She only smelled anything like this once, a few days ago, when she opened that freezer. The facilities were not being maintained, and that meant it was little more than a corpse farm.
And yet, everywhere, signs of life.
A bulletin board announced a company softball game at Bruce Trent Park in Summerlin against the Palm Northwest Cemetery Workers and a potluck for Emily’s birthday, and then, smack in the middle, was a bright yellow Missing poster for Melanie Moss, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. They were on every streetlight and telephone pole in the city, her face smiling out into forever, alive and well.
Which is perhaps why Kristy had the distinct feeling she wasn’t alone. Kristy didn’t believe in ghosts, not really, but as she made way her way toward Jerry Ford’s office, the stench of death getting more overpowering with each step, she couldn’t stop feeling . . . what? Residual energy? Maybe it was thirty years of people walking around Safeway picking up the sustenance of their lives. Or maybe it was that LifeCore had transformed Safeway’s intricate system of freezers into housing for a jambalaya of the dead: arms, legs, sheets of skin. Eyes, livers, kidneys. All the stuff that made a human a human? It was all stored in what used to be the meat lockers and frozen-food storage, T-bones and Swanson’s chicken dinners replaced by the very parts of human life.
Which was an unsettling notion.
She stole a glance over her shoulder. Nothing but cubicles.
Kristy unlocked Jerry Ford’s office and found his body on a fake leather sectional, across from his desk and an entire wall of ancient CCTV monitors, none of which were turned on. He’d been dead for a while. Three days at least, judging from the decomp. There was a plastic bag zip-tied around his neck, his face either purple or disappearing, the poor son of a bitch more meat than man. Kristy stared into Jerry’s now-sunken and clouded eyes, tried to imagine all the turns in his life that had led him to this moment.
Jerry Ford, though, was long gone. Not that she’d ever known him. She’d seen his wife at Temple plenty of times. Stephanie even picked her up from the infusion center one day and they talked about their favorite old characters on General Hospital back in the day, Stephanie going on about Rick Springfield, Kristy more of a Jack Wagner fan. The kind of conversation you have when you think you’re going to die.
So Kristy did the only thing that seemed right, even though she knew Ford wasn’t really a Jew: she picked up a pair of scissors from Jerry’s desk, pulled her blouse out from her jeans, snipped the corner of the garment off, rending it, as was Jewish custom, in grief and anger at the dead. The body would rot away. The body was already rotting away. The soul would continue, somewhere. That was the Jewish belief. But it didn’t quell in Kristy the anger she felt toward Jerry, what all this might mean.
Kristy put the envelope of cash on Jerry’s desk, then sat down on the other side of the sectional, where it seemed Jerry’d been living, a stack of Styrofoam food containers on the low coffee table in front of it, a colony of coffee cups, clothes, medication, including an empty bottle of Ambien, which Kristy figured was in Jerry’s dried-up bloodstream, and a stack of legal paperwork. Including, she saw, an unopened letter from the FBI’s field office in Chicago.
Jerry’s cell phone was on a small coffee table. She grabbed a Kleenex, picked it up; one bar left. She scrolled through his calls until she found Stephanie’s cell phone, which she dialed.
“Baby?” Stephanie said by way of greeting. She sounded relieved.
“No,” Kristy said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, this is Special Agent Kristy Levine.”
“From . . . Temple?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, “but I’m not calling in that capacity.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Ma’am,” Kristy said, “are you in Las Vegas?”
“No.”
“Where are you, ma’am?”
“Jerry told me not to tell anyone,” she said.
“Ma’am,” Kristy said, “you know me. You know I’m an FBI agent. I’m trying to help you.”
“He told me I couldn’t trust the FBI,” she said. “That there are corrupt agents trying to get him. And then I see the news and it’s nothing but corrupt agents. So. No. I’m fine. What do you need, Agent Levine? Why do you have my husband’s phone?”
“Ma’am,” she said, then stopped. “Stephanie. Stephanie, listen to me. Your husband has taken his life. I’m worried your life is in danger. Your husband is in business with some very bad people. And some very bad things have started to happen because of it. You need to tell me where you are so I can send someone out to protect you.”
She pulled the phone from her ear.
Stephanie Ford had hung up on her. She redialed. Straight to voice mail, which was full.
Poremba wouldn’t be landing for another two hours.
If she called this in now, she’d be out front doing interviews all morning, then stuck in a conference room explaining how she ended up inside LifeCore, would probably be on paid administrative leave by 5 p.m. Sal Cupertine would be long gone.
Kristy grabbed the envelope filled with money and headed outside.
SHE FOUND POOL BOY ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF THE SILVER SUITES. HE WAS walking out of his apartment with two suitcases. At least he could take direction.
He set his bags down, put his hands up. “I’m leaving, like you said,” he said.
“That’s good,” she said. She peered into his apartment. His niece was asleep in front of the TV, which was playing The Wizard of Oz on DVD. She handed him the envelope filled with cash and the keys. “Why don’t you hold on to these things.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as it takes you to spend the money.”
“What do I have to do for it?”
“Anyone asks, I was never here.”
“I’m not gonna be here, anyway. And I don’t know your name.”
“Lotta bald ladies come around this way?” In the apartment, the flying monkeys were beginning to rain across the sky in search of Dorothy.
TWENTY-ONE
SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2002
THE MOJAVE DESERT, CA
