Richard Laymon - Flesh

“Aw, honey,” he whispered. And struggled not to cry, himself.

Jake swung his car into the lot beside the Applegate Mortuary. The town of Clinton wasn’t large enough to justify a city morgue, but Steve, whose brother took care of the funeral parlor side of the business, had spent twelve years as a forensic pathologist with the Office of the Medical Examiner in Los Angeles—resigned in a huff after Thomas Nogushi got canned—and had come back here to practice in his hometown.

Clinton didn’t do a booming business in autopsies, but there were evidently enough to keep Steve happy. An autopsy was required for everyone who died as the apparent result of an accident, suicide, or homicide, under any kind of circumstances in which the death was not pretty much expected by the deceased’s physician. An autopsy was also required for every corpse headed for the crematory instead of the grave. With all that, even a small, peaceful town like Clinton provided quite a few opportunities for Steve to practice his art.

Three new customers Thursday alone, Jake thought as he climbed from his car. Steve must think he’s back in LA.

Jake entered through a rear door that opened into Betty’s office. She looked away from her typing, smiled when she saw him, and swiveled her chair around. “Been a while, Jake.” Tipping back her chair, she folded her hands behind her head—a posture that seemed designed to draw Jake’s attention to her breasts. Betty’s job didn’t require her to face the public, so she was allowed to dress as she pleased. She was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan, “Make My Day.” It clung nicely to her full breasts. Her nipples pointed at Jake through the fabric.

“Looking good,” he said.

“Natch.” She stared at his groin. He didn’t look, himself, but he could feel a warm swelling down there.

“Well,” he said, “Steve’s waiting for me.”

“No hot hurry. Higgins isn’t here yet.” She looked up at his face. Her eyes widened a bit. “So what’s the story?”

“What story?”

“Got a new friend?”

Jake shook his head.

“Taken a vow of celibacy?”

“Just busy, that’s all.”

A smile tilted her mouth. “Well, if you ever happen to get unbusy, I just bought a rubber sheet for my bed and I’ve got a great big bottle of slippy-slidy oil we can rub all over each other. You oughta just see how it looks on me in candlelight.”

Jake could imagine. He pursed his dry lips and blew through them. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said.

“Just in case you find some free time on your hands.”

“Yeah.”

She nodded. Again, her gaze lowered to his crotch. “I’d be glad to take care of that for you right now, if you’d like. Plenty of empty rooms around here. How about it?”

“You’re kidding.” He knew she wasn’t. “We’re in a morgue,” he reminded her.

“Just the place for taking care of stiffs, and I’m looking at one.” She rolled back her chair and stood up. She was wearing a short, black leather skirt. Her bare legs were slender and lightly tanned.

“This is crazy,” Jake muttered. He felt shaky inside. Was he really going along with this?

Then the rear door opened and in stepped Barney Higgins, Chief of the Clinton Police Department. Betty rolled her eyes upward. She turned to Higgins. “Hi-ya, Barn.”

“Hey, Betts.” The small, wiry man winked and snicked his tongue. “What’s that y’ got in yer shirt?”

“Your guess is good as mine, Barn.”

“Where’d you pick ’em up? I’d like to order a set for the wife.” He laughed and slapped Jake’s shoulder. “Let’s get a move on, I got a hot poker game back at the house.” He turned to Betty. “Where’s the Apple, down in his butcher shop?”

“B-1,” she said. “Have fun, boys.”

Leaving her office through a side door, they started down a flight of stairs toward the basement. “You get a good look at that gal?” Barney asked.

“Sure did.”

“Prime. Ooo! How’d y’like playing some hide-the-salami with a prime thing like that? Yeah!”

“She’s a knockout, all right.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Jake pulled open a fire door. Directly across the corridor was B-1, the autopsy room. His stomach fluttered as he walked over and opened the door. From the room came a high whining buzz like the sound of a dentist’s drill.

Steve Applegate, a cigar stub clamped in his teeth, squinted down through the smoke at what he was doing. Whatever he was doing, it involved the head of a naked woman who was stretched out on one of the tables. And it involved the small buzz saw that was making such a racket.

Jake chose to watch his shoes as he walked across the polished linoleum floor.

The saw went silent.

“Who y’got there?” Barney asked.

“Mary-Beth Harker. A probable cerebral aneurysm.”

“Joe Harker’s girl?”

“That’s right.”

“Aw, shit. Shit. When’d it happen?”

“Last night.”

“Shit. She’s not, what, eighteen, nineteen?”

“Nineteen.”

“Shit. That’s his only daughter.”

Jake felt cold spread through him like a winter gust. Kimmy. God, what if it was Kimmy? How could a man go on living if something like that happened to his kid?

He turned away and walked toward another table. The body on this one was covered with a blue cloth. “This Smeltzer?” he asked without looking around.

“That’s Smeltzer, Ronald. I’ll get to Smeltzer, Peggy, later today.”

I killed this guy, he told himself, wanting to feel the guilt, wanting it to come and take away the terror of imagining Kimmy dead. I killed this guy. He’s dead because of me.

His mind began the replay. Fine. Smeltzer raising his head, tearing a flap of skin from his wife’s belly, turning in slow motion to reach for the shotgun.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Steve said, pulling Jake out of the memory. He drew back the cover.

Smeltzer was facedown. Jake’s bullets had left five exit wounds on his back and splayed open the side of his neck.

“Good shooting,” Barney commented.

Jake was looking at the gash that ran from the nape of Smeltzer’s neck, down his spine, over his right buttock and down his right leg to the outer side of his ankle. The raw, bloodless gash was bordered by about half an inch of blue-gray skin. “What’s this?” Jake asked.

“Something of a puzzle,” Steve said. With the tip of his cigar, he pointed at the quarter-sized ankle wound. “Know anything about it?” he asked Jake.

Jake shook his head.

“When I stripped him down this morning, I found it along with the hematoma—that discoloration you see there. Frankly, I didn’t know what to make of it. A bruise is usually caused by blunt trauma that breaks capillaries in the skin. So I asked myself what could’ve hit this man in such a way as to follow the curves of his body this way.”

“Something flexible,” Jake said.

“A whip,” Barney suggested. “Maybe a hose.”

“That occurred to me. The problem is, the epidermis showed no evidence of injury, which you’d expect if the man had been struck by that kind of instrument. And the ankle wound made me suspicious. So I made an incision at the wound and followed the track of the hematoma to his neck. What I found was a two centimeter separation between the fascias and—”

“Spare me the jargon, huh?” Barney said.

“Along the entire length of the bruise, the connecting tissue between the skin and underlying muscle was no longer connected. It’s as if approximately an inch-wide area of skin had been forcibly raised from the inside.”

“What are you gettin’ at?” Barney asked.

“Something entered this man’s body via the ankle wound and burrowed its way up to his neck.”