23
That evening, Eli drove Keiko to her grandmother’s and left her there, confident that she would now have no reason to use her weapon. He begged off the invitation to tea, joking that it was late enough in the day for whiskey. Bones was happy to see his car back in his driveway without a scratch. Eli fell asleep in his clothes before he could have dinner and slept until midnight. Then he was wide awake.
He changed into his jeans, made himself a sandwich, and found Bones still working over a corpse in the mortuary embalming room.
“I was afraid I’d find you here,” he said. “I thought you had, you know, people to do this.”
The body was a 14-year old African-American boy. There was a bullet wound in his chest the medics hadn’t had time to dress before he expired.
“I like to keep my hand
