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I scowled into the darkness Well, this sucked Since I didn’t knohat the hell I had taken, I didn’t dare try to see if so else would do the trick I’d hit my OD quota for the month already, thank you

I stubbornly stayed in bed At so for the Xanax to kick in

Chapter 5

Despite the failure of Xanax, I ot out of bed when my alaran in earnest Nick was an obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive jerk with no social skills, but he took his job da sure I was totally prepared for anything For the rest of the week I was drilled, instructed, trained, and learned to fucking death, but I grittedNick, and actually got the hang of the whole thing faster than I ever expected It helped that there wasn’t much about the job that was particularly difficult or complicated The van drivers were also called bodysnatchers, and that’s basically what our job was: Go to the death scene, grab the dead person, stuff’e And if there were ever any doubts or questions, the investigator was there to clear things up

I’d braced ross or weird stuff when it came to the dead people Rotten bodies, bizarre suicides, that sort of thing I was ready for it I was determined not to freak out, no matter what

What I wasn’t prepared for was the cops

Cops everywhere, and uilty and spastic every ti to re hassled--I had no reason to instantly get all defensive And for the nored runt and nod that they gave various other non-cop types who happened to be on the scene

I’d been on the job for a whole four days before I ed to run into the two detectives who knew exactly what kind of loser I was

It was Detective Abadie who recognized me first We were in the front yard of a two-story house in a nice-as-hell gated subdivision The overweight and out of shape guy ned the house had apparently decided that having a half-million dollar house meant that he couldn’t afford to hire soutters Noas dead hat looked to me like a broken neck after the ladder had slipped He’d taken the plunge into his fancy landscaping--coutters were clean

Abadie’s dark eyes scanned the area, ski He took in the insignia onbitter Meanwhile I pretended to be focusing on so near the body so that I didn’t have to e Detective Roth and whisper soist of what he was saying The burly detective turned around, but to my surprise a smile spread across his face, and he lifted his hand in a wave I couldn’t really pretend I didn’t see it, and it would’ve probably been horrible and rude to ignore it, so I gave hi that it wasn’t one of those cases where he was actually s to someone behind me

Abadie shook his head and stalked off toward his car with the same expression on his face that Allen Prejean had worn--conteust, and a side of disbelief for good measure

Roth watched hi and a s to his work I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, tugged a hand througha little Okay, so Abadie thinks I’ht And the other cops are all pretty le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>