Page 45 of Killer Clone

“We’d better get moving.” Slade pointed at Stella. “You and Stacy dig into Patrick Marrion. Mac sent me a report stating that trippinballz12 has placed a laptop on Craigslist. Might be Marrion’s.”

Stella nodded. “I’ll get with Mac and set up a meeting time with him. We can pretend we’re buyers.”

“Why don’t you just beat his door down?” Ander stopped rocking on his chair. “We could probably get a warrant.”

Slade rose from his seat. “We’ll get a warrant anyway. But going in with a buyer ruse will keep Mr. Trippinballz from getting skittish and throwing the laptop in a lake or something. We need to know the identity of the new friend in town that Patrick Marrion was visiting, and our best bet is a computer or his phone.”

20

Hagen closed the button of his jacket and tugged on his cuffs. A somber black sign jammed into the grass verge declared in gold letters that they’d reached the Murray Funeral Home, a standalone one-story building on the same block as an office-furniture store and a yoga studio.

This was where Otto Walker was building a career. It was his last stop before he’d returned home and had his throat cut and his corpse mutilated.

Hagen and Ander strolled up a narrow path that led to the open door. In the entrance, an easel held a picture of an old woman. She wore a blue silk scarf over a lime blouse, her white hair neatly blown out and the lines on her face delicately smoothed using digital effects.

That family was gathered in a chapel to the left. A middle-aged woman sat sobbing in the front row. Older people milled around touching each other’s elbows—grateful, Hagen assumed, the funeral wasn’t theirs. Children ran between the seats, ignoring whispered calls for them to sit back down. Everyone wore black.

The receptionist, a young woman with a blond ponytail and a tight black blazer that sat too high on her black skirt, greeted them with a closed-mouth smile. She waved a silent invitation for them to join the mourners.

Ander reached for his ID and introduced himself.

The pain of Hagen’s father’s funeral came back. He’d been old enough to understand but too young to be ready. The burial had passed in a daze, an event that happened around him not with him. He’d stood by the grave in front of his mother. Her hand had lain on his shoulder. His hand had held his sister Brianna’s.

Though the priest had read something, Hagen didn’t know what. All he could remember were the solemn tones and how the book softly closed at the end before they all walked slowly and silently back to their cars waiting at the entrance.

The difference between the constant ache he carried and the more manageable pain he believed others felt at the passing of a loved one was because of the way his father died.

The difference mattered.

His father hadn’t passed away of old age or died in some random accident or been taken by an illness that had no explanation. A decision had killed him. Someone had decided to take his father, to bring that pain into Hagen’s life.

That choice had added years of burning rage to Hagen’s loss.

Ramirez was dead now. He’d paid for his decision. And though the anger had abated, the ache was still there. It would remain for each of the mourners in that room too.

“Hagen?” Ander had moved to the stairs at the end of the hall. “The owner’s downstairs.”

Hagen gave one last glance at the chapel before following Ander. A heavy door at the bottom of the steps opened into a room that smelled of formaldehyde and disinfectant.

In the middle of the room stood a steel table on which a man’s body lay naked, face up. He’d been old when he died. His head was mostly bald, but the hair that covered his chest and his stick-thin arms and legs was white. His jaw was open so that he looked surprised at being disturbed, though not bothered enough to do anything about it.

Two tubes were connected to his body on the right side of his neck. One was filling the decedent with embalming fluid, while the other sent blood down the drain in the floor.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t come in here.”

A man in a lab coat rose from a chair at the end of the table. He was in his late forties, with a long chin and tidy black hair combed to a straight side parting. The tips of his blue latex gloves were loose on his fingers.

Hagen tore his gaze from the corpse and flashed his badge. “We’re from the FBI. I’m Special Agent Hagen Yates. This is Special Agent Ander Bennett. You’re Chris Murray?”

The man nodded. “Yes, but?—”

“We need to ask you a few questions about your former employee. Otto Walker.”

“Otto.” Murray’s long face seemed to grow longer. Whether it was a trick of the room’s bright light or something in the movement of the mortician’s head, Hagen wasn’t sure. But the mention of the deceased brought a new solemnity to Murray’s eyes. “Yes, of course. That’s perfectly fine.”

His words came out slowly, as though reluctant to fall from his mouth and die in the air.

Murray left the pump humming by the table and took a cotton sheet from a shelf above a sink. He laid the sheet over the deceased, adjusting the edge so that it lined up neatly beneath the entry of the tube.

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