Figment - Jace Cameron. Страница 11

Now, these are the smelly, rotten corpses I expected. Dead, stinky, and bloodstained. I am too exhausted to even care.

The woman's shoes turn out to be too small for me. I go back and pick up the man's shoes. My size. Being picky isn't helping when you're trapped in a morgue.

I put on the shoes, enjoying the warmth in my feet—a dead man's warmth. Oh, the mad world outside. I realize I want to go back to the asylum again, a tear about to squeeze out of my eyes in this terrible cold.

"Reebok or Nike?" the Pillar teases.

I don't answer him. Instead, I rip off the dead man's duster jacket and put it on. If I am blunt enough to put on a shoe, I better put on all that will save my life.

"I am ready." I tighten the dead man's bloody duster around me, my feet not jumpy anymore. "I came here to accomplish something." I take a deep breath, fooling my mind into thinking I am wearing Cinderella's slippers and a beautiful wedding dress. "Should I open the dead kids' bags and look for clues now?"

"I thought you'd never ask." The Pillar sighs. "I'd do it as fast I can, if I were you. Like I said, a mortician will soon arrive to collect you, so you'd be sent to another morgue. She'd need to find you intact inside the bag you came in."

"Yeah. You said that before." I've already pulled the zipper of the bag of one of the victims. "Thirty minutes."

"That was thirty minutes when you arrived at the morgue, Alice." He sips and then burps. "You only have twenty minutes left, or your cover will be exposed. Time is slipping away."

Chapter 13

Twenty minutes to go...

I am doing my best not to think about the dead man's shoes wrapped around my feet. Still, I cringe at the thought.  Strangely, the only way to get rid of it is to occupy my mind with a twelve-year-old boy's corpse.

I put the Pillar on speaker as he keeps reminding me of the eighteen minutes I have left before the mortician arrives. Then I lay the phone on the edge of the metallic table and begin my work. I feel like Nancy Drew already.

Unzipping the first plastic bag, my hand shivers and trembles when I see the kid's corpse.

Somehow, I am not really sure of the corpse's gender. The face is so mutilated, my stomach churns. The sentence "Off with their heads" is scribbled in sticky blood on the forehead. This feels like one of those unnecessarily gory scenes in one of those slasher horror movies.

I intend to reach for the kid's face but realize my hands are still relatively numb. Not from the cold this time, but from the horror before my eyes.

I can't even swallow, feeling a lump in my throat. What is it about the real world that makes people commit such crimes? It's a kid, for God's sake! He was supposed to have a whole future ahead of him. Why am I staring at his chopped-off head in a morgue right now? Why?

"Too much gore?" The Pillar's munching echoes slightly in the boxed room. "Which reminds me, I need barbecue sauce for my snack."

Instead of screaming at him, I buckle down on my knees and vomit on the floor. I don't even have a chance to resist the urge.

"You're not vomiting, Alice. Or?" The munching stops. "Can't you see I am eating here? That's so Jub Jub."

The cold and fear seal my lips. I can't speak. All I do is wipe my mouth with the edge of the dead man's bloodstained duster. Last time, when I saved Constance, I hadn't come so close to a corpse. Let alone a young boy or girl.

"I need a minute," I tell the Pillar. His annoying attitude doesn't disturb me now. Seeing the corpse stirred the same emotions I felt toward Constance. Someone has to stop the Cheshire. At least stop the killings from spreading. Someone has to stop this sane world's madness.

"You don't have a minute." The Pillar's voice is dead serious. "All you have is sixteen minutes left before the mortician arrives to pick up your corpse."

"I just couldn't believe what I saw." I am on my feet again. Words worm their way out through my lips and cause me pain. I wipe my mouth again, and force myself to stare at the chopped-off head. "I'm ready now, unzipping all five bags." I still do my best to suppress my inner screams. "Two boys, two girls, one I am not sure about, since I can't tell from the head."

"That's fine," the Pillar says. "If we see it's necessary to know its gender, you can check the rest of the body later."

"I only unzipped the bags a few inches to examine the heads," I explain. "The rest of the bodies should be down there if I unzip it totally open."

"No need for that now," the Pillar says. "You came to check the heads. They are the body of the crime, after all. The bodies have been collected from the kids' houses after the discoveries of the heads."

"So the killer chopped off heads in the houses and took the heads with him? That's horrible."

"We're not sure, Alice. He could have chopped the heads and then sent the body back to the house. Anyhow, read the toe tags, please. Let's see if a name clicks."

I read the names, but none of them rings a bell. I read them aloud to the Pillar. They don't mean anything to him either.

"Strange. I thought the names would have a clue. Fifteen minutes." I don't know why he feels he needs to remind me. I'm aware of the scarcity of time. "Try to look for anything the five heads have in common."

"Nothing but the 'Off with their heads' message," I say as I look harder for any details I might have missed.

"That's it?" The Pillar is disappointed. I can tell he has no clue of what's going on.

"No, wait!" I reach for one of the metal instruments on the table and use it to part a corpse's mouth. "There something in boy's mouth," I say. "It's wrapped in a small plastic Ziploc."

"What is it?" I've never heard the Pillar so curious.

"A muffin."

Chapter 14

I bend forward to check the muffin inside the mouth. "How come the police didn't find this?" I ask.

"The police are lazy, logical creatures. They think the world they live in is actually a sane one, so they tend to think of all the useless CSI-like evidence of a crime; fingerprints and other silly things," the Pillar says. "My bet is that some officer saw the muffin but didn't see its significance, especially if the boy is fat."

I can't tell if he's fat, as I am only inspecting his head. I don't have the guts to pull the zipper down to inspect the body yet. Who knows what the killer did to it. I might check this a few minutes later, so I don't vomit again.

"Besides, this is the coroner's job. It looks like he hasn't inspected the body yet," the Pillar adds.

"Why delay inspecting the body of the most important crime in Britain right now?" I am angry at the lazy system that postpones the autopsies of five innocent children. A system that postpones the possibility of justice.

"Well, that's a good point," he says. "Maybe the coroner has been told to delay the matter."

"Told by whom?"

"Parliament? There is always someone benefiting from he death of someone else, Alice?" He is hinting at something that I might not be ready for yet. I witnessed the Duchess Margaret Kent's corruption last time. I know I am still naive to how the world outside operates.

"I can't get it out." I cut off my thoughts, trying to pull the muffin out. "Why Ziploc the muffin?"