Greg Iles - Blood Memory

But my father will be silent no longer. Like the blood of Abel, Daddy’s blood is crying out from the ground. And like Abel’s murderer, my grandfather will soon be marked. Marked and punished.

“Can I look now?” asks Mr. McDonough.

I nod absently.

He lifts the jacket and stares into the darkness. “I’ll be damned. Just like CSI. ”

“Just like that,” I murmur. “I need to see the body again, sir.”

He rolls down the window and cranes his neck to look around. “Van’s already carried it back to the home.”

“I need to see it before it goes to Jackson.”

“You’d better get going, then. The van from the medical examiner’s office could already be waiting there. They’ll just transfer the coffin between vehicles without ever taking it into the prep room.”

I crank the engine, back the car onto the asphalt lane, and accelerate toward the cemetery gate four hundred yards away.

“You got to drop me at my car, remember?” says Mr. McDonough.

“I can’t take the time. I’ll bring you right back.”

He glares at me. “You stop this car right now, young lady.”

“This is a murder investigation, sir. An FBI matter. Please sit back in your seat.”

I don’t know if Mr. McDonough believes me or not, but he sits back and shuts up. Thank God for small favors.

Outside McDonough’s Funeral Home, cars are parked along the street for two blocks in all directions. It’s a Natchez tradition: you see the parked cars along here and you know someone has died. Someone white. Blacks have their own funeral homes. Their own cemeteries, too. Some things take a long time to change.

“Turn at the railroad tracks,” says Mr. McDonough. “The prep room’s just inside the garage door.”

I turn left, then left again, and pull into a long vehicle bay. A tall black hearse stands gleaming in the sun, with several expensive sedans parked behind it. They probably belong to the family of the decedent having his service inside.

“This way,” says McDonough.

He walks into an enclosed garage, past a Dodge Caravan fitted with rollers in the back. Beyond that stands the Econoline van that was at the cemetery. A teenager is washing mud out of it with a green garden hose.

“Man from Jackson come yet?” McDonough asks the boy.

“No, sir.”

“Your lucky day,” he says over his shoulder.

Past the garage door, a short corridor lined with upended caskets wrapped in plastic leads to a door marked with a biohazard symbol. McDonough knocks, but no one answers. He pushes open the door.

My father’s coffin lies on the floor of the prep room. The bronze has been wiped down, probably to keep mud out of the prep room rather than from any gesture of respect. This time I don’t wait for McDonough. I go to the coffin and open the lid myself.

“Do you suture the gums shut?” I ask. “Or do you use the needle injector system?”

“You know your business,” he says. “We’ve been using needle injectors since they come out.”

Steeling myself against the emotions boiling in my chest, I don a pair of latex gloves from a box on the counter, then bend over my father and touch the line of his mouth. Gentle pressure does not part his lips.

“Sometimes we have to use Super Glue,” says McDonough. “To keep them closed. Other times Vaseline does the trick.”

Trying not to tear the desiccated skin, I pry a little harder.

The lips part.

The first thing I see is two lengths of silver wire twisted tightly together and folded back under the lips. This is what keeps the teeth together during the viewing of the body. Small screws are fired into the bones of the upper and lower gums by a spring-loaded injector. Each screw has a four-inch length of wire attached. Using forceps, a technician twists the two lengths together, tightening them until the corpse’s teeth come together. Then the technician snips the leftover wire and tucks the twist out of sight.

“Wire cutters?” I ask.

McDonough goes to a drawer and rummages noisily through it. “Here you go.”

Careful not to damage my father’s teeth, I fit the blades around the twisted wires and snip them in half. The mandible sags immediately, mocking the mindless gape of sleep.

“You looking for something in his mouth?” asks the funeral director.

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure.”

I tilt my father’s head back a little, then open his mouth wide and insert Lena’s head into it.

“What the hell?” mutters the funeral director.

“Turn off the lights, please.”

He obeys.

A few moments after the lights go out, my pupils dilate sufficiently to see the glow produced by the orthotolidine reacting with the blood on Lena’s fur. As I suspected, the glowing arch on her snout perfectly matches my father’s maxillary arch.

“Lights please,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

I can’t begin to name the feelings swirling through me. It’s a nauseating combination of excitement and dread. I’ve been hunting killers for a long time, but it strikes me in this moment that I’ve been hunting only one killer all my life.

The knock on the prep room door makes me jump. When McDonough opens the door, an elderly man stands there, looking inside with obvious curiosity.

“I’m from the medical examiner’s office,” he says.

McDonough looks at me. “You finished?”

“I need three minutes.”

He closes the door. “Don’t pay that fellow any mind. The ME’s office pays retirees to drive for them. They pay by the mile. Drivers don’t know crap about the business.”

“Flashlight?”

McDonough passes me a yellow penlight from the drawer.

With my heart racing, I systematically probe my father’s mouth with a finger. What am I hoping for? A tuft of fur? Some trace evidence of another person? As my finger slides between the upper gum and cheek, I feel something small and hard, like a kernel of corn. I remove it with my thumb and forefinger.

It’s not corn. It’s a plastic pellet-a gray one-exactly like the ones that were pouring out of my father’s chest in my dream. “My God,” I breathe.

“What is it?” asks McDonough.

“A plastic pellet. It’s from inside this stuffed animal. Originally they were stuffed with rice to make them soft, but after a while the company started using plastic.”

“Is it important?”

“It’s evidence of murder. Do you have a Ziploc bag?”

McDonough gets one, and I place the pellet inside. More probing reveals three more pellets: one behind the cheek, two in the throat.

“You saw me locate these,” I say. “I’m replacing them exactly as I found them. Did you witness that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you’ll testify to that in court?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that. But I’ll say what I saw.”

As I pull off the gloves with a snap, a worrisome thought occurs to me. I should have searched my father’s mouth before inserting Lena’s head into it. The stress is getting to me. I pass Mr. McDonough the stuffed animal. “Please examine this and see if you can find any holes in her coat.”

Surprisingly, he dons a pair of gloves and obliges me. “I don’t see any.”

I’d really like a few moments alone with my father, but if I’m alone with the body, that might cause legal problems later. In full view of the funeral director, I kneel beside the casket, lay my hand over my father’s, and kiss him softly on the lips. A little mold isn’t going to kill me.

“I love you, Daddy,” I whisper. “I know you tried to save me.”

My father says nothing.

“I’m going to save myself now. Mama, too, if I can.”