My Life as a White Trash Zombie

Chapter 20

I was starting to figure out that Derrel had a sixth sense-thing going on, where he knew exactly what to say to make people feel better. Even if sometimes that something was absolutely nothing. Not even an “I’m here if you need someone to talk to”—which is usually even more unhelpful than staying out of it completely. And that old “If you need anything, let me know,” is also a total crock. You hear people say it all the time, but then you never see anyone actually call up the person who said it and say, “Hey, remember when you said to let you know if I needed anything? Well, I’m feeling really overwhelmed. Could you please come clean my kitchen, because if I could have a clean kitchen, I’d feel like I had a bit of a head start.” You’ll never hear someone say that, because then the person asking the other person to clean their kitchen is seen as a helpless, incompetent dick.

What would be so much better would be for the person who spouted the useless “if you need anything just ask” platitude to fucking go over to the person’s house and clean their goddamn kitchen without being asked. Go over and say, “Hey, you go take care of your kid or your work, or go take a fucking nap. And when you get done, you’ll have a clean kitchen. And, no, you don’t owe me a goddamn thing. Someday the shoe will be on the other foot, okay?”

And that was the sort of shit that Derrel did all the time. He never breathed a word or a hint, but he was too tapped in to the gossip to not know what was going on with my dad. He didn’t ask me why I was so quiet, which was more of a relief that I could have possibly expressed. And no, he didn’t come over and clean my kitchen, but when I met him at a death scene later in the morning, he stopped me before we went inside the condo and handed me an insulated cup full of hot chocolate and a paper bag with an egg and bacon biscuit in it.

“You’re too skinny,” he told me. “And if you don’t eat it willingly, I’ll hold you down and make you eat it.”

I took the bag from him. I had absolutely no doubt that he would do exactly that.

“Besides,” he added with a wicked smile, “you should always be well fed going into a death scene. There’s nothing worse then puking on an empty stomach.”

“I have never and will never puke on a death scene,” I informed him around mouthfuls of bacon and egg biscuit.

He grinned. “I’m beginning to think this is true. You’re getting to be pretty damn hardcore. Amazing the stuff we can survive, isn’t it?”

It was the closest he ever came to saying something meant to be comforting. Yet I was more comforted and reassured and all that than I would have been if he’d given me a big ol’ hug or anything weird and touchy-feely like that. Actually, if he’d given me a hug I’d have probably freaked the hell out, because, well, that would have been seriously weird. But then again, I was about as far from touchy-feely as you could get. Unless you’re fucking me, don’t put your hands on me.

I finished up the biscuit and hot chocolate, and followed Derrel into the condo with the stretcher and body bag.

There was no crime scene tape or sign-in log—only a deputy at the door who directed us toward a bedroom in the back. I left the stretcher in the foyer and followed Derrel with the bag.

We were in a condo on the south end of Tucker Point in a complex that advertised itself with terms like “luxury” and “high end.” Through the bedroom window I could see the Kreeger River, and I’d seen on our way up that the bottom floor of this condo had a walkway that led to a private dock where a modest-sized boat was parked. The condo had all of the modern touches—stainless steel appliances, wood floors, marble counters. The furniture in the bedroom was solid and elegant, all in a matching dark oak—unlike the thrift-store variety selection in my own house. The bedding was a rich red and gold brocade and looked expensive as hell, though right now it was stained with vomit and saliva.

But not egg-and-bacon-biscuit vomit at least.

The source of the vomit lay sprawled on her side, eyes half-lidded and dulled by death. She looked fairly young—maybe mid to late twenties or so. Pretty and slender, she had shoulder-length brown hair subtly highlighted with red and blonde, tendrils of which snaked through the congealing mess of puke beneath her head. Bubbles of spit lingered on her mouth, and I could see the remains of a dark red lipstick. She was wearing a pink tank top and panties that looked like they came from Victoria’s Secret instead of Walmart, and her nails were nicely done with a French manicure. I could see flecks of pills in the puke, and about half a dozen baggies containing more pills on the nightstand.

It wasn’t too hard to figure out how she’d died.

“Theresa Anderson. Twenty-nine years old,” Derrel muttered with a shake of his head.

My mouth formed a grimace as I scanned the room. “Living the dream, and it’s still not enough.”

“Depends on how you define ‘the dream,’ ” he replied absently.

Snorting, I casually poked through a pile of papers and file folders on the nightstand. “What, you mean ‘money isn’t everything,’ blah blah blah?” I shrugged. “I mean, yeah, money sure as shit helps, but—” I swept my gaze around the room again. “I mean, look at this place. It fucking rocks.”

I expected Derrel to argue the point with me, make the case that even rich and successful people could get overwhelmed or whatever, but he simply gave a slight nod while he scrawled notes. “It’s a waste,” he said mildly.

“It’s fucked up,” I stated. “She has money, a great place to live.” I scowled down at the papers. Legal briefs, letters. Nothing terribly ominous. Looked pretty boring to me. “Looks like she was some sort of hotshot lawyer. I bet there was never any question about her going to college.”

Derrel made a noncommittal noise in his throat while he peered at the body.

I moved over to the bookcase, trailing my fingers through the thin layer of dust. A reed diffuser gave off a pleasant flowery scent that mixed oddly with the smell of puke. There were more law books here. A few books with lofty titles that sounded like they’d been featured on Oprah or some such thing. Nothing that looked fun or light-hearted. “Maybe she couldn’t handle the pressure,” I said with a shrug, then sighed. “I dunno. I’m talking out my ass. Was it a suicide?”

“Hard to say,” he said, lifting his eyes from his clipboard. “Cops didn’t find a note, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing. Most suicides don’t leave notes. And Dr. Leblanc is usually reluctant to rule it a suicide unless there’s a fair amount of certainty. I expect this will get ruled an accidental overdose.” He shook his head. “Likely started out small—the occasional anxiety med, or maybe Adderall or something to help her get through her classes. Then it grew from there until she was dependent on it.”

I fell silent at that, and my emotions tumbled strangely as the two of us wrestled her into the body bag. That theory hit a little too close to home. I’d narrowly escaped being found in a similar situation—though most likely in far less lovely surroundings. But it felt strange seeing that regular, upscale people went through shit like this as well. I mean, I’d known it on a logical level, but somehow I’d still always believed that drug abuse and overdose was limited to the loser segment of the population.

I smiled without humor. No. Where I went wrong was believing that being in the loser segment had anything to do with income or social class.

Derrel bagged up the various pills, then helped me maneuver the stretcher out of the condo and into the van. I wonder if she bought her pills from Clive. Certainly a possibility, though I knew there was a hefty market for pain meds, and plenty of people looking to make a buck that way.

Derrel’s phone rang as I was closing the back doors of the van. He made some notes on his pad and then looked up at me, expression sour. “Busy day today. Good thing there’s room in there for more than one body.”

The second body of the day was at the other end of the parish, in an apartment at the opposite end of the economic spectrum from Ms. Anderson’s luxury condo.

An ambulance was parked outside next to a Sheriff’s Office car and an unmarked one that clearly belonged to a detective. A quick glance at the unit number on the marked car told me that it wasn’t Marcus’s, and I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or disappointed.

Inside the apartment the carpet was old and threadbare in spots, and none of the furniture matched, but it was absolutely neat as a pin and as spotless as it was possible to make such a place. A faint scent of biscuits hung in the air, mingled with a faint flowery scent. I looked around to see if there was a reed diffuser in this place as well, but then realized that the source of the flowery smell came from actual flowers in a ceramic pitcher on the dining room table.

Detective Roth stood by the doorway to the kitchen. “Your victim’s in here,” he said in a low voice to Derrel, stepping aside so that we could see the woman on the floor. “Sarah Jackson.” Then he nodded his head toward the living room. A twenty-something black man wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and workboots sat on the couch with his head in his hands. “That’s Drew Russell, her boyfriend. They live together, but he got in from working offshore about an hour ago and found her.” He grimaced.

Derrel gave him a grave nod and then moved to the living room. I stayed back while he spoke in soft tones to the boyfriend, but the grief on the man’s face was so stark I had to turn away.

Stepping into the kitchen, I thought for a brief, jarring instant, that the woman was simply asleep—even though I knew that couldn’t possibly be the case. Not if we were there. She was lying on her right side, left arm out in front of her, legs slightly bent as if she’d curled up to take a nap. But her eyes were open and lifeless, and when I stepped closer I could see that her right arm was twisted awkwardly beneath her.

Crouching, I tugged on gloves. The portion of the body nearest the floor was red and mottled, and I’d been on the job long enough to know that was called “lividity”—the settling of the blood in the body after the heart stopped beating. I gently poked at a spot of red on her lower arm. It didn’t change color, which meant the lividity was fixed and that she’d probably been dead for several hours, at least. At least this isn’t something where the boyfriend is responsible, I thought with a vague relief. He seemed so devastated by loss, I’d have felt cheated if it was all some sort of act.

I looked up as Derrel came into the kitchen. “Anything interesting?” he asked as he crouched beside me.

“Lividity is fixed,” I replied. “That’s as far as I got.”

He nodded, then lifted the victim’s left arm and flexed it at the elbow. “Rigor’s come and gone, though that’s a lousy way to determine time of death. No sign of pulmonary edema—that bubbly-spit thing that the last body had. That can be a sign of possible OD.”

I didn’t think this woman had overdosed, but I had nothing more than a gut feeling to back that up, so I said nothing.

“I don’t think she’s an OD,” he said in echo of my thoughts. “But Dr. Leblanc will find out for sure.”

We did a quick sweep of the apartment for meds, coming up with nothing more than some antibiotics. A neighbor came and sat with the boyfriend while Derrel gently obtained information about her legal next of kin, and then I departed with the body, leaving the emotional wreckage behind.

Dr. Leblanc was ready to start the autopsies almost as soon as I made it back with the bodies. With the first, Theresa Anderson, he performed a quick-test for drugs while I was still getting her propped up on the block. He peered at the results then sighed and set the test aside. He practically zoomed through the rest of the autopsy, doing cursory examinations of the organs while I struggled to keep up. I’d seen the quick test, and I figured he didn’t feel like wasting time on an in-depth procedure when it was obvious to anyone with eyes that the woman had died of an overdose, whether intentionally or not. Of course there was always the consideration that it could have been staged and that it was a possible homicide, but that was for the cops to figure out. The pathologist’s primary job was to determine manner and means of death.

Realistically, though, we all knew there was no foul play involved in Theresa Anderson’s death. This was senseless, not sinister.

In stark contrast to the first, Dr. Leblanc took his sweet time with the second victim, Sarah Jackson. He performed a quick test on her as well, but it came back as clean as a whistle.

“Ah, well,” he finally said, looking down at the heart that he’d carefully sliced open on his cutting board. “That explains it.”

“What?”

He gestured me over with the blood-covered scalpel, and I obediently moved to his side. “She had an abnormally small right coronary artery. Most likely caused a fatal ventricular arrhythmia. Probably never had a single symptom.” He pointed to something within the heart, but I could only take his word that whatever I was looking at was abnormal in any way.

“Wait,” I said. “She never felt bad or sick from this? She just dropped dead?”

“That’s probably what happened.”

“That’s not fair!” I blurted, then realized how dumb that sounded. But it wasn’t. The rich bitch had thrown her life away, while Sarah Jackson had been working her ass off trying to make as nice a life as possible with what she had. Then she died with no warning.

Dr. Leblanc’s eyes were shadowed as he met my gaze. He’d seen it too many times, I realized. He was used to it.

He gave me a sad smile. “Welcome to death.”

I stood in the cooler until the cold seeped into my bones, and my fingers began to grow stiff. Death wasn’t fair. Death didn’t give warning. Death hit nice people and nasty people. It didn’t give a shit.

My one-month anniversary of working here had come and gone, and nothing had happened. No one gave me a medal or certificate for good behavior. It didn’t make a difference, I realized. Nothing had changed. I was still the same thing I was a month ago.

It wasn’t until hunger began to nudge at me that I realized I was being a moron and pushing my body too far with this whole standing-in-the-cold bullshit.

After making sure I was alone in the morgue, I went through my procedure of scooping the brains into my pickle jars. I felt no qualms when I salvaged the overdose victim’s brain, but when I turned to Ms. Jackson’s bag, I hesitated. Her death had been unfair enough already. Now I was going to desecrate her by making her brain my dinner?

Hunger poked at me again. Tightening my jaw, I quickly put her brain into the jar. Yeah, death wasn’t fair. And I’m not gonna give it any more head starts.