Prologue

I stared dolefully down into my near-empty bag of coffee beans. The new order wasn’t supposed to arrive until next week, which meant it was either a great pot of coffee for tonight’s shift followed by almost a week’s worth of government supplied coffee grinds, or five nights of weak, watery, near bland coffee.

I sighed.

I upended the contents of the bag into the grinder, brought up the evening body count on my computer screen, and cranked down with vindictive vehemence. I peered at the monitor. There was only one body tonight so far, a Jane Doe. I briefly scanned the specs. Pre-teens, Caucasian, black hair, 5’2” approx, 105 lbs approx, no visible wounds or contusions, the cause of death unknown.

I tutted. A dead child, sad stuff.

I poured the fresh grinds into a clean filter, gingerly placed the filter into my desktop coffee maker, and flicked it on before heading to the prep room to starting cleaning. I was halfway through my routine when the double doors connecting the morgue and the lobby crashed open.

I rolled my eyes.

Bob, the night janitor, has a tendency to be as loud and aggravating as he is cranky and senile. Luckily, he only works three nights a week. Which reminds me.

I glanced over at the calendar, frowning.

“Bob?” I yelled. “It’s Wednesday. You’re not supposed to be here until the night after tomorrow.”

I stuck my head out the prep room and came face to face with the business end of a big looking handgun held by a much bigger looking mountain of a man wearing tactical blacks, facial tattoos, and a sardonic grin. Straw-like greasy brown hair hung down over his face and piled at the back of his head in a machismically vague resemblance of a ponytail.

There was sharp, bright, flash and a roar of thunder. My head whipped back and the smell of iron and blood filled my nostrils. My vision pulsed with vivid red and utter black tones. I heard voices talking as if from a long ways off. For a brief moment, I vaguely registered that I was lying face first on the ground, breathing in feeble, short, gasps.

Then I fell into darkness.

I woke up a few moments later in a large pool of drying blood. I sat up slowly and pressed a hand to my aching head.

“Ow.”

Chapter 1

“So let me get this straight,” said the officer. I eyed him impatiently.

He looked to be in his mid-thirties. He had dark brown hair cropped in a police standard close cut and wore a street uniform that looked like it was ironed on a daily basis. Lean and well balanced, he carried himself with the confidence of someone who knew how to handle his own weight.

He’d been questioning me by the book - excessively, plowing politely through my repetitions, hunting for any hint of contradiction or uncertainty. I read his name strip, ‘P. Thompson’. I mentally made a note. It’s always handy to know an annoyingly good cop.

“A large man with facial tattoos and a ponytail knocked on the door at about one in the morning. You opened the door to ask him what he wanted. Next thing you remember, you were lying on the ground and he was gone. You checked to see if anything was missing, saw that the body was gone, and called us immediately.”

He glanced at his partner.

His partner looked like evolution had temporarily forgotten its place and taken a step back. He had a thick, wide set, brow lined with short, bristly hair. Sporting aviator tan lines, thick shoulders, and a paunchy waist, he looked like he was used to intimidating his way around. His name strip read ‘C. Glabe’. No mental note was made.

“Yup,” I nodded. If by immediately he meant immediately after I mopped, drained, and washed the blood, bone fragments, and brain matter down the drain.

Glabe squinted at me suspiciously. But they’d also switched out the light bulbs recently. He might’ve genuinely been having a hard time holding a long stare without his fear-inducing sunglasses on.

“Okay, uh,” Thompson checked his notepad. “Mr. Rucker, we’ll file a report. But I wouldn’t expect any sort of quick follow up, no offense. Don’t see many of these cases that aren’t eventually explained by some sort of weird fetish or another,” he chuckled humorlessly.

“But you gotta admit,” his partner chimed in, his voice droned thickly. He paused for a dramatic moment. “Some of them are just dead wrong.” He guffawed loudly.

Thompson and I both gave him a blank stare one usually reserves for exceptionally slow children.

Fortunately, before either of us could say anything, the front door swung open.

“I’m sorry,” said Thompson, turning and automatically reaching for his badge. “This location is not open to civilians at this ti- detective?”

The detective walked into the lobby. She was about five foot three, five foot four tops. She held herself rigidly, and instead of walking in normally, she almost seemed to push her way into the room, as if she was walking against a stiff breeze. She had light brown hair tied back into a short ponytail and almost burly shoulders that had a decidedly aggressive tension to them. Dark, forest green eyes gazed around sharply.

What the hell was a detective doing here?

Thompson regarded her solemnly.

“Captain keelhauling you again?” he asked, gently. She shrugged, a grim, determined, expression on her face. Thompson clicked his tongue sympathetically.

“You can always take it up with IA, Bell,” he said.

“You got notes, Thompson?” she asked brusquely, examining me as she asked. I felt marginally violated as she gave me a scrutinizing once-over. Thompson paused, then let out a breath.

“Sure, Detective,” he tore off the topmost pages of his notepad and handed them over tiredly.

She took them, glancing up at him as she did. Her face never changed or wavered, but for a brief moment, her expression lost some of its stiffness. She gave him a curt nod.

“Thanks, Thompson,” she said briskly.

He grinned. He hadn’t missed it either.

“Sure, Detective. Good luck,” he put away his notepad. “Let’s get out of here, Glabe.”

I’d forgotten about Glabe. I turned to see him standing motionlessly with his arms crossed, watching the detective with a slow, wary, gaze.

“Glabe,” Thompson said sharply. He was standing in the doorway, propping the door open with his shoulder. Glabe gave a slight start and tore his gaze away from the detective. He raised his eyebrows slightly at his partner.

Thompson jerked his head out towards the parking lot.

Without a word, Glabe strode past him and out the door. Thompson stared after him for a moment before turning to me.

“Sorry about your troubles, Mr. Rucker,” he said, politely. He closed the door behind him.

“So, Mr. Rucker,” said Detective Bell slowly. “You’ve been working here for eight years now, this says.”

“Yes ma’am,” I replied.

“And this is your first incident?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She flipped a page over.

“Knocked you out huh?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She paused to peer up at me, eyes narrowed.

“You always this talkative?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said, dryly. Her lips drew into a tight line.

“Mind if I take a look around?” she asked forcefully, stepping towards the double doors before she even finished the question. I followed her without protest.

We walked into the morgue. She looked around, taking in her surroundings before shivering.

“Is it always this cold in here?” she asked. She folded her arms over her body. I opened my mouth to speak. Then closed it. It wouldn’t hurt anyone to be polite.

“Only when we’ve got fresh bodies coming in, or an autopsy being done,” I said. “Embalming fluids and cabinet humidity and temperature levels keep the bodies from decomposing the rest of the time.”

She nodded slowly, still looking around.

“So the body was being stored in...” she paused, glancing through the notes. “Unit 116.” She looked around.

“Over here,” I walked over to the steel storage unit. It was a standard cadaver unit, three feet wide, two feet tall, a little lower than waist high off the ground. I’d found the unit door left wide open.

“You haven’t touched anything have you?” she asked.

“Not without gloves,” I said, truthfully. Thompson had insisted I put on gloves before getting near the unit, and I’d had a pair on earlier when I cleaned up the mess by the prep room.

“Good,” she said, she sniffed the air. “You’re going to have hold off on things for a while until I can get a forensics team down here.”

I stared at her as she reached for her flashlight. There was, literally, a murder scene just waiting to be found by any forensics team worth half their salt.

“I don’t like this investigation any better than you do, Mr. Rucker,” she said, misunderstanding my look. “But while I’m on it, it’s gonna be done right.”

I thought fast.

“No problem,” I said. “How long will we have to wait?”

She let out a breath and looked up at the ceiling, mentally calculating.

“It’ll be Monday at the earliest,” she said. I quietly breathed out in relief. “Do you have any details on the missing body?” She headed towards the unit with her flashlight.

“Yea, I’ve got them back in the office. Gimme a sec,” I headed towards the door that connected to the office, mind racing.

Four days. That gave me enough time to get the hell out of dodge if I wanted to.

I shook my head.

Bad move. I was the only known witness, victim, and/or accomplice in an investigation being led by a detective with chips on both shoulders. Not a good time to skip out.

I considered my options as I printed out the specs.

“This’s a dead body case?” Detective Bell called from the other room.

“Pretty sure,” I quipped. I walked back to see Bell crouched down, pointing her flashlight up towards the roof of the storage unit, a peculiar expression on her face. I knelt down next to her and looked up at the circle of light inside the unit.

Dragging along the top of the storage unit were the faint but unmistakable tracks of a small, human, pair of hands.