Talking to the dead was always useless. Mr. Granberry didn’t hear, didn’t feel, didn’t care. But Bryn felt better for having said it, and that was really the point.
“Time to go to your room.” Bryn spread a clean white sheet over him, then removed the brakes from the wheels and rolled his table into the walk-in refrigerator. “Sleep tight, Mr. G. I promise we’ll do our best for you. Oh, look— you’ve got a friend.” Mr. G had a neighbor, it seemed— another body, still zipped in a dark plastic cocoon. She supposed it was a late arrival from a hospital or the coroner’s office.
As she closed the door on him, she could have sworn she heard something. Bryn paused, holding her breath, but she heard nothing now but the hum of machinery. She couldn’t help but think of poor Mr. Granberry sitting up on his tray. Corpses sometimes did that sort of thing. It wasn’t anything to do with zombies; it was just muscles contracting. It seemed creepy, but it was just … biology.
Although biology could be pretty damn creepy, when you came right down to it.
She looked inside, but nothing seemed to have changed. As she swung the door shut, she heard it again. A faint sound but definite.
Kind of a scratching.
“Rats,” she said, and shuddered. She’d have to tell Mr. Fairview. The last thing any mortuary needed was a rodent problem. That would get them shut down quickly, and ruin their reputation forever.
Bryn clicked off the lights decisively and walked out the doors, locking them behind her.
She was halfway up the stairs when the door at the top opened. She was caught—nowhere to go. All she could do was stand there and look alarmed. Of course, Fast Freddy had come back … and this time, he had her where he wanted her.
No … As the shock faded and her eyes adjusted, she realized that the man standing at the top of the steps wasn’t Fast Freddy, or Lincoln Fairview. For a second she couldn’t place him at all, and then she remembered.
It was the man who’d come earlier today to talk about his brother’s arrangements. Joe. Joe Fideli.
He lifted a finger to his lips, a clear shushing motion, and Bryn took a step backward slowly.
Mr. Fideli raised a pistol. Not just a Saturday-night special—no, this looked like a very serious professional semiauto. Not military issue, but a similar model, and just as good. She raised her hands in mute surrender. Mr. Fideli gestured her down the stairs. She slowly went, feeling for each step as she took it backward.
Once she was at floor level, there still weren’t many options. The elevator and loading-dock doors were closed, and she didn’t know the maze of basement storage at the other end well enough to count on another exit. Still, she had the crazy impulse to run—but there was something about running into the dark that stopped her.
Well, that and the fact that she thought Mr. Fideli was probably a crack shot.
“It’s Miss Davis, right? You’re not supposed to be here,” Mr. Fideli said. “Sorry. I don’t mean to scare you, but I’m going to need you to do what I say for a while.”
He sounded like he meant it. He also sounded completely different from the buttoned-up, blankly inquisitive man who’d been sitting across from her this morning. He was kind of relaxed, as if this were his job, and he was very, very good at it.
Also, she supposed an unarmed, first-day-on-the-job funeral director probably didn’t pose much of a threat.
“What are you doing here?” Bryn demanded. Her voice was shaking, so it spoiled the confrontational words, but Mr. Fideli just raised his eyebrows and ignored the question anyway.
“Anybody else here I need to know about?” he asked. “Fairview? Freddy Watson? Lucy?”
He knew everybody’s name. That was … strange. Bryn shook her head.
“Okay.” He stared at her for a long second, and she sensed he was making some kind of decision. It might have been about her own life and death. “Upstairs. Let’s have a seat in your office and talk. Might as well be comfortable.”
She led the way, terribly aware of the gun he was aiming at her back; she supposed some movie action hero would have been able to spin around, roundhouse-kick the gun out of his hand, and martial-arts him into blubbering submission. She’d been through extensive unarmed combat training, and she knew that in no way was that a good idea.
Bryn lived in the real world, and in the real world, you followed a gunman’s instructions, and waited for any opportunity that wouldn’t get you shot.
Once they were in her office, Mr. Fideli locked the door and sat down in the guest chair opposite her desk with a relieved sigh. When she hesitated, he gestured with his free hand for her to take the chair behind the desk. She did, making no sudden movements.
“Long day,” he said. She nodded.
“Today’s my first day,” she said.
“Well, you picked a honey of a time to start, Bryn. Mind if I call you Bryn?”
“Mind if I call you Joe? If that’s even your name?” She felt a little better sitting down. A little more in control.
“Sure. And yeah, it’s my name.”
“Do you even
“Had,” he said, and tilted his head slightly, still watching her. “How the hell old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Damn. You ought to be an actress; you could do those teen shows. You look sixteen.”
Bryn ground her teeth and said nothing. She was
Probably not the most important thing on the radar at the moment, from a macro point of view.
“Anyway,” Fideli said, “I’m just here to do some reconnaissance. You know what that means?”
He clearly didn’t know her past. “Check out the lay of the land.”
“Ding. I wasn’t planning on running into anybody. Where’s your car?”
“I don’t have one. I ride the bus.”
“No shit. Is that one of those save-the-planet things, or I’m-too-poor-to-afford-it things?”
“Both. Mostly the latter, honestly.” Sadly.
“Well, good for you, I guess. Bad for me, though. Tougher for me to get you out of here.” Fideli fell silent, staring at her.
She felt compelled to say something. “What do you want? We don’t have a lot here that’s worth taking, if that’s what this is about. I mean, the furniture, maybe, but—”
“I’m not a thief.”
“Well, there’s not a load of opportunity for industrial espionage in this business,” she said. It was a joke, but he didn’t smile. His eyes certainly didn’t. “What did you want in the prep room?”
“I’m supposed to find out if Mr. Fairview and Fast Freddy are running drugs,” he said. “Prescription drugs. Stolen.”
“
“No offense, but you’re what, a day into this job? How would you know?”
“This is a successful business. Why would they do something so stupid?” Then again, she’d met Freddy. And she wouldn’t put anything past him. “Unless—maybe it’s not Mr. Fairview? Just Freddy?”
Fideli’s head came back upright, and there was a new tension in his body. “You know something about the guy?”
“Not that much. Just … he’s a creep. You know the type.”
“Explain it to me.”
“He came on to me. Downstairs.”
“Romantic.”
“Exactly.” She cleared her throat. “Look, I’m not Wonder Woman—do you think you could put the gun down?”
