Skin Trade

message with the Near East Studies Department as we pulled into the parking lot of the Las Vegas/Clark County Coroner’s Office.

The building was nondescript, set in the middle of an industrial area, but there was a discreet sign that let us know we were in the right place. There was also a little herd of white cars and trucks against the far side of the lot that had Clark County Coroner on the side of them. We got out, and Edward led us to a small door beside a larger garage door. He pushed a button to ring the bell.

“I take it you’ve been here before,” I said.

“Yes.”

I spoke low. “Was it Edward or Ted who came to town?”

He gave me that smile that said he knew things I didn’t. “Both,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you saying you’ve come as a marshal and an assa…”

The door opened, and questions had to wait. Bernardo leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “He never answers questions for anyone but you.”

I threw back over my shoulder, as we followed Edward into a double-doored entryway, “Jealous?”

Bernardo scowled at me. No, I shouldn’t have taunted him, but I was nervous, and baiting him was more fun than what we were about to do.

On television there are drawers. In real life there aren’t, or not at any morgue I frequent. I’m sure that somewhere there must be drawers, but have you ever noticed on some television shows that the drawers are so high up, you’d have to get a ladder to reach the bodies? What’s up with that?

Olaf and I were in the little backward gowns, with two layers of gloves on his and the pathologist’s hands: one pair latex, and one pair of the blue nitrile. The double layer had become standard at most morgues, to protect against blood-borne pathogens. Thanks to Jean-Claude’s vampire marks, I probably couldn’t catch anything, even bare-handed, so I’d opted for a single layer of the nitrile. One, you sweated less; two, if I had to touch, or pick up anything, I was less clumsy in a single layer. I’d never been comfortable in gloves. I chose nitrile over latex because they were more puncture resistant.

Morgues are almost never dark and gloomy, like they show on television. Clark County was no exception; it was bright and strangely cheerful. It smelled clean, with that undertone of disinfectant and something else. I was never sure what the something else was, but it never made me want to breathe deeper. I suspected that the “smell” was actually imaginary, and not there at all. Morgues actually don’t smell of much of anything. Clark County had a second cooler for bodies that would have made the morgue smell of something else. I really appreciated that.

Olaf and I were in the first autopsy suite, which was all red countertops, shiny silver sinks, and walls that were tan and red tile. The color scheme looked like someone’s cheerful kitchen. Except that most kitchens don’t have bodies in plastic wrap on a gurney near the sink and countertops. I couldn’t get the kitchen analogy out of my head, so the body didn’t look ghostly behind the layers of plastic wrap but oddly like something you’d take out of the refrigerator.

Once the bodies had bothered me, but that was a while ago. What bothers me about morgues now is thinking of the handful of vampires that were awake while I had to stake them. Awake and chained down to a gurney. The ones who just spit at me or tried to bite me to the bitter end don’t bother me. It’s the ones who cried. The ones who begged for their lives. Those haunt.

Morgues make me think of tears now, and not my own. Clark County had a small room off to the side of the garage that was just for vampire stakings. It was next door to the room that they reserved for organ harvesting. They were nearly identical rooms, just that one helped people live, and the other helped them die. Oh, there were chains and holy items in the vampire room, that was different. But, thankfully, I wasn’t having to use that room today.

Dr. T. Memphis-honest, that was on his name tag-stood over the first body. Memphis was five foot six and a little round around the middle, so that his white coat wasn’t happily buttoned, but he’d buttoned it all the way up. He wore his white coat, tie, and collar tight. It must have been hell in the desert heat, but then he spent most of his time in cooler places. His curly hair was beginning to give up the fight to cover all of his head, and gray was winning out over the brown he’d started with. Small, round glasses completed the look.

He looked harmless, and professional, until you looked in his eyes. His eyes were cool and gray and pissed. Angry did not cover it; he was pissed, and didn’t care that we saw it.

Of course, I didn’t have to get to his eyes to know that he was not happy with us. Everything he did was jerky with anger. He snapped his gloves on. He banged the side of the gurney. He jerked the plastic off the corpse’s face, but only the face. He made sure the rest stayed covered.

Olaf watched everything impassively, as if the man meant nothing to him. Maybe that was the truth. Maybe Olaf spent his life waiting for someone to interest him, and until then, people just didn’t. Was it peaceful inside Olaf’s head or lonely? Or, maybe just silent.

Edward and Bernardo were looking at the only body they hadn’t had time to finish processing. It was in a different room, so it was just Olaf and me with Dr. Memphis. They’d gotten a female doctor, whose name I hadn’t caught. I trusted Edward to find out anything I needed to know, and Bernardo to know everything about the attractive woman from just a few minutes’ acquaintance. Either way, we were covered.

I had not chosen to start with the processed bodies; Edward had done the division of labor. He’d tried to separate Olaf and himself into one team, and Bernardo and me into another, but Olaf had put his oversized foot down. The best Edward could do was to give me the bodies he thought would be less interesting to the big guy.

Eventually, we’d have to see the other bodies, but we could delay the part that Edward and I both thought would get Olaf’s rocks off the most. Sometimes the best you can do is delay the worst part, for just a little bit.

The man nestled in the plastic had short brunet hair. His complexion was gray with the edges dark, like someone who had a tan but had been bled pale. Just from seeing his face and neck, I knew he’d bled to death, or bled out, before he died. The official cause of death might read something else, but he’d been alive long enough to lose all or most of his blood.

“Is the official cause of death exsanguination?” I asked.

Dr. Memphis looked at me; it was a little less hostile. “This one was; why do you ask?”

“I’m a vampire hunter; I see a lot of bloodless corpses.”

“You said this one was. Are there other causes of death on the other men?” Olaf said.

He looked up at the bigger man, and again it wasn’t as friendly. Maybe he just didn’t like men who were over a foot taller than himself. Short person’s disease: attitude.

“See for yourself,” Memphis said, and he peeled back the plastic farther to expose the man to his waist.

I knew how he’d bled out-cuts. So many cuts. I knew blade work when I saw it. But so many wounds, like angry mouths everywhere, lipless but gaping wide to show the pale meat underneath.

“It was a blade of some kind.”

Olaf nodded and reached out toward the wounds with his gloved hands. I stopped him, just short of touching the body, with my own gloved hand on his arm. Olaf glared at me, his deep-set eyes going back to that first blush of hostility he’d had before he started “liking” me.

“Ask first,” I said, “we’re in the doctor’s house, not ours.”

He continued to scowl at me, and then his face changed-not softened, just changed. He put his other hand over mine, so that he pressed my hand to his arm. It was my turn not to freak. But it sped my pulse, and not from the usual reason a man’s touch will speed your heart rate. Fear put my pulse in my throat as if I were choking on candy. I fought not to show my fear in any other way. Not for Olaf’s benefit, but so the doc didn’t figure out something was weird.

My voice was even as I asked the doctor, “Is it okay if we touch the body?”

“I’ve gathered all the evidence I can from this… body, so yes.”

He’d hesitated on the word body, not something that most pathologists have problems saying. Then I realized I’d been slow. He knew the men, or at least some of them. The odds were that he’d had to work on people he knew over the last few hours. Hard.

I tried to lift my hand from Olaf’s arm, but he kept his pressed over mine, holding me in place. For a second I thought it would be a fight, but then he moved his hand away.