lay a mile down the road, but that wasn’t where I was headed. I pulled up to a small Presbyterian church. At least, that’s what I think it was originally. The old parsonage stood off to one side, along with the parking lot.
I crossed the artificial stream surrounding the church and walked up to the door. The bronze plate read “Parker’s Funeral Services.” Dad’s body was prepared here. Mom’s service was held here. I hadn’t come back for Dad’s.
I raised my hand to knock, and spun as the crunch of gravel betrayed someone’s approach.
The clear “You might have made a mistake” sound of a shotgun shell being chambered kept me from jumping at the short man who stood behind me, a nice clear shot at my belly lined up.
“Brynner Carson. I let you in the cemetery to pay respects, since I carry the backhoe keys with me these days, but you aren’t welcome here.”
Mr. Parker might be one of the few fathers in town who didn’t want me hurt for breaking his daughter’s heart. “How’s Emily?” Emily was the only girl in school who not only escaped my charms but who seemed completely immune to them.
“Moved to New York eight years ago. Married herself a nice wife; they’ve got a grandson on the way. Now get the hell off my property.” He hefted the shotgun for emphasis. “This ain’t rock salt.”
“I’m not here to break in this time. I need to talk to you. Official BSI business.” A lie, but not like he’d know. The badge didn’t speak up and say I quit.
He lowered the shotgun. “I do my bodies right. All of them. Tendons cut at each joint, jaws pinned. You got a problem with the dead, you know they weren’t buried in Happy Hills. I have a log with the serial number of everyone I’ve processed for the last five decades, and my cousin works the computer to put them in the BSI national registry. Mine don’t come back.”
Of course not. The man took pride in his work, making sure the bodies were both prepared to go in the ground and fixed so they’d stay that way. That gave me an idea. “If I got you some serial numbers from the thigh tattoo on a corpse, could you tell me where they were processed?”
He walked up to me, easily a foot and a half shorter, but a man confident he had the power. “I could. But first I need to hear you say it.”
I’d known this was coming all along and had rehearsed my answer. “I’m sorry I broke in. I’m sorry I stole your backhoe, and I promise, Mr. Parker. I won’t dig up my mother’s coffin again.”
Fifteen
GRACE
After thirty minutes of translating, I realized I didn’t need Brynner. I needed his aunt. The woman was a walking catalogue of Brynner’s life, without the risk I might kiss her.
Regular hieroglyphics could be deciphered with ease. Later glyphs often spelled out the meaning of earlier glyphs. Co-orginfluenced hieroglyphics, on the other hand, combined all three sets of characters in a manner similar to Japanese. Early glyphs completely altered the entire meaning and tone of ones that came afterward. With no punctuation, the only way to make sense of it was to start at the beginning.
The other question that came to mind was, How did Henrich Carson learn these? So I laid out the journals one by one, asking questions of Emelia as often as I could to help me pin down the order when I thought I’d ferreted out a passage.
And her patience had limits. On my twenty-first trip to the kitchen, Emelia finally put down her paper and stared at me. “You really ought to ask Brynner.”
“I tried.”
“Ask nicer. Boy dotes on you something awful. Pass the sugar, sweetie.”
I handed it to her, shaking my head. “Sure he does.”
“Grace Roberts.” She dropped her paper enough to look at me. “Was that sarcasm?”
I closed my eyes before I could roll them. “No, ma’am.”
“I didn’t think so. Not in this house.”
Taking my laptop, I went out to the porch swing and downloaded my current mail. My connection, even with a satellite card, was so slow I could practically fly back to Seattle faster. When it finally downloaded, I opened the activity data Dr. Thomas promised me. Red dots pinpointed each co-org confirmed and killed.
The sheer amount of activity left me horrified.
Shamblers everywhere. Co-orgs popping up in places that made no sense, like the one trapped on a sandbar. How had