I got the body of the overdose victim onto the table and prepped while Dr. Leblanc made his initial observations and jotted notes on his pad. I stepped back as he picked up a scalpel off the sideboard, but to my surprise he extended it to me, handle first.

I automatically took it, looked stupidly down at it, then back up to him. “Um. You’re kidding, right? You want me to cut him open?”

“You can do this, Angel,” he assured me. “You’re a tough, no-nonsense chick with an iron stomach. You’ve watched me do it a few hundred times. Now, cut that body open.”

I made a face. “Why can’t I just stick to cutting heads?” I said. I might have whined a little bit.

Dr. Leblanc chuckled. “Because I’m lazy.”

“Hardly!”

“How about, because you’re fully capable of doing it, therefore you should.”

I scowled down at the scalpel in my hand. The pathologist had been dropping hints for a while now that he would soon start having me participate more in the autopsies—a statement I hadn’t really understood until now. “I’m fully capable of doing many things that I probably shouldn’t,” I said.

A smile quirked his lips. “I trust that you have the judgment to apply proper discretion. Besides, what you really are is fully capable of being more than a simple morgue tech. There are some agencies where the morgue assistant—or the diener—does almost all of the work of opening the body up and pulling the organs out, whereupon the pathologist simply comes over and takes a look and cuts his samples off.” He gestured to the body lying on the metal table. “A bit more training and you could probably get to that point.”

I stepped grudgingly up to the body. “Okay, so maybe you are being lazy.”

He chuckled. “Curses! Here I thought I was being convincing in my mentor persona.”

“Nope. I see right through you,” I replied, but the truth was that any time Dr. Leblanc made one of those comments it warmed my crusty little soul more than I could have ever explained. More than anyone else in my life, I felt that Dr. Leblanc truly thought I was smart and had potential.

“Dieners make more money,” he added with a sly wink.

“Well why the hell didn’t you just say that to begin with?” I replied, raising the scalpel.

I found myself wincing as I pressed the scalpel into the skin, which was a bit silly since I was used to cutting the heads open. That involved slicing the scalp from ear to ear over the top of the head, peeling the scalp back, and then taking a bone saw and cutting the top of the skull off, thus exposing the lovely, luscious brain.

Yeah, so it probably wasn’t lovely and luscious to most people. But ever since I’d been turned into a zombie the sight of brains got my mouth watering as much as fried pickles and a roast beef po-boy did.

Following Dr. Leblanc’s murmured instructions, I made two incisions from the outer edge of the collar bones to the middle of the sternum, then carefully sliced the rest of the way down the torso.

“Be careful not to nick the bowels,” he cautioned as I maneuvered the scalpel around the belly button. “That’s never fun.”

I gave a short little nod as I crept the scalpel down the abdomen at a snail’s pace. A lesser man than Dr. Leblanc would have snatched the blade from me in frustration at how slow I was going, but he didn’t seem to have the slightest bit of impatience. I fucking adored Dr. Leblanc.

I finally pulled the scalpel free as I reached the pubic bone. “Holy shit,” I said. “I just cut someone open.”

“That you did!” he said, giving me a pat on the back. “Next thing you know you’ll be doing surgery.”

Snorting, I handed the scalpel back to him. “God help anyone who has me as a surgeon.”

He quickly filleted the flesh back from the ribs, then stood back while I took a pair of pruning shears and crunched through ribs and sternum to remove a large triangular section of ribs. “I’ll give you a pass on the surgeon thing for now. But only for now.” He glanced up at me. “I didn’t go to med school until I was in my late thirties. And I wasn’t even the oldest in my class.”

“Uh, I think I should get through the GED first.”

“Fair enough. How’s that going?”

“All right,” I said, but apparently I didn’t sound very convincing. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Okay, I only recently found out that passing the test is one of the conditions of my probation,” I continued, wincing. “Which means I get to see if I can make up for five years of being an ignorant slacker in a little over a year.”

He shrugged as he pulled the lungs out and set them on a cutting board. “I have the utmost faith in you. And what will happen if you fail? Do you truly think you’ll be tossed in jail, or isn’t it more likely that your probation would simply be extended until you pass?”

I let out a gusty sigh. “Well…it would most likely be extended. Which means I’d keep studying and try again.”

“Ah, that’s my girl,” he said. “You’re too tough to let a little setback like that defeat you.” He met my eyes. “Not that I think you’re going to fail, mind you. You’ve done a good job of surviving these past few months,” he said. “You’ve turned your life around in ways that you probably never imagined.”

“I had some help,” I said, managing a weak smile. “I mean, I don’t think I could have done it on my own.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I think you’re past that now. You don’t need help surviving, do you?”

I started to protest, but then I had to stop and consider. “No, I think I have that much down pat. But at the same time it would really suck to not have people around who have my back, y’know?”

He smiled, gave a nod. “Yes, we all need that. However, I believe it’s time for you to take the next step.”

I gave him a blank look. “Er, what would that be? You mean learning how to cut bodies?”

He chuckled low. “That’s a start, but I’m talking in more of a metaphysical sense.” He set the scalpel down, crossed his arms and leaned back against the sink. “You’ve spent this time surviving. But that’s just existing. You can do more. Now it’s time for you to thrive.”

I didn’t even know how to respond to that. Finally I said, “Okay.”

We continued the autopsy, but I found myself thinking about what Dr. Leblanc had said. He was right, and in more ways than he probably knew. I had the potential to live a very long time. Was I going to stay an uneducated goob forever?

I guess that’s up to me.

After I finished cleaning up I swiped the brain of the overdose guy and stuck that container in the cooler in the trunk of my car while retrieving my other container—the one that held my actual dinner. It, too, contained brains, but they were cleverly mixed in with broccoli and stir fry sauce and various other stuff that made the whole thing that much more yummy. Sure, I had no trouble eating brains straight-up, but making the whole thing somewhat gourmet not only made it easier to hide but also kept me feeling more, well, human.

Nick came in as I was finishing eating. There were three of us morgue tech/van driver types, and Nick had been the one who’d trained me. He only topped me by a couple of inches, and in some scenarios could possibly be considered good-looking. He had nice hair and green eyes, but those tended to be offset by the fact that he always seemed to be smirking. He could be a smarmy little shit at times, but every now and then a glimmer of “Nice Nick” peeked through.

He gave a glance to my almost empty container. “Smells good. You cook?”

I gulped down the last pieces, then snapped the lid back onto the container and stuffed it down into my bag. “Sorta. I just throw a bunch of veggies into a pan with some tofu. Add rice, maybe some sweet and sour sauce.”

Nick made a face. “Tofu. Gah. Give me real meat any day.”

I hid a smile as I gathered up my things. If he only knew. Yet as I left the morgue and headed up to the main building a thought occurred to me that made me stop and laugh.

Nick was grossed out by tofu, but not at the fact that I was eating my dinner not twenty feet from a cooler full of dead bodies.

I grinned and continued on. We’re all monsters here.

Chapter 10

It was tempting to sit back and consider Dr. Leblanc’s words to me and daydream about doing more with my life, but right now finding out about the stolen body was a shitload more important. As dorky as it sounded, my fucking honor was at stake, and unless I got this shit figured out I was going to have a helluva hard time having any sort of decent future.

Therefore, I headed straight for the investigator’s office. Derrel was there, painstakingly pecking out a report on the computer. He gave me an absent-minded wave with barely a glance up from the screen.

“Angel, why can’t you be more like Nick?” Derrel said with a black scowl.

I could only stare at him for several breaths before I found my voice. “Wh-what? Why do you say that?”

He gave a hmmphing sound. “Because Nick is a godawful fast typist, and Allen has managed to convince the little shit that if he types up all of Allen’s reports it’ll improve his chances of getting a promotion.” He lifted his head and grinned at me.

I returned the grin with relief. “Well, I can’t type, but I can be more of a suck-up if you want.”

Derrel shuddered. “No, please don’t change a damn thing. I’ve already had to fight off a hostile takeover from Monica.”

“A what?”

“Monica wanted to change the shifts so that she was paired with you. I told her to back the hell off. You’re stuck with me, chick.”

I plopped into a chair. “I’m glad to know you love me so much. Now I need you to prove your love by helping me out with something.”

Derrel clicked on something on his screen, then gave me his full attention. “You want to know everything there is to know about the victim from the lab.”