Jenner shook his head. Something was definitely not right here.
The Highway Patrol lieutenant had said the victim was probably a migrant worker, but Jenner doubted he was from Bel Arbre.
He stepped back to look at the body again. A young white man, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three. Black hair shaggy but cut fashionably, like some British pop star. Clean-shaven. Good general hygiene. Circumcised.
A migrant worker? The arms were faintly tan, but the hands were soft, no calluses, no scars—they’d never held anything more serious than a pen. Most migrants were Latin American, Catholic, and uncircumcised.
In recent years, though, marginalized young people who called themselves “travelers” had joined the migrant workers, following the harvests from state to state with the shifting seasons. But travelers wore their alienation like a uniform—hair in matted dreadlocks, skin tanned deep brown, facial piercings, anarchist tattoos. Their bodies were lean and hardened, often detailed with wrist scars and needle tracks.
This kid was pale, a little doughy, and his teeth were perfect.
Well, almost. Lifting the upper lip, Jenner noticed a slight color difference between two of the premolars, one tooth subtly paler than the others.
He had Bunny wheel over the X-ray machine and do a full-mouth X-ray; he was pretty sure that was an implant. All the fillings were care fully tone-matched ceramic, high-end work, not mercury amalgam packed in on some side-street butcher shop in Juarez or wherever. This was Park Avenue dentistry—no way was this kid a field hand.
They cleared the room for Bunny to zap the film, then Jenner waited by the viewing box.
“Hey, Jenner! What’s up?”
Rudge was at the entry to the main body cooler. Next to him was a middle-aged black man in a dark suit, standing next to a collapsible gurney topped with a maroon velour cover. A funeral director.
“Morning, Detective Rudge. How’s it going?” Judging from Rudge’s breath, it had been going pretty well the night before.
“Doc, I want you to meet my cousin, Reggie Jones.”
Jenner shook hands. “Good to meet you.” Reggie had the same next-day booze smell.
“Doc! Check out his shoes—handmade!”
Reggie proudly raised his knee and hiked up his pant leg so Jenner could admire his shoe—a gray, pointy-toed Cuban-heeled ankle boot in what looked like armadillo skin.
Jenner said, “Nice!” with all the sincerity he could muster.
Rudge clapped his hands on Reggie’s shoulders and said, “You see, Jenner? This is what we should be doing! There’s money in dead folk! Reggie’s building a house near the golf course, acre of land, partial canal-view, three-car garage…”
“Four, now,” Jones said, nodding solemnly. “Four-car garage.”
“Hear that? That’s what I’m talking about! A four-car garage! And his brother Jimmy’s a funeral director in Atlanta—his house is even bigger!” He clapped Reggie on the shoulder again, and said, “I tell you what we do, Jenner: we get the hell out of law enforcement, we go to funeral-home school, we rent ourselves a place.
“Because I’m naturally good-looking and have a winning way, I put on a suit, run the front of the house, take care of the customers, all that. Because you’re a naturally tall-ass white dude who’d terrify grieving relatives, we’ll stick you in the basement, give you your own slab and some formaldehyde, let you loose on the bodies…We work a few years, then we franchise the shit out of the operation, and retire young, good-looking, and rich…”
Jenner thought for a second. “Whose name first?”
“Say what?”
“Mine or yours? Rudge & Jenner or Jenner & Rudge? It makes a difference.”
“The idea man always goes first.”
Bunny poked her head into the hallway. “Doc, I’m done.”
She slapped the film up onto the viewing box, and Rudge, his cousin, and Jenner gathered in front of it.
Jenner tapped the upper premolar; the tight white shadow of a small screw spiked into the bone of the jaw. “There we go.”
“What you got, Jenner?”
“This pedestrian from up near Bel Arbre.”
“So what’s his mouth saying?”
“He’s telling us he’s not just any pedestrian from Bel Arbre. And that his dental work is much too good for a migrant worker.”
Rudge said, “Highway’s going to love that!”
Reggie said, “So he’s not ID’d yet, doc?”
Jenner shook his head. “No. He will be, though—this is the kind of kid people look for…”