong?”

  Henry paused at the top of the porch steps, waiting for the chief’s response. When it came, he was surprised, intrigued, and more than a little fearful.

  “I need to know,” Kat said, “how to go about embalming someone.”

  TEN

  In Kat’s mind, few places on earth were as depressing as McNeil Funeral Home. Arthur McNeil, the owner, tried hard to make it as calm and comforting as possible. Beige walls, classic furnishings, fresh flowers on a side table by the front door. Yet the sterile perfection of the place always unsettled Kat. The décor felt to her just like the corpses on display there—posed, painted, lifeless.

  Her opinion of the place was colored by the terrible hours spent there during her parents’ funerals. Too uncomfortable to take a seat, she waited with Nick just inside the door. The position gave her a glimpse into the empty viewing room where her mother’s body was laid out eight months earlier. Memories of that time rushed into her head. Seeing James cry. Weeping herself. Sitting next to her mother’s casket, trying not to break down completely. The recollections were so painful that Kat sighed with relief when Art McNeil finally appeared.

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, taking one of Kat’s hands in both of his. “Deana told me it sounded important.”

  He was dressed in light blue scrubs, with a paper cap on his head and a surgical mask lowered to beneath his chin. Even out of street clothes, Art projected a benevolent calmness that was one of the tools of his trade.

  When Kat introduced Nick Donnelly, Art flashed him the smile of a favorite uncle.

  “It’s wonderful to meet you, Lieutenant Donnelly.”

  “We hate to bother you like this,” Nick said. “But there are some things we need to learn in order to investigate a recent crime.”

  Art shook his head sadly. “Let me guess—George Winnick. Wallace Noble told me everything when I made arrangements to pick the body up from the morgue.”

  On the one hand, Kat was annoyed that Wallace felt free to talk so openly about the case. But on the other, she was glad Art already knew the gory details of the situation. Since she still barely comprehended it herself, she had no idea how to go about explaining it to someone else.

  “As you know,” she said, “whoever killed George also tried to embalm him. In order to understand how and why, we need to see the whole embalming process. From start to finish.”

  She knew it was an odd request. So odd, in fact, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Art flatly refused. But he seemed to understand the strangeness of the situation. Without thinking it over, he said, “Certainly.”

  He led them to the funeral home’s basement, guiding them to a small changing room under the steps. Kat went first, stripping down to her T-shirt and trousers and slipping on surgical scrubs that matched Art’s own. She topped off the absurd outfit with a blue cap over her hair and paper booties on her shoes.

  As Kat left the changing area open for Nick, Art called to her from the embalming room, which sat to her immediate left.

  “Come right on in.”

  Kat wanted to leave the embalming room as soon as she entered it. The white-tiled space was cold, for one thing, the chill instantly forming goose bumps on her arms. It also was eerily immaculate, as clean and sterile as an operating room. As she looked around, the scent of ammonia and formaldehyde tickled her nose and stuck to the back of her throat.

  In the center of the room was a body lying on a stainless steel table. Large lights hung over the corpse, casting a brutal, white glow onto it. Beneath the table, the concrete floor gently slanted to a conspicuous drain.

  “This is where we do it,” Art said, standing next to the table.

  Kat couldn’t take her eyes off the body. It belonged to an elderly woman with a white sheet draped over everything but her head and bare feet. It took Kat a moment to realize she knew the woman, causing her to gasp when recognition hit.

  “That’s Barbara Hanover.”

  Art confirmed it with a solemn nod. “She died in her sleep during the night.”

  As a little girl, Kat had purchased candy from Mrs. Hanover every Saturday at the store she ran with her husband. She had been a jovial woman, quick with a smile and a free Jolly Rancher. Standing in the same room as her corpse, Kat felt like she was violating the woman in unspeakable ways.

  She was grateful when Nick finally entered the embalming room. His new uniform of crisp scrubs gave her something other than Mrs. Hanover’s body to look at.

  “I’m assuming both of you know very little about the embalming process,” Art said.

  “Nothing at all,” Nick said, answering for both of them. “But I understand it’s very important.”

  The mortician beamed. “Oh, it is. The most important as
pect of my job is creating a memory picture for the family of the deceased to take with them. They find it helps with the grieving process.”

  Kat recalled the way both her mother and father had looked in their caskets. Contrary to what Arthur McNeil thought, it didn’t help her one bit. The images were something she wished she could forget.

  The door to the embalming room opened and Art’s son, Robert, emerged, also dressed in scrubs. Unlike the rest of them, he wore a rubber apron tight around his torso.

  “What are they doing here?” he asked, his voice harsh in the hushed atmosphere of the embalming room.

  Kat graduated high school a class behind Bob, and the intervening years hadn’t changed him one bit. The polar opposite of his father, he was without manners of any stripe. Kat knew part of Bob’s rudeness stemmed from his lifelong outcast status. He was an ungainly, unattractive boy, whose social life didn’t benefit any from living above a funeral home.

  Things only got worse for Bob when he turned ten, the year his mother, no longer able to live among the dead, decided to become one of them. Wearing three layers of heavy clothes, a brick shoved into every pocket, she threw herself into Lake Squall, the water quickly consuming her.

  Leota McNeil stayed underwater for three days. When she finally floated to the surface, Kat’s father was unlucky enough to find her.

  Kat vividly remembered the conversation that took place that night at the dinner table. Her father doled out details to her mother, who clucked with sympathy. He then turned to Kat and said, “Be nice to Robert McNeil the next time you see him at school. Give him a little smile in the halls.”

  The next day, to everyone’s surprise, Bob showed up at school, thudding through the halls with the same old chip on his shoulder. When he neared her, Kat recalled her father’s words and forced a smile. Bob ignored it, giving her a withering glance as he barreled on by.

  It surprised no one when he went into the family business after high school. The general thinking was that Bob McNeil had to work with the dead because he didn’t know how to act among the living. They also suspected that he continued to reside with his father because Art was the only person who could tolerate him.

  “Chief Campbell and Lieutenant Donnelly are here to observe the embalming process,” Art said, as his son moved deeper into the embalming room. “You will extend them every courtesy, understand?”

  He then turned to Kat. “Despite his ornery mood, I know Robert will be a huge help. He always is. I’ve found that children of single parents are especially attuned to the needs of the remaining parent. Like your son, for instance. How is James?”

  “He’s doing great,” Kat said.

  Art seemed pleased by the news. “I’m happy to hear that. James is such a good boy. Very special. You should be proud of him.”

  She assured him she was, which satisfied Art. With a smile and a wave, he said, “It was a pleasure seeing you again, Kat. And very nice meeting you, Lieutenant. Be sure to ask Robert any question you want.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  The nervousness in Kat’s voice was obvious to both father and son, but she couldn’t help it. Bob McNeil was the last person she wanted to be with in an embalming room.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Art said. “I work days. Robert works nights. But truth be told, he’s a better embalmer than I’ve ever been. You’re in good hands.”

  Arthur departed, leaving Kat and Nick alone with one corpse and one mortician. It was like school all over again, with the mere presence of Bob McNeil creeping her out.

  “How have you been, Bob?” she asked, trying to make an effort to sound casual and friendly.

  The mortician wasn’t buying any of it. Slipping a surgical mask over his nose and mouth, he said, “You ready?”

  With the mask and cap on, the only part of Bob’s face still visible were his too-large eyes. They were exaggerated further by the pair of Coke-bottle glasses he was forced to wear beginning in junior high. The lenses caused his eyes to look positively huge, which always made Kat think of a deranged Muppet.

  “I guess we are,” she said. “How long do you think this will take?”

  “Not long. This one should be pretty easy. She’s in good shape. Bodies that are really banged up or autopsied like George take much longer.”

  Bob whipped off the white sheet, leaving the body of Barbara Hanover fully exposed, with every wrinkle and sag on her chalk-colored skin visible. Nearby sat a stainless steel tray on wheeled legs, which he pulled to his side. Arranged on the tray were plastic bottles, a few folded towels, and medical instruments of various shapes and sizes. Within seconds, Bob was dipping a sponge attached to a wooden stick into a sudsy fluid. He then used it to swab the body.

  “What are you doing?” Kat asked, oddly fascinated by the way Bob efficiently wiped down the body.

  “Cleaning her,” he replied, the sponge sliding over the corpse’s drooping breasts. “I’m using a germicide. Kills off bacteria.”

  When he finished with the skin, Bob dipped a smaller sponge attached to a longer stick into the cleaning solution. This he used to swab first inside the corpse’s mouth and then in each nostril.

  With the cleaning over, he began to knead the body, his hands working down its arms and legs.

  “This loosens things up,” he said, moving to the shoulders. “Rigor mortis makes the corpse tight.”

  “Is this done to all the bodies?” Nick asked.

  “For the most part. Some are in better shape than others, but all need a little work.”

  He rubbed a greasy, butter-colored lotion onto the corpse’s hands, massaging it into the skin at the knuckles and on the surface of the palms. He then did the same thing to the face, rubbing the lotion deep into the wrinkles on Mrs. Hanover’s cheeks and forehead.

  “Moisturizer,” he said. “Keeps things soft.”

  “When does the actual embalming begin?” Nick asked.

  “In a minute. I need to set the features first.”

  “What does that involve?”

  “Arranging the face to prepare it for viewing.”

  As he spoke, Bob shoved a clot of cotton into Barbara Hanover’s nostrils. He then took a large clump of it and, holding the mouth open, placed it deep in the back of her throat.

  “The cotton blocks any leakage,” he said. “That’s the first step. The eyes are next.”

  From the tray, he picked up a concave disc made of white plastic. One side of it was smooth, the other studded with small V-shaped hooks.

  “This is an eye cap. Sometimes the eyes don’t stay closed. Because the last thing you want is a corpse’s eyes coming open during the viewing, we have to force them shut. In the old days, they used—”

  “Coins,” Kat said, unable to keep her brain from conjuring up the image of twin Honest Abes covering George Winnick’s eyes.

  Working on the left one first, Bob pulled the eyelid away and slipped the cap smooth-side down onto the eye itself. He let the eyelid drop onto the studded side, where it stuck to the cap, staying permanently closed. He then repeated the process with the right eyelid.

  “Are the lips next?” Nick asked.

  Bob looked at him, grudgingly impressed. “Yes, they are.”

  “Is it true that you sew them shut?”

  “We do the entire mouth, at the jaw. George’s lips were sewn shut, right?”

  Kat replied with a weak nod, recalling the horrible pattern of thread that had overlapped George’s blood-flecked lips.

  “Why do you think the killer did that?”

  “We don’t know,” Kat said. “We don’t know why he did any of this. But we intend to find out.”

  “I’ll show you how the pros do it.”

  Bob’s voice was filled with a cold braggadocio that unnerved her. He actually enjoyed doing this, she realized with a chill. His tone made that abundantly clear.

  She also suspected he was trying to show off in a warped attempt to impress them. His hands worked rapidly, with a flo
urish common to magicians and blackjack dealers. He wanted them to notice the nimbleness of his fingers. It was impossible not to. Despite all of his flaws, Bob McNeil was an expert at his job.

  Next, he removed a needle from the tray. It was long—almost six inches—and curved slightly at the end.

  “Watch this,” he said, threading it with heavy suture string.

  Kat winced as Bob parted the lips then poked the needle through the lower gums of the corpse’s mouth. With his fingers inside the mouth, he shoved the needle through the upper jaw and into the right nostril, pulling the thread through. He next thrust the needle through the nose’s septum and pushed it down through the left nostril. After taking the needle through the upper jaw again and back to the bottom gums, he tugged, pulling both sets of jaws tightly together.

  “That’s how it’s done.”

  Pleased with his work, Bob picked up a crescent-shaped device made of transparent plastic. Just like the eye caps, one side contained small ridges designed to hold flesh in place.

  “This is the mouth form,” he said, as he parted Mrs. Hanover’s lips to place the device over her teeth. Lowering the lips onto it, he delicately shaped them until they lay flat against each other.

  Finished, he clapped his hands together and announced, “Now, we embalm.”

  A second wheeled tray stood in the corner. On top of it sat a chunky, box-shaped appliance with two knobs flanking a half-circle meter. A rubber hose, yellowed by age and chemicals, stuck out of the side. Sitting on top was a rectangular basin capped with a stainless steel lid.

  “Is that the embalming machine?” Kat asked, slightly horrified by the antique look of it.

  “It is.”

  Bob retreated to a cabinet along the wall, removing several bottles of liquid, all marked with the jagged symbol designating them as hazardous materials. Slipping on heavy-duty latex gloves, he turned to them and said, “Put your masks on. Take shallow breaths. And for God’s sake, stand back.”

  Both of them took the warning seriously, moving backward in large steps until their spines touched the wall. When Bob opened one of the bottles, Kat slipped the mask over her nose and mouth before covering them with both hands.