Free 1 Motor City Shakedown by Jonathan Watkins Page B

bottles, brown glass chemistry regents, and dozens of other found , bottled treasures. In the bottom of the box, he found the bottle he sought.
    He pulled it out and held it up to the light. It was very old, and the words typed across its white paper label were so faded as to be illegible. Rolling it over in his fingers, he saw the one thing upon its face that was still recognizable: a red skull and crossbones.
    With his free hand, Malcolm reached into his Carhartt jacket and produced a hypodermic syringe. Carefully, he uncapped the bottle and drew its liquid contents into the syringe.
    The bottle went back in the box and the syringe into his coat. He clicked the flashlight once more, killing the light.

 
     
    SIX
     
    Darren was a slouching mass in Issabella’s passenger seat when her GPS announced they had arrived at Vernon Pullins’ crematorium in Westland. She pulled into the crematorium’s parking lot and looked at him beside her. His hair was a wild thicket, he had the passenger seat fully reclined, and his eyes were hidden beneath a pair of sunglasses despite the pale, early morning half-light.
    Issabella parked in the gravel lot close to the squat cinder-block building. The crematorium had no business signs of any sort. The only windows were thin panes running along the top of the one-story building. There was a huge garage door on one side, and an improbably tall smoke-stack running up out of the center of the roof.
    ‘State regs, I bet,’ she thought, craning her head to one side and peering up through the windshield until she could see the top of the smoke-stack, ‘Can’t have the remains of Aunt Ethel wafting through the neighborhood.’
    A yellow truck—the boxy sort that package delivery companies use –was sitting in the shadow of the building near the garage door. Issabella squinted and could make out the bio-hazard symbol emblazoned in a corner of the truck’s body.
    With a disquieting chill, she realized that it must be Vernon’s dead body delivery truck.
    Darren roused himself beside her and offered a weak grin.
    “New rule,” he said hoarsely. “I do the scheduling. Nobody, and I mean nobody , has any damn business being alive at this time of the morning.”
    She opened the door and snatched her briefcase up from the backseat. Inside it was the big ring of keys Vernon’s brother, Eugene, had provided to Darren.
    “I didn’t tell you to spend the night getting drunk, which seems apparent is what you did,” she said.
    “ That’s not what I did.”
    “You have a drinking problem, don’t you?”
    Darren groaned and got out of the car. The two of them stood looking at the squat, solid bunker that was their client’s chief place of business.
    “I enjoy a good drink, yes,” he said after a minute. “ Maybe a bit too often. But not last night. Last night, I had trouble getting to sleep. It happens. You’re not going to suddenly grow a mommy personality on me, are you?”
    “God, I hope not.”
    “Stellar.”
    “But, you know, early bird catches the worm and all that. So, no, I’ll be in charge of scheduling throughout, thank you very much.”
    “You were that girl in school weren’t you?”
    A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows and she drew in a long breath.
    “What kind of girl?”
    “The one who actually believes all those sayings. Like ‘the early bird catches the worm’ and ‘waste not want not’ and ‘success is ten percent inspiration. “
    “Let’s get to work,” she said and walked off toward the front of the building.
    Darren trailed after her, a mess of wrinkles wearing a playful smile.
     
    *
     
    Once the two of them had performed enough of a cursory walkthrough to establish what each room was--a large room that contained the crematorium ovens and the garage door, a janitorial closet, an office, and a bathroom --the two of them stood in the middle of the big oven-room.
    “Remind me why you thought we needed to come here,” she said.
    “I want to know as