who could see her hooters pulsing red in the casket.
Charlie hadn't been to a lot of funerals, but Madison McKerny's seemed nice, and fairly well attended for someone who had been only twenty-six. It turned out that Madison had grown up in Mill Valley, just outside San Francisco, so a lot of people had known her. Evidently, except for her family, most of them had lost touch and seemed somewhat surprised that she had been gunned down by her married boyfriend who had kept her in an expensive apartment in the city.
"Not like you vote 'most likely' for that in the yearbook," Charlie said, trying to make conversation with one of her classmates, a guy he'd ended up standing next to at the urinals in the men's room.
"How did you know Madison?" said the guy, a condescending tone in his voice. He looked like he'd been voted "most likely to piss everyone off by being rich and having nice hair."
"Oh, me? Friend of the groom," Charlie said. He zipped up and headed to the sink before hair guy could think of something to say.
Charlie was surprised to see a few people at the funeral whom he knew, and each time he walked away from one, he'd run into another.
First Inspector Rivera, who lied. "Had to come. It's our case. I've gotten to know the family a little."
Then Ray, who lied. "She went to my gym. I just thought I should pay my respects."
Then Rivera's partner, Cavuto, who didn't lie. "I still think you're kinky, and that goes for your ex-cop friend, too."
And Lily, who was also honest. "I wanted to see a dead fuck puppet."
"Who's running the store?" Charlie asked.
"Closed. Death in the family. You know Ray called the cops on you, right?"
They hadn't had a chance to talk since Charlie had been released. "I should've figured," Charlie said.
"He said he saw you go into the dead chick's building and just disappear. He thinks you have ninja powers. That part of the thing?" She bounced her eyebrows - a Groucho Marx conspiracy bounce - made less effective by the fact that her eyebrows were pencil thin and drawn on in magenta.
"Yeah, it's kind of part of the thing. Ray doesn't suspect about the thing, does he?"
"No, I covered for you. But he still thinks you might be a serial killer."
"I thought he might be a serial killer."
Lily shuddered. "God, you guys need to get laid."
"True, but right now I'm here to do a thing regarding the thing."
"You still haven't gotten her thing thing?"
"I can't even figure out how to get it. Her thing is still in the thing." He nodded to the casket.
"You're fucked," Lily said.
"We have to go sit now," Charlie said. He led her into the chapel, where the service was beginning.
Behind him Nick Cavuto, who had been standing three feet away with his back to Charlie, made a beeline for his partner and said, "Can we just shoot Asher and find cause later? I'm sure the fucker's done something to deserve it."
Charlie didn't know what he was going to do, how he was going to retrieve the soul implants, but he really thought something would occur to him. Some supernatural ability would manifest itself at the last minute. He thought that all through the ceremony. He thought that when they closed the casket, during the funeral procession to the cemetery, and all through the graveside ceremony. He began to lose hope as the mourners dispersed and the casket was lowered, and by the time the ground crew started throwing dirt down the hole with a backhoe, he'd pretty much given up on having an idea.
There was grave robbing, but that really wasn't an idea, was it? And even with his years of experience in the death-dealing business, Charlie didn't think he was up for breaking into a cemetery, spending all night digging up a casket, then cutting the implants out of a dead woman's body. It wasn't the same as swiping a vase off the mantel. Why couldn't Madison McKerny's soul be in a vase on the mantel?
"Didn't get the thing, then," said a voice beside him.
Charlie turned to see Inspector Rivera standing not a foot away. He hadn't even seen him since they'd left the funeral home.
"What thing?"
"Yeah, what thing?" Rivera said. "They didn't bury her with those diamonds you saw, you know that, right?"
"That would have been a shame," Charlie said.
"Sisters got them," Rivera said. "You know, Charlie, most people don't stay to watch them