Free Beyond the Pale by Mark Anthony Page B

things he already knew, or acting like he was stupid just because he was slow and quiet and didn’t easily get mad. Too often in this world people mistook fast for smart, loud for important, and angry for righteous. But Leon knew the difference. Besides, the customers here didn’t care what pace he did things at.
    Whistling a tuneless song, Leon adjusted the plastic sheet that covered a cadaver lying in an open body drawer. He had to make certain there were no gaps in the wrapping. The morticians hated it when the corpses dried out. Leon wasn’t sure why. Maybe it made it harder to paint the makeup on them for the funeral. That was something else to think about. He paused to regard the old woman in the stainless-steel drawer. With her blue-gray skin and white hair it looked almost like she was frozen in a piece of ice rather than wrapped in clear plastic. It made him think of a story he had read as a child, a story about the queen of Snow. Only the queen had been cruel, and she had imprisoned a little kid in her palace of ice.
    Leon slid the drawer shut and shivered. That was the onereal problem with this job—it was too damn cold down here sometimes. The chill radiated from the bank of drawers and soaked into the floor and walls, where it lingered like permafrost. The cold had never bothered Leon in the past, but this last year he had noticed it creeping deeper into his joints and bones, like something hungry and alive. Maybe one of these days he would have to get a different job. Something warmer.
    He rubbed his lean hands together for heat and turned to see to his next customer. The naked corpse lay on its back on a stainless-steel table—white male, late twenties, in good physical shape. Leon picked up a clipboard and checked his notes. That’s right. This was the John Doe the police had shot before bringing in. They had cracked this one’s chest open, but the wound was neatly closed up now. Leon recognized the precise stitches that bound together the two raw edges of flesh. Even when they were dead, she always took care in what she did to them. This had been Grace Beckett’s patient.
    Leon grabbed a pen and made notes concerning the corpse’s condition: height, weight, appearance, the locations of the two bullet entry wounds. He turned the body over, then noticed a small tattoo on the underside of the John Doe’s forearm. He bent closer. No, it wasn’t a tattoo, but a brand. The puckered scar tissue formed a symbol:

    It wasn’t anything Leon recognized, although it did make him think of some sort of religious sign. If it
was
from a religion, then it had to be a crazy one to brand its disciples like cattle. Leon shook his head at the sorry state of the world, then turned the corpse back over and scribbled some more on his clipboard. A moment later he halted and frowned.
    “Now, I thought I already shut your peepers.”
    The cadaver only gazed upward with unseeing eyes. Leon snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and closed the corpse’s eyelids. Staring was one impertinence he did not tolerate of dead people. He made a few last notes, then prepared thecadaver for storage. Leon had it down to a system these days. Toe tag, plastic bag, then into the deep freeze.
    “You were a healthy boy, now weren’t you?” he grunted as he wrangled the heavy corpse from table to drawer. Sometimes the bodies seemed to fight him in this, as if they did not want to be shut away in the dark, as if they wanted to hold on to the lighted world for a little while longer. Mostly, though, it was just rigor mortis and the slippery plastic that made it so hard. At last Leon succeeded. He leaned on the open drawer to catch his breath. Maybe he really was getting too old for this job. He supposed he could go work at his cousin Benny’s upholstery shop. It sure would be warmer, and he wouldn’t have to talk to customers if he didn’t want to, not if he stuck to the shop’s back room. Besides, Benny owed him a favor. He resolved to