That night I got to the morgue a little before seven and found Eli at the front desk, filing things, doing more work than I’d ever seen him do before.
“You know,” he said, huffing and puffing a little, for effect, “I hate when you get to come in late just to help Dick drop those bodies off. It always means more work for me.” Poor guy.
I made my way behind the counter. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t really like delivering the bodies. If I wanted to be a delivery boy, I’d just get a job with FedEx or UPS or something.”
He laughed. “You would look damn sexy in those little brown shorts.”
“Right. What’s with all the work?”
He told me that, that afternoon, an elevator cable snapped, and something was wrong with the emergency brakes, so the thing just dropped, and fourteen people died. “You lucky bastard,” he said. “I’ve been doing paperwork for these fat, non-stair-taking assholes all day. I’ll be here at least another three hours, and you’ll be riding around in a fucking truck.”
I didn’t care. Not at all. Not about his extra work. Not about those fourteen people who probably had enough time during their fall to realize that they were about to die very painful deaths. I just didn’t care.
“Bummer,” I said.
He shook his head and glared at me, kind of. “Right. Dick’s in the back. I think he’s already started loading up the truck.”
I thanked him, took a breath, and went back into the human filing cabinet room. The back door, the pseudo-garage door, was open, and Dick was in the back of the truck, heaving a bagged body onto a shelf about waist-high. This was the second body on the truck. The first was resting comfortably on the shelf at his knees.
“Hey, Travis.” He was breathing heavily. “I figured I’d get started a little early, you know, to make up for not helping load it up last time.”
“That’s nice of you.” I couldn’t take my eyes off that first body bag. I knew who was inside. “How many more we got?”
He came out of the truck. “Just two.” He shook my hand. “Apparently, Wednesday’s going to be a smaller group.”
“Why’s that?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Walter just wanted a smaller group this week. He did mention the other day that he sort of missed the way it was in the beginning. It was more intimate. It felt like we had more of a bond with one another.”
It’s still amazing to me that all these people thought this was a normal thing, like getting together to smoke cigars and talk about the stock market, or maybe a potluck at some church some Sunday afternoon.
“And who’s in this smaller group?”
“The older guys, mostly.” He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Me, Walter, Conicella, Cansellini, Stearns, and their wives. Gregor, of course. And a few others. It’ll be nice, I think.”
I tried not to, but I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. This smaller group of psychos would make things infinitely easier on Wednesday, my day of reckoning. Still, it made me a little suspicious.
“Wow. How’d I manage to get into such an elite group?”
He didn’t answer right away. In fact, he hesitated long enough to convince me that something was up. Finally, he said, “I think Walter thinks a smaller group will help you acclimate yourself. And Angela will be there. She asked if you could be there, too. I guess she likes you.”
Sneaky sonofabitch, working a sweet, cute little girl into the conversation that way. They say flattery will get you everywhere, and I guess they’re usually right about that. Unfortunately for Dick, he wasn’t exactly sly.
“That’s good to know,” I said. “I do like her. And a smaller group will be less intimidating, I guess.”
“I hope so.”
I asked him who we still needed to put on the truck, and he pointed me to a couple of shorter guys, both a good bit heavier than they appeared. And that was that. We loaded them up and headed for the warehouse, this time remembering the gurney.
Dick drove, and on the way we again listened to jazz. “This must be a little more pleasant when you’re sober, eh?”
I laughed and nodded. It was a shame that Dick had to die. I really did like him. But I’m sure even Dahmer had a friend or two. And, when you think about it, Dick was exactly the kind of guy who, if other people ever found out he was a cannibal, they would say, “He was such a nice, quiet guy. I can’t believe he’d do something like that.” It’s always the quiet ones.
We got to the warehouse, and everything went just like last time. We wheeled the corpses into the big fridge, lifted them onto the tables, and talked to Gregor for a while.
This time, though, I had a plan. During a lull in the conversation, I turned to Dick. “Hey Dick, I have a question to ask you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Is Virginia in one of these bags?”
That caught him off guard. He stammered in his normal Dick way. “Why do you ask?”
I wanted to hit him. I knew damn well she was in one of those bags, and I was in no mood to play games. But I had to play it cool. “Well, she doesn’t have any family, so I figured no one would have claimed her body. And since we bring the unclaimed bodies here, I figured she’d be one of them.”
“You sure you want to know?” I told you, he was a decent guy.
I nodded.
“Yeah, she is.” He lowered his eyes. “I thought it might make you uncomfortable to know.”
Here it was. My plan. If I was really going to pull it off, I had to start right here. And so I did. “It would have,” I told him, “but I’ve been doing some research about cannibalism, and I came across this tribe in the Amazon that eats their dead loved ones. They feel that it helps the mourning process. They believe it’s a way to keep them alive forever.”
Gregor smiled and nodded. “You mean the Wari. It’s good to see a young man who knows the importance of knowing about what he’s getting into.”
I didn’t bother to tell him the reason I was in this mess in the first place was because I didn’t look into what I was getting into. At least I learned from my mistake. I did, however, tell him, “Yeah, the Wari. Anyway, they have this whole ritual of dismembering the deceased themselves, and then cooking and eating them. And, I don’t know, I guess it just sort of makes sense to me. I feel like maybe it would help me with everything.”
Dick looked at me as though my head had just fallen off. Gregor, though, seemed to understand what I was saying, even if he didn’t know I was lying about it.
I went on. “I was kind of hoping I could, you know, do that. With Virginia’s body, I mean, if I’m going to end up eating her anyway.” I was proud of myself for not backing out. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to convince someone to let you dismember, cook, and eat one of your friends, but it’s no easy task.
Dick didn’t say anything. I think it was because he simply couldn’t find anything to say. He had to have been surprised by my request. It was all he could do to look over at Gregor and wait for the hairy chef to answer me.
“It sounds like an ok idea to me,” he said. “I’m going to carve her up anyway. I don’t think Walter would be ok with you having the whole body, though.”
“I don’t think I could eat her whole body anyhow. She’s not exactly a small girl.”
Gregor put a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “What do you think, Pearson?”
Dick said it sounded fine, if that’s what I wanted to do.
“I think it would be good for me, Dick.” And you know, right then, I kind of thought it would be.
So it was settled. I would come by the next night, Tuesday, the day before I would become a murderer, and perform my own little ritual. Gregor would teach me. “But tonight,” he said, “I have to bleed the bodies, the way you would with a deer. It makes the butchering a much less messy job.”