Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle Read Free Page B

and van, arriving just before midnight central time. The roads were desolate when they first headed east out of Dallas, but once they passed Shreveport and turned south on I-49, they found a steady and ominous increase in traffic coming from the direction of the Gulf Coast. By the time they reached Baton Rouge six hours later, the outbound lanes were aglow with headlights rising out of the south like sparks pouring from the mouth of a furnace.
    In obedience to their commander’s instructions, Nick’s group dutifully shuffled forward through the entrance of the 150,000-square-foot warehouse. They were more than happy to move inside; the August heat and humidity were stifling and a light rain was beginning to fall, a presage of what was headed their way. As he approached the doorway, Nick looked up into the sky; in the brilliant light of the mercury-vapor lamps, raindrops magically appeared from the infinite darkness and streaked toward him like silver needles. Above the doorway was a sign in Latin: Mortui Vivis Praecipiant —“Let the Dead Teach the Living.”
    Nick felt a tap on his shoulder. A voice behind him said, “A woman walks into a funeral home.”
    Nick turned and found himself looking into the face of a very large man. The man looked directly into Nick’s eyes, rivaling his six-foot-three stature, but the man outweighed Nick by at least forty pounds.
    â€œC’mon,” the man said. “A woman walks into a funeral home.”
    Nick rolled his eyes. “Go ahead.”
    â€œA woman walks into a funeral home. She tells the funeral director, ‘I want my husband buried in a blue suit.’ ‘What’s wrong with the black one he’s wearing?’ he asks. ‘No, it has to be blue,’ she says, and she hands him a blank check. “Whatever it costs,” she tells him. So, at the viewing, the husband is wearing a beautiful blue suit. ‘It’s perfect,’ the woman says. ‘How much did it cost?’ ‘Not a thing,’ the funeral director tells her. ‘After you left, a body came in wearing a blue suit. The man was exactly the same size and build as your husband, so—I switched heads.’”
    Nick just stared.
    â€œC’mon, Nick, that’s my newest joke.”
    â€œI believe you, Jerry.”
    The two men shook hands.
    Jerry Kibbee was a member of Region V, the Great Lakes Region of DMORT. Jerry was a funeral director from Fort Wayne, Indiana, a town that Nick had visited once and vowed never to do so again. Kibbee’s Funeral Home served the good people of Ft. Wayne in all the conventional ways: selling caskets, ordering headstones, providing memorable floral arrangements, and coordinating with police over solemn funeral processions to local cemeteries. For his part, Jerry was a simple mortician with a two-year associate’s degree in mortuary science from a local community college. Beyond that, Jerry had no forensic expertise, a fact those new to DMORT might find surprising—but DMORT was founded by people just like Jerry. In the early 1980s, the National Funeral Directors Association assembled the components of the nation’s first portable morgue, and many funeral directors are still counted among its members. The simple reality is that people like Jerry will always be needed at DMORT; there’s always a place for those who are comfortable handling the dead.
    Jerry’s weight was all in his torso. He wasn’t fat; he just had a barrel-shaped trunk that overshadowed the rest of his body. His arms, by contrast, were slender, and his legs even more so—like a marshmallow on toothpicks, Nick always said. His face was wide and friendly, and his cheeks were always rosy regardless of temperature or season, giving him a look of constant energy and health— and making him look , Nick thought, like a poster boy for the embalmer’s art.
    â€œDidn’t know if I’d see you for this