Neil McMahon - To The Bone

He went from niche to niche until he found the name Gwendolyn Anne Bricknell. She was in the Dove Chapel. A plan showed its location.

Monks was on his way there when a man wearing formal black tails stepped into the room. He clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward in a partial bow.

"Can I help you, sir?" he said, in the hollow whisper of one who has learned to speak the language of mourning. He was thin, in his mid-thirties, but looked older from pallor and balding.

"I'd like to see Miss Bricknell."

"Certainly. If you'll come this way." His smooth black shiny shoes made only a whisper on the tiles. Monks felt like a mule, clopping along beside him. They crossed the mortuary's main room, as large as the naves of most churches and similar, with pews and a raised dais in front – although it was equipped with a steel track to slide coffins in and out of view. This was a full-service organization.

"Are you family, might I inquire?" the attendant asked.

"Just an acquaintance."

"The service is scheduled for four p.m."

"I'm afraid I won't be able to make that," Monks said.

"Of course." The attendant's voice dropped confidentially. "It's going to be quite an event."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. We're expecting a capacity crowd, and a lot of celebrities. She was quite famous, in her day. But I'm sure you know that."

"So I've gathered."

"Terrible tragedy, isn't it?" He gave Monks a sidelong glance that showed only one wide-open eye, a look reminiscent of a flounder's. "Whoever would have thought it?"

"Very sad," Monks agreed.

"I mean, can you imagine?" the attendant went on, warming to his subject. "A monster, posing as a surgeon? Suppose he'd had you under the knife. How would you feel?"

Monks resisted the urge to say, He did.

"I'll leave you to pay your respects, sir," the attendant murmured. He stepped aside and gestured Monks into the Dove Chapel, opening off the main room. It was a tasteful space, lush with flowers and candles. The coffin was on a bier at the far end, burnished wood that looked like mahogany, chased with brass or perhaps gold. The upper half of the lid was open.

Her still form brought to Monks's mind an image from childhood, a somber Doré engraving of the Lady of Astolat – spurned by her lover, Lancelot, floating pale and lovely down a stream, holding a lily to her breast – finally at peace from her torments. Except that Gwen was dressed in black.

And with frightening irony, a black silk scarf had been arranged carefully around her neck, to conceal her wounded throat. It brought back with force the eerie intimacy that he had shared with her.

That Gwen had murdered Eden Hale was almost certain. Among her cache of health care and beauty products, several ounces of castor beans had been found, along with instructions on how to compound them into ricin – a poison that was deadly and would not show up on an ordinary tox screen. Making ricin was not difficult, and her work at the clinic had exposed her to chemical procedures.

The black scarf she had worn that night had been found, too – in her trash, still damp, hacked to pieces.

As with the other events, it was mostly speculation from there. Monks guessed that Gwen had arranged the tryst between Eden's boyfriend and Coffee Trenette, so that Eden would be alone, and then had called Eden and arranged to stop by, on the pretext of bringing comfort. She probably had disguised the ricin in something like chicken soup, which she had deliberately let go bad, so that salmonella would cloak the poison's effects. She probably had also taken Eden's answering machine, although that had not been found.

The whys of it were murkier. Jealousy figured in, no doubt – the fear that Eden would replace her as the queen of D'Anton's world. Then there was her fierce insistence on seeming young. It suggested that in a way, she had been like Eden – convinced, with childish naivete, that youth and appearance were everything. And he suspected that with her brittle temperament, drug use, and real or imagined pressures, she had gone a little insane.

Monks felt no anger toward her – mostly sadness and pity. Even her attempt to kill him had been self-preservation. There was a dark irony, too, in that her poisoning Eden was what had exposed Todd Peploe. Otherwise, he would certainly have gone on killing.

But there was more, Monks admitted. Those few minutes with her in the night had brought love and death together with an intensity beyond anything he had ever experienced. He was not a believer in the supernatural, but if ever he had been touched by magic, it was then.

Had making love to him been a gift from her, to sweeten his passage? Or an attempt to control him, in some otherworldly way, cut short by her death?

How had she known about that scarf?

Monks walked back out of the Dove chapel, footsteps echoing through the halls of the dead, to the world of light and movement. He was eager to embrace the relief he had felt, leaving the hospital.

But he knew that there would be a price, too. He was not a good sleeper. He still woke up sometimes in a childlike panic, croaking hoarsely, after long, helpless seconds of trying to shout at something that menaced him.

He knew that his dreams featured images that came from his actual experiences. The images were distorted, and the dreams themselves were wild collages that melted from one insane scenario to the next – like most people's, he supposed – but when he remembered flashes, he would realize that many specific details stemmed from things he had recently seen or done.

These past days were going to mix themselves into the brew, and on those nights when he came thrashing fearfully into wakefulness, he would be alone.

The author is deeply indebted to many people who helped in the making of this book. Special thanks to:

Kim Anderson; Carl Clatterbuck; Dan Conaway; Drs. Barbara and Dan McMahon; Dr. Dick Merriman; Mary Pender; Linda Ross; Jill Schwartzman; Nikola Scott; Xanthe Tabor; Jennifer Rudolph Walsh… and to many good and dedicated folks at HarperCollins, both behind and in front of the scenes.

NEIL McMAHON studied premed at Stanford where, later, he was also a Stegner Fellow. His short fiction has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines, and in several anthologies, including Boxing's Best Short Stories and The Best of Montana 's Short Fiction. He is married and lives in Missoula, Montana. You can visit his website at www. neilmcmahon. com.