Twenty-Seven Bones

5

Shortly after Pender left police headquarters on his Vespa, Lewis Apgard arrived in a squad car to formally identify his wife’s body. His own vehicles were still being examined, though they hadn’t been officially impounded. Chief Coffee led him across the cobbled courtyard to the morgue in the basement of the courthouse, where Hokey lay in a refrigerated drawer, covered by a sheet.

Lewis felt a blast of cold air when Dr. Parmenter, an obstetrician who doubled as coroner-womb to tomb, he liked to say-opened the door and rolled her out on a slab. Coffee lowered the sheet as far as Hokey’s neck. Lewis glanced briefly at her face; her long rabbity nose looked even more pinched than usual. He nodded. Coffee started to pull the sheet back up. Lewis stopped him.

“Could I have a couple minutes with my wife, please? We never did have a chance to say good-bye.”

Layla had already taken her smears and gone over the body for trace and transfer evidence, so Coffee had no problem with that. He and Parmenter went across the hall to the coroner’s office to go over a few details about the autopsy scheduled for later that evening, leaving Lewis alone with Hokey.

He looked around to be sure there were no hidden cameras, then pulled the sheet down to her waist. It was sort of the ultimate peep, but he got no pleasure out of it.

At least she still had her full-body, no-line tan, Lewis told himself, and would for eternity now. Hokey would have been glad of that: she’d been terribly vain about her tan, all but suicidally so in this age of melanoma.

Poor Hokey-so much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that it was just beginning to sink in for Lewis that what had been only a vague plan the previous morning was now a fait accompli.

“I miss you,” he whispered. “And all over a few fucking trees. You stupid, stupid-” He was about to call her the C-word. He caught himself-he hadn’t come here for that. “Sorry,” he said, bending to kiss her.

He couldn’t do it, though-he could feel the cold coming off her in waves when his lips were only an inch away. He touched her blue lips with his forefinger instead, then pulled the sheet back up over her head and smoothed out the wrinkles with his palm.