Skin Trade(49)

Olaf shrugged. “I do not know, but I am saying that there are alternatives to lycanthropes for the injuries.”

“Point taken,” Memphis said. He looked at me, and his eyes were kinder. “Marshal Blake, are you ready to see the rest of the body, or do you need a minute?”

“If he stays on his side of the table, I’ll be fine.”

“Duly noted,” Memphis said, and he gave a less friendly look to Olaf.

I moved around the gurney, putting it between Olaf and myself. It was the best I could do and stay in the room. But after we finished with this body, I was finding Edward and we were trading dance partners. I could not work with Olaf in the morgue. He saw the whole thing as foreplay, and I just couldn’t deal. No, not couldn’t, wouldn’t.

Bernardo would flirt, but he wouldn’t flirt around the bodies. He didn’t think freshly slaughtered bodies were sexy; it would be downright refreshing after working with serial killer boy, no matter how outrageous the flirting got.

The doctor started to unfasten the bulletproof vest, then stopped. “Take a few close-ups, Rose.” The doc pointed with gloved fingers at places on the vest. Olaf had already leaned in, so if I was to see what had excited the doctor, I had to lean in, too. Shit. Was I so bothered by Olaf that I could not do my job?

I finally leaned closer and saw slash marks in the vest. They could have been from blades or really big claws. It was hard to tell through the cloth. Bare skin would tell me more.

An autopsy for a murder victim is very intimate. It’s not just the cutting of the body but the undressing. You don’t want to cut or further damage the clothes, in case you mess up clues, so you have to pick the body up, hold it, undress it like some huge doll or sleeping child. At least rigor had come and gone. A body in full rigor is like trying to undress a statue, except it feels unlike any statue you could ever touch.

I’ve never envied the morgue technicians their job.

Dale and Patricia moved in to raise the body and ease the vest off. I never liked being in the room for this part. I’m not sure why it bothered me to see the corpse undressed, but it did. Maybe it’s because it’s a part of the process I don’t usually get to see. For me, the dead are either fully dressed or naked. Watching them go from one state to the other just seemed like an invasion of their privacy. Did that sound silly? The dead shell on that table didn’t give a shit. He was way past embarrassment, but I wasn’t. It’s always the living that fuck up death; the dead are fine with it.

Olaf was beside me again, but not close enough for me to bitch-yet. “Why does it bother you to see them undress it?”

My shoulders hunched, and I crossed my arms over the green gown, flexing my hands in the gloves. “How do you know I’m bothered?”

“I can see it,” he said.

He could only see half my face, and my body was hidden behind the overgown. I knew I’d been controlling how I stood and moved, so how had he noticed? I finally looked at him and let my eyes show that I’d had a horrible thought.

“What did I do now?” he asked, and it was almost that tone that all men use-no, not all men, all boyfriends. Shit.

“Is he bothering you again, Marshal Blake?” Memphis came to stand near us.

I shook my head.

“You say no, but you’ve gone pale again.” Memphis gave Olaf a very unfriendly look.

“I just had a thought, that’s all. Let it go, doc; just let me know when we can come back in and look at the body.”

He looked from one to the other of us, but finally went back to join the others. They almost had him naked from the waist up. Even from here, I was almost certain the chest had been clawed up, not cut up.

“I have upset you again, Anita.”

“Let it go, Otto,” I said.

“What did I do wrong?” he asked, and again it was the boyfriend question.

“Nothing; you didn’t do anything creepy or disgusting. You just acted like a guy for a minute.”

“I am a guy,” he said.

I wanted to say, But you aren’t. You’re a serial killer who thinks dead bodies are a turn-on. You’re damn near a bad guy, and I’m pretty sure that someday you’ll force me to kill you to save my own life. You’re male, but you can never be a guy to me. But I couldn’t say any of that out loud.

He was looking at me with those hooded eyes, except there was the faintest glimmer of that look. You know the one. That look that a guy will give you when he likes you and is trying pretty hard to figure out how to please you, and he’s not succeeding. That look that says, What do I do now? How do I win?

What had my scary thought been? That Olaf was sincere. In some crazy, pathological way, he like-liked me. As in boyfriend-liked me. Not just for fucking or slaughter, but maybe, just maybe, he actually wanted to date me like one human being to another. He seemed to have no clue how to interact with a woman in a way that wasn’t terrifying, but he was trying. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he was trying.