Apex Book Company

1.

Through some ironic twist of fate, the phone call from the morgue came while Jim Cooley sat watching Frankenstein on one of the cable channels.

“It’s me,” Stuart said when Jimmy picked up the receiver. “I got one. How fast can you get down here?”

Jimmy straightened up in his seat, letting the half-eaten bag of Crispy Pork Bits fall to the trailer’s floor. “Hot damn, Stu, are you serious? When’d he come in? Where’d they find him–”

“I’ll fill you in on the goddamn details when you get here,” Stuart interrupted. “Harrington just went out to lunch, so we have less than an hour to do this.”

Jimmy grinned. “We’re really going through with it?”

“I guess so. Meet me at the back loading dock by twelve-thirty, or the deal is off!”

He hung up.

Outside, thunder rumbled like the footsteps of an angry god.

Jimmy continued to smile as he replaced the handset, then slapped his hands together with a whoop of delight. “Hot shit!” he cheered. “The little bastard did it!” He jumped up from the couch and grabbed his jean jacket off the wall hook as he hurried out the door.

2.

Three inches of rainwater sloshed along the gutters and burbled around the storm drains as Jimmy guided his rusty Mustang down the alley that serviced the back side of the Hewitt County Municipal Building. The parking area at this end of the lot boasted twenty spaces, but only two vehicles occupied the asphalt: Stuart Wyllie’s dented red Honda and a 1988 Ford that made up the third unit in the HCPD’s trio of squad cars.

Jimmy parked next to the sunken driveway that gave access to the lower loading bay of the building and got out. The rain continued to come down like a busted water main, soaking his shoulders and hair as he ran to the back door.

He rapped on the steel. “Yo, Stu, open up, man!”

He knocked again when no one answered, letting his gaze flick to the old squad car as he waited. A smile crept onto his face when he thought of how he had etched his initials in the vinyl on the rear of the driver’s seat back when the car had been new.

The door clicked and flew open.

“What the hell?” Stuart asked. “I never told you to knock!”

The kid glanced around like a mouse in a cat kennel as Jimmy stepped past him, into a green-tiled hallway outside the morgue office.

“I’m due back at the hospital as soon as Dr. Harrington returns,” Stuart reminded him. “We don’t have much time!”

“Don’t shit yourself,” Jimmy told him. “Now what do you got for me?”

Stuart eased the door into its frame before speaking, and when he did, he kept his voice low. “Mexican male, no ID. Sheriff Picket said a trucker found the body under the I-30 overpass around four o’clock yesterday morning. He’s guessing the guy was an illegal thumbing his way north.”

“Kick ass!” Jimmy cheered.

“Keep your voice down!” Stuart whispered, glancing up and down the corridor.

“Yeah, yeah–what else?”

Stuart ushered him inside the empty office, toward a door across the room. “We got him fresh,” he said, snatching a manila folder off the desk as they passed it. “Harrington pronounced the cause of death as heart failure two hours after they brought him in, and we just got the toxicology and blood work reports back from HCMC: negative across the board; aside from being dead, he’s as healthy as a horse.”

“Ah, man,” Jimmy said, “this is friggin’ perfect!”

Stuart pushed through the door of the autopsy room and led the way past the central operating table and body hoist. Jimmy shivered as the first drops of adrenaline hit his veins. His neck hairs prickled on end the way they did in his childhood, when his mother would drag him to the doctor’s office with an ear infection or pneumonia. Cold sweat sheathed his palms as his eyes drifted over the various items in the room: the table, the scales, the stainless steel containers. The drive over had been easy enough–even a bit exciting–but now the reality of what awaited him began to sink in.

Stuart unlocked another door, and they stepped into the cooler. Six stainless steel storage lockers took up the far wall, but only one displayed an information card in the holder on the door.

“This him?” Jimmy asked.

Stuart gestured toward the locker. “Be my guest.”

Jimmy reached for the handle but stopped short before his fingers touched the metal. He glanced at Stuart, at the purple latex gloves he wore; with a smirk of self-admiration, he slipped the cuff of his jacket over his hand. “Can’t be too careful.”

He opened the door and rolled out the retractable table.

The corpse had already been packaged in a black body bag for its trip to the Hewitt County Medical Center, where it would await cremation if nothing came up on a fingerprint check, or if nobody claimed the body.

Still using his jacket cuff, Jimmy unzipped the top third. With a final glance at Stuart, he reached up with both hands and parted the two halves of the bag to reveal a bloodless stump where the man’s head should’ve been.

“Holy Christ!” He snapped his hands back and leapt away. “Son of a bitch!”

Stuart cracked a grin for the first time since their meeting.

“Real hilarious, asshole! I thought you said his ticker crapped out?”

“It did,” Stuart laughed. “After he got hit by a truck.”

“Damn!”

“Hey, at least we don’t need to wait for the dental x-rays.”

Jimmy shook his head, still squirming from the surprise like a snake trying to work itself out of an old skin.

Stuart’s smile faded as he glanced at his watch, then to the door. “Okay, let’s get this over with. We’re pushing the limit here.”

He placed the manila folder on the dead man’s chest and flipped it open. A second later, he produced an ink tray from the pocket of his lab coat.

Jimmy lingered at a distance for another moment, then moved forward again. He glanced at the shredded mess of torn muscle and broken bones in the bag–all that remained of the cadaver’s neck–then refocused on Stuart as he held up the man’s left arm and dabbed his blue-gray fingers on the ink-soaked felt of the tray. The top form in the manila folder contained two rows of sequential square boxes, each labeled for the digits of the human hand. Starting with the row marked “Left,” Stuart pressed the man’s fingers into the appropriate spaces one at a time, rolling them from side to side to transfer their impressions. He repeated the procedure for the right hand, all except for the smallest finger.

For that box, he dabbed his own right pinky in the ink and rolled it on the paper.

He took the original fingerprinting sheet out of the file–the one Dr. Harrington had completed when the Sheriff first brought the corpse in, Jimmy guessed–and he crumpled it into a wad, using it to wipe away the excess ink from his hand. Finished, he stuffed the soiled paper in his pocket, slipped the new form into the file, and gathered up the folder.

“I still say it should be your print on that paper,” he commented. “This was your plan, after all.”

“I got a record,” Jimmy said. “You don’t.”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that’s my end of it. Your turn.”

Jimmy reached into his back pocket, extracting a sandwich-size Zip-Loc baggy and a dirt-flecked pair of pruning sheers.

He met Stuart’s eyes . . . then looked to the cadaver’s right hand.

To the smallest finger.

His heart hesitated as he positioned the tool’s cutting edge between the first and middle knuckle. Then, after one last glance at Stuart, he squeezed down on the sheer’s handle with both hands as hard and as fast as he could.

Shick!

Stuart grimaced as Jimmy lifted the severed digit from the table, holding it between thumb and forefinger.

“You really gonna eat that thing?” Stuart asked.

“I ain’t gonna eat it,” Jimmy corrected as he slipped the finger into the Zip-Loc bag. “I’m going to do like we talked about and just . . . chew it a little.”

“This is nuts,” Stuart said.

Jimmy eyed him. “Hey, we’re in this together, man. Don’t start getting fidgety on me! Just keep thinking about that old lady who burned herself with the coffee from McDonalds. What’d she get for her lawsuit . . . a million? Two million?”

“Actually, I think it came closer to three.”

“Exactly! Now imagine what a big-ass chain like Smokey’s will have to shell out when I find a human finger in my food!” He clapped his hands together. “Hot damn, boy! Even split fifty-fifty, we’ll both be rolling in it! I’ll make sure a couple of guys from the worksite are there to see me spit it out. Then those patty-flipping pricks will have to pay through the roof for emotional stress.”

Stuart’s expression remained as serious as ever, but Jimmy noticed a renewed gleam of determination in his eyes at the mention of the money. “Just remember to cook it,” the kid said. “You gotta simmer it in the chili for at least three hours at 180 degrees so the spices will permeate the flesh. That’ll give any prosecutor in the country an uphill battle to prove it wasn’t in the mix from the start. Especially since Smokey’s meat supplier just got busted for hiring illegals. I Googled the case settlement last week and.. .”

Jimmy shook his head and laughed.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Jimmy answered, heading for the door. “I just knew hanging out with a nerd like you would pay off eventually.”