Death Notice (30 page)

She received different reactions from the two women in
Troy’s life. Amber Lefferts and Lisa Gunzelman seemed not to notice Kat at all.

Amber looked paler than usual, thanks to the black dress she was wearing. She also seemed inconsolable, weeping openly and loudly as she signed the condolence book by the door.

Kat felt sorry for the girl. She was young and had little experience with loss. She wore her grief on her sleeve.

Lisa Gunzelman was another story. Sitting next to the casket, she displayed no tears, no trembling lips. Nothing about her grief was showy. It was lodged in her gut so deep it could never be removed.

Kat was about to express her condolences when she saw Bob McNeil enter the viewing room. He paused in the doorway, looking bearlike in an ill-fitting brown suit. Kat was by his side in a flash and tugging on his sleeve.

“We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“Coffins.”

“What about them?”

“How much they cost,” Kat said. “I’m guessing you know all about that sort of thing.”

Bob stayed motionless at the threshold of the viewing room, squirming in his suit. He tugged at his collar, pulling it away from his thick neck. He seemed as uncomfortable in Kat’s presence as she was in his. A welcome change. Usually Bob McNeil was the one doing the creeping out.

“Are you looking to buy a coffin?” he asked.

Kat shrugged. “Not really. I’m more interested in if there’s a black market for them.”

She thought back to the evening spent with him in the embalming room. There, he told her a black market existed for everything. She had no idea he was speaking from experience.

“I’m assuming there is,” she said.

Bob yanked at his collar again before dropping his hands to his sides. Staring at Kat through his bug-eyed glasses, a grimace played across his lips.

“Am I being accused of something?”

“Should you be?” Kat asked. “I mean, couldn’t you lose your license if it was revealed that you sold a coffin to someone for a purpose other than burial?”

She enjoyed the way Bob flinched ever so slightly, wordlessly admitting his guilt.

“Not here,” he whispered, glancing at the mourners shuffling all around them. “Follow me.”

He lumbered through the crowd, clearing a path for Kat. She followed him out of the foyer, through a side door and down the steps to the embalming room. Unlike her first visit, the stainless steel table was empty. The lights above them were shut off, making the room darker—and more unsettling—than before.

Bob stood in the center of the room, staring at Kat with those huge eyes, not blinking, forcing her to make the first move.

“I know about the coffin you sold to Lucas Hatcher,” she said. “And I’m assuming your father doesn’t. Think I should fill him in?”

“Please don’t tell him.” Desperation crept into Bob’s voice. “I don’t want him to find out about it.”

“Then you better explain yourself.”

Above them, the ceiling creaked, moaning under the weight of all those mourners. Kat heard footsteps, muffled voices, and the lone, inappropriate flutter of a laugh.

“I did it for a reason,” Bob said.

“Which was?”

“Money, of course.”

“You’re the only funeral home in town,” Kat said. “I doubt money’s too tight for you and your father.”

“I need money my father can’t know about.”

“For what purpose?”

Bob removed his glasses. He wiped them across the sleeve of his suit, using his thumb to swirl the fabric over the lenses. When he put them back on, there were tears in his eyes, the lenses making them look as big as raindrops.

“To get the hell out of here,” he said. “Do you think I enjoy living with my father two floors above an embalming room? That I like seeing more people who are dead than alive? It’s torture, Kat.”

“Things can’t be that bad.”

“You have no idea what bad is,” Bob said. “You don’t have to live in the same house as that monster.”

Kat couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Arthur McNeil a monster? She doubted that. Art was as harmless as a puppy. Bob was the dangerous one, with his surly attitude and his shady dealings on the side.

“You should stop making excuses for yourself,” she said, the harshness in her voice surprising even her. “And you should stop blaming your father.”

“You don’t know what kind of person he is.”

“Then tell me.”

“I already did. A monster.”

Bob was red-faced now, the raindrop tears falling with increased frequency. When he wiped them away, Kat saw his hands were shaking. Bob was afraid—but not of getting caught. He was afraid of his father.

“Did he do something to you?” Kat asked. “When you were a boy?”

Bob sniffed. Then he nodded.

“Did he abuse you?”

Another sniff. Another nod.

“How?”

Bob McNeil remained surly in his pain. “How do you think?”

A shiver of horror entered Kat’s body. She had never considered there was a reason behind Bob’s attitude, a cause for his discomfort around people. She thought it was just part of his personality. But she was wrong. People didn’t get that way on their own. Someone had to cause it.

“How old were you when it started?”

Bob looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Kat knew he didn’t, but she needed him to. She approached him slowly and laid a hand on his shoulder. Bob shrugged it off with a grunt.

“Please tell me,” she said gently. “I can help you.”

“It started when I was eight. It ended when I was ten. After Mom killed herself.”

Kat flashed back to her childhood, when she had stared at her dinner plate as her father talked about how Leota McNeil took her own life. She remembered hearing him mention the layers of clothing and the bricks that weighed Mrs. McNeil down.
Like a stone
, was how he had phrased it. Leota McNeil sank like a stone.

When she was a girl, she couldn’t comprehend why an adult would do something like that. Especially a wife and mother. But now Kat knew the reason. Leota McNeil had discovered Art’s dirty secret and opted to throw herself into Lake Squall instead of confronting her husband.

“Do you think your mother’s death made him stop?”

“I know it did.”

“Did Art tell you that?”

“Right here in this very room.”

There was pain in Bob’s eyes as he glanced around the embalming room. Kat couldn’t imagine having to come down there every day, knowing there was such a terrible memory associated with the place. But Bob had done it. And he continued to do it.

He pointed to the embalming table. “My mother lay right there. They had just pulled her from the water. Her skin was still blue.”

The shiver of horror had never left Kat’s body. But listening to Bob, it grew until it became a quake.

“She was naked,” he said. “The first naked woman I had ever seen. I was repelled and excited at the same time. Later on, I threw up thinking about it. Or it might have been the embalming that did it. It was my first.”

Kat felt nauseated herself. Deep down, she wanted Bob to stop talking. It was a struggle to keep from holding her hands over her ears.

“Dad gave me the scalpel. He made me slice the neck. And then the arteries. He made me do it all. I didn’t want to, but he said it was punishment for making her kill herself.”

“But you weren’t responsible,” Kat blurted out.

“I didn’t know that. I was ten, for Christ’s sake.”

Ten years old. The same age James was now. If Bob was telling the truth, then Art McNeil really was a monster.

“He also told me he’d stop,” Bob said. “He’d stop if I helped embalm her. And I wanted that more than anything. So I did it. I embalmed my own mother. He made me sew the mouth shut. It wasn’t the way I showed you. It was the old-fashioned way, a needle and thread through the lips. Dad said it was special. That it was important to do it that way. After that—”

Kat knew what he was going to say next. “You put pennies over her eyes.”

Bob nodded. “And then we were done.”

Kat’s nausea increased, making her woozy. She had to steady herself on the wheeled tray next to the embalming table. Scattered across it were all the tools of the mortician’s trade that she had learned about during her first visit there. Scalpel. Eye caps. Aneurysm hook. Trocar.

That night, Bob had explained the things someone would need to embalm a corpse. One was formaldehyde, which was locked in a cabinet on the far side of the room. Another was space, which the embalming room provided in spades. The third was drainage, and lots of it. Looking at her feet, Kat saw she was standing over the drain in the floor.

A bit of clarity cut through her dizziness. She thought of George Winnick and Troy Gunzelman. They both had been embalmed in that room. Not just once, after she had found them dead. But most likely another time—
before
they were found.

The second embalmings were done by Bob McNeil, in the professional way. But the first ones, occurring before anyone even knew they were dead, were more primitive. The results were so rough because the person doing it had ignored modern methods in favor of something more old-fashioned. And that person wasn’t Lucas Hatcher or Bob McNeil.

It was Art.

“I need to talk to your father,” Kat said.

Bob’s expression changed into one of abject terror. The wide lenses of his glasses reflected what he saw—a figure standing just outside of the embalming room. The person moved inside, close enough that Kat could make out his face in the reflection.

“Talk to me about what?” Art McNeil asked.

Kat whirled around to face him. He was smiling, but it was cold and meaningless—a liar’s grin.

“Art, I’m going to have to take you in for questioning.”

“Have I done something wrong?”

Oh, yes
, Kat thought. The list of things he had done wrong was so great she didn’t know which one to address first.

“It’s best if we talk about this down at the station. Is there a way we can leave without drawing attention?”

Art looked first to Kat, then to his son. “What am I being accused of? What has Robert been telling you?”

“Everything,” Bob said. “I told her everything.”

The frigid grin of Arthur McNeil’s lips melted into a flat line. Calmly, he moved the wheeled tray out of the way until there was nothing between him and his son.

“I thought you had learned,” he said. “I thought that after what happened to your mother, you would have learned.”

“I had to tell her.” Bob’s voice was reedy and panicked.
He sounds like a boy,
Kat thought.
Like a ten-year-old boy.

“Just like you had to tell your mother,” Art said. “You told her and then she abandoned us. If you had just kept your goddamned mouth shut, she’d still be here. But you whined to her, just like you whined to Chief Campbell.”

When he had finished berating his son, Art turned to Kat. His voice was almost gentlemanly as he said, “I sincerely apologize for all the trouble Robert has caused you. Now, I really must return to my guests.”

With his back straight and head held high, Arthur McNeil exited the embalming room. Kat waited until she heard him start up the steps. Then she looked down at the tray. The tools were still there.

Except one.

Art had taken the scalpel with him.

Kat sprinted out of the embalming room. She hit the stairs running, taking them two at a time. When she reached the top one, a scream erupted from the viewing room.

She followed the sound, shoving her way inside. Everyone
there was motionless, their eyes locked on Arthur McNeil, who stood next to Troy’s casket. The scalpel was in his hand.

“Don’t do this, Art. Just come with me.”

“You think I abused my child.”

“I don’t know,” Kat said. “But I need to talk to you about that. Not here. Alone. Where you can be honest.”

Art looked down at the corpse beside him. A tiny flame of pride ignited in his eyes as he admired the handiwork.

“My son did that,” he said. “He’s so much better at it than I ever was.”

He raised the scalpel, prompting another scream from somewhere in the back of the viewing room. He placed the scalpel against his neck, blade perilously close to slicing his flesh.

“Put the scalpel down,” Kat said, pleading. “Please don’t do this.”

“You think I’m a bad person,” Art said.

When he spoke, the scalpel blade bit into his skin slightly. The result was a tiny smear of blood at his neck. It was a bright red, like a lipstick mark left by a secret lover.

“I think you need to leave everyone here alone and come with me.”

Art made no attempt to move. “You think I killed them, don’t you? George and Troy? You think I had something to do with their deaths.”

“I don’t know. Did you?”

“I think I did,” he said. “I really think I did.”