The Blue Hour

Twenty-Six

The Department of Mortuary Science of the health sciences division of Cypress College waits behind a heavy blue door next to a snack area with a view of the campus.

It was Monday morning. Hess went through and waited in the small lobby. The lobby was poorly lit and gave off a feeling of a decade long past — the 1950s, perhaps. On the walls were pictures of the school in the old days, when it was still located near downtown Los Angeles. Important mortuary science directors of the past, and some graduating classes, were also featured. A glass bookshelf held antiquated embalming texts, among them the seven-volume Humane Embalming.

The director came from the inner building and offered his hand. “Allen Bobb,” he said. “Detective Hess?”

Bobb was middle aged with a wide, pleasant face. His hair was thinning and his smile both open and wily at the same time. In Bobb’s cramped office Hess was offered a small chair on rollers that both men chuckled at.

Hess thought of all the chemicals they filled you with when you died and all the chemicals raging through his own blood right then and wished he was twenty-two again, bombing through giant waves at the Wedge, functionally immortal.

“I’ll cut to the chase,” said Hess.

“Shoot.”

He explained the circumstances: the missing women, the purses, the remains, the blood and trace formalin discovered in the soil by the lab.

Bobb nodded along like he’d heard it before. “He’s not embalming them, then. Not in the standard American way. Not if he’s removing organs and intestines. We leave those in. Are you familiar with the embalming process, Detective? Its goals and purpose, its limitations?”

“No.”

“Historically, the purpose was to discourage the spread of disease. Biologically speaking, there’s nothing more dangerous than a dead human body. Secondly, there were the cosmetic considerations — making the body presentable and natural for viewing before burial. The modern method was born in the Civil War, when thousands of bodies were shipped home for burial.”

“How long are they, uh, good for?”

“The bodies? Three to five days is our goal. Longer, if there are family circumstances that will delay interment.”

“Can you go weeks? Months?”

Bobb raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Weeks, maybe. Detective, if you underembalm, the corpse decomposes too quickly. If you overembalm, it becomes discolored and hard almost immediately.”

Hess scribbled down the questions in his own shorthand. His fingers seemed clunky again this morning, with patches of cold numbness on the tips. He lifted his pen hand and rubbed it with his thumb. The radio played an old Elvis song now, one that Hess remembered listening to at the beach many years ago.

He pulled a copy of Merci’s sketch from his pocket and handed it to the director. Bobb studied it with apparent patience, then gave it back. “No. I don’t think so, Detective. I’ve got a good memory for faces. I mean, this one’s pretty distinctive, with the long hair and mustache.”

“Former student, maybe someone who dropped out?”

Bobb pursed his lips and shook his head. “Sorry. Wish could just say I know him.”

“Your graduates? You keep their records here?”

Bobb nodded. “And yes, there’s a student photograph with each file. I won’t offer to let you see them. But I won’t disallow a request.”

“I understand. If I could see the last ten years of graduates, that would be good.”

Bobb picked up his phone and spoke to someone about graduate records for the last ten years.

“It will take about fifteen minutes to have them ready, Detective. Would you like to see the procedure? We’ve got three student embalmings going on right now.”

“That might be helpful.”

On the door of the embalming room was a framed copy of the California Health & Safety Code forbidding anyone but family, police, doctors, nurses, mortuary personnel and students from being in the room during an embalming.

Hess followed the Director in. The lights were bright against the tile and the sweet smell of aldehyde compounds was strong.

The tables were laid out in the center of the room, with the corpses’ heads toward the far wall. Hess heard the metallic ping of instruments hitting pans, low voices and a heavy, rhythmic chunka-thunk, chunka-thunk. Bobb guided Hess past the first three tables.

“Here’s one just starting, Detective. The features have been set and the corpse has been disinfected and bathed. The student, Bonnie, has chosen a fluid she believes is right for the decedent — based on age, condition, cause of death, medications, et cetera. In this case she’s chosen a formalin solution called PSX. It’s made by Champion. It’s one of my favorites. Did you know that good cosmetic results come from inside the body and not outside?”

“I did not.”

“Sometimes you don’t even need makeup.”

Hess joined Bobb beside the last table, where an old man lay stretched on the aluminum. He looked to be about Hess’s age, and he was surprised how bad this made him feel. He glanced at the Case Report Record: Age — 69, Cause of Death — cirrhosis of the liver. The sonofabitch is two whole years older than me, he thought, and that’s a lifetime of a difference.

Hess had always assumed, for no particular reasons, that he would live to be seventy-five. It was a good number, a number with bulk and character, a number that always seemed far off in the future. This assumption had sat well with him until the diagnosis. At that moment he’d resolved to get those seventy-five years no matter what it took. The last eight were his and he was going to live them to the fullest. Sometimes he told himself it was a matter of principle. Other times, he admitted he was just plain scared to death and didn’t want to leave yet.

The smell of the aldehydes started to sicken him. He hadn’t gotten queasy at an autopsy for forty years. He looked at the student across the corpse from him and saw that she was early twenties, tall, wholesome and probably beautiful. A surgical mask covered her nose and mouth. She looked at him and her eyes smiled, but there was concern in her expression, too.

“Stand back just a little for this, Detective. Okay, Bonnie, locate the main right carotid and make your incision above the clavicle. Oh, this is Detective Hess. He’s interested in what we do.”

“Hi,” said Bonnie.

“Morning,” said Hess.

“Not going to tip over, are you?”

“I’ll stay up.”

Her eyes conveyed the powerful smile of youth and she picked up a surgical scalpel to make her cut. Hess watched her.

“Good, Bonnie. Not too deep. Now use the aneurysm hook to lift out the artery. Good. Do your ligatures now, and not so hard this time. You don’t want to—”

“—I know.”

“Bonnie overdid her ligatures last time, and the artery burst.”

“I am capable of learning, Al.”

“Make me look good.”

Her fingers were nimble. “There.”

“Very good. Go ahead with the insertion tube now.”

“Roger.”

Hess watched her slide the two smaller ends of a metal joint into the cut of the artery and connect the tube to a black hose coming from a machine. It was like setting up a drip irrigator for your tomatoes. Bonnie flipped a switch on the machine. A moment later it was chunka-thunking.

Hess noted that the machine was a Porti-Boy. It looked kind of like a giant blender. The clear canister on the top held the embalming fluid that Bonnie had chosen. There were controls and indicators for flow and pressure. Bonnie looked at the dials, then down at the body, setting one gloved hand on his thigh, the other on his shoulder.

“I’d like to start a little early on the massage, Al. I want this to be the best embalming in the history of Western civilization.”

“Go ahead, then.”

Hess watched as Bonnie squeezed something onto her left palm, added some water from the counter faucet, then rubbed her hands together and applied them to the dead man’s right breast. Palms down and fingers together, she began kneading the tissue. She started in a tight circle and spread slowly outward, glancing up every few seconds to check the Porti-Boy.

“Detective, what Bonnie’s doing now is helping the PSX work in. The pressure of the machine pushes the fluid through the entire arterial system — right down to the level of the capillaries. Then, of course, it backs into the veinous system and eventually moves into the large veins. What we’re looking for are distribution and diffusion. Massage helps the fluid proceed evenly and easily. It overcomes clots and obstructions. It’s an overlooked aspect of good embalming. We know we’re ready for the next step when the veins in the forehead start to swell, the eyelids engorge, and a natural color begins returning to the face. It’s almost like they’re coming alive again.”

“Boy, I wish,” said Bonnie. “I’d make a fortune.”

Bobb took Hess into a small back room that was lined on three sides with shelves. The shelves held scores of bottles, all labeled. There were cases stacked against the other wall.

“These are the solutions,” he said. “Most are formaldehyde based, but there are others. Glutaraldehyde is becoming popular these days. They’re mixed with humectants in most cases, then diluted. There’s an embalming fluid for almost every circumstance. For instance, this one.”

Bobb handed Hess a dark plastic bottle of Specialist Embalming Fluid. The label said it was “specially formulated for ‘floaters,’ burned, decomposed, frozen or refrigerated bodies.” He set the bottle back on the shelf and read more labels: Champion, Embalmers’ Supply, Dodge, Naturo.

Back at Bonnie’s station, she was massaging the old man’s face, both hands up on his cheeks. It looked like she was imploring him. Hess could see the temporal veins starting to fill.

“The color is beginning to come to the face,” said Bobb. “That means he’s filled with so much blood and solution that he’s basically full. So you’re ready to start draining, Bon. Find that jugular and open her right up.”

Bonnie gave him a remonstrative glance over her mask. She looked at Hess and winked. He watched her take up the scalpel again, open the neck, deftly pull out the jugular with the hook. With one hand she pulled and “v”-ed the vein toward the table drain. With the other she cut it in half with a pair of scissors. She controlled the flow with finger pressure.

“You’ll see the pressure inside release almost immediately,” said Bobb. “Right now, the solution is pushing the blood out. The draining process should take around ten minutes in normal temperatures. A good embalmer will continue the massage, in order to move the fluid further in.”

Bonnie was already at work again with her hands, rubbing them over the lifeless gray flesh in opposing circles. The man’s head and feet rocked and his thin white hair lifted in the breeze from the air conditioner.

The color returned to his face. Hess didn’t notice it by the degrees by which it surely had come, but rather he saw it all at once: the gray skin turned natural again, the stony complexion become flushed and natural, the lips swelling with color. It was like a switch had been thrown.

“Oh,” said Bonnie. “There we are.” She worked the hollows of his cheeks and his temples, his forehead and chin, under the eyes, his ears and nose and mouth. Then down the neck to the shoulders and arms and chest.

Hess stared. He was suddenly dizzy. It was easy to see Janet Kane or Lael Jillson in front of him now, easy to imagine that Bonnie was the Purse Snatcher and a beautiful young woman was coming to life beneath his patient and expert hands. Then Hess blinked, and the body before him was simply a dead old man’s. But a second later it was Lael Jillson. He looked at Bonnie and she was a handsome man with long blond hair and a mustache and remorseful eyes. Then she was Bonnie again and Hess suddenly felt something very strong for her, a desire to defend and enhance and help her in a sometimes violent world. He wanted to see her triumph. It was a surprisingly powerful feeling. He knew it was absolutely inappropriate but there it was anyhow, filling his body like something pumped in. It made his heart beat fast and his muscles feel strong and urgent. It had as much to do with Bonnie and his impulse to love as it had to do with the Purse Snatcher and the old man supine in front of him and his own certain but unscheduled death. When he looked down at the man again it was Merci Rayborn and he was doing Bonnie’s job, with caring, desiring hands. Her dark nipples rose after his fingers passed over them.

“I’m going outside,” he said.

“I’ll go with you,” said Bobb.

“Don’t bother.”

“Let me show you where the door is...”

Outside Hess bent in the shade of a big pepper tree, his hands on his knees and his head up like an umpire but breathing hard and sweating coldly. His shirt felt wet under his sport coat and his shoulder strap slid on the damp fabric. He looked back at the campus buildings shimmering as if in a heat wave, outlined in a blue light that grew brighter until he blinked, then got brighter until he blinked again. He closed them and thought of where he had just come from and saw this time that the lifeless body back there was his and the hands bringing him back from the dead belonged to Merci.

He felt the air going in and out of his lung and a third, filling them up and purging fully, but it was like he wasn’t getting the right thing, like the air was mixed wrong, or maybe there just wasn’t enough of it getting in. He asked himself what he expected from fifty fucking years of smoking like there was no tomorrow. Help me get through this, he thought: just help me beat this thing and I’ll be good forever. Forever. I honestly do swear I’ll do whatever you want.

He opened his eyes and looked down at the grass but there were naked gray bodies upon it. He saw Lael and Janet and Ronnie and Merci and Bonnie and himself. And the old man and his father and Barbara and Lottie and Joanna. There was a kid in a cowboy shirt standing beside them with a blank look on his face: Tim Hess, age eight. Lightning cracked blue and rain splattered down on them all with drops bright and heavy as mercury. Young Tim had a green garden hose in his hand, gushing water. He rinsed everybody off then gave the hose to himself fifty-nine years later and the old once-dead Hess rose and drank from it and said he was going to give everyone else a drink, too.

Then Hess saw nothing but the green Bermuda grass beneath the tree and the pink pepper hulls lying by the trunk and his own bent shadow leaning away from the sun. His heart was way up in his throat somewhere and he could feel hot drops of something running down his cheeks and see them splat against the pepper shells where they fell. He heard himself panting. He felt an erection in his briefs, something that seemed no more related to this moment than the north rim of the Grand Canyon or UFOs. He smelled himself — a blend of man, chemicals, death and terror of death that he’d never smelled before.

“Detective? Mr. Hess? Al told me to come out and check on you. You okay? It’s the chemicals. One time I was setting features on this lady and then I was just lying there looking up at the lights. You okay?”

“Sure I am.”

“You’re white and trembling.”

“Breakfast. Skipped it, I mean.”

“Ah, come on. Quit being such a tough guy. Here, sit down in the shade. Just breathe even and keep your eyes up on the horizon. Think about your wife or your grandkids or someone you love.”

Hess took a knee. His eyes were burning still but he couldn’t let himself wipe them. He was confused by his arousal and ashamed of it and happy to hide it from the girl. Bonnie squatted across from him.

“Don’t,” Hess heard himself say.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t ever.”

“Ever what?”

“Let anything bad happen to you.”