he sure enough dead, Doc?” one of the old men asked.
“Sure enough,” Coop said. “But it looks as if he was ready to go.”
Agreement chorused through the hallway, and a few amens.
They threaded back through the crowd to the stairs.
“This is going to be harder than I thought,” Coop murmured.
Wesley frowned. “What do you mean? The guy even dressed up in the suit he wants to be laid out in. I wouldn’t think it could get any easier than that.”
“Ever tried to move a body in full rigor mortis?”
Wesley swallowed. “No.”
“Let’s just say that nothing bends.”
“But the guy is sitting up.”
“Exactly.”
Wesley grimaced, feeling like he could lose his eggs on the spot.
They passed Sarah, who angled a sly smile at Coop, and then they walked outside to the hearse. The fresh air revived Wesley a bit as Coop unlocked the rear door and pulled out the gurney.
Staring at the flat surface, Wesley asked, “So how are we going to get a guy frozen in a seated position to lie flat on the gurney?”
Coop sighed. “Good question. It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have an audience, but a sheet’s not going to hide anything.” He scratched his head, then worked his mouth from side to side. “In the back seat, there’s a hand truck. Get it.”
Wesley did as he was told, and soon they were back in Gentry Dunbar’s room. His sister, sensing the end, was crying softly. Wesley’s heart went out to her and he wondered if the old man in the chair had put his older sister through as much hell as he had put Carlotta through.
Coop helped the woman to her feet and led her toward the door. “We need to move Gentry now, Miss Dunbar, but I was wondering—since he loved this chair so much, how about if we give him one last ride in it?”
Her eyes rounded. “You mean take him out in the recliner?”
“Yeah,” Coop said, as if it were perfectly normal. “We’ll make sure you get the chair back, of course.”
The old woman smiled wide. “He’d like that. And just give the recliner to Goodwill.”
“Fine,” Coop said. “We’ll be right out.” When she left, Coop handed Wesley a pair of rubber gloves and donned a pair himself. Then he turned to assess Gentry.
“He’s starting to smell,” Wesley said, covering his nose with his sleeve.
“The cells begin to break down the second the heart stops beating,” Coop offered calmly. He bent over and pried open the man’s mouth with two gloved fingers.
Wesley winced but couldn’t look away.
Coop made a noise in his throat. “Just as I suspected.”
“What’s wrong?” Wesley asked.
“The reason that Gentry here had prior knowledge of his death is because the old boy did himself in.”
Wesley’s eyes bugged. “Suicide?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know?”
“Look—his tongue is dry and flushed, probably an overdose of antidepressants.” He closed the man’s mouth, then walked over to a side table, opened a drawer and pulled out several prescription bottles. “Doxepin and trazodone—probably took a little of each, just enough to do the job.”
Wesley bit his lip. “His sister will be crushed.”
“She won’t hear it from me,” Coop said lightly.
“But won’t it be on the death certificate?”
“Only if the medical examiner notices.”
“You’re saying he won’t?”
“He, she, whoever is doing the autopsy. Gentry’s an old man who died in a nursing home and probably was being medicated for a number of ailments. His autopsy isn’t going to be a high priority in an office where hundreds of autopsies are performed every day.”
“But you spotted it right away,” Wesley said.
Coop was silent for a few seconds, then said, “I’ve been doing this for a while.” He covered the man with the sheet, tucking it in around the sides of the chair. “Okay, when I tilt the chair, slide the hand truck underneath.”
Wesley did and between the two of them, they managed to balance the chair on the hand truck. When they wheeled it out into the hall, there were guffaws of laughter, applause and an impromptu rendition of “I’ll be Seeing You.” Wesley couldn’t help but smile as they wheeled the old man out to the hearse.
Getting the recliner into the back of the hearse was another matter, but they managed. In the process, Wesley’s hand slid under the sheet and he accidentally touched the man’s stiff fingers. He flinched, then realized the skin felt more like a cold bar of soap than anything sinister. A few minutes later when he swung into the front seat and banged the door closed, he was feeling pretty good about himself. “That wasn’t so bad,” he said to Coop.
Coop gave him a lopsided smile. “Don’t get too cocky on me.”
“Do you get a lot of funeral home business this way?”
“Yeah,” Coop admitted. “There’s decent money in contracting body retrieval with the morgue, but to be honest, it also helps my uncle’s business. People get to know us. If they haven’t already selected a funeral home, nine times out of ten, they’ll go with us.”
A shrewd businessman, Wesley decided, and wondered how much Coop was worth. Death was probably a pretty lucrative business, since it never let up.
“So when do I get paid?”
Coop’s eyebrows rose and he laughed. “Jumping the gun a little, aren’t you? We haven’t even officially delivered the body to the morgue.”
Wesley gave an embarrassed little laugh. “I have a fine to pay off, man.” Not entirely the reason he needed the cash so soon, but it would do.
Coop nodded. “I hear you. I’ll pay you every Friday, twenty-five bucks for every body you help me move.”
Wesley nodded. “Sounds fair.” His internal calculator kicked in. Even if they moved only four bodies a day, that was a hundred bucks, seven hundred per week, and with the crime rate and traffic fatalities in Atlanta, he was probably being conservative. Business would probably be even better on weekends and holidays.
Wesley’s pulse began to drum with excitement. For the first time in his life, he was earning real money.
“You
