The Killing House

22

Marie rolled the gurney across the funeral home’s basement suite of dull white walls and grey linoleum flooring. The adrenalin rush from the past few hours had departed, leaving in its wake a bone-crushing exhaustion. Still, she felt relaxed. The funeral home was empty, and she had the rest of the afternoon to herself.

The crematorium had three separate ovens. She pushed the gurney up against the middle door. Rico’s carcass had been wrapped and stored inside one of the long, cardboard boxes the funeral home used to put corpses awaiting cremation. She opened the door and slid the box inside the chamber. After she locked the door, she ignited the burners. The process would take thirty minutes.

Marie left for her office, aware of a new feeling worming its way through her: sorrow. She felt a sense of loss, always, at this stage. Each death brought her one step closer to the completion of her life’s purpose — her life’s mission.

Fortunately, she had discovered a way to remember each child and parent. To keep them alive in her heart and mind until the moment she gasped her last, dying breath.

She unlocked the office safe and from the top shelf removed a large velvet jewellery box. It contained the necklace she’d worn while visiting Theresa Herrera. She never wore it here at work, just at home and when she visited the grieving parents.

The gold necklace was very elaborate, made up of eleven diamonds of various colours, each one a different shape and carat size. There were three empty settings. She wondered where she should put Rico.

The funeral-home business had brought her into contact with a vast array of companies offering specialized services for honouring the dead. The last decade had produced a rush of companies that created certified, high-quality diamonds from cremated remains, or a lock of hair. These lab-created diamonds had the same molecular identity, brilliance, lustre and hardness as the natural stones sold at any posh jewellery store. She had done business with several of these companies over the years, all under different names, and yet each and every time she visited their websites she was overwhelmed by the choice. There were cuts, degrees of clarity and sizes to consider — and colours. She had five to choose from: colourless, blue, red, yellow and green. Which colour was Rico?

The answer came to her immediately: red. It had taken a long time to break his fiery resolve — and that temper! He had fought her at nearly every turn.

Now she had to choose the cut and the clarity. She turned to her computer and logged on to one of the websites. She scrolled through the pages, thinking.

When she couldn’t come to a decision, she checked her watch. Twenty-two minutes had passed. She rose from her chair, and on her way back to the oven ducked inside a room to put on a face shield and apron to protect her from the intense heat.

Opening the crematorium door, she saw Rico’s skull in the blaze of fire. She used a T-shaped iron rod to break it down into smaller fragments. She did the same with other, larger bones and then returned to the computer.

An hour passed and she still couldn’t come to a decision.

No matter. The inspiration would come to her eventually. When it did, she would fill out the paperwork and put eight ounces of Rico’s ashes, along with a money order, into the post. Another packet of ashes would be mailed out to the exciting new company she had just discovered. Sacred Ashes specialized in placing cremated remains inside rifle cartridges, shotgun shells and handgun ammunition, custom-made to any calibre.

Marie carried a 9-mm handgun in her handbag when she visited the parents. Until Colorado, she had never fired it inside a home. She did, however, use it frequently inside the printing press.

The moment she’d discovered Sacred Ashes, the idea of incorporating the cremated remains of her previous guests inside her handgun had struck her with such intensity that she shook for nearly an hour. It was as though she had been granted a dark and magical power to summon the dead from their graves (or, more appropriately, their incinerated ashes, all of which she had kept) to carry out an execution.

And it had given her a power. Approaching the cages with the handgun raised, she could recall, even now, the thrill of watching the look of terror in each parent’s eyes as she rattled off the names of the dead loaded in her gun clip. Each time she fired a round, she felt lighter. Better.

Marie had placed three orders, with many more to come. The boxes of ammo were tucked inside the safe.

Marie had one regret: she wished Theresa Herrera had known the name associated with the bullet that had killed her. Wished the woman could have died with the knowledge.

Marie returned to the oven. The bone fragments had cooled. She picked up a long, metal broom with a brush made of high-carbon stainless-steel bristles and hummed a Spanish lullaby as she carefully swept Rico into a steel catcher at the front of the crematorium door. She switched to a normal paintbrush with a wide head to collect the finer fragments and then transferred everything into a crematorium pan.

Marie inspected the debris and, finding no metal, carefully dumped the fragments into a special processor. As the motorized blades pulverized Rico’s bones to ash, she decided to honour Rico with a 1.5-carat, emerald-cut red stone. The $25,000 diamond would be the centrepiece of her necklace.