Death Notice (3 page)

Leaning in close, Kat sniffed deeply, detecting a faint trace of pitch. Pine. Just as she had suspected.

She wanted to believe the box had simply landed there after falling off a truck, but instinct told her otherwise. It was in perfect condition. No scratches or scuff marks. No signs of impact with the road. The way it sat—on its back, stretched tidily across the ditch—also raised suspicion. No box tumbling from a truck could have landed so perfectly without some assistance.

Its location was no accident. Someone had placed it there. Someone had wanted it to be found.

Finished with her examination, Kat saw no point in delaying the inevitable. Coffin or not, the box needed to be opened. Tugging on the lid, she noticed it was nailed shut at the corners and at two points along each side. She marched back to her patrol car and grabbed a crowbar from the trunk before returning to the box. With the crowbar’s help, the nails barely resisted when she pried the lid open and yanked it away.

The first thing she saw was a pair of wheat-colored work boots. Next was a pair of mud-streaked overalls that continued over a red flannel shirt. Finally, framed by the shirt’s collar, was the face of a man in his late sixties.

The full picture sent Kat scrambling backward. Standing halfway between the box and her car, she turned away and clamped one hand over her mouth to calm her gasping. She pressed the other hand against her right side, where a sudden fear jabbed at her ribs.

When a minute passed, Kat willed herself to look at the coffin again. The second glance was accompanied by the sad, stomach-sinking realization that she knew who the corpse was.

His name was George Winnick, and until this morning he had been a farmer who tended fifty acres on the outskirts of Perry Hollow. Kat didn’t know him well. Other than exchanging greetings at the Shop and Save or in passing on the street, they had barely spoken. But he was enough of a fixture in town for her to know he had been a decent man—hardworking and
dependable. She also knew there was no reason he should be lying dead in a pine box on Old Mill Road.

“George,” she whispered as she unsteadily approached the body again. “What happened to you?”

His corpse had been crammed inside the coffin like a doll stuffed into a shoe box. His arms were folded across his chest, each open hand resting against the opposite shoulder. The ashen shade of his hair matched the pale flesh on his hands, neck, and face.

Two polished pennies sat atop each of his eyes, hugged by bushy, gray-studded eyebrows. Both coins had been placed heads up, Abe Lincoln’s profile glinting in Kat’s direction. The effect was eerie, the pennies looking like eyes themselves—dead and unblinking.

A wound marred the right side of his neck, partially hidden by his shirt collar. Pushing the fabric out of the way, Kat examined the gash. About three inches long, it had been stitched shut with black thread. Beads of blood had frozen to the thread, like raindrops in a spiderweb.

Similar ice crystals could be seen on George’s lips, which were coated with rust-colored flecks of dirt. That’s when Kat realized it wasn’t dirt she saw. It was dried blood. Lots of it, crusted around more black thread that crisscrossed his lips.

George Winnick’s mouth had been sewn shut.

Kat gasped again as the pain in her ribs deepened. It was an overwhelming sensation—part nausea, part horror. Still, she managed to make it back to her patrol car and radio Carl.

“I need you to listen closely,” she said. “Call the EMS squad. Tell them to get here immediately.”

“There’s someone inside the box?”

“Yes. George Winnick.”

Carl reacted the way Kat had expected him to—he prayed.
She waited as he murmured a quick prayer for George’s soul. After the amen, he asked, “How did he die?”

Kat told him she didn’t know.

“What I do know is that you need to get on the horn and call the county sheriff. Tell him to bring the medical examiner. We’re going to need some help, because this—”

She stopped speaking when she realized she had no idea what
this
was. Nor did she have the first clue how to handle it. All she knew was that she had been right about the relentless chill. The cold
was
a bad omen.

Very bad.

It’s called a death sentence—that single line in an obituary detailing who died, how, and when. Henry Goll, who wrote them on a daily basis, enjoyed the nickname. He liked its sly wordplay, its mordant wit. Plus, he appreciated how the name hinted at a deeper, darker truth just below its surface: from the moment we are born, we are sentenced to death.

Part of Henry’s job was to make sure every obituary printed in the
Perry Hollow Gazette
contained a death sentence. For the most part, it was easy. A grieving family gave the information to the county’s only funeral home, which in turn faxed it to Henry. Using that as a guide, he sat in his cupboard-sized office and wrote a respectful overview of the deceased’s life. The death sentence always came first. It was the meat of the obituary, the only thing readers really wanted to know. The rest—family, work histories, achievements—were just side dishes to be consumed later.

Henry knew the obituary for George Winnick was a fake because it wasn’t a complete death sentence. Other than a name and a time of death, it contained barely any information at all.

George Winnick, 67, of Perry Hollow, Pa., died at 10:45
P.M.
on March 14.

Five years of being the obituary writer at the
Gazette
had made Henry an expert at spotting fakes, which arrived with alarming frequency. He had no idea how anyone could see humor in that kind of prank, but many did. The worst offenders were teenagers, who often sent in fake death notices of much-reviled teachers. Others were sent by the alleged corpse’s friends, usually during a milestone birthday. Under Henry’s watch, none had managed to sneak into the paper. Whenever he saw an obituary claiming someone had died on his fiftieth birthday, he automatically threw it away.

He was close to doing the same with George Winnick’s, which had been sitting in the fax machine when he entered his office that morning. But because there was nothing suspicious about the age and date listed, he figured it was best to at least confirm it was a fake before relegating it to the trash.

Henry’s first and only call was to the McNeil Funeral Home. Tucked away on the far end of Oak Street, McNeil was a father and son outfit that had a monopoly on Perry Hollow’s dead. If someone in town passed away, the folks at McNeil knew about it.

Deana Swan, the funeral home’s receptionist, answered the phone after a single ring.

“McNeil Funeral Home,” she said in a bored voice. “This is Deana. How may I help you?”

Henry cleared his throat before speaking. “This is Henry Goll from the
Perry Hollow Gazette
.”

Deana interrupted him with a pert “Hey, Henry.”

“I have a question about a fax I received.”

“Why don’t you ever say hello to me?”

Taken aback, Henry replied with a confused “Pardon?”

“You call here, like, every day. And you just get straight to the point. No hello. No chitchat. Why is that?”

Henry was at a loss for words. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not that interesting.”

Deana’s response of “That’s not what I heard” surprised him, mainly because she offered no follow-up. Henry didn’t find himself interesting in the least, so he doubted Deana’s mysterious source.

“Trust me,” he said. “I’m not.”

Henry wasn’t lying. He might have been interesting once, but his life in the past five years was a strict schedule of work and solitude. Every morning he arrived at his third-floor office by nine. He worked until six, taking an hour to eat lunch at his desk. When he left for the day, it was via the back stairs, where he could bypass the prying eyes in the main newsroom. Once home, Henry exercised for precisely an hour. After that, he prepared dinner, watched an old movie on TV, then read a book until he grew tired. In the morning, he had breakfast, made his lunch, and repeated the routine.

His unbending schedule, coupled with the fact that he rarely showed his pale face in the newsroom, had earned him a nickname among the reporters—Henry Ghoul.

No one suspected Henry knew about the nickname. But he did. And he thought it amusingly appropriate, just like death sentence. He was the phantom of the newsroom, the odd duck writing about dead people. Sometimes he went out of his way to act accordingly, sweeping ghostlike up the back steps and making sure moody music emanated from his office under the eaves.

As for the other, crueler reason they called him Ghoul,
Henry tried not to think about it. He couldn’t change the way he looked. Not now, anyway.

“Well, interesting or not, you should visit me sometime,” Deana said. “We can go to lunch.”

Her suggestion was the biggest surprise in a conversation filled with them.

“That’s probably not a good idea,” Henry said.

“Why? I don’t even know what you look like.”

Henry touched his face before he spoke, his fingertips running along the scar that started at his left ear, sliced through the corners of both lips, and ended in the center of his chin. Moving upward, his hand slid across the mottled skin above his left eye. Although he couldn’t see it, he knew the large burn mark retained a dark redness against the white of his flesh. It was usually darker in the morning, only fading as the day progressed.

“We should get back to the fax,” he said.

Deana didn’t bother to hide the disappointment in her voice. “Of course. What’s the name?”

“George Winnick. I can’t tell if it’s legitimate or not.”

Henry heard the rustling of paper on Deana’s desk, followed by a few taps on a keyboard.

“There’s no sign of him in our records,” she eventually said. “Did the fax come from us?”

Henry told her the fax didn’t seem to have come from any funeral home—another sign of its impostor status. Having nothing else to add, he thanked Deana for her help and hung up before she had another chance to invite him to lunch. He then grabbed the obituary for George Winnick, crumpled it into a tight ball, and dropped it into the trash.

Henry spent the rest of the morning writing obituaries for people who actually were dead. There were four of them altogether,
two coming from funeral homes outside of the county and two faxed to him by Deana Swan. On the second fax, just beneath the funeral home’s letterhead, she had scrawled, “Sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

She had, mostly because Henry had been momentarily detoured from his usual routine.

He worked in the same manner he lived: without spontaneity. Everything in his impeccably organized office had its place and its purpose. The lamp on his desk illuminated the cramped and windowless room. The bookshelf bulged with reference materials. The fax machine, exactly an arm’s length away, provided grist for the mill.

While writing, he played one of the many tragic operas downloaded onto his computer. That morning, he listened to Wagner’s
Tristan and Isolde
. Instead of a distraction, the swelling music, soaring arias, and tale of doomed love served Henry well. It helped him concentrate, allowing him to sustain the somber mood necessary to write about those who had shuffled off this mortal coil. And by the time poor Isolde died of heartbreak, he had finished his work for the morning.

Lunchtime was promptly at noon. Henry ate the same meal every day—turkey on wheat, small salad, bottle of water. He brought everything from home except the water, which was purchased from the vending machine downstairs.

In the break room, a lone reporter stood in front of the snack machine, mulling over his options. He offered a forced smile, which Henry refused to return. Henry Ghoul didn’t smile.

The reporter’s name was Martin Swan. Blandly handsome, he had the look of a former football star going to seed in the working world. His white shirt fit tightly, and his silk tie trickled down a broad chest and the beginnings of a beer gut. Henry knew nothing about him other than the fact that he was Deana’s brother. In a town as small as Perry Hollow, coincidences like
that were common. Because of this tenuous link between them, Martin always felt compelled to talk to Henry, even though his voice was usually poised somewhere between sincerity and indifference. Today was no different.