Signature Kill by David Levien Page B

see.”

24
    I’ll never die
.
    The idea flashes in his mind.
    No one who experiences this ever can
.
    A power surges through him like high-voltage electricity.
    He’s spent the special time with Cinnamon, three hours’ worth, right after her end. There is something magical in the silence, in the utter void of her being. As always, when it is done, he is totally used up. A deep sense of exhaustion and peace creeps up through the soles of his feet and spreads through him. He covers her, there on the floor, and it is time to leave the garage. Cinnamon has to go through this next part alone.
    He knows too much about it. The Latin words:
rigor, algor, livor mortis
. Her tissue will stiffen until her body is like a board, literally like stacked cordwood. She will cool, until she is as chill as the air, as cold as the concrete floor, but somehow feeling even colder to the touch. And her blood will pool in the lower planes of her body until the skin of her back is a beautiful speckled reddish purple. This is a time he prefers to be away, inside, eating a good meal, drinking tea, regathering his energies, poring over his books and planning for the work ahead. By the next night or so, when he goes back to her, she’ll be soft and supple once again. Then he will have his hours, perhaps a few days because it is winter, to finish the project before it is time to move her. He’s waited too long in the past, before he’d known better, only to see black flies and seething larvae boil over a ruined piece. He won’t make a mistake like that again. By now he knows exactly what he’s doing.

25
    “You ready for me? ’Cause if you’re ready, I’m ready.” It was Lisa Mistretta on his voice mail.
    “That was quick,” Behr said when he called her back. It had been a day and a half.
    “It was only a review, how fucking long should it take?” she asked, some amusement in her voice.
    “Okay, where and when?” Behr asked.
    She actually answered this time before hanging up.
    “My place, at eleven, same address you sent the stuff.”
    The house was a tidy brick job in Broad Ripple off East 61st, behind the bars and restaurants. Behr parked in the driveway in back of an amber-colored Infiniti SUV and could see Mission-style furniture in the living room beyond the house’s picture window. But standing in the doorway of the detached garage, an aluminum coffee cup in one hand, the other cocked on a curvaceous hip, was a woman with a mane of black hair. She wore tight jeans and a black turtleneck.
    “This way, buddy,” she said. She only went about five foot five, but her attitude was much bigger. “So you’re Behr?” she said, sticking out her hand.
    “And you’re Ms. Mistretta,” he said. Her grip was firm, her palm cool and smooth.
    “Call me Lisa or you’ll remind me of my old lacrosse coach. The guy was half a fucking perv.”
    “Frank.”
    “Okay. Come on in, Behr.”
    The car evidently lived outside, because the garage had been converted into a comfortable office. The concrete floor was covered with a plush white rug. A gray sofa and black leather chair offset a long brushed-steel desk topped by a high-tech computer. The shelves along the walls were lined with books, mostly clinical texts and medical journals. The only bright spots in the room were an orange beanbag that sat next to a low coffee table piled with the case files Behr had sent her, and Mistretta herself.
    “Sit,” she said, pointing to the couch, and then curled up on the beanbag.
    “So, thanks for this,” Behr said.
    She shrugged. “ ’S no problem. I’m glad to. My feet were going to sleep and I didn’t even realize it,” she said.
    “How’d you end up out here?” Behr asked.
    “Indy?” she said. “New York—my New York anyway—became a fucking nightmare.”
    “Because of the work?”
    “Because of the work, and other things. Then about four years back, my husband got a chance to relocate here. So we came.”
    “How’s that working