Page 3 of Stay in Your Lane!

That was when I did somethingreallybad. I didn’t even stop to think about it, I just reached into my pocket, grabbed my phone, turned on the camera, and snapped a photo of the dead man’s chest. I made sure the whorls of the pattern were clear, then got photos of his arms, hands, and the base of his neck just in case I’d missed something. I’d go take a picture of the blood in the hall, but Dwayne was there right now, and he’d probably get upset if he saw what I was doing, so…

Maybe I could come back later. After the scene was released but before the cleaners got here. Yeah…I could?—

“Everett!”

“Uh-huh, on it!”

It wasn’t hard to get the deceased’s body—most of it—into the bag. He was a pretty skinny guy, and I had a system after doing this for so long. I started with the bag turned inside out, slipped it over the feet and up the legs, did one long slide up the torso as I pulled it forward to get the head in, and there I was with a fairly clean body bag and all the parts where they should be.

Well…okay, so I had to scoop some stuff off the bed, and some more off the wall. I could have gotten more but it would have taken, like, a spatula, and Dwayne was getting anxious and the detective was being shouty, so that was all I got. Dwayne helped me load the body up on the stretcher and move it out, but I still managed to get a covert shot of the blood on the wall as we went.

I tried bringing it up one more time. “Seriously, dude, this spot is weird. Why would there be blood out here?”

Dwayne sighed as he turned to me. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s from one of the paramedics? Maybe the guy is just a raging junkie who got a bloody nose before he decided to end it all? I don’t know and I don’t care.”

You should care.

It bothered me that he didn’t. A person had died and the shit surrounding his death was way weird, but it seemed like no one really gave a damn. I knew all too well how fast and how far people could fall when things got hard; one incident could lead to another, to another, and all of a sudden all the good things in your life started going down like dominoes. My family’s funeral home was responsible for cremating every unclaimed person in the county, and no matter what, my mom had taught us that every person who came to us deserved decent treatment and a memorial, however brief.

“You got it from here?” Dwayne asked at the edge of the scene as we stripped off gloves and masks.

“Yeah.” I used a bunch of wipes to clean off the bits that had gotten on the outside of the body bag before getting rid of my own gloves, then threw it all away into the trash bag next to the scene commander.

“Finally,” the scene commander muttered. “Sign here.”

I signed, took my body, and headed for the hearse. Part of me was relieved to see it still sitting where I’d parked it, even though I double-checked my pocket to make sure I had the keys before leaving it here. Your hearse gets taken for a joyrideonceby a thrill-seeking teenage delinquent and you never hear the end of it. At least it had been empty.

I opened the back and slid the stretcher inside, locking it smoothly in place on the rails in the back. I made sure the body was strapped down tight, then closed up and got into the front seat, waved to Dwayne, and headed out.

The drive back to Mulligan’s Mortuary Services was enough time for me to confirm that, yeah, I wasn’t done with this. I couldn’t be. The scene was just too strange. The shoeprint on his chest, the defensive wounds on his hands and forearms, and the blood stain in the hall…a paramedic wouldn’t leave that, would they? They wouldn’t even need to touch him to declare him dead—not with most of his head missing. And why would their hand be up at elbow level as they walked out? It wouldn’t have come from the medical examiner, either; he knew better than that. Right?

I needed another look. Soon the scene would be released, and my shift was almost over too, so once I got this guy in the morgue I could go grab a quick bite at Waffles?, then go back to the scene and get some more pictures before everything was cleaned up.

Super illegal, dude. So super illegal.

But not as illegal as me taking photos of the body itself, so…yay for me?

I parked at the back of Mulligan’s and brought the body in immediately. I’d learned the hard way not to get distracted when I had a corpse on my hands.

“You’re late,” my sister called out from where she was prepping someone for burial in the room next to cold storage. “Stop for a burger on the way?”

I groaned. “That was one time and I wassixteen!” I would never live that down. When we were old and gray, my older siblings would still bring up the time the munchies got the better of me during a job. I ignored my sister’s cackling and transferred the body to a cold compartment, then locked it in and noted the number in the computer.

There. Done.Now I could go get some food and satisfy my curiosity at the same time. Maybe I should go back to the scene first, though. There was no telling when they’d release it, after all, and?—

“Earth to Everett.” I startled as my brother’s palm impacted the back of my head. “Keys, please.”

“Shit, you could just ask,” I muttered as I handed over the keys to the hearse.

He took them with a satisfied expression. “I did. Twice. You didn’t seem to hear me, so I had to resort to drastic measures.”He turned and left for the back lot before I could manage a comeback, like usual. Stuart was obsessed with our vehicles; I swear he’d rather be running an auto body and detailing shop than working in mortuary services. He did all the long-distance delivery, sometimes driving bodies across state lines, and he washed our two hearses every single day, keeping them gleaming.

“Don’t mind him,” Leanne said as she removed curlers from Mrs. Martin’s pure white hair. “He’s been jerky all day.”

I shrugged and went to stand beside her. “She looks great,” I said appreciatively. Mrs. Martin’s funeral was tomorrow, and Leanne always made sure our clients looked their best at viewings.

“Thanks,” she said absently as she began to brush out Mrs. Martin’s hair.

I glanced at the clock. “Don’t you have dinner with Theo in half an hour?”

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