Now she understood exactly where they were. “I see what you mean about keeping the neighbors from snooping.”
Tom opened the door to the crematory and motioned for her to enter.
“Seriously?”
“No worries. They don’t keep cadavers here.”
Skylar had never been inside a crematory before. She’d looked through the window, but back then everything either side of the door to the cremation retort had been curtained off.
The room reminded her of a hospital facility. A government hospital. No frills, just the basics. There was a sink to the left of the cremation retort and a pulverizer to the right. Cardboard coffins lined the left wall. Storage cabinets covered the right. Everything you’d need to turn a body into cremains with dignity.
What Skylar didn’t see was another door. The entrance to FIFO’s secret headquarters.
She turned to Tom, her puzzlement undoubtedly apparent. Her excitement mellowed by the macabre.
Tom’s enthusiasm hadn’t dimmed. “See if you can find the entrance. Pretend you’re a police officer and you got a tip that there’s a meth lab hidden on these premises. It’s not unknown, using funeral homes for that purpose, given the need drug dealers have to camouflage the heat and fumes from cooking.”
Skylar did a 360-degree survey. The cabinets were an obvious choice. Too obvious. Her gaze halted on the cremation controls. Was one a special lever? Perhaps the big red Emergency Stop. Perhaps when you pressed it the entire cabinet set swung inward like a large door.
She moved closer to study it.
Tom followed.
She felt the needle prick her thigh, but lost consciousness before her combative muscles could react.
29
Corrupt Practices
DESPITE HIS KNOWLEDGE of her athletic background, Tory was surprised by Skylar’s weight as he lifted her unconscious body off the floor and lowered it into a cremation container. Her size-four frame was weighty as a sack of rocks. He automatically adjusted the enclosed pillow but didn’t bother unfolding the blanket. Such acts would surely ring hollow, given the circumstances.
He’d skipped the box altogether the first time he did this. That was a mistake. Sliding Ries’s replacement into the cremation retort had been unpleasant and awkward. Sleeping bodies weren’t rigid.
The fact that a cardboard casket was missing might be noted in the morning, given that the stack at the side of the room no longer reached the ceiling. But that didn’t matter. His actions weren’t a secret. He’d offered the owner of the family funeral home $100,000 in cash to incinerate something. All Mr. Murdoch had to do was leave a few lights on and forget to lock the back door. Plausible deniability, and a tax-free hundred grand.
When concocting the scheme, Tory had accurately anticipated an easy sell. He figured that men who made their living by taking advantage of grieving widows would tend to have a me-first mentality.
He’d been right.
The Good Graces Chapel and Mortuary was the fifth funeral home he’d rented. The other owners had all made a show of deliberating before acquiescing with a green light in their eyes, but Murdoch actually made a demand. “No guns.”
Tory replied with, “Who said anything about guns?”
Murdoch pushed his thin spectacles up his aquiline nose. “I am anticipating. Anticipation is how problems are avoided. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would,” Tory said with an appreciative lilt. Cunning was one thing he respected. “No problem.”
Murdoch responded by standing in silence for a second, then folding his arms across his chest. “Lest you dismiss this as an unenforceable acquiescence and walk into an unforeseen situation, I should inform you that my brother-in-law works in the law enforcement supply business. If you hand me that envelope, I’m going to use some of that cash to install a metal detector—with an alarm.”
Tory suspected that the business owner was bluffing, but hoped he wasn’t. A metal detector would add a nice touch of credibility to the ruse. Given the location and the success of his CIA-recruitment scam, he anticipated multiple visits. “No problem, Murdoch. Just be sure to set the sensitivity to ignore phones and keys.”
Murdoch nodded and accepted the envelope stuffed with a thousand Benjamins.
Having dismissed the threat as a bluff, Tory wore his weapon to Lars’s execution. Fortunately, he spotted the archway in time. He’d mumbled an excuse about forgetting something in the car and run back to deposit his Glock in the glovebox.
The rest of that first op at Murdoch’s Mortuary had gone smoothly, so when Tory used the CIA con for a second time, he approached Murdoch again. That time around, the mortician had been nothing but sunshine and rainbows.
Tory opened the retort door but paused before pushing the cremation container into the pyre. Staring into the dark hole with its rings of gas nozzles, he shook his head. This machine would create death when it came to life.
Tory had loved and feared God. Back before the Almighty had taken his wife during childbirth and given the daughter she died for an incurable condition. When his daughter died as well after thirteen difficult years, Tory concluded that if God existed, He had abandoned them. “See what you get when you leave us alone on this rock? We’re stuffing each other into incinerators.”
With that thought, he shoved Skylar all the way inside. It would take two hours to transform her flesh into four pounds of skeletal remains. He’d have to rake those into the pulverizer to create the cremains that could be dumped into an urn. He hadn’t thought to bring a receptacle the first time he used this disposal method, but the mortician kept a supply of biodegradable cardboard cremains containers in one of the cabinets. More than sufficient for a quick trip to the woods.
Tory had taken all the ashes to peaceful natural locations rather than toss them into dumpsters. One had to draw the line somewhere, and his conscience had drawn that one.
His radar pinged as he approached the incinerator control. It wasn’t a sight or a sound. More of a sensation. The presence of another person. Could Skylar be stirring? He checked his watch. No, the antipsychotic would have her out cold for at least another hour. Haldol was serious stuff, thank goodness. What a horror that would be, waking up inside an active oven.
As it was, Skylar had effectively died in a good mood, a great mood actually, and without ever knowing what hit her. Everyone should be so lucky. His wife and daughter certainly hadn’t been.
Tory cocked his ears, but heard nothing. He decided that what he’d sensed was someone slipping through the outer door. A series of individually undetectable events that somehow registered when combined. Had Murdoch returned? Had curiosity gotten the better of him? No, not curiosity. If Murdoch had returned, it would be to see if he could wring more money from the man who had so easily coughed up two hundred grand.
Tory reflexively flexed his left pec to confirm the presence of his Glock 42 slim subcompact, but it wasn’t there. He’d left it in the car on account of the metal detector. Suddenly his situation felt like a setup.
If it was, he might have to make the cremation a twofer. He hoped it didn’t come to that. Killing Murdoch would lead to an investigation, and those were something Tory worked very hard to avoid. Just because he could kill, didn’t mean he liked it. What he did like was this arrangement. It worked well with his CIA recruitment scam, which was by far his favorite.
There were other funeral homes, of course. But Murdoch’s murder would make their owners overly wary. They’d be more likely to report Tory than accept his unconventional offer.
Paying Murdoch extortion money wasn’t out of the question. It wasn’t Tory’s money, and his clients clearly didn’t sweat their checkbooks. Pride was the primary consideration. Pride over practicality.