LITMIR.BIZ

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decide to ignore the page. I can’t call Izzy anyway; I never bothered to have the phone turned on since my original plan was to stay in the cottage for no more than a few days. And I figure if I don’t show up, Izzy will just go on without me. So I might as well go back to sleep. Pleased with my decision, I ease back into bed and pull the covers up. The next thing I know, Izzy is standing over me, shaking my shoulder.

      “Come on, Mattie. Get up. We have a call. A homicide.”

      “I don’t want a call,” I whine, throwing off his hand and burrowing deeper under the covers. “And I sure as hell don’t want a homicide.”

      “Yes, you do.”

      “No, Izzy. I assure you, I don’t.”

      “Get up.”

      “It’s three in the morning. Can’t these criminals honor banker’s hours?”

      “Come on. Dom’s making coffee, if that will help. It won’t be so bad once we’re there. You know how it is. Once you’re up and moving, it’s a piece of cake.”

      Easy for him to say. He doesn’t have a hematoma the size of Texas in his crotch.

      “Just go on without me,” I tell him. “I’ll catch the next one.” He steps closer and starts to make a grab for my covers but I stop him cold by saying, “I’m naked from the waist down.”

      He backs up like I pulled a gun on him, his hands held out in front of him. “Fine, if you want to play hardball, I will too. If you don’t get up, I’ll start telling people your real name.”

      Moaning, I roll over, give him a dirty look, and sit up, feeling a million muscles scream in agony. My right leg, the one with the mangled ankle, is numb clear to the thigh.

      He bends over, picks my pants up from the floor, and tosses them at me. “Put these on and let’s go.”

      I stare at the pants a minute, my bleary mind still struggling to come fully awake. “How’d you get in here?” I ask.

      “I have a key, remember? But that’s beside the point since you didn’t bother to lock the door.” He eyes me warily a moment, then asks, “What the hell is that in your hair?”

      I reach up and pull out several small pieces of mulch. Tossing them on the floor, I say, “New hair treatment. This herbal stuff is all the rage now, you know.”

      He stares at me, then shakes his head and turns away. “I’ll be waiting in the living room. Hurry please.”

      I’m feeling cranky so I give a petulant stomp of my foot once for good measure, then swallow down a shriek of pain when I discover that my injured ankle isn’t nearly as numb as I thought. Once the stars go out, I start pulling on my slacks and have my bad leg in before I realize I’ve forgotten my panties. I look around on the floor, don’t see them, and figure they must be under the bed. Getting them will mean kneeling down, and I’m not too keen on that idea. As stiff as my body feels, I’m afraid I won’t be able to get back up again, and the thought of having to call to Izzy for help while I’m on the floor with my naked ass in the air isn’t very appealing. The dresser is across the room and I eye it for a second before deciding to go commando. At least I won’t have to worry about unsightly panty lines.

      Five minutes later I’ve plucked the rest of the mulch from my hair and we are on our way, Izzy behind the wheel. His car, a 1963 Chevy Impala, fully restored, has a bench front seat. In order to reach the pedals, Izzy has the seat up as far as it will go, which leaves me scrunched like a pretzel, my knees just under my chin. One good bump and I’ll have teeth coming out my nose.

      “What have we got?” I ask, finally awake enough to remember that my job now entails messing with dead bodies.

      “A residential break-in, possibly a robbery. There’s one victim—a woman.”

      I nod thoughtfully, as if such a scenario is a part of everyday business, but the truth is, Izzy’s words strike fear in my heart. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in small-town America. I console myself with the thought that it probably happened in a bad section of town, the result of bad people doing bad things, like a drug deal gone wrong. But then Izzy pulls up in front of a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Several police cars, an ambulance, and four or five other cars are parked willy-nilly out front, the darkened, quiet light bars on the official vehicles serving as a grim testament to the situation inside. On a nearby lawn, a small cluster of neighbors congregate, whispering and gawking.

      After I climb out of the car, Izzy reaches over, opens the glove box, and removes a small, plastic wallet. He hands it to me and says, “Keep this with you at all times. You never know when it might come in handy.”

      I flip the wallet open and see an ID card with my picture on it—the same picture that is on my driver’s license, I note. It identifies me as a deputy coroner for the county but lest there be any doubt, there is also a shiny, brass-colored badge in the wallet with DEPUTY CORONER written across the top in bright blue. Izzy obviously didn’t waste any time once I agreed to go out on a call with him, and I’m tempted to act annoyed at his presumptuousness. But the badge is kind of cool looking and, in an odd way, it makes me feel important. So I hook the wallet in the waist of my pants with the badge showing and follow Izzy toward the house.

      Normally, my long-legged stride puts me yards ahead of his stubby-legged one, but tonight it is all I can do to keep up. I think my bowling ball may be crowning and the numbness in my right leg is rapidly receding—something I’m not at all sure is a good thing. Izzy pauses on the porch, reaches into the black suitcase he is carrying, and hands me a pair of latex gloves.

      “Put these on,” he says. “Then stick your hands in your pockets and keep them there unless I ask you to do something. Don’t touch anything.”

      I do what he says, thrusting my hands into my pants’ pockets and trying to look like I know what I’m doing. A uniformed police officer meets us at the door, nods at Izzy, and then waves us into the house. Two steps later I catch my first whiff of death—a smell I’ve come to know during my years working the ER. It’s a distinctly unpleasant scent, a mix of blood and other bodily excretes that are released when sphincters relax.

      The house is a nice one, tastefully decorated in a contemporary fashion with thick carpet that cushions my aching feet. As we pass through a formal living room into a family room, I feel something odd near my injured ankle where the nerve endings are now rapidly coming to life. I glance down to see the bottom eight inches of my pant leg bulging on one side, as if my calf is sporting a woody. Only, this woody is composed of white cotton edged in elastic, a small portion of which is peeking out just above my shoe.

      I’ve found my missing underwear.

      After a quick glance around to be sure no one is watching, I do a little Riverdance maneuver and the panties slide the rest of the way out, settling on the floor between my foot and a nearby chair. I am about to snatch them up when I hear a voice say, “Hey, Izzy!” and sense someone approaching.

      With one quick flick of my foot I kick the panties under the chair, and then look up to see who’s coming. My eyes lock in on a tall man with a craggy but handsome face and a head of thick, black hair. He steps up to Izzy and briefly shakes his hand, then turns his gaze toward me. As I take in blue eyes, black lashes, and a stature of at least six-four, my heart rate speeds up a notch or two.

      “This is Mattie Winston, my new deputy coroner,” Izzy says, making the introductions. “Mattie, this is Detective Steve Hurley. He’s with Homicide.”

      Kill me now.

      “Pleasure to meet you,” I say, extending a gloved hand over Izzy’s shoulder and praying I won’t drool. Hurley grabs my hand and gives it a brief squeeze. My face flushes hot, then the heat spreads. I wonder if Detective Hurley has ever investigated a case of spontaneous combustion before, or if I’m about to become his first.

      “Have you ever processed a homicide scene before?” Hurley asks.

      “No,

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