Is it a crime to dispose of a body?
I typed the query into the search bar and tapped enter. Lines pulled between my eyebrows reading link after link. I mean, of course it was a crime, but how bad were we talking here?
I scrolled down.
Abuse of a corpse.
Desecration of a corpse.
Failure to properly intern the deceased.
Getting rid of a body 101.
Each headline was worse than the last. Basically, if he was doing what I thought he was doing, my dad was fucked.
I looked up, my neck sore from staring down at my phone screen. Thinking about my father’s office across the property in the mortuary building, my stomach turned.
I still wanted it to be false. I couldn’t stand it.
I wasn’t young enough anymore to think my father was this perfect, blameless person who could do no wrong. He was as human as me and all the bodies that came through our mortuary. He could lie, cheat, steal, and apparently get himself involved in some sort of shady criminal business which required him to get rid of bodies.
My neck and cheeks heated. I wasn’t young and naive enough to think of my mom somewhere up in the clouds, watching over me, but I was fiercely protective of the legacy that she had built with the mortuary while she was still alive. It was a routine that’d gotten boring and stale, but it fucking meant something.
It made me sick to imagine that after she died, her husband decided to desecrate her legacy with something as messed up as this, whatever the hell this was. I didn’t care about his reasons or how he had rationalized his way into thinking it was okay.
I needed to get back into that office, but when? Doing it during business hours was too risky.
Sometime between the hours of closing and midnight, then? Which would mean, like, right now, since after midnight was definitely out of the question.
Knowing he told me not to go into the main building after midnight because that was whenever he did what he did was infuriating.
At the heart of every swirling emotion inside, was hurt. I spent hours agonizing over this, rationalizing, trying to imagine he had a good reason.
Since I lived here, wasn’t I implicated in some way?
I opened my door, stepping out into the cold night. I crossed my arms over my chest, absorbing the small shiver that ran through me. I was getting so used to the sensation someone was out here that it was becoming easier to ignore. Easier to brush off since even though I felt their shadow, they did nothing.
I hadn’t been attacked. Or even approached.
A fly on the wall might be a pest but it couldn’t hurt me.
It also lent credence to Tessa’s theory that I was just being paranoid.
But coming outside, removing whatever space was between me and it, I felt exposed. Inhaling deeply, I almost thought that I could smell musk, or cologne, smell it; whatever it was.
I closed the door and locked it, making it to the mortuary in half the usual time. The cold night air nipped at my lungs. I panted coming around the building to the face our clients saw when they arrived. Dad’s office was closest to the front entrance and I didn’t want him to spot me sneaking in through the back.
Jamming my key in the lock, I looked over both shoulders. To an outsider, the mortuary could seem supremely creepy at night. But the chill in my blood didn’t come from the knowledge of there being corpses cooling in the basement. It came from whatever the hell I might find in a much less morbid setting.
I closed the door behind me, locking it up.
Dad never locked his office, trusting me enough not to go inside. To follow the rules that’d been in place since I was a child. I might have broken a rule by coming out here past midnight, but as far as I knew, he was breaking the law.
I used the flashlight on my phone, shining it around my dad’s office instead of turning on the light. Pointing it toward the bookshelf, I squinted, a harsh reflection of the light glinting off the vase that he used to store all the metal joints that he found in the cremator. Metal knee and hip joints didn’t break down in the flame or even melt, they just sat there on the incineration slab when it was all over, a little dusty, but perfectly intact.
Sometimes families asked for them back, other times, they didn’t care. So they ended up there. He had had the collection for years and I thought of it as nothing but a banal oddity. It was kind of amusing but now, I couldn’t help wondering who all those people were and which ones were illegal.
Everything seemed tainted. Wrong.
I threw the drawer open, forcing myself to snap out of it. It wasn’t the time. Checking the lowest drawer where I’d seen incriminating evidence, I found myself looking into a pile of innocent brown envelopes.
Fuck.
I balanced my phone on the edge of the desk with the beam of light shining into the drawer as I rifled through the envelopes. Most were empty, some old, all useless.
Where did you put them?
A ball formed in my throat.
Where did you put them?
I wrenched the top drawer open, and the second, seeing exactly what I saw last time.
They were gone.
For a terrible second, I wondered whether I imagined the whole thing. Over the past week, everything I saw, heard, and touched felt false on some level. Like I needed confirmation, for someone else to experience them so I knew they were there.
I scanned the room wildly, an ache in my chest, squeezing, twisting in my stomach.
Jumping to my feet, I ran to the tall shelf of filing cabinets that stood against the wall. My dad kept paper records like it was still 2003. They had to be in there with the others.
I yanked open the top drawer, barely sure of the method he used to organize these things. I grabbed a handful of paper, and then a harsh yellow light clouded my sight.
“Emily Diane Snow.”
I froze, my breath lodging in my chest as my fingers completely immobilized. I froze like I was seven years old and he had just caught me trying to sneak an ice cream bar from the freezer after he had already told me no. This was far, far worse.
I dropped the sheets, every nerve ending ablaze.
“Did you lose something in here?” he asked, the edge in his voice uncharacteristically hard.
My chin jutted out. I wasn’t the one who should be under scrutiny here. It should be him.
“Why was there a gun in your desk drawer?”
He cocked his head at me. “I’m sorry, what?”
“There was a gun in your desk drawer, Dad, why?”
“For self-defense. We’re out here alone,” he said, shrugging. his tone was almost mocking, like he was talking to a child instead of his adult daughter.
“Then explain the money. There was an envelope full of money.”
“What are you talking about, Emily? What are you doing in here? That’s the real issue.”
“In there,” I almost screamed, pointing at his desk.
“You’re going through my things? What did I tell you about coming in here?”
“Now I know it’s because you had something to hide. Why was there a false autopsy report in there?” I insisted. His face was so stoic, I felt crazy letting my emotions get the best of me.
“I haven’t done an autopsy report in weeks. All our most recent death calls have been cremations and embalmings,” he said coolly.
I was so frantic I thought I was going to explode. He was not going to lie in my face about what I saw. He couldn’t.
“I know you’re taking money from someone to get rid of bodies,” I said, throwing the grenade out. If he was guilty, I would catch him. I watched his face, his mouth, eyes, anything that would give him away in the light of my phone flashlight.
But then, he laughed.
He fucking laughed.
“What’s gotten into you, Emily? You’ve been jumpy and acting weird for days. The only reason I want you to stay out of here is because I don’t think it’s your place. I work you hard enough as it is. This part is for me. I’m disappointed that you would go against my instructions.”
My emotions swirled around me like swamp mud, sucking me down. My vision shook and I couldn’t think. His words said one thing, but I knew what I saw. The images in my mind altered, changing themselves to conform to his words.
No. No, I saw them.
“I can’t believe you would do that to Mom,” I croaked, fighting the doubt. Finally, his face moved. His mouth fell open, and his chest rose, indignant.
“I can’t believe you’d ruin her legacy by getting involved in something like this,” I continued before he could interrupt, balling my hand into a fist.
His face hardened, rage flickered in his eyes. When he spoke, his even tone was scarier than if he’d yelled at me.
“I was married to your mother for almost fifteen years. I would never desecrate her memory by ruining a business she built from the ground up with her own two hands. How dare you say such things.”
He turned his back and walked toward the door. Pausing, he glanced over his shoulder.
“I never want to see you in my office again.”
My heart slammed in my chest as I ran across the grass back to my cabin.
It was fake. Everything was fake. All I had to do was go to sleep, and when I woke up, nothing that’d happened in the last week and a half would be real. Everything would be back to normal.
I never saw the ghost in the basement that day.
Nor the gun or files or money in Dad’s desk.
I wouldn’t feel eyes on me while I slept, anymore.
There wouldn’t be—
I stumbled coming up the steps of the patio. The front door of my cabin gaped open like a mouth mid-scream. I stared, willing my vision to shift back to reality, but it didn’t, and the door kept screaming.
I closed that fucking door. I locked it. I knew I did.
My legs buckled. All the strength flowed out of my muscles as I sat there, crumpled, staring into the shadows beyond my door.
Take me, then, I thought. Just do it, already.
Nothing emerged from the black. Not a sound eked out from within. The eerie silence cloaked me until I shivered beneath it.
Shaking my head, I snapped myself out of it, clenching my jaw until it hurt.
I knew one thing for damn sure. I was not going back in there.
Retreating back to the grass, I tore my phone from my pocket, dialing Carlos. He wouldn’t ask questions, not if I was giving him what he wanted. I needed somewhere where none of this existed. Just for tonight.
I squeezed my eyes shut waiting for him to answer.
Please. Come on, pick up.
“Emily?” his voice came through the line.
“H-hey,” I stammered, swallowing, my eyes fixed to the door.
“What’s up? Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry for—uh—calling so late. Are you at home?”
“Well it’s almost midnight on a weeknight so, yeah…” He trailed off, tone flat.
We were cordial as far as exes went but off the books, we still hooked up, not often, but enough so that a midnight call wasn’t entirely out of the blue.
Usually, though it was him who made these calls, not me.
“Can I come over?”
“Oh. Shit. Like, now?”
“Now,” I confirmed.
I heard some commotion in the background, imagining him frantically picking up garbage and dirty laundry before I got there.
“Yeah. Sure. Come on over.”
A shock of relief raced over me and I shut my eyes with a sigh. It was a Band-Aid. A quick fix that wouldn’t last more than the one night, but I’d take it. I’d take anything if it meant not being here even for five more minutes.
“Thanks, Carlos,” I muttered, jutting my jaw against the shadows on the other side of my door. “I’m on my way.”
