The truck bounced along the rutted old logging road, past a few scattered cabins and old farmhouses, before hitting the smattering of mobile homes that dotted the weedy fields at the bottom of the hill.
Matt was surprised to see his old buddy Andy Goodis leaning against Lissy Okrum's dented mailbox, smoking a cigarette and watching the road, obviously waiting for him to show up, though they hadn't made any plans.
Andy was brown haired and blue eyed, laid-back and loose limbed. He wore torn jeans, a faded denim work shirt over a white thermal T, a leather jacket, cowboy boots, and a Stetson. He looked like he was auditioning to be a model in a Levi's ad, something that might have been within the realm of possibility if not for his nose, which had been broken so many times that it looked like it had been molded out of Play-Doh by a very untalented child.
Matt pulled over in front of the mailbox and looked out the passenger window at Lissy, standing on the steps to her mobile home in her pink bathrobe and cradling a mug of coffee in her hands. Her patch of land was overgrown with weeds and she had a Buick up on blocks, where it had become a home to cats and other strays. Her bed was like that, too.
In high school, she'd been revered for her tit fucking. The boys lined up for the experience. Matt had been one of them. That was more than twenty years ago. Now Lissy was a cashier at the supermarket, and ever since Janey died, she smiled at Matt the same way she did that day in her father's shed when she removed her shirt.
Matt waved at her politely and she waved back. Andy flicked his cigarette in the mud and got into the truck.
"Thanks for the lift," Andy said. "My truck is down at the Longhorn."
"Ernie took your keys?" Matt asked as he got back on the road.
Andy nodded. “I was shit-faced drunk."
"You'd have to be to land in Lissy's bed again."
"Lissy's not so bad. She still knows how to use those tits, even if she can sweep the floor with 'em now. She asked about you. Wanted to know how you were doing."
"What did you say?"
"I said she should go up and see you sometime in your monastery, that you're lonely up there."
"I'm not," Matt said.
"Of course you are. When was the last time you had a woman?"
"You know the answer to that question."
Andy shook his head. “No wonder you're chopping so much wood. Save a forest and jerk off instead."
Matt grinned despite himself. “You're an asshole."
"That's what you like about me," Andy said, grinning back at him. “I do all the things you don't have the balls to do. It's been that way since we were kids."
"I never wanted to steal Mr. Erdmann's Mustang and drive it through the front window of the Nussbaums' store."
"You wanted a Mustang, didn't you?"
"I was eleven," Matt said.
"But I got us the Mustang, didn't I?" Andy said. “I'm just saying that while other people dream, I make dreams happen."
They drove through the center of town in silence. Most of the storefronts on Main Street were empty, the businesses long since euthanized by Walmart and the big-box retailers along the highway.
Matt pulled into the Longhorn parking lot beside Andy's pickup. Ernie had left the keys for Andy on the front tire, as he always did. There was no danger of anyone stealing Andy's truck. It was old, dented, and rust eaten and would have been recognized as Andy's anywhere in Clarion County.
"Thanks for the lift," Andy said. “See you at work."
"Maybe I should stick around and make sure it starts up," Matt said. “You don't want to show up late again."
"Bye, Grandma," Andy said, turning his back on Matt and walking to the car.
"What if you need a jump start?"
"I'll call triple-fucking-A." Andy snatched the keys and unlocked his door.
"You don't belong to triple-fucking-A. I'm your triple-fucking-A."
Andy climbed into his truck and started the engine. Or at least he tried. It didn't catch.
He looked up sheepishly at Matt, who sighed, reached behind his seat, and pulled out his jumper cables. Rescuing Andy was just another part of his routine, one that Matt would have been shocked to learn would continue even after his own death.
CHAPTER THREE
February 20, 2011
The forest rangers dug Matt's frozen corpse from the ice, zipped it up in a body bag, and had it delivered to the Clarion County morgue cooler, where it was left to slowly defrost like a Butterball turkey the night before Thanksgiving.
Matt's body was stacked on a shelf above Aurelio Rojas, age twenty-seven, who'd had eight margaritas too many and whose head and torso were packaged separately as a result of his freeway collision with a big rig, whose unlucky driver was bagged one shelf below and who, at the moment Aurelio's Chevy Cobalt crossed the median and slammed into him, had been thinking erotic and anatomically impossible thoughts about his upcoming sexual encounter with Carla DuPont, who was waiting for him at the Motel 6 in Bigsby and who, when he didn't show up, assumed she'd been fucked and dumped for the umpteenth time and, facing her fourth abortion in ten years, slit her throat with a box cutter.
But Clarion County assistant coroner Lyle Whittaker knew nothing about Carla DuPont, or what other dominos of fate had been toppled by the three corpses on his Sunday morning to-do list of autopsies. To him, the corpses were just leftover tasks from the previous shift that he had to complete.
Being a coroner was just a job to him, not a calling, an ambition, or even a remote interest.
He'd been struggling through medical school when, one day in class, as he was about to cut into a cadaver, he had an epiphany.
It would be a hell of a lot easier working with dead people than trying to heal the living.
The idea became even more appealing after he watched a bunch of those CSI shows, which made the profession seem outrageously cool.
He could definitely see himself wearing Armani, driving a chrome-plated Hummer, and fucking a woman like Eva La Rue.
As it turned out, the profession was cool, but only in terms of the room temperature of his workplace.
He ended up wearing Kirkland, driving a used Camry, and fucking his mattress like it was a woman like Eva La Rue.
But even so, he wasn't bitter or unhappy.
Far from it.
He had a secure job that paid decently, that kept him from being a disgrace to his family of doctors, that required no customer service skills, and that left him pretty much on his own to do as he pleased, which was spending hours playing World of Warcraft and fucking his mattress like it was a woman like Eva La Rue.
And it looked like he'd be able to get back to Warcraft fairly quickly that Sunday morning. There were only three autopsies to do, and it wasn't like the cause of death in any of them was a great mystery. It was all by-the-numbers stuff.
Lyle decided to start with the simplest case, the guy who'd been buried in the December avalanche. He figured the body had probably defrosted enough to cut into by now.
The first thing Lyle noticed once he got Matthew Cahill's body on the table was that the corpse's skin didn't feel as cold or as rubbery as he expected, which meant something was wrong with the temperature-control mechanism in the cooler.
Not good.
The last thing Lyle wanted to walk into on his next shift was a cooler full of putrefying corpses. After he finished gutting Matthew Cahill, he'd alert maintenance to get the thermostat fixed right away.
Lyle took his scalpel and made a deep cut through the flesh at Matt's shoulder and was about to rip his way to the sternum and on down to the pelvis, so he could peel it all back, saw off the ribs, and remove the internal organs underneath.
He didn't get that far.