Ellen looked at the cards, thinking. It kills all of us.

"You know who you should talk to, if you really want to understand the effects of the murders in this city?"

"Who?" Ellen asked her, intrigued. The best leads always came from other leads.

"My uncle. He'll see you, if you can handle it."

Chapter Twenty-nine

Ellen was standing in the Glade-scented entrance hall of the funeral home with its proprietor, Ralston Rilkey. He was a slight man with a compact frame, in his early sixties, and he wore his hair cut short and natural, with steel gray coils tangled at the temples. He had a short forehead, and his eyes were worried above a wide nose and neatly groomed mustache, also going gray.

"And what is it you want to know again?" Ralston asked. "I'm fairly busy. We have two viewings tonight."

"I'd like to know how you've been affected by the murders in the neighborhood. There's been so many lately, especially of children like Lateef Williams. Your niece told me you might help, and Laticia gave her permission to talk to me."

"I'll speak with you, but the interview must be respectful. Here at Ralston-Hughes, we practice dignity in death."

"I understand."

"Then follow me." Ralston left, and Ellen followed him across a red-carpeted hallway, through a paneled door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY, and downstairs into the basement of the converted rowhouse. The carpeting morphed into institutional gray tile, the temperature dipped slightly, and the fake-floral scents were eradicated by a starkly medicinal odor.

"Is that formaldehyde?" Ellen asked, making a note.

Ralston nodded, his bald spot bobbing as he walked ahead, and they reached a set of white double doors, which he opened. The odor grew stronger, and on the wall hung white smocks and plastic face shields. Stainless-steel shelves held boxes of cotton, jars, and bottles with labels that read Kelco Gold Series Arterial Embalming Fluid and Aron Alpha Instant Adhesive. Ellen made notes, trying not to shudder.

Ralston opened another door, and she found herself in a larger room with a glistening white table at its center, tilted at an angle. He stood behind the table in his suit of dark green, gesturing with evident pride. "This is our preparation room, one of them. You'll notice the table is porcelain. Porcelain doesn't react with the embalming chemicals."

"Would you fill me in on the procedure, generally?"

"The first step is washing and disinfecting the body. Embalming is simply the process of displacing blood with fluid, usually of formaldehyde preservative with a red dye, to give the flesh a lifelike appearance. Even African-American skin takes on a pallor once the blood is removed."

Ellen made a note.

"Then we inject the fluid, and this machine does its work, replacing the blood with fluid." Ralston rested his small hand on a yellowish pump at the head of the table. "We insert a trocar, which punctures the viscera and removes fluid. We disinfect the cavities as well, then inject preservative and we pack the orifices."

Ellen wasn't about to ask.

"We wash the body again and apply lotion, to protect against dehydration. After death, the eyes begin to sink into the skull, and we pack cotton into the eye socket, place a plastic eyecap under the eyelid, then pull back the eyelid to apply adhesive and keep the eye closed."

Ellen's stomach turned over.

"Death also causes the facial muscles to relax, and the jaw drops open. We make the eyes and mouth as lifelike as possible. As we say, we set the features."

Ellen tried to remain professional. "Now, how was the procedure in Lateef's case?"

"With Lateef, there were so many gunshot wounds on one side of his face that we had to use his school photo as a guide and build from that foundation."

Ellen tried to visualize it. That little face, smiling from his memorial T-shirt. "Couldn't you use the other side of his face?"

"No. With as many gunshots as he had, there was significant facial swelling, which distorted even the good side of his face. The trauma, you understand. We use chemicals to reduce the swelling."

"How did you cover the bullet wounds?"

"On his face?" Ralston frowned. "You misunderstand me. There was no covering. There was nothing there. So in his case, we reconstructed. We snipped away the excess tissue around the wounds and glued the skin that was left to his cheekbone and eye socket."

Ellen didn't want to know more. Nobody should know this stuff. It was unthinkable. She couldn't help but think of losing Will this way. Of him being the child on the table. Of his beautiful face being the one glued together.

"We poured wax into the bullet holes to fill the gap and used cosmetics to match the shade of the wax to his skin, which was lighter than his mother. Some mortuaries have airbrushes, but we don't need that. I'm forty-two years in this business, and my father had it before me. We don't airbrush."

Ellen rallied at the businesslike note in his tone.

"The result wasn't perfect, but it was acceptable to Laticia and the family, and it gave them comfort, to see him as they knew him in life. Even my niece gave us a good grade."

"That's wonderful," Ellen said, with an admiration she didn't try to hide, but Ralston shrugged it off.

"Even for a single gunshot wound, we wouldn't cover it, that would never work. The putty would simply sink into the wound." He held up an index finger. "That's one thing I've had to order more of, wax and putty. We've already used four times the amount that we did last year, and the manufacturer can't keep it in stock. I have a friend in Newark, he's in the same bind."

Ellen scribbled away. These would be the effects of murder that would flesh out the story, from a tragic perspective.

"And all the eyecaps I have are too big for children. For Lateef and the others, we have to resize the eyecaps. Cut them down with scissors."

Ellen wrote that down, too. "I hope the day never comes when they make eyecaps for kids."

"I hear that." Ralston nodded. "In addition, with Lateef, we didn't use a wire in his mouth. We sutured the muscle and used adhesive, and it worked very well. He had so much bruising, but luckily, the displacement during the injection cleared a lot of that. That's what we'd hoped for."

"You use the word "we" a lot. Did you have help with Lateef?"

"My son John. We worked together." Ralston's tone softened. "We started at eight o'clock and we finished at dawn. My grandson, he's Lateefs age, and well, it wasn't easy for either John or me." He coughed slightly, and Ellen was about to ask a question, but held her tongue when she saw his head bow slightly and a stillness sweep over his slight frame. "Lateef, he's the one I'll never forget. I knew that boy. When he came in, looking the way he did, at first I didn't know what to do." Ralston shook his head, still downcast. "I didn't know what to do. I had to go outside. I stood in the back, by receiving. I asked the Lord to help me, to give me strength."

Ellen nodded. She didn't take a note. It would be off the record. It was too personal. Suddenly her cell phone rang, destroying the quiet and jarring them both. Embarrassed, she reached for her purse. "I'm so sorry," she said, digging. "I should have turned it off."

"Feel free to take the call." Ralston checked his watch, the moment having passed. "I should get back to work."

Ellen found the phone and switched it off, but not before she saw the area code. 302. Delaware.

Cheryl Martin.