The Morgue and Me (3 page)

“Well,” my mom said, “I thought you might be interested or, God forbid, happy for Julia doing so well. And the two of you, winning the same scholarship . . .” She trailed off in sorrow over my obtuseness.

The Spencers used to live next door to us. Julia is one grade below me, and we were friends until my junior year. And then, abruptly, we weren’t. My mom had no idea what had happened between us, which is why she still brought Julia up all the time.

“What?” she said, when she caught me rolling my eyes.

My dad reached an arm across to her. “Dear, the referenda on Miss Spencer . . .”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself, Dad.”

My mom placed her napkin on her lap. “It wasn’t anything like that. It’s just that, well, at the very least you’re going to have to see her at the scholarship ceremony. After that, I won’t mention her name in your presence, if that’s what you want.”

She sighed and focused on her beets.

I couldn’t concentrate on anything for the rest of dinner—anything, that is, besides how it had felt to walk away from Julia’s locker a year and a half ago. I’d thought about that a lot. I’d constructed a vivid memory full of colors (the green Homecoming banner), sounds (“Christopher, please . . .”), and smells (kiwi lip gloss), but it happened so long ago I couldn’t say how much of it was real anymore.

The sting was real, I knew that much.

I felt it all over again and never managed to bring up Dr. Mobley.

 

 

The next day, the
Courier
ran the story on the bottom half of page A7, between the Word Jumble and an advertisement for Dirty Dan’s Landscaping and Snow Removal. I don’t normally read past the front page, but I wanted to see if the morgue’s latest guest had made the paper. He had, but it wasn’t much of a story:

At least I knew the guy’s name, Mitchell Blaylock.

I tore the article from the paper and called my best friend, Mike Maske.

Mike lives in a wooded area at the edge of town, in a house that’s basically a glass rectangle and gets photographed for design magazines about every other week. His parents are rich, hot tempered, and about to get divorced. On the rare occasion they’re home, Mike’s usually eager to escape. He bounded out as soon as I pulled up behind his mom’s silver Porsche Boxster.

He was wearing his customary summer garb: Tevas, long-sleeved T-shirt, and a pair of glimmering basketball shorts. His aviator sunglasses reflected the sun as he drank from a cup with pink sludge in it. His latest concoction.

“Calling it Strawberry Fields,” Mike said as he folded his lanky body into the passenger seat. “Wanna taste?”

I declined. Mike’s been on a smoothie kick lately. He wants to start a chain of smoothie stores with drinks named after popular songs. It’s about the hundredth business idea he’s had since we bonded over his plan to sell digital baseball cards on the Internet back in sixth grade. I thought for sure he’d be Forbes’s Businessman of the Year, but the only scheme he’s followed through on is becoming a small-time bookie for college students at NWMU, which, according to Mike, he does pretty well at.

Anyway, I figured Mike had learned a thing or two about keeping cash from watchful eyes, so I was eager to get his take on Dr. Mobley’s hidden stash.

I gave him the basics as we drove toward the harbor. They have food stands and pleasure boats down by the docks there. If you’re lucky, maybe a few girls in bikinis. It’s sort of our default destination, but I had something else in mind.

Mike had his head back and his knees up on the dash—more interested, it seemed, in savoring the subtle flavors of Strawberry Fields than Dr. Mobley’s $15,000. I had to prod him when I finished: “So, c’mon, what do you think?”

“I guess it’s weird,” Mike said lazily, “but I don’t know.”

“Help me think. Why would anybody carry around so much money? Maybe you’d take a big wad of cash to an auction?”

“An auction? For what? Farm equipment?” Mike shook his head, downed his drink, and tossed the cup into the backseat (which, to be fair, has a kitchen-sink aura of untidiness). “The guy had a bunch of cash; we’ll never know why. Mysteries of the universe, man, they’re all around us. Go with it.”

It was time to pull out my big gun—the theory I’d hit on that morning. “All right, listen to this. He’s not just the medical examiner, he’s a pediatrician, too. I think he’s selling Ritalin or something. Maybe Xanax. Illegal prescriptions, you know. It’s big business.”

“I could see that,” Mike said. “A fine conspiracy theory you’ve got there. Now drive on, Jeeves.” He tilted his seat back, catching rays, his hair floating in the wind.

I should have expected as much. Mike thought I read too many spy novels. Last year, he said more girls would be into me if I “got out of my head” every once in a while. I asked him if he got his psychological insights from dating shows.
No
, he’d said,
Julia Spencer
. It’s the only time I’ve ever wanted to punch him.

Mike had fallen half-asleep by the time I parked the car. We were across the street from the hospital parking lot. The dashboard clock said 11:55—about the time that Dr. Mobley left work on Mondays.

Mike’s head swiveled in confusion as he put his seat upright.

“Uhhhh, what the hell are we doing here?”

“We’re going to tail him.”

D
r. Mobley didn’t leave until 12:20.

It was just a theory, but I figured that if we followed him around for a bit, we might find something out about his (hypothetical) secret life that somehow involved carrying large amounts of cash. I have to give Mike credit—he was being pretty cool about going along with my plan.

“Hallelujah,” he said when Dr. Mobley’s rusted red Buick finally turned out of the exit. I pulled onto Mercury Drive, a few hundred yards in back of Dr. Mobley’s beater.

A mile down, Dr. Mobley turned in to a strip mall and headed for Dino’s, a pricey restaurant where parents take their NWMU-student kids when they come up to visit.

I found a spot in the back of the lot. “Slink down,” I told Mike, but we didn’t need to bother—Dr. Mobley was oblivious. He took forever to dock his boat in a handicapped spot, and then another half hour to teeter inside. He almost lost his balance on the way; he had to steady himself on a motorcycle parked near the entrance.

It was a red racing-style motorcycle, and for a second I thought Dr. Mobley and the bike were going to topple over together. Finally, he made it up the steps, and the restaurant door closed behind him.

Within two minutes Mike was shifting about in his seat. He was like the rookie cop in a bad stakeout flick. That would make me the wizened professional investigator—the one who always explains to the young buck that police work isn’t as glamorous as they make out in the academy. I’d hand him a coffee, maybe some pistachios, and tell him to settle in for a long night. The steam from my cup would shroud my face as I kept watch, brooding on my marriage that’d been wrenched apart by long hours on the job. My marriage to a girl named Julia—

“Dude, it’s going to take that guy all day to eat,” Mike said. “I mean, this is a blast and everything, but . . . oh no.”

His eyes had snagged on something in front of a clothing store. An athletic girl held blue shopping bags in her hands like barbells, scowling into the sun. Her thick blonde hair swished as she scanned for her car . . . and found us instead.

“Ohhh no,” I said.

Dana Ruby. The mayor’s daughter and, more importantly, Mike’s on-and-off girlfriend. Mike takes most of life in stride, but the two of them made a volatile mix. A lot of people at Petoskey High claimed to hate her, but they would’ve died to be friends with her. It was something about her ego—magnetic, repulsive, and roughly the size of Lake Michigan.

She was prancing toward us like a runway model: high knees and wounded lips and “dare me” eyes. She had the looks to pull it off.

“So, uhhh, there’s something I didn’t tell you,” Mike said.

“You’re back together?”

By then she was almost to the Escort, spreading her bag-laden hands in a
wtf?
kind of way. She leaned inside the car and gave Mike a Euro-peck.

“Hey, Newell.” She was the only one in the world who called me by my last name. “So, what might you boys be doing? There’s something kinda pervy about two guys just sitting in a car together in the middle of the day, you know. Just FYI.”

I thought we were going to have to explain ourselves, but then her face brightened with a thought. “Hey, did you tell him about my party? Newell, you’re totally invited.”

“Umm, no, not yet,” Mike said, and she slapped the side of his head. It was playful, but it brought back a memory. I had watched her play volleyball once, and when she spiked the ball, there was something scary about it. I remember thinking:
anger issues
.

Mike glanced at me. “Yeah, he’ll come.”

“Righto. I’m there.” I’m not the biggest fan of parties, but Mike is unusually vulnerable when it comes to all Dana-related matters, so I couldn’t let him down.

“So let’s do something,” Dana said. “Unless this parking lot is more exciting.”

It was just the excuse Mike needed. He was halfway out of the car before she even finished. “Sorry, dude, but I’m gone.”

“No problem.”

“Come with, Newell,” Dana said, but I made some grumblings about needing to put some hours in at work, which was actually true.

They said good-bye and drove away in Dana’s Jetta, with the Top 40 station blasting into the wind. After that, it felt pretty ridiculous to just sit there alone.

 

 

Things at the morgue were back to normal. With Dr. Mobley at lunch I could have searched the whole place, but there was nothing to look through other than his trench coat (pockets empty) and an old pair of winter boots (also empty). The brown briefcase was gone. The desk had no new infusions of cash. Dr. Mobley had left some documents for filing, but that was about it.

The only item I noticed was in the top drawer—an empty plastic case for a Vista View digital photo memory card. I could hardly imagine Dr. Mobley using a digital camera, but it made sense that he would buy the cheapest brand. I tried a Vista View card once, and my pictures reeked.

I had planned to save the best part of the day—taking another look at the dead guy—for last. Work first and all that. But my curiosity got the best of me and I headed to the autopsy room.

I had no idea how long a dead body stayed at the morgue, but Mitchell Blaylock had come in just yesterday. I tried the body coolers one by one. The first two were locked, but the third one opened at my pull. The drawer glided open until the whole body, covered in a white sheet, slid out into the stark light and bumped to a stop.

I covered my nose against the sweetish smell coming off him. The sheet ended at the ankles, where a pair of bony feet stuck out. He had a tag on his toe—it looked like a luggage claim—with his name written in green ink:
Mitchell A. Blaylock, No. 09-341
.

Squiggles of shiny black hair peeked out from the top of the sheet. The guy had been dead for more than a day and still could have starred in a Pantene ad. I grabbed the edge of the sheet and thought for a good three seconds about whether I was being disrespectful. With a breath, I drew it away from his face.

There’s no way around it: Mitch Blaylock was an ugly guy. His nose was too long and his eyes were set too far apart and he had wispy little eyelashes. A scar ran through his lip. Worry lines spiked his forehead and a smudged blue tattoo colored his chest. He had puffy muscles in his upper body, the kind you get doing construction instead of at the gym.

His body told a story I would never know. It made me slightly sad, and then disgusted with myself for disturbing his peace. I returned the sheet over him and slid him back, dazed and eager to get done with my work.

I filed Dr. Mobley’s papers: correspondence with the medical examiner in Washtenaw County, copies of a budget proposal, and some reports from the state. At the bottom was a death certificate for Mitchell Blaylock. Original death certificates got filed with the county, a copy went to Lansing. We held our own copy in the office, and after a while it would be sent to storage somewhere and then forgotten about, like the bodies themselves.

The certificate, one page long, had even less information than the
Courier
article
—
just his name, dates of birth and death, not much more. The surprising item was typed at the bottom, not far above Dr. Mobley’s narrow, chicken-scratched signature. This is what it said:

“Cause of death: Deceased shot self.”

I turned right around, returned to the autopsy room, and pulled Mitch out again.

“Me again,” I said apologetically as I checked for evidence of the suicide. He hadn’t shot himself in the mouth, or the temple. Or anywhere else I could see. I held my breath and nudged his head just a little, to check the back. Nothing there.

Consumed with a morbid curiosity, I pulled the sheet down to his knees. For a minute, I had trouble processing what I saw.

The five bullet wounds made a raggedy circle on his torso. They were tidy and small—polite looking, you could say. I counted the five entry points again. One of the bullets had probably entered his heart. One of them, perhaps, his liver. My stomach revolved on itself.