"Look, Joey, I got a lot on my mind, okay? Your stupid eggs aren't the only thing I gotta worry about, all right? I got Billy with crusts I gotta trim, and Tommy with Sugarboats he hates and-"
"What's Sugarboats?"
"Cereal. And Lana with pimples so she's crying her eyes out and-"
"Why do you give the kid a cereal he hates?"
"Last week it was his favorite. This week he'd rather be dead than look at it," Mary explained.
"What pimples? I didn't see any pimples."
"On her chin. She's got two pimples on her chin."
"And she's crying about that?" He loaded salt on the egg, pointedly used his knife to cut through it.
"She's got a date with some big wheel at school and thinks she can't go now."
"'Cause she's got two pimples? That's stupid."
"Not everybody's got peaches-and-cream complexions so they never have to worry, you know."
Joe knew she was talking about Debbie. It ticked him off that his mother didn't like her, never had. She said the Van Tuyl family thought they were too good for Seaville and looked down their big noses at the Carrolls. "You don't have to say it like it's a crime or something."
"So have a little sympathy for your sister." She slammed down a plate with two pieces of overdone toast. "Don't say anything, Joey, I'm warning you."
"I'm saying nothing." He eyed the toast with distaste, then began scraping, black bits falling on his napkin. Hell, he shouldn't be so hard on his mother; he knew what was wrong with her this morning and it wasn't trimming Billy's toast or Tommy's Sugarboats or Lana's pimples. It was his father. He'd come in last night drunk as a skunk again. He'd broken a couple of dishes and kept the whole house awake screaming at his mother, telling her she was stupid, the next thing to a moron, and that he should have married Sis Terry instead of her. It was a routine he did at least once a month, like he was a goddamn werewolf or something.
Joe remembered the three years his father had been on the wagon. Those were Joe's last three years in high school, and they were great. He and his father had even become friends, going camping together like in some television program. Then the old man fell off-no, crashed off-the wagon and it had been hell ever since. At least he'd gotten away from it for awhile when he was at school. But now, Chrissake, it was like living in a war zone. Even when the old man didn't go out on his whopper drunks he was always squiffed, mean and cruel, and never did a goddamn bit of work.
And that was the worst part. Joe had never wanted to be a mortician to begin with, but his mother had begged him, said the business would be lost if he didn't go into it, and then where would the family be? So now he was a goddamn undertaker wearing a black suit and tie two, three times a week, and when he wasn't officiating at funerals he was draining blood out of bodies and pumping them full of chemicals, rouging up their pasty faces, and combing their hair. Yeah, it was a great life hanging around a lot of stiffs.
Like today.
"What's wrong?" Mary asked.
Joey looked at the deep circles, like small sacks, under his mother's eyes, the two deep furrows from nose to mouth, the sallow complexion, and he wanted to weep for her. "Why don't you leave him?" he heard himself saying, a question he'd thought many times but never dared ask.
"Leave who?"
He almost laughed, understanding why he hadn't asked this sooner. "Nobody. Skip it." Giving her a kiss on the cheek, he left the house.
The mortuary was next door to the Carroll home, so Joe had only to cross the lawn to go to work. It was a beautiful June morning, sun in the sky, warm breeze tickling his arms. Boy, would he have liked going on a picnic with Debbie, maybe taking the ferries over to the Hamptons, getting a six-pack, some ham-and-cheese sandwiches, a bag of chips. But no dice.
He unlocked the front door and went inside. The first floor held the viewing rooms and a small chapel. Today Ostrowski was in Room One, better known as the Blue Room, and Miller in Two, known as the Rose Room. Nobody was in Three yet, the Gold Room, but Turner, the stiff he had to work on, would be there by afternoon.
Joe walked along the dark hallway. There was no need to throw the light switch, as he knew the walk by heart. He was grateful that the body he had to embalm today wasn't a kid. Like Mary Beth Higbee. That was a bitch. It really tore him up to do kids. And then the funerals themselves, the parents practically going nuts, falling on the caskets, wanting to jump in the graves.
But Mary Beth Higbee was the worst he'd ever had to do. Besides being a kid she was his first murder victim, that goddamn A carved in her little chest. Afterwards, he'd had nightmares for two nights running.
He opened the door to the prep room and hit the light. It was small but big enough for the job. Big enough to house the electric lift, the sink, and the embalming pump. The damn thing looked like a water cooler!
Turner was on the table under the sheet. God, how he hated doing ones he knew. Sure, it was easier 'cause you knew what the guy looked like, but it was harder on the old emotions. A lot of people thought undertakers didn't have any feelings, but it wasn't true. He switched on his little gray Sony. Some rock group were singing their guts out. Joe saw that the station had been changed from the one he usually listened to. He wondered who'd done that. Turning the dial, he found his favorite station; Frank Sinatra was singing My Way. Debbie and all his friends laughed at him for liking such square music but what the hell? Could he help it if rock left him cold?
Next to the radio was his pair of yellow rubber gloves. He looked them over carefully, checking for cuts or holes. His father was always yelling at him for going through gloves like Kleenex, the cheap bastard. He wished the old man would do a little more work and less complaining. Besides, could he help it if he nicked a glove now and then? Those instruments were sharp. He pulled on the gloves and walked to the table. Standing next to the body, he took a deep breath. The moment of pulling back the sheet, seeing a corpse that might have passed through rigor mortis but still looked very dead, always got to him. Much as he knew, much as he'd done it maybe four hundred times, it still gave him the creeps. Ah, shit, just do it.
With a flick of his wrist he pulled back the sheet. The body sat up and Joe screamed, stumbled backward, eyes wide and staring, mouth hanging open. "What… you… doing here? Oh, shit, no…"
The killer sprang from the table, and Joe felt the knife plunge through his sweater, shirt, skin. It burned and he fell to his knees, his hands grabbing at the hilt of the knife, wanting to pull it out, struggling in vain against the force of the killer.
Tears trickled from the corners of Joe's eyes as he looked into the face of his killer. "Why?" he whispered.
"It's your birthright," came the answer.
I couldn't have heard right, he thought. He couldn't have said birthright. He'd ask again. Later. But now he had to lie down, now he had to sleep. Slowly, Joe fell sideways, grateful for the cool of the tiled floor. Gazing at the man above him he tried to speak, ask why again. Words wouldn't come. Later, much later. He closed his eyes. The very last thought Joe Carroll had was: See you later, alligator, and he wanted to laugh but he couldn't.
– -
The first thing that morning Colin had put in a call to Mike Rosler at The New York Times. Mike wasn't there and he hadn't called back yet. He thought Mike might help him with information on cults, their symbols and signs. They'd gone to college together and Mike, Colin, and Mark had been great buddies, all of them determined to write for The Times. Only Mike had made it. Although writing for the Chicago Tribune wasn't kid stuff, it still wasn't the same as writing for The Times. Mark was the only one who'd never written for a big paper. He'd gone from one small weekly to another until he finally owned one himself. Colin wondered if Mark ever felt insecure about his writing history. When Colin had asked Mark why he no longer saw Mike, he'd said that Mike bored him, that he'd gotten too big for his britches. Although Colin had only seen Mike two or three times over the last five years since he'd been writing for The Times, he hadn't detected any egomania in him. And he'd been a damn good friend during the year that followed the murders of Colin's family. He hated to admit it, but he couldn't help thinking that Mark was jealous of Mike.