Free Speak the Dead by Grant McKenzie Page B

Jersey protested, “if you release the bodies now, there won’t be time for an autopsy. At least let me request a drug screen.”
    â€œThe decision is made, detective. That will be all.”
    Amarela grabbed Jersey’s arm and pulled him toward the door. Before he exited, Jersey turned and asked, “What funeral home are the bodies being shipped to?”
    Morrell glanced down at a sheet of paper on his desk. “Paynes Funeral Home. Both victims had those pre-paid plans you see advertised on TV. I’ve actually been thinking of getting one for Mrs. Morrell. Our anniversary is coming up and with the new baby…”
    Morrell stopped. He was talking to himself.

16
    I n the chilled basement of Paynes Funeral Home, Sally removed the crisp sheet from the dead woman’s face.
    The basement felt different during the day—colder somehow. Despite the blacked out windows, Sally could sense movement all around her: creaks, scrapes, and sighs descending from the viewing parlor and sales office above; rumbles, horns, and grumbles colliding on the streets outside.
    It was unsettling.
    At night, her workshop was a calm oasis—just her and the guests.
    But when Mr. Payne phoned with a special request, how could Sally refuse? In fact, she was delighted to help. The Payne family had always been so good to her.
    Sally looked down at her guest again. Any sign of recognition that she expected to feel wasn’t there. The woman was a stranger.
    It disturbed her that she had watched this woman die and yet her face hadn’t imprinted itself. Sally mostly remembered her clothes—the periwinkle pantsuit and black raincoat now blood-soaked and bundled in a clear plastic garbage bag under the gurney.
    She also recalled in horrifying detail the shock and pain as the woman’s neck twisted beyond the breaking point. But everything had been viewed directly through the woman’s eyes rather than from a spectator’s point of view. Sally had barely looked at her face, except when she touched her mouth. She remembered the mouth.
    Jesús had done a wonderful job on her: smashed skull restored with wire mesh and liquid polymer; twisted neck straightened, the metal screws and plastic supports hidden from view so long as nobody rolled her over; flattened nose splintered back into shape; and her broken front teeth hidden behind a thin, opaque mouth guard.
    Jesús told her he was trying to convince the Paynes to invest in a 3D printer that would allow him to reconstruct guests’ faces from scanned photographs.
    â€œEveryone could have open casket,” he had enthused to her, “even burn victims or those ravaged by disease. Imagine? I could print ears, noses, even whole faces, and you could use your magic to make everything natural.”
    Although she didn’t quite understand the technology behind three-dimensional printing, Sally had to agree, it was a brilliant idea.
    Still, even without a special printer, Jesús’s work was that of a master artist. Working underneath the flesh, he left her a clean canvas marred only by tiny stitches in her guest’s cheek, forehead, and nose. Even the once-torn scalp was smooth with the skin stretched over the wire frame he’d built, and the stitches as close to the hairline as he could manage.
    Sally would be able to cover the stitches with a smudge of wax before she applied the foundation, although she would need to take extra care with her airbrush to remove the harsh bruising around the eyes.
    With trepidation, Sally reached out and touched the woman’s smooth cheek. The explosion of light and the weightless feeling of leaving her body didn’t come. There was no vision, nothing but the stiffness of cold flesh.
    Sally sighed with relief. It had just been a fluke, she thought, a glitch, a weird supernatural blip on her otherwise very dull and normal life. The last thing she needed was to be having visions of her guests at their