“Wait!” Tim interrupted, clearly displeased. “Drive around to the cargo bay in the back. I’ll take him down on the elevator.”
“Wise choice,” was the obnoxious reply.
Tim locked the front and side doors, making absolutely certain that no one could enter the mortuary while he took the ailing animal to the basement, then headed for the loading dock, hoping that the Setter wasn’t large. He wasn’t capable of carrying a great deal of dead weight, and didn’t want to drop the poor dying creature. He opened up the cargo bay door at the back of the Victorian just as the rude woman opened the back door of her fine German automobile.
“Get out here,” she reached in, jerking on a red nylon leash.
The most beautiful, glossy Irish Setter that Tim had ever seen, bounded from the car, looking this way and that, and shying away from the woman who held the leash. Spotting Tim, Elmo lunged, ripping the leash out of his owner’s hand, and bounding over to the startled mortician, who actually cracked a smile when the exuberant red dog planted his paws on Tim’s shoulders and started licking his face.
“He doesn’t seem sick,” Tim observed, gently pushing the affectionate dog down, and grabbing the leash.
“He has seizures,” was the reply. Her look dared the mortician to challenge her claim.
“How old is he? Maybe with medication…”
“I told you, medication doesn’t help. He’s suffering horribly,” she insisted, glancing down at the floppy-eared animal who was wagging his graceful plume of a tail against Tim’s leg.
Tim stared at the woman, thinking that this must be what pure evil looked like.
“What’s to become of the remains?” he swallowed, a plan forming in the back of his mind.
“I’ll have the young man from the vet clinic come by to pick him up when you’re done. How long will this take?”
“Not long, but…won’t it be rather…risky for you to involve someone else?”
“Of course not. I told you, he referred me here. He obviously isn’t going to tell anyone,” the woman waved dismissively.
Glancing down at the perfectly healthy-looking dog again, she bent forward to pat the animal on the head, and Elmo cringed away, burrowing his face in the leg of Tim’s chinos.
“Good riddance,” she muttered, backing away without having touched him.
Tim stood silently, holding Elmo’s leash, as she got back into her car and drove away, without so much as a backward glance. The dog looked up at the mortician, with a wide doggy grin.
“What are we going to do with you, I wonder?” Tim mused, smiling faintly when Elmo nuzzled his hand.
Until he could think of a viable solution, Tim led the dog into the elevator and took him down to the basement. The thought of euthanizing a joyful, perfectly healthy dog like Elmo brought bile to the back of his throat, and he couldn’t bring himself to even think about mixing up his special sleep cocktail. He grabbed a clean fluid collection bin from a supply cabinet and filled it with water for the animal, placing it on the floor next to a blanket, so that the dog could lie down while he figured out what to do with him.
A pair of big, brown canine eyes followed Tim to and fro as he resumed working on the school teacher, hoping that the tasks would clear his head enough to inspire him with a solution for the Elmo dilemma. Focused on the final stages of his preparation, he heard the doorbell buzzing out front, and remembered that he’d locked all entrances to the mortuary before taking Elmo to the basement.
“Stay,” he whispered to the lovely dog, who obediently laid his head on his paws, seemingly content to stay on his blanket.
A quiet young man with his hair in a messy ponytail stood on the porch in front of the mortuary.
“Yes?” Tim frowned, irritated at the disruption of his work, yet again.
“I’m Tanner,” was the mild reply from the youth who stood with his hands jammed firmly into the pockets of his jeans.
“And?” Tim sighed, in no mood for guessing games.
“I’m here to pick up Elmo,” Tanner leaned in and whispered.
“Oh.” Tim studied him carefully. “Have you ever met Elmo?”
“Yeah, he gets boarded with us when his owners go on vacation or travel for business.”
“So, you’re aware that there’s nothing wrong with Elmo, right?”
Tanner nodded, his eyes sad.
“Do you have pets?”
“No. I just moved here.”
“Do you like animals?”
“Absolutely,” the young man’s face was without guile.
“Do you think it would be possible for you to take Elmo and give him a good home? If you can’t, I understand, but I’m not…I just…I’ll find him another home.”
“You’d do that?”
“I don’t see an alternative.”
“I’ll take him,” Tanner said quietly. “Where is he?”
“This way,” Tim opened the door wider, letting the young man in, then took him to the basement.
When Tanner came into the work area, he stopped in his tracks, his eyes fixed on the school teacher that Tim had been working on.
“Is that real?” he asked, wide-eyed, but not the least bit squeamish.
“Quite so. Elmo is over here.”
At the sound of his name, the dog stood, wagging his tail and looking happily from Tim to Tanner and back again. Tanner sank down to his knees, and held out a hand to the dog, who trotted over, slathering the young man in sloppy kisses.
“He knows you,” Tim remarked, puzzled that, rather than petting the animal, Tanner seemed to be inspecting him rather clinically. He watched him examine the dog’s eyes, ears, tail, and musculature, figuring that it was something he did at the vet clinic.
“Yeah, he does.” Tanner stood, taking Elmo’s leash.
“He seems like a nice dog,” the mortician offered, not knowing what to say. “Do you need a ride home?”
“Nah, we’re good,” the thin young man replied, once again staring at the cadaver in the room with them. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.
“Let a few hundred people pay their last respects, then bury him,” Tim shrugged.
Tanner looked at the mortician curiously and nodded.
“Gotta go,” the young man said, taking one last look at the corpse.
“Bye Elmo,” Tim said soberly, patting the dog on the head.
**
Susannah came home from work and went directly to the basement of their cozy cottage. Tim was in bed long before she was done working on whatever current art project she had, and she snuggled up to him in the wee hours of the night, content for the moment. The busy Assistant Chef was still asleep the next morning when her husband got up to start his day.
Tim sat down at the kitchen table with his bowl of oatmeal, being careful not to make too much noise, so that his wife could sleep. When he finished his breakfast, and had brushed his teeth, he noticed that Susannah’s sweater was draped over the back of a dining room chair. Thinking that she might want it later for her walk to work he picked it up and hung it in the closet. He was about to turn away, when a thin line on one sleeve caught his eye. Gingerly picking up the sleeve, he brought it closer, so that he could see it, and his heart beat faster when he realized what he was looking at.
There, on his wife’s sweater, was a medium-length mahogany-colored hair, that looked coincidentally like it had come from the Irish Setter he’d spent time with yesterday. This was the second time this month that there had been a hair on Susannah that didn’t belong to her, and he couldn’t help but wonder how the hairs were getting on her clothing. He told himself that it had to be accidental. Perhaps she had brushed by someone at the grocery store, or maybe someone at work had borrowed her apron, getting a hair on it, which then transferred to her clothing, but a deep, dark feeling wriggled and squiggled in the pit of his stomach, and he dropped the sleeve, leaving the closet.
CHAPTER 22
* * *
Ginger and S
pice
Susannah walked home alone today, it was Tanner’s day off, and she figured that the young man was busy with an art project of his own. Seeing Elmo, when the young man had come by the restaurant to collect his paycheck, had inspired her to be on the lookout for a redhead to add to her materials. The freckled skin would make interesting leaves, and the hair would add a brilliant touch of color. Her eyes were still on the prize, Dr. Bradley Dobbins, but he was her long game, she needed a quick fix and decided that she might as well go with a skin type that she hadn’t encountered before.
There was a lovely ginger cheerleader named Abigail Sorenson at the high school, who had been in the newspaper last week because she had raised money for a local charity, but Susannah knew better than to assume that she was a good person just because her face was splashed all over the news. She was a cheerleader, which meant, by definition, that she looked down upon others who were not of her social class, and that her life had been a series of easy opportunities and moments of good fortune thrown at her feet, simply because she was pretty and popular. She probably threw tantrums, demanded to get her way, and hurt whomever she needed to in order to stay on top, Susannah knew the type all too well.
She’d posed as a mother and called the school that morning to see what time cheerleading practice ended. Just before the group called it quits for the day, Susannah had stationed herself along the route that she knew Abigail would take on the way home, waiting. She’d scoped out the place where she’d take the young lady to turn her into art materials, and figured out a plan to lure her there. When she saw the young lady strolling down the sidewalk, alone, she collapsed, crying out in pain. Abigail saw her go down and ran over.
“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” the cheerleader asked, green eyes wide. “Should I call an ambulance or something?” She pulled out her cell phone and Susannah knew that she had to strike quickly.
“No, please…don’t call an ambulance,” she writhed on the sidewalk, holding her knee as though injured. “I can’t afford to go to the hospital, I don’t have insurance.”
“Do you need a ride? I could ask my dad…”
“No, that’s really sweet of you,” Susannah spoke quickly, wanting to get off of the street before anyone could see them interacting. “I live right on the other side of the woods over there,” she pointed. “Do you think you could maybe help me get to my house? I can walk with a little support,” she grimaced.
“Oh yeah, of course,” Abigail nodded, swinging her backpack down from her shoulder and putting her cell phone and water bottle inside.
She slid both arms back through the straps, and bent down to offer a hand. Susannah pretended to let the teenager help her up, then began hobbling toward the woods, which she had combed earlier, looking for the most private, out-of-the-way spot to do what needed to be done.
“Does it hurt much?” Abigail worried, a concerned frown on her smooth, freckled face.
“It seems to get better as I move,” Susannah grunted, leaning on the girl a bit, knowing that having to support her weight would wear Abigail out, making her weaker.
“Oh, that’s great! I hope you’re going to be okay.”
“I’ll need to rest a bit when I get home, but I’ll be fine,” she had to repress a smile that flickered around the corners of her mouth. “At the hollow tree over there, cut to the right, it’s the shortest way.”
“Really? I didn’t know there were any houses out this way,” Abigail remarked, trying to make conversation to take Susannah’s mind off of the pain.
“It’s new construction,” she huffed, wincing, playing her part.
“How nice,” the cheerleader smiled, her moist skin pink from exertion.
Susannah looked at the glowing skin and wished there was some way that she could make it stay that color. The pink blush on the white skin, with chocolatey freckles reminded her of Neopolitan ice cream. She loved Neopolitan ice cream.
“Go to the left by those big rocks over there,” she instructed, knowing that there was a nice little enclosed space on the other side of the rocks, made by the intersection of two rock formations and shielded by a thick patch of undergrowth.
“Wow, this looks like a fairyland,” Abigail smiled when they went around the rocks.
“Where all your dreams come true,” Susannah cooed, moving lightning-fast from beneath Abigail’s arm and putting a choke hold on her before the clueless teenager could utter a sound.
She couldn’t see her face, but she knew that her bulging eyes would be open wide with terror, her nostrils would be flaring as the realization that she’d soon be taking her last breath hit, and her mouth would be agape with a soundless scream.
The cheerleader was fit, and strong, but she only weighed a little over a hundred pounds, and her wiry frame was no match for the strapping woman who muscled her past the undergrowth, into the roughly six-by-six clearing in between the rocks, where she’d have privacy. Susannah patiently held on, the guttural grunts of Abigail trying desperately to catch her breath finally subsiding. When the girl went limp, her killer lowered her to the ground, and, while still unconscious, her lungs sucked in air automatically. Susannah pulled her gloves out of her jeans pocket and slid them on, then placed several strips of duct tape over the teenager’s nose and mouth, so that she’d die of asphyxiation.
Abigail struggled briefly, but succumbed with a dramatic relaxing of her muscles eventually. Susannah surveyed the beautiful specimen in front of her with a clinical eye. She wanted a different look and feel for her leaves, so she examined the girl’s body carefully, choosing just the right spots for excision. She noticed that the girl’s eyelids had finer, paler freckles, and realized that if she took the entire upper eyelid, she’d have beautiful ginger brow hairs on one side of her leaf, and sweetly curled eyelashes on the other. For a sense of symmetry, she took the other eyelid too, placing both pieces of flesh in a plastic baggie. Brilliant orbs of green stared up at the early Fall sky, and Susannah found herself wishing that she could somehow incorporate that color into one of her pieces, but she didn’t waste much time thinking about it, there was other harvesting to be done.
She had just removed a patch of scalp with a long lock of glorious red hair attached, when she heard a crashing in the bushes and the sound of laughter close by. Too close by. Susannah held her breath, frozen in place. There were two young boys, judging by the sound of their laughter, and they were moving fast enough that they had to be on bikes. She’d picked this spot because it was difficult to get to, and was furious that her activity had been interrupted. She thought seriously about jumping out into the open and killing them both, but if she was busy with one and the other happened to get away, that could spell disaster, so she waited, crouched, as they moved rapidly closer.
Susannah heard their sweet young voices, and could smell the tang of their sweat, as they pedaled their bikes as fast as they dared through the undeveloped terrain. Only when she heard them whiz by without a second glance, did she release the breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Some of the joy of her task had ebbed, though adrenalin rocketed through her body, but she went back to it, hurrying this time.
The skin on Abigail’s foot was so thin that it appeared to be transparent, and Susannah just had to have some of it. After securing her materials, she put the teenager’s shoe back on and surveyed her baggies of materials. Satisfied that she had enough from the lovely teenager, she dragged what was left of Abigail Sorenson into a crevice under one of the rocks, rolled her over so that she lay on her face, because the staring eyes freaked her out a little bit, and peeled off her gloves, putting them in a plastic grocery sack to dispose of later.
The sun was sinking fast, and the temperature had dropped, causing Susannah to shiver a bit, despite her activity. She wanted to get out of the woods quickly, her feet hurt from wearing shoes that she’d stolen from a homeless man behind a grocery store, and she wanted a nice hot bath before Tim came home.
With this particular victi
m, she was glad that she didn’t have to worry about blood spatter, because the work that she had done was post-mortem. She typically liked to see the pulsing and spurting of blood from a live victim, and take her samples as their life force ebbed from their body, but today had been about satiating her appetite in the most efficient way possible. It was going to be torture for her to wait for these leaves to dry. She’d place them in a position of importance upon her tree, for, while it hadn’t been a spectacular kill, it had been satisfying enough, and the materials were glorious. Feeling smug and titillated over a job well-done, she headed home to shower. She’d make Timothy a nice meal, then have her way with him. On the floor. Maybe even with candles.
CHAPTER 23
* * *
If You Can’t Take the Heat
Timothy Eckels looked up from his desk, disheartened to see Sheriff Arlen Bemis staring down at him grimly. Tim had been so absorbed in his perusal of a forensics article online, that he hadn’t heard him come in.
“Hello Sheriff,” he greeted him mildly.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, mister,” the sheriff chomped on his toothpick like his life depended on it.
Tim sighed, not caring that the lawman saw his obvious annoyance.
“What now?”
The sheriff roughly pulled back one of the club chairs in front of Tim’s desk and sat down hard, leaning toward the mortician over the desk.
“If you think this is a game, you’re sadly mistaken,” he growled.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tim folded his hands on the desk and stared.
“Where were you last night?”
“Depends.”
“On what?” Arlen’s eyes narrowed.
“On when. I was at certain places at certain times.”
“Well, why don’t you start from about five o’clock and tell me everywhere that you were from that point on, and you better watch that attitude,” the sheriff threatened.
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