CHAPTER TWO
1850 Words
CHAPTER TWO
Carly examined her face in the mirror, checking carefully under her eyes for any sagging that showed how little sleep she’d gotten recently. She’d spent 14 hours on planes plus time in taxis and a boat just for that fruitless excursion to Santa Novara.
I don’t look too bad, she told herself.
Even at age 30, she liked to think she “cleaned up” pretty well after the down and dirty work on serial murder cases. But today she wasn’t getting ready for FBI fieldwork or even for office tasks at Quantico.
She wouldn’t be pulling her long dark hair back into a bun.
Today she would let her hair hang free, and she had to find something especially attractive to wear.
The text she’d received yesterday was from Mark Lawson, her long-ago high school boyfriend. He was in D.C. for a convention and wanted to get together for lunch.
She had responded,
I’d like that. What do you have in mind?
They had agreed on a time and place, and now she had to get dressed and drive from her Virginia apartment into the city in time to meet him.
Carly was looking forward to their date …
If that’s what it is.
Their relationship status was extremely uncertain right now. Maybe today they’d get a better idea of where things stood between them.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone buzzing on the bathroom counter.
Lyle! she realized, picking up the phone.
She hadn’t talked to her BAU partner since the debriefing from their most recent case. Lyle hadn’t looked at all well at the time, and with good reason. He’d barely escaped death at the hands of a serial killer who had injected him with a paralytic d**g. It was a d**g that was used in some surgeries—a neuromuscular blocking agent, the doctors called it. Lyle had been ordered to take time off for full recovery, and Carly had been granted a few free days as well.
“Hey, Lyle. How’re you resting up?” she asked him. As they talked, Carly wandered to her kitchen, picked up a mug of coffee, and then sat down on her couch.
“I’m done resting up. I’m bored. How about you?”
Carly was a bit surprised by his somewhat snappish tone.
“I’m, uh, kind of looking forward to a few more free days,” she said.
“Well, I’m glad one of us is. What have you been doing with your time, anyhow?”
Carly felt brought up short. She couldn’t think of any plausible excuse for having flown out to California and back. It certainly hadn’t been restful. Although she valued honesty in their relationship, there were things she hadn’t told him about herself. Telling him about her trip to California would mean revealing the riddling communications she’d received from the dead. Her partner didn’t know about her peculiar gift, and she didn’t think he was ready to hear it.
“Oh, you know,” she answered vaguely. “Just resting and recuperating.”
“Well, no more of that for me. I’m ready for another case. I’m gnashing at the bit.”
Carly fell silent for a moment, remembering that terrifying interval when Lyle lay physically helpless at the mercy of the killer.
She stammered in reply, “Uh, Lyle, don’t forget what the Quantico doctor told you about getting back to work too early.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. The aftereffects of vecuronium might linger for a while, and I ought to get some serious rest, and blah-blah-blah.”
“Maybe you should think seriously about that.”
“I’ve lived long enough to know that work is the best therapy for me. What do you say we get back in action? I want to give Voss a call and see if anything is up.”
Carly fell silent again. Special Agent Preston Voss was their team chief at Quantico, and he usually assigned them their cases. Part of Carly thought she should flat-out say that this was a bad idea. But judging from her partner’s prickly tone, she thought an argument might well follow.
Maybe Voss won’t have any open cases, she thought.
Better yet, maybe Voss would talk sense into Lyle about his need to decompress for a while.
It’s not like he’ll listen to me.
“I guess it’s OK,” Carly muttered.
“You guess? Where’s your enthusiasm, Carly?”
“I said OK.”
“Great. I’ll get back to you whenever I know something.”
Lyle ended the call, and Carly sat staring at the phone in her hand. Her partner’s tone had her worried.
He sounds desperate.
While it was true they’d just closed a dangerous case which had almost gotten both of them killed, the same had been true of many of their other cases. So why did he sound so shaky right now?
Carly knew it must have been terrifying for him to be helplessly paralyzed. After something like that, maybe she, too, would feel anxious to get back to work and put the trauma behind her.
But all that was out of her hands. Right now, she had to go find something exciting to wear.
I do have a lunch date, she told herself with a slight giggle.
And for the moment, at least, she wasn’t working on a murder case.
*
The man took a deep breath as he stepped inside the Garrison Funeral Home.
He sighed with pleasure as he exhaled.
“Ahhhh.”
Although it was a lovely fall day outside, he definitely preferred this kind of atmosphere. There was something about the air in a good funeral home always that seemed fresh and especially clean to him, and even cheerful.
The interior of the Garrison Funeral Home didn’t look all that different from other such places in Harmonium. The front lobby connected with four visitation rooms and a large chapel at the far end. The decor resembled a luxury hotel, with pristine furniture, patterned carpeting, and soothing, pastel-colored wall paneling
Even so, he found the Garrison Funeral Home uniquely pleasant. There was something ineffably serene about the ambience of the place.
The dead are treated well here.
Bodies were never handled casually or callously here. Great care was taken in their embalming and restoration, making them look mysteriously alive and more in harmony with the world than they likely ever were in life.
That care and sensitivity rubbed off on friends and family of the dead.
This is a happy place.
As he peeked into one of the visitation rooms, he saw a black-clad woman standing alone over an open coffin. She was dabbing her face a little as she looked down at the man’s body inside it—her late husband, the man guessed. But her features were relaxed, tranquil, even beatific, as if she were happy that her husband had finished his days of pain and tribulation and was on his way to a peaceful hereafter.
These surroundings were designed to have such an effect on mourners.
It helps people see things as they really are.
As he approached the arched doorway leading into another visitation room, he was a bit startled to hear the sound of chuckling. He peeked inside and saw a man and a woman sitting in front of an open coffin with a young man inside. They were whispering and laughing with their heads close together until they noticed someone looking in on them.
They suddenly pulled away and blushed with embarrassment, but nevertheless couldn’t quite stifle a remnant of the giggles.
The man smiled at them.
They needn’t be embarrassed as far as he was concerned.
Life goes on.
One of the great purposes of an open casket was to prove that very point.
And the couple’s merriment wasn’t the least bit mean or contemptuous, but palpably sweet and loving.
They were obviously sharing a joke they had once shared with the dead man.
And he’s laughing too, I’m sure.
All was well in the mystic sphere these living shared with their dead.
But then the man became aware of a bitter, discordant voice coming from the chapel at the far end of the foyer. He hurried there and quietly slipped inside the double doors.
A funeral was in progress.
In an open coffin at the front of the chapel was a woman in her 30s. Even from here the man could see that the mortician’s best efforts hadn’t been able to erase telltale signs of strain, pain, and hardship the deceased had suffered during her short life.
Sometimes the dead are beyond mortal help, he thought.
Less than a dozen people were seated in the rows of chairs, looking bored and restless. One woman was actually fanning herself with the service program, despite the fact that the temperature here was perfectly comfortable.
A pastor with a white collar stood listening while a woman stood speaking at the podium. The man knew the pastor—his name was Miles Lindsay. The man knew what sort of man Pastor Lindsay was, and the sorts of things he was capable of.
Not a good man.
The man pitied Lindsay’s flock for being so thoroughly taken in by him.
As for the woman who was speaking, she looked close to the same age as the deceased. Her face looked tired, sorrowful, and even angry.
The man paused to listen to what she was saying.
“… and to tell the truth, I don’t know what any of you are doing here today. None of you bothered to give my sister the time of day after her accident. Her helplessness was just too … inconvenient, I guess. None of you gave me any help during the 15 years I spent taking care of her, seeing to her every need. But here you are for some reason …”
She fell silent with a choking sob of rage, then resumed.
“And now that Lisa is gone, I’ve got nothing. No reason to go on. And none of you care about me, any more than you did about Lisa. And you know what? I envy her. She’s through with you, and with life, and I wish I were through with it all too.”
A man stood up and walked toward her and half-heartedly tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away and sat down apart from the others. Despite a discontented murmur, the seated people seemed pretty much unfazed by the woman’s tirade. One man looked at his watch.
The pastor stepped up to the podium and began to make his concluding remarks.
The poor woman, the man thought.
She needs my help—just like the others did.
He made up his mind to wait right here for her, so he could introduce himself and get to know her just a little.
Soon her suffering will be over, he thought.
Meanwhile, he fingered the bright new penny in his pants pocket.
She’ll be needing this, he thought.
- Writer
