Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.

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      The morgue’s front desk was empty and my footsteps in the hall caused Will Lindy to come to the door of his office. The new facility had been open officially only a few days, but Lindy looked dug in, forms stacked on his desk, manuals alphabetized across shelves, calendars and schedules on his wall.

      “Morning, Detective Ryder.”

      “Howdy, Will. I’m here for the post on Nelson. Clair around?”

      I was maybe the only person in the universe who called Dr. Peltier by her first name; I’d used it since our introduction and she hadn’t torched me yet. She countered by using only my last name, addressing everyone else by first name or title. Lindy looked at his watch. “She’s due at nine, which means—”

      I glanced at my timepiece, 8:58. “She’ll be here in one minute.”

      We heard a burst of masculine laughter from down the hall and saw a pair of funeral-home staffers retrieving a body for burial. They rolled a covered body toward the back dock like kids playing with a supermarket buggy, weaving the clattering gurney from side to side. Lindy was down the hall like a shot.

      “Hey, fellas,” he said. “What you do at the parlor is your business. Around here we show respect.”

      The funeral home guys froze, reddened. They mumbled apologies and continued on their way, slow and silent.

      “Good going, Will,” I said when he returned.

      Lindy gave a half smile; funny how half a smile indicates sadness. “Poor guy’s on his last ride, Detective Ryder. There’s no need to treat it like a game.”

      I admired Will Lindy for his stand; too many homicide cops and morgue workers forget the bodies passing by were once the exact center of the universe, to themselves anyway. No one knows why we were chosen to be here, or if we had much hand in the choices we made during our presence. In any event, for the arrivals at the morgue, this level of the journey was over. Bad people, good ones, the indifferent—they’d all crossed to the final mystery and left behind a soft, soon-gone husk, not always to be mourned, but at least respected.

      Lindy and I turned to an insistent rapping: Doc Peltier high-heeling toward us. I detected she’d been to breakfast with her husband, Zane, since he was walking beside her and working his teeth with a toothpick. Zane’s fifty-nine, but looks younger, with cool gray eyes in a chiseled face, a nose ridge like the spine of a slender book, and a mahogany tan independent of seasons. He wore a charcoal three-piece cut to hide a touch of paunch and walked fast to keep up with his wife.

      “A little early, aren’t we, Ryder?” she said as I jumped into her slipstream. Her perfume suggested champagne made from roses.

      “I’d like to take a look at the body before the post.”

      I always tried to do this when the bodies weren’t badly decomposed, feeling it provided a stronger link with the victims. After the post, the invasion, the deceased seemed different, as if they’d shifted from our world to the anteroom of the next.

      Clair rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time to indulge you today.” She wasn’t big on my linkage concept.

      “Please, Clair. A minute?”

      Clair sighed. We stopped at the door of the autopsy suite. She remembered her manners. “Have you met my husband, Zane?”

      “Art museum, months ago,” I said, offering my hand. “Detective Carson Ryder.”

      Zane Peltier had one of those handshakes that stop short of locking thumb to thumb; he shook my knuckles. “Of course I remember,” his mouth said as his eyes denied it. “Great seeing you again, Detective.”

      Clair opened the door. Her husband said, “I’ll wait out here, dear.”

      “They won’t bite, you know, Zane.”

      He smiled but didn’t approach the door. I understood his hesitancy—I believe people sense death as precisely as cattle sense lightning forming, an atavistic warning system that’ll be with us until we evolve to creatures of pure reason, slim chance.

      Clair and I stepped into the suite. “Make it fast, Ryder,” she said. “I’ve got a busy day and don’t need distractions.”

      “Yes, Your Majesty,” I replied, drawing a withering glare but no comment. She slid the body from its refrigerated confines, drew the sheet away.

      I studied the odd tableau for several seconds. Without the head I took no sense of being, just of loss. All I noted was the victim’s physical dimensions, wide of shoulder, narrow of hip, well muscled. Death removes some of the tone and definition, but it was obviously a body the owner had put time and effort into.

      Clair watched me with disapproval, then let her eyes wander the body with professional appraisal. She started to draw the sheet back into place, but paused.

      “What the hell?” she said, leaning over the pubic region. “What’s that?”

      “A penis?”

      “No, dammit. Above the pubic hair. Make yourself useful, Ryder, get me some gloves.”

      I ran to yank a wad of latex surgical gloves from a box beside an autopsy table. Clair snapped them on and pressed aside the matted hair.

      “It’s writing,” she mumbled. “So small I can barely read it. ‘Warped a whore,’” she said, squinting at words I couldn’t see. “‘Warped a whore. Whores Warped. A full quart of warped whores. Rats back. Rats back. СКАЧАТЬ