“I don’t think there are many of us,” I said. “Does it help in your job?”

“When they’re gone like they should be,” Cleda said. “If I see one lingering, I try to call in their pastor to read a prayer. Sometimes that does the trick.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” I said faintly. “All right. Let me do my thing.” I closed my eyes, which wasn’t necessary but did help, and to get the best impression possible, I laid my hand on the bag. I could feel the chill flesh under the surface.

I feel so bad, I’m so tired…. Where’s Manfred? What’s that man doing here? Looking at me. So tired…sleep.

My eyes flew open to meet the funeral director’s curious blue gaze.

“Natural death,” I said. It wasn’t murder if someone else just stood there and watched. I’d had no sense of touching, or any other kind of contact. Someone, some man, had watched Xylda in her last moments, but that was hardly surprising. It might have been the doctor or a nurse. There was no way to tell. However, the image I got was chilling—someone calmly and dispassionately watching Xylda die. Not aiding, but not preventing, either.

“Oh, good,” Cleda said. “Well, I’m sure the family will be glad to know that.”

I nodded.

The black bag went back into the transition room.

In a somber silence, we retraced our steps across the parking lot and through the corridor back to the front doors of the funeral home.

“I guess you’re braced for a huge amount of business,” Tolliver said. “When the bodies of the—the young men—are released.” I was sure he’d been going to say “victims.”

“We’re going to be pretty busy, yes, sir,” she said. “One of those boys was my nephew. His mama, my brother’s wife, she can’t hardly get out of bed in the morning. It’d be one thing if someone had grabbed him and killed him—that would be bad enough. But to know he lived for a while, and got hurt so bad, and got used so unnatural, that just kills her.”

There was no possible response that would be helpful, because I thought she was exactly right. To know your loved one was cut and burned and raped would make the fact of his death much worse, and there was nothing to be done about it. I’d always figured my sister Cameron had been raped before she’d been killed, without ever having proof of either. And just imagining it might have happened was pretty damn awful. I thought the act of rape itself was unnatural, regardless of the gender of the victim. But an emotional time like this was no time to debate the issue.

“We’re really sorry,” I said.

“Thank you,” Cleda Humphrey said with dignity, and we let ourselves out.