one thing so hard that’s what you see. I expected to see Coleman’s body there, and that’s what I saw. But the body was that of Cheri Maple, and she was just as dead as the smell that led me to her. She was sprawled in an old chair next to the desk, facing me. From the faded look of her pupils and the impossible tilt of her head, I could tell she was gone even if she hadn’t taken a frontal shotgun blast.
“You need to be dead, man,” I whispered aloud. “You really need to be dead.”
Emery didn’t respond as he moved behind me and patted my back for the presence of another weapon. He gestured with his free hand to another chair in front of the desk. The desk was very tidy, nothing but an old-fashioned landline, a stapler, a few menus, a humidor with pipe holder, and a pencil cup crammed with everything but pencils.
Emery took the chair behind the desk for himself and said, “Sit.”
Wondering why he was in no hurry to eliminate or at least immobilize me, I sat down across from him while Cheri’s body sagged in the chair to the right of me. Even with a psychopath like Emery, it felt macabre to have Cheri in on the conversation.
But it helped, too. The sight of Laura Coleman lying helpless across the room and Cheri dead before me made me drain out of myself in much the same way as when Carlo had found my bloody clothes in the washing machine. Only this time it was good, that I could stay as collected, as free of sympathy, as the killer before me. This is what I had tried to explain to Coleman, that we all must become what we want to conquer, and it was welcome, because it meant the Brigid Quinn I needed to survive had just kicked in.
“Why did you kill Cheri?” I asked, stalling for time until I could figure a way out of this mess. “Because she saw what you did to Agent Coleman?”
“No. Because she saw this in the walk-in freezer.” He kicked a booted leg out from behind the desk. He looked disgusted, as if he blamed the corpse for his lover’s death.
My resolve slipped for a moment before I could get it into my head that Carlo didn’t wear boots. “May I?”
“Be my guest. Just move slowly.” He kept my pistol trained on me as I stood slowly, steeled myself for what I might see, and moved to the side of the desk for a better view. The body was fairly intact except for a little dried blood around the mouth.
“Who is it?” I asked, relieved that I did not know.
“Who knows? It took a while to find someone with decent teeth who was apparently homeless so no one would be looking for him.”
“Was there a reason, or just for kicks?”
He looked offended. “A very good reason. He is going to be me when I blow the place up.”
I managed to avoid reacting, kept to the key information. “What about ID, fingerprints, dental records?”
Emery knocked at the side of his face. “There aren’t any dental records. I have a jaw like a rock. That’s what the cops will remember me saying. Plus, just in case, I had this happen in the bar earlier today…” He lifted his front lip to show me the gap where his tooth was missing. Then he lifted the lip on the corpse to show it had one missing, too. “No fingerprints on record,” he said. “But thank you; just in case, I’ll make sure to obliterate them in the explosion. Anything else I may have missed?”
“How long have you had him?” I asked, to keep him talking and discover whatever mistakes he might have made.
“Oh, he is fresh enough. He wasn’t in the freezer long.” Still holding the gun on me with one hand, he opened a desk drawer and took out some clear packing tape. “Amazing how useful office supplies can be,” he said. He tossed me the tape. “Sit on the floor over there and wrap some of that around your ankles, would you?”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said to him without rancor, without any feeling at all. I said it to test the effect.
Emery picked up a metal stapler from the desk with his left hand and stepped over to where Coleman lay listlessly on her right side, her head on the floor. I shouted, but not fast enough to