Page 4 of The Sin Eater (Carnival of Mysteries #27)

Ezra

I ’m used to taking on someone’s sins.

But I’m not used to diving into their memories.

His need surrounded him like a cloud, a kick in the ass that shifted my thinking from how soon can I get out of here to how soon can I get Geneva out of here so I can eat some sin?

And how did I miss such a big red flag? I pick the corpses, not the other way around.

I should have been freaking out. Instead, I snuck a cracker onto his chest. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a cracker or scone or goddamn Girl Scout cookie.

I just need something baked, that’ll absorb the sins so I can eat them. At least that’s what Dad always said.

Dad . He didn’t actually tell me much more than that. He taught me some prayers, he told me to avoid going too long without doing it, and he had me swear an oath never to give the act a name until I pass it on to the next generation.

Which, fuck that noise. I’m a gay man. These fucked-up genes end with me.

But he never, ever, ever said anything about a corpse whispering in my ear, demanding that I eat its sins.

I should have known this was one bad deal.

Geneva was more than happy to take off a couple minutes early.

Must have had a date or something. Dr Chen stayed, though, catching up on charting, so I made excuses to hang around.

When I finally had the place to myself, I brought out the body and said the opening prayers.

The Our Father as the warm-up act, then a plea for strength and forbearance and that I’m equal to the task.

Finally, a request that the soul of the deceased will be allowed to walk free from their sins.

I started the prayers anyway, but before I got to the part about forgiving our trespasses, I got sucked into the mind of a guy who’d been really, really shitty.

He was mean, selfish, and greedy, which wasn’t a huge surprise. A lot of us are. The murder, though, was something new.

He’d killed a woman, and he fucking enjoyed it .

The memory roils my gut until I’m ready to puke. Shit. I can’t throw up or the sins will get on the floor . I don’t even know what that would do to me, or the floor, or whoever has to work here tomorrow, so I grit my teeth, fingers interlaced on top of my head, and swallow down the bile.

Used to be, after the eating, my father and grand-whatever parents would sit with the body for the whole night.

Best-case scenario, I can only manage a couple of hours.

With this guy, there’s no fucking way I’m going to stick around any longer than I absolutely have to. Damon’s arrival is almost a relief.

Almost.

I mean, any interruption would have been a blessing, but Damon can tell right off that something’s wrong. For one, I’ve probably got saltine crumbs on my face. Sure as hell can’t explain things to him, though. Instead, I act the asshole until he and his nurse friend take off, and then I go to work.

See, as a morgue tech, I’m in the corner documenting while the cops poke and prod a crime victim, taking blood and hair and stuff for evidence.

Evidence? Wait. My heart’s racing so fucking fast it makes my ears ring. I drop into the nearest chair and put my head between my knees. I’m not a damn cop and I have no business thinking in terms of crime and evidence .

Except I’d seen a young woman at the moment of her death, her blond hair back-combed and sprayed in a perfect ’80s crown, her eyes growing wide as the realization hits, and then dimming.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my ever-loving god .

Jaw clenched so I don’t scream, I force myself to rewind the scene.

Her hair dates her, and her shirt is a blur of bright pink, maybe one of those polos with the alligator.

That’s it. That’s all I got. The area around her is also pretty nondescript.

Outdoors, probably. I let myself sink deeper.

Cold. Damp. Pine and mud. So maybe somewhere around here, though it could be any time of year except maybe July or August.

Rational thought gives way to absolute panic. I can’t breathe. I can’t even see. I was doing you a favor, man. Showing me your shitty-ass memory was fucking cruel .

I drag in as much air as my lungs can hold and let it go slowly. Freaking out can only last for so long and then I gotta conjure some kind of plan. Because yeah, I know the guy’s name—James Smith—and I know he murdered a woman.

And I know that memory’s gonna haunt me unless I figure out who she was and what the hell happened to her.

I mean, I know what happened to her. Fuck. I saw it. But where? And when? Why? For all I know, maybe Murder Dude was convicted and did his time.

I don’t believe that, though. I’d poked through his chart while the doc did his autopsy, and there were no social work notes that indicated he’d had any kind of criminal history. Nothing much in his history at all, except that he’d lost a fight with a car.

If I call in an anonymous tip, will the cops even follow up? It’s not like I can tell them I saw him off a woman while I was absolving him of his sins.

Anger chases the nausea away. Rage . My head starts to throb. I’d sent some asshole murderer off to the hereafter with a clean slate. None of Dad’s little lessons covered that level of bullshit.

Another deep breath doesn’t do jack to slow my heartbeat or soften the pickax that’s hammering my brain.

The body of James Smith will be here at least until tomorrow afternoon while some poor ICU social worker tries to figure out where to send him next.

My guess is we’d already know if there was family involved, so likely the body’ll go to Mount Olivet down in Renton for cremation.

And if the cops don’t get here before that, they won’t have any evidence.

I take one more deep breath and make a decision.

There’s a real-ass pay phone at the light rail station on Broadway, and just in case, I can trim the dude’s nails and hair to save some of his DNA.

No point in trying to draw blood since it’s coagulated by now.

Besides, they’ve probably got some on hold in the lab from his ICU stay.

Working quickly so I won’t second-guess myself, I drag him back out of the cooler.

His nails are long, with half-moons of dark brown crud underneath them.

I trim his pinkies and drop the bits in a sterile specimen cup.

If anyone does care to look, hopefully they’ll think he liked having one short nail on each hand or something.

I trim some hair, too, letting it fall on top of the nails in the cup, and screw the green plastic lid closed.

I don’t know why I’m doing this. There’s no way anything I collect will count as legitimate evidence and it will probably only get me in trouble.

Can’t stand to do nothing, though.

His sins weigh on me while I work. I mean, sins do carry a weight, and this guy’s are like a twenty-pound bag of flour strapped to my back. I’m off work for the weekend, which should make me happy. Instead, I worry about what three days spent rattling around in my own head will do to me.

Nothing good. That’s for damned sure.

Plus, I gotta do it without cigarettes, although hello , it seems like murder should count as extenuating circumstances.

As soon as that thought forms in my mind, the need for a smoke grabs me by the throat.

It’s my penance, though. There’s nothing quite like denying myself a cigarette to make me really feel it.

Fuck .

Can’t have sex, either. It’s a pretty effective one-two punch.

Fortunately, I’ve got a plan for emergency nicotine fits, at least. Geneva keeps a “secret” candy jar—so secret that anyone who’s spent any time here knows where it is—and I make sure there are always at least a couple lollipops in there.

Doesn’t matter what kind: Dum-Dums, Tootsie Pops, or even the cheap-ass type that are literally flat discs of colored sugar.

They don’t make the weight any lighter, but they all keep my mouth busy, which stops me from crawling out of my skin.

Likely it’s against the rules somewhere for me to try to take the edge off my suffering. Guess I’m just a rebel.

Either that or my attachment to reality is really, really tenuous.

There’s only one place where my brain will shut off, and that’s the dance floor.

Which is weird, right? Like, I put the A in antisocial, but I love nothing better than to be in the middle of a crowd of sweating bodies, with a heavy beat drowning out the sound of my own thoughts.

Yeah, that’s what’s next. Somewhere there’s a dance floor with my name on it.

After what I just went through, I need it. F. M. L . I might need to spend the whole weekend on the dance floor.

Sucker in my mouth, I leave the dead to their own devices, slipping out through a side door and into the dark maw that is the loading dock.

Fifteenth Street is buzzing with freaks trying to get their Friday evening started just right.

My apartment is only about four blocks from the hospital.

I pass it on my way to the light rail station where I use the pay phone—a first for me.

I pitch my voice as low as I can manage and tell the 9-1-1 operator what I know about James Smith.

When she starts asking questions, I hang up.

Home is in one of the circa 1940 buildings built all over Seattle to deal with the influx of workers in the new aeronautics industry. I might move around a lot, but I make an effort to learn about the place I’m in.

It’s a studio apartment, a twelve-by-twelve foot room with a kitchenette separated by a pair of French doors, and a closet big enough to fit a twin mattress.

The rent is ridiculous and I pay it more-or-less gladly.

I couldn’t stand a roommate, so it is what it is.

Plus, I need a parking spot for the car that I only drive when I’m going off the Hill and guaranteed not to drink.

A classic like Dorothy May deserves only the best.