The Embalmer: A Steve Jobz Thriller Read online

  But I am not prepared for this.

  On one hand, Henrietta looks like she’s sleeping peacefully. On the other hand, her skull and the exposed portion of her face are swelled beyond recognition. Her entire head resembles a blood-soaked melon that’s been crushed. There’s just no other way to describe it. I should look away, but I can’t get myself to do it.

  My God, how is it you are still alive? By what miracle?

  “Henry,” I say as if she can hear me, “don’t worry about a thing. It will all be all right.”

  “Excuse me!” the woman EMT barks. “I asked you nicely to get out of the way. Now, please.”

  Miller and I shift ourselves out of the way of the gurney.

  Working as a team, they cart Henry out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the awaiting EMT van. How they are able to heft Henry’s dead weight with an almost graceful ease is beyond me. But then, these people are professionals. Trained professionals.

  As for me, I’m just a helpless loser.

  An ineffectual observer. A stray dog along for the ride, my tail tucked between my legs.

  Miller is speaking to one of the uniformed cops outside the open bedroom door, taking some notes. He steps back into the room, shifts his focus to me.

  “You gonna be okay, Jobz?” he says. “Perfectly understandable you wanna walk away.”

  I swallow some of the bile that’s regurgitated into my mouth. Inhaling a deep, calming breath that is anything but calming, I shake my head.

  “I’m okay,” I mumble, my voice heavy and guttural. “I assume you’re assessing the situation for what it is. So, what’s your assessment?”

  He cocks his head. “Uniforms tell me there is no sign of a break in. No jimmied door frame out front. No jimmied window frames. No broken window panes, no busted door openers or locks. Which tells you what?”

  The answer comes to me without my having to think.

  “Henry was familiar with the intruder.”

  He raises his right hand, makes like a pistol with extended index finger. Shoots me with it.

  “Bingo, Jobz,” he says. “Looks like the cop in you is returning.”

  “But who the hell could do something like this to her? I’m not aware of her having any enemies in particular.”

  “You not being aware of anyone, doesn’t mean she didn’t have a private life you’re not privy too. She date much?”

  Takes me a minute to think about it. That’s when it dawns on me that I’ve never seen her with a man in all the years since I’ve been working under her. She’s always talked like she dates all the time, but I’ve never seen her with another man whom she called her significant other. It’s exactly how I relay it to Miller.

  He nods. “APD has gone through the drawers and the closets. No pictures or love notes to speak of. Nothing hidden away in boxes on the shelves, no letters stashed in her underwear drawer. Looks like she enjoyed her alone time.”

  “She enjoyed her friends, mostly.”

  “They’re gonna start dusting the joint for prints. Be interesting to see what shows up, if anything.”

  “Anybody out of the norm, you mean,” I say. “Anybody who wasn’t a friend. But then, maybe a friend was capable of this. A so-called friend.”

  “She fire anybody lately?”

  Another shake of my head. “No. I would know it if she did. My cubicle is right across from hers. And she would tell me about it.”

  He takes a step closer to the bloody mess of a bed. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a clean pair of Latex gloves, blows into each one like it was a balloon before putting them on. Pulling a mini-Maglite from the same jacket pocket, he flicks on the light beam, begins running it over the pillows and crumpled bed sheets. Using his thumb and index finger like a pair of pliers, he picks up a blood-encrusted strand of hair, examines it for a moment, then sets it back onto the pillow.

  He takes a step back, pulls out his smartphone, snaps a few quick pictures of the bed. Flicking the Maglite off, he returns it along with his cell phone, to his jacket pocket.

  “I can’t be entirely sure,” he says, “but whoever did this used a framing hammer. I got a brand new, crisp twenty-dollar bill says it’s true.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Those wounds on her head were round, about the size of a quarter. So the EMTs told me. Same as the head on a framing hammer.”

  “Maybe a carpenter did this?”

  “Maybe. Or a handy man. Orrrrr . . .” he says, his voice trailing off.

  “Or what?”

  “Or a former disgruntled mortician.”

  His words take a second or two to sink in.

  “I don’t see any evidence of Henrietta having been embalmed,” I point out. “Sort of doesn’t fit the profile or MO either, Miller.”

  “Again, excellent assessment, Jobz.”

  Miller peels off his gloves.

  He says, “Let’s go, Jobz. I wanna get you back to your car, and I want you to head home for some much-needed shut-eye before we officially begin our day.”

  “What about Henry?” I ask. “I was planning on heading straight to the ER. She’s all alone.”

  “The hell you are,” he grouses. “She’ll be intubated and out cold. Probably for days. That is, she survives the first twenty-four hours.”

  My heart sinks. But he’s right. The first twenty-four hours are always the most crucial in a case of traumatic injury. For all I know, she’s already bled out or suffered a major stroke on the way to the hospital.

  “Looks like I don’t have much choice in the matter,” I say, exhaling.

  “You don’t,” he says. “I wanna talk with you about something on the ride back to the station.”

  “Something good?”

  “Something that tells me we’re closing in our mortician murderer.”

  The summer sun is just coming up beyond the Hudson River and the blue mountains of Massachusetts to the East. I’m riding shotgun while Miller drives us away from Lark Street in the direction of the Central Avenue Precinct. Since we’re going west, the sun is at our backs.

  “There’s a reason I brought up the hammer aspect of the story,” he says, after a time. “All three victims of the mortician killer had their skull injured by what’s been described as a framing hammer.”

  “I’m not what you call the handyman type, Miller. So, what’s a framing hammer exactly?”

  “It’s a hammer with a longer than usual neck and a heavier than usual head. It’s engineered so that construction workers can drive a single eight-penny nail in one, well-aimed swing.” He makes like he’s got a hammer in his hand, and he swings it hard. “A framing hammer . . . a hammer that frames new houses. Get it?”

  I nod. “I get it. All it takes the mortician murderer is one well-aimed swing to knock his victims senseless, but not dead, prior to strapping them down onto a table or a bed or whatever he puts them on before filling their veins and arteries with embalming fluid.”

  “That would be the idea,” Miller says.

  We drive for a bit.

  “But this one is different, Miller. Henrietta had her brains pretty much bashed in.”

  “That she did. The weapon fits the bill. But the actions and their result very much do not. But that doesn’t mean the mortician murderer didn’t do it.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It means his motive for killing Henry was different from the others. He wasn’t creating art by killing her. He was angry with her, and he was shutting her up.” He makes a waving motion with his hand. “Or shit, I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t his type.”

  “Shutting her up. For what?”

  “What if she was onto him? What if she saw him in action somehow? And he saw her. You following me here, Jobz?”

  Something stirs in my gut. It’s not more queasiness, but something else entirely. More like realization.

  “Holy shit,” I say, voice raised as we pull into the Central Avenue Precinct lot, pull around back to where
my Mustang is parked. “They not only saw one another, but they know one another.”

  Miller, nods emphatically. “My guess, and I think it’s a fucking good guess, is that Henrietta saw the mortician murderer when he was in the process of stealing his next victim. And it happened only a short time before Henrietta died. What this means is, Henrietta might not be his fourth victim.”

  “She might be his fifth,” I interject.

  “It also explains why there was no sign of a break in at Henrietta’s,” he surmises. “He probably simply rang her doorbell, and she let him in, never for a minute thinking he planned on killing her.”

  “But she was attacked in her bed while she was sleeping. It doesn’t add up.”

  “I’ve seen this kind of thing before. Somebody arrives at your house unannounced. You think you know them well, so you trust them more or less, and you let them in. In this case, Henrietta would have been tired and maybe even a little drunk judging by the open wine bottle. They speak for a brief moment about any old nonsense, and she escorts him back out the door. But what she doesn’t know is that he’s already spotted a key to the place, which he’s already pocketed. After she lets him out and turns out the light, he waits a few minutes, casually lets himself back into the house.”

  It comes to me with all the clarity of the newly risen sun.

  Herman.

  In my head, I picture the mustached, pockmarked-faced Herman ringing Henry’s doorbell. I picture her answering it. Maybe she was a bit startled to see him, but she wouldn’t have been afraid of him. Even after seeing him get into his vehicle with that young woman from the bar.

  But then my mind shifts to another man.

  Lu.

  Lu Chin, always attached to Herman at the hip.

  “Tell me, Jobz,” Miller goes on, “didn’t you say you were having a drink with Henry last night?”

  “Yeah, I met her at Lanie’s Bar in North Albany. Our usual after work drink.”

  “Was there anything unusual about this drink? Anyone else at the bar who didn’t fit in, or who didn’t seem right to you? Anyone who might have appeared to know Henry? Someone who maybe even engaged in conversation with her?”

  Exhaustion is beginning to kick in. So much so that my hands are trembling. It’s ever so slight, but the trembling is there. So are the DTs. Miller takes notice, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Herman Healy,” I say. “And Lu Chin.”

  “Herman,” he says. “Lu Chin. That Chinese?”

  I nod.

  “Guys I work with. Lu’s always seemed harmless to me. But Herman is different. He’s always showing me pictures of these women he picks up on Tinder, or Ashley Madison, or Plenty of Fish or wherever. He was at the bar last night, and he had a date. A short girl. A brunette. Kind of chubby, but cute. Lu had a date too. A little redhead. Both couples left the bar together like they were going to grab a bite to eat or catch a movie or something.”

  “You get the girl’s names? The one with Herman Healy in particular?”

  “No, sorry,” I say. “Herman’s creepy, so we avoid him when we can. But he spoke to us briefly before his date showed up. Soon as she did, they retreated to the opposite side of the bar, downed a couple of drinks, then like I said, both couples left without saying goodbye.”

  “Did Henrietta see them leave together?”

  “Come to think of it, Miller, she left immediately after they did.”

  “So then, it’s conceivable one or both of them would have made eye contact with her on their way out to the parking lot together.”

  I nod. “If they all parked close enough to one another. Absolutely.” Suddenly, in my brain, I’m picturing Bryan, the muscle man, motor mouth who first came upon Lisa Barrett in the park yesterday morning. “One thing is for sure, Miller, your boy Bryan is not the mortician murderer.”

  “I’ve already mentally scratched him off the list, Jobz,” he says.

  He drives for a bit, mumbling something to himself the entire time. At first, he’s whispering, “Herman, Lu, Herman, Lu...” But then he switches up to simply, “Herman, Herman, Herrrrmannnnn . . .”

  Glancing at me, he says, “The notes the mortician killer has left on each of his victims. How did he sign them again?”

  “You testing me again?”

  “More like a pop quiz. Indulge me.”

  I picture the notes in my head. The final sentence, or in this case, what Miller constitutes as the killer’s signature. I . . . am . . . her . . . man.

  I say it out loud. “I am her man.”

  He looks at me quick. Smiles. I can’t help but notice that his long concave cheeked face has turned a shade of red. As if his blood is heating up, circulating faster, pulse elevated.

  “The motherfucker has been telling us who he is all along, Jobz.”

  I shake my head.

  “Sorry, Miller,” I say. “But between the exhaustion and the DTs, I’m not able to follow.”

  “Jesus, man,” he says. “Wake up! I am her man. I am Herman. I am fucking Herman for Christs sakes!”

  Her . . . Man. Herman. Well, I’ll be a dipped . . .

  Poor Henrietta has just been violently attacked in her own bed, and yet now I find myself smiling. I feel a wash of warm water pour all over me while the cop car seems to levitate above the pavement.

  “How do you like that, Miller?” I say, the words feeling like they're tearing themselves away from the back of my throat. “I’ve known the mortician murderer all along. He was right under my nose at work.”

  He slaps the steering wheel, let’s lose with a Hoorah! then holds out his fist.

  “Give me the rock, Jobz,” he insists.

  “Why?”

  “Because we just found our killer.”

  “Guess that means I owe you twenty bucks,” I say.

  “Save it for drinks when we find this guy, Herman Healy, and lock his evil ass up for good.”

  He’s dead tired.

  He’s worked most of the night creating his newest work of art. His beautiful creature who, in life, was a silly, dumb girl who had to rely on a cheesy online dating service just to get a man’s attention. But now, in death, she has taken on a life of great beauty, unabashed charm, and provocative mystery. She is now a woman who loves him with all her heart. A woman who will bow to him, who will fulfill his every wish, every fantasy. And she will do so, ever so quietly.

  “What do you think, Leslie?” he says, glancing at the head in the jar on the shelf. “She’s not you. But not bad, huh?”

  He’s dressed her in the best Fredericks of Hollywood black, silk lingerie. He’s replaced her tight black skirt with a long, silk gown and put her thick brunette hair up in a bun. He’s even placed white silk gloves on her hands. She looks radiant and ready to attend a ball or even a presidential inauguration.

  He is an important man. Shouldn’t people realize that by now?

  He should be invited to balls, and parties, and inaugurations. The important people in the world simply don’t understand him. His bosses at the funeral home never understood him—his talent which far surpassed their own, an embarrassing situation for the owners. Of course, they help one another out now, but better that he packed up for good and took his talents with him.

  His bosses at the latter jobs he took on—the landscaping, the janitorial, the Starbucks sales counter—none of them appreciated how good he was. Not even when he finally managed to land the job with the State Unemployment Fraud Investigations Agency, were people able to understand his genius. Of course, he had to hide his genius by that point. No sense in admitting to your fellow workers that the entire reason you took the job at the Unemployment Insurance Fraud Agency was to commit gross Unemployment Insurance Fraud yourself.

  D’oh . . .

  He might have also told them that he had rigged the Medicare and New York State Disability programs as well, collecting payments for Wendy while feeding her night and day to make sure she had no choice but to stay on the disabled list.
The payments weren’t huge in and of themselves, but when combined with the hundreds of false unemployment insurance claims he’d managed to open over the past year, they added up to some very nice weekly payouts. Ten thousand dollars per week in payouts, give or take. So much money he could afford to live in the South of France if he so chooses, rather than this old dump. But then, an extravagant lifestyle would only arouse suspicion. Better that he at least wait until Wendy’s heart gives out before he up and moves to a nice locale.

  But this whole operation is a testament to how smart Herman is. How cutting edge. People can’t relate to him. Not even his wife would understand if he were to lay everything out for her—the false Unemployment Insurance accounts, the Medicare Fraud, the health insurance fraud, his agreement with his old funeral home employer . . . all of it.

  Wendy would rather just eat, and he’s happy to feed her, even if it means he’s got to change her diaper now and again. Like his father used to say, we’ll all eat a pound of shit before we die. Better to just get on with it.

  He stares at the beautiful Peg who now sits on the table, her legs crossed sophisticatedly, her hands resting one on top of the other on her knees, very lady like but, at the same time, sexy too. Her blue eyes are wide open, her mouth upturned into just a hint of a smile as if she’s spotted the man of her dreams . . . Her Man . . . from all the way across the ballroom dance floor. She wants him to know she’s aware of his presence, but then, she doesn’t want to appear too forward. Or, what’s the word? She doesn’t want to appear wanting. She wants to play coy.

  How sexy is a beautiful, rich, and worldly woman when she decides to play coy?

  Herman feels himself growing hard down inside the basement of his modest Albany bungalow. He stares into the eyes of his love. He feels her staring back at him. Not like she did when they first met in the cheap neighborhood bar yesterday evening, but deeper than that. Like he is the gallant man she spots from across the dance floor . . . Her man . . . her Herman. The man who makes her heart go all aflutter. The man who steals her breath away. Who makes love birds sing inside her heart.