“I’ll be upstairs for a while and will fill you in later,” I say to him, and it’s my way of signaling that we can’t talk openly in front of Benton right now. “I’m thinking we should put her in the decomp room. She’s getting into rough shape really fast.”

“I can imagine and it sounds like a plan,” Luke says with his German accent as his blue eyes meet mine. “We’ll get going on that, then,” and Harold and Rusty are wheeling the stretcher through the bay.

They push it up the ramp, and through the door leading inside as Benton and I say good-bye, although we don’t really use that word. We try not to speak in terms of endings but to leave our separations light and airy with a See you later or I’ll call in a bit. As if everything is fine when it’s not.

I wait at the top of the ramp, my messenger bag slung over a shoulder of my sweat-stained scrubs. I watch my tall husband with his wide shoulders, his long stride and straight proud posture as he walks away. He reaches the huge square opening, and it frames him like a painting as he turns to smile at me.

CHAPTER 39

THE FIRST STOP WHEN I enter my building from the bay is the brightly lit receiving area with its walls of stainless-steel coolers and freezers monitored by green digital readouts that turn yellow and red when they aren’t happy.

The air is cool and pleasantly deodorized, and I’m greeted by bickering just inside the door, where Harold and Rusty have parked the stretcher on the platform floor scale. They’ve put on shoe covers, aprons, gloves and surgical caps, and I catch them in medias res, softly pecking at each other and oblivious to anyone who might be listening.

“Well what is it then?” Harold clicks open a pen and he has his notebook open.

“It’s really annoying when you do this.”

“Do what? I’m just asking for verification of what weight you said we should deduct.”

“I didn’t say because I don’t need to.” Rusty holds the long wooden measuring rod in one hand like a shepherd’s crook as he unzips the pouch.

“Then what is it?”

“Why would it be different this time, Harold?”

“It’s always smart to ask.”

“And you always do. It’s eighty-six pounds just like last time we weighed it.”

“But you didn’t check first when it was empty, did you. So we don’t know that for a fact.”

“No, I don’t every single time because it’s stupid,” as Rusty measures the body from the top of the bag over Elisa Vandersteel’s head to the bottom of the bags on her feet.

“What happens if we get asked in court whether we weighed the stretcher?”