“Wellfuck,” I groan, unable to hide my annoyance.
Robin’s reaction is much more pronounced, leaping into the back of my truck as he fights to turn the corpse over.
I’m glad his focus is elsewhere as my eyes roll back in a quick, involuntary movement. I can feel the sound of an exhausted sigh bubbling up within my throat, but I manage to quell this before it has the chance to fully manifest.
I shift gears, struggling to match Robin’s urgency. “Ohno!” I chime in with all the enthusiasm of a community theater table read. It’s admittedly not very convincing, but Robin doesn’t seem to notice. I climb in and position myself on the other side of the fallen corpse, helping to turn it over and then wincing as I assess the damage.
When a living human falls our body will instinctively protect itself by any means possible. Our muscles will tighten and relax in strange, subconscious ways, rendering even the most brutal accidentsslightlyless terrible than they could’ve been. Unfortunately, the dead aren’t capable of this kind of self-preservation, and a face-first tumble can have unexpectedly graphic results.
The whole front of this semi-translucent body bag is now smeared with dark, congealed red, a pudding rather than a liquid splatter. I can vaguely see the remains of her face through the crimson mess, but what’s left is difficult to parse. The bones have cracked and caved, flattening out in an awkward mash of features so that the only thing Icanreallymake sense of is a single eye staring back at me through the plastic.
“Help me get her up onto another shelf,” I command. “The strap broke on this one.”
I put my hands under the corpse and start to lift. Robin hesitates, but when it becomes obvious that I’m moving ahead without him he kicks into gear. Carefully, the two of us somehow manage to wrangle the fallen body into one of the other compartments.
We strap her into place, then repeat the process with Tyler Fleming. Once we’re finished, there are four bodies in total, including tonight’s previous stops.
Robin and I climb out of the truck and shut the doors.
“You can call from inside if you want,” Robin offers.
I hesitate, squinting clumsily as I fight to understand what he’s getting at. I’m familiar with all these words separately, but the context of arranging them in this order eludes me.
“The family,” Robin presses.
I immediately snap back into focus. “Oh yeah,” I reply, nodding along. “To tell them what happened. I’ll take care of it.”
“Just out of respect,” Robin insists.
“I’ll call them on the drive,” I assure him, finding my confidence again. I furrow my brow and just kind of nod a bit, my best approximation of deep concern. “Thank you so much. Wow.”
There’s a long pause.
“Welp, I should get going,” I chirp.
I climb back into the cab, putting my truck in driveand then waving to the kid as I pull away. My eyes linger on Robin as he gets smaller and smaller in the driver’s side mirror. Eventually, he disappears, and soon enough I’m turning out onto the vacant highway.
This view is pretty nice during daylight hours, a beautiful golden vista of California sand stretching off in every direction as glorious craggy mountains skate over the horizon. Now, however, an oppressive darkness shrouds everything. When I stare through the windshield, all I can see is an endless blanket of night, a black ocean through which a handful of other distant headlights carve their winding path.
I reach into the center console and pull out my phone, tapping the most recent contact. It rings once through the truck’s speakers, connecting wirelessly before a familiar voice picks up.
“Hey,” my friend Noah starts. “I just—”
I interrupt before he gets the chance to continue this thought. “Can I tell her good night?”
“Marlo? She’s five years old. She’s been asleep for like … two hours.”
I hesitate, briefly fighting the urge to make Noah wake my daughter for a do-over. Instead, I let out a long sigh of acceptance. “How was she?”
“Great. We did some puzzles. She went in the pool.”
“She fucking loves it in there.” I laugh.
“How’s work?” Noah asks.
To his credit, Noah wants to know out of genuine care, not because he’s hunting for clues. He’s shockingly goodat letting these mysterious adventures exist in their own private bubble, secure in his lack of knowledge. At this point, I can only assume he thinks I’m a part-time stripper, as little else would require my late-night babysitting needs and a code of silence.
Black-market corpse dealer is probably low on his list.
