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Hagen closed the button of his jacket and tugged on his cuffs. A somber black sign jammed into the grass verge declared in gold letters that they’d reached the Murray Funeral Home, a standalone one-story building on the same block as an office-furniture store and a yoga studio.

This was where Otto Walker was building a career. It was his last stop before he’d returned home and had his throat cut and his corpse mutilated.

Hagen and Ander strolled up a narrow path that led to the open door. In the entrance, an easel held a picture of an old woman. She wore a blue silk scarf over a lime blouse, her white hair neatly blown out and the lines on her face delicately smoothed using digital effects.

That family was gathered in a chapel to the left. A middle-aged woman sat sobbing in the front row. Older people milled around touching each other’s elbows—grateful, Hagen assumed, the funeral wasn’t theirs. Children ran between the seats, ignoring whispered calls for them to sit back down. Everyone wore black.

The receptionist, a young woman with a blond ponytail and a tight black blazer that sat too high on her black skirt, greeted them with a closed-mouth smile. She waved a silent invitation for them to join the mourners.

Ander reached for his ID and introduced himself.

The pain of Hagen’s father’s funeral came back. He’d been old enough to understand but too young to be ready. The burial had passed in a daze, an event that happened around him not with him. He’d stood by the grave in front of his mother. Her hand had lain on his shoulder. His hand had held his sister Brianna’s.

Though the priest had read something, Hagen didn’t know what. All he could remember were the solemn tones and how the book softly closed at the end before they all walked slowly and silently back to their cars waiting at the entrance.

The difference between the constant ache he carried and the more manageable pain he believed others felt at the passing of a loved one was because of the way his father died.

The difference mattered.

His father hadn’t passed away of old age or died in some random accident or been taken by an illness that had no explanation. A decision had killed him. Someone had decided to take his father, to bring that pain into Hagen’s life.

That choice had added years of burning rage to Hagen’s loss.

Ramirez was dead now. He’d paid for his decision. And though the anger had abated, the ache was still there. It would remain for each of the mourners in that room too.

“Hagen?” Ander had moved to the stairs at the end of the hall. “The owner’s downstairs.”

Hagen gave one last glance at the chapel before following Ander. A heavy door at the bottom of the steps opened into a room that smelled of formaldehyde and disinfectant.

In the middle of the room stood a steel table on which a man’s body lay naked, face up. He’d been old when he died. His head was mostly bald, but the hair that covered his chest and his stick-thin arms and legs was white. His jaw was open so that he looked surprised at being disturbed, though not bothered enough to do anything about it.

Two tubes were connected to his body on the right side of his neck. One was filling the decedent with embalming fluid, while the other sent blood down the drain in the floor.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t come in here.”

A man in a lab coat rose from a chair at the end of the table. He was in his late forties, with a long chin and tidy black hair combed to a straight side parting. The tips of his blue latex gloves were loose on his fingers.

Hagen tore his gaze from the corpse and flashed his badge. “We’re from the FBI. I’m Special Agent Hagen Yates. This is Special Agent Ander Bennett. You’re Chris Murray?”

The man nodded. “Yes, but?—”

“We need to ask you a few questions about your former employee. Otto Walker.”

“Otto.” Murray’s long face seemed to grow longer. Whether it was a trick of the room’s bright light or something in the movement of the mortician’s head, Hagen wasn’t sure. But the mention of the deceased brought a new solemnity to Murray’s eyes. “Yes, of course. That’s perfectly fine.”

His words came out slowly, as though reluctant to fall from his mouth and die in the air.

Murray left the pump humming by the table and took a cotton sheet from a shelf above a sink. He laid the sheet over the deceased, adjusting the edge so that it lined up neatly beneath the entry of the tube.

The attempt to cover the man’s nakedness impressed Hagen. The deceased couldn’t possibly mind, but Murray did. Even in death, he wanted to protect his client’s modesty.

“We can step outside if you want.”

“I can’t leave the decedent.” He paused, as though expecting the body to tell him it was perfectly fine. He wasn’t going anywhere. The deceased said nothing. “Not in the middle of a procedure.”

Ander pushed his hands into his pockets. Hagen couldn’t blame him. The room was uncomfortably cold.

“This won’t take long. Can you tell us when Otto started working for you?”

“It’s so awful.” Murray returned to his seat. “He started here about…oh, two and a half years ago, maybe three. He just helped out at first. But he started mortician school, finished his training about eight months ago, and I took him on full time. It was Father Ted’s idea.”

“Father Ted?” They knew who he was but wanted to hear what Murray had to say.

“Father Ted Barlow. Over at Saint Aloysius up in Idlebrook.” Murray frowned. He seemed to search for a memory, recalling something long gone. “He asked if I had space for an apprentice. It’s really not easy to find staff, not in this business. I told Father Ted I was happy to take Otto on, if he was interested.” When he checked the pump’s pressure gauge, he seemed satisfied.

“Was he?” Hagen stepped back as the pipe twitched. “Interested, I mean?”

“I think so. Yes.” The mortician took a deep breath. “A lot of people…they struggle with this work. They think they’re going to be okay. But at the first sight of a dead body, they…well, they faint or turn pale. It’s not an easy job. But Otto didn’t flinch. Not at all. He stood over the decedent, respectfully, and listened to the instructions. And he asked questions.”

“About?”

“Well, that’s a good question in itself.” Murray turned off the pump. The hum died away. He reached for the tube sending embalming fluid into the dead man’s artery but changed his mind. “Once, he wanted to know how I was sure the deceased was dead. I’ve never been asked that before.”

Ander rested an elbow on the stainless steel counter that ran around the room. “What did you tell him?”

“Honestly? I don’t recall. Some wisecrack about trusting the death certificate, I think. That was probably it.”

Hagen eyed the end of the tube in the artery, the cut on the man’s neck. Murray would probably remove it when they left the room and then sew up the opening. Dressed, no one would know the old man had been opened and bled.

“Was Otto a good learner?”

“He was…” Murray sighed. He folded his hands in his lap. His plastic apron crinkled. “Otto was an eager student, and he flourished. Like I said, this isn’t an easy job. There are a lot of chemicals to study, some biology, and more than a little practical hands-on craftwork. But he was sharp. He had an instinct for the carotid artery, for example, and he never struggled with a trocar.”

“A trocar?”

Stella had mentioned a trocar when she spoke about her experience after her brother Jonathan died. Here was a chance for an illustration.

“It’s a kind of…here.” Murray reached behind him and took what looked like a long steel needle from the counter. “This is a trocar. Three cutting edges in a single tube. We insert the tip below the navel and use it to remove gases and fluids from internal organs.” He lifted his chin toward his client. “I won’t show you.”

Hagen had rarely felt more grateful. “And Otto was comfortable using that? What else was he skilled at?”

“All of it.”

“Right.”

Hagen pulled out his phone and brought up the picture of the alley where Patrick Marrion was found. Widening his fingers, Hagen zoomed in until all that was visible was the cut above the victim’s clavicle. He showed Murray the screen.

“What do you make of this?”

Murray put the trocar back, pulled off a glove, and took the phone.

“It looks like the cut we make for arterial embalming. It’s what I’m doing here. See? I make a cut so I can reach the jugular vein and the carotid artery.” The mortician showed Hagen a cut identical to the one on Patrick Marrion. But after pulling on a fresh glove, Murray took it a step further. “I put the embalming pump here.”

“That’s the carotid?” Hagen didn’t really need to ask. He had learned a lot about this particular anatomy from Dr. Brennan.

“Correct!” Murray sounded like a proud teacher. “And the drain tube goes here. That’s the jugular.” He demonstrated, setting the tube in place. “And voilà”

For a moment, Hagen thought the mortician was going to turn the pump on. He was not prepared for that.

Murray saw his discomfort. “Don’t worry. I won’t turn it on right now. Wouldn’t want to hurt your shoes.”

Hagen would definitely not be okay with any bodily fluid hitting his Italian loafers. He shifted the conversation a bit. “Do you think this could be Otto’s work?”

When he held his phone out again, Murray politely did not touch the screen with his gloved hands, especially after his demonstration. Who knew what the man had touched today.

“Could be. Honestly. It looks like the kind of cut any skilled mortician would make. Otto would’ve been able to do this comfortably.” He stopped and looked closer, suddenly realizing what Hagen was suggesting. “Look, I can’t say for sure.”

Hagen put the phone back into his pocket. “If you were to perform these cuts on a living person, what would happen?”

The mortician looked taken aback. “Well, that person would die, and quickly too. Within two to five minutes. All the blood would be pumped out of them. They’d be completely exsanguinated, as we say.”

Hagen and Ander shared a look. It seemed like Otto had used his knowledge, but certainly not in the way it was intended.

Ander tapped a fingernail over the counter’s steel top. The sound echoed through the room. Murray’s basement was as clean and cutoff as a forensics lab.

“Do you know if Otto had any friends? Or anyone he mentioned in particular he was close to?”

“Friends? I don’t know. I assume he did. Otto didn’t talk about his personal life. Honestly, he didn’t talk much at all. That’s why I thought he might have a future as an embalmer. This isn’t a job for extroverts.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I knew he had an uncle he was close to. And like I said, I know he and Father Ted had a good relationship. But he never mentioned anyone his own age. I once tried to ask him if he had a partner, and he literally laughed. I remember what he said, since it struck me as sad. ‘Who’d want to go out with me?’ I was surprised by that, since he was a good-looking fellow. But, no, my sense was that he didn’t have much of a social life.”

Ander tried to smile but couldn’t seem to get any feeling behind it. “He didn’t mention anyone visiting from out of town? A friend he hadn’t seen for a while, maybe? Or someone he met online?”

Shaking his head, Murray pushed a button on the pump. The hum returned. The pipe shook. A smell of preserving fluid filled the room and burned the back of Hagen’s throat.

Murray held the tube in place, jammed into the dead man’s artery. “No, nothing like that.”

Hagen cut in. “How about in the days up until he died? Did you notice any change in his demeanor?”

Murray cocked his head. “Actually, now that you mention it, he did seem sort of jumpy Monday morning.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I didn’t think it was anything at the time. But I came down here mid-morning. I’d forgotten my pen. And, I don’t know, I must’ve spooked him or something, as he upset a tray full of tools. They scattered all over the floor. Then he snapped at me, saying I shouldn’t sneak up on him like that.”

“And that was unusual?”

Murray nodded. “Very much so. I mean, I guess he might have been spooked because he thought I was upstairs, since there was a service going on. For the most part, he was a very cool customer. I can’t remember a time when he snapped at me like that before. Maybe a little bit when he first started working. And then, of course, he went home early on Wednesday. He’d never done that before. But I’m sorry, I do need to get back to it now.”

Hagen pulled out a card.

Murray looked up, his fingers still guiding the embalming fluid. “It’s terrible what happened to Otto. I still haven’t told the rest of the staff. I don’t know how to break it to them. I’ll tell them at the end of the day, I think.”

Hagen was surprised. “They’re not used to being around loss?”

“Not their own.”

He drew his lips into a thin line. Hagen didn’t envy him breaking the news.

They made their way out. The door of the chapel was closed. From the other side of the wall came a man’s deep voice and the sound of quiet sobbing.

Otto Walker had killed Patrick Marrion. Hagen was confident of that. The mark on Marrion’s neck was an embalming cut. He’d used his knowledge to bleed out his victim.

Now the question was—who killed Otto Walker?