Blood Pact

doesn't look asleep." There was no mistaking the waxy, gray pallor, the complete lack of self that only death brings.
    Vicki had recognized it the first time she'd seen it in a police cadet forensic lab and she recognized it now. The dead were not alive. It sounded like a facetious explanation but, as she stared down at the body her mother had worn, she couldn't think of a better one.

    Dr. Friedman looked mildly disapproving as she drew the sheet back up over Marjory Nelson's face, but she held her tongue. She could feel the restraints that Vicki had placed around herself but didn't know the younger woman well enough to get past them.
    "There'll be no need for an autopsy," she said, indicating that the morgue attendant should take the body away. "Your mother has been having heart irregularities for some time and Dr. Burke was practically standing right beside her when it happened. She said it had all the earmarks of a massive coronary.”

    "A heart attack?" Vicki watched as the door swung shut behind the pallet and refused to shiver in the cold draft that escaped from the morgue. "She was only fifty-six.”

    The doctor shook her head sadly. "It happens.”

    "She never told me.”

    "Perhaps she didn't want to worry you.”

    Perhaps I wasn't listening. The small viewing room had suddenly become confining. Vicki headed for the exit.

    Dr. Friedman, caught unaware, hurried to catch up. "The coroner is satisfied, but if you're not . . .”

    "No autopsy." She'd been to too many to put her mother, what was left of her mother, through that.

    "Your mother had a prepaid funeral arranged with Hutchinson's Funeral Parlour, up on Johnson Street, just by Portsmouth Avenue. It would be best if you speak to them as soon as possible. Do you have someone to go with you?”

    Vicki's brows drew down. "I don't need anyone to go with me," she snarled.

    "According to your mother's arrangement, Ms. Nelson, Vicki . . . Ms. Nelson" the funeral director blanched slightly as his client's expression returned him to last names but managed to continue smoothly, "she wanted to be buried as soon as possible, with no viewing.”

    "Fine.”

    "As she also wanted to be embalmed . . . perhaps the day after tomorrow? That would give you time for a notice in the local paper.”

    "Is the day after tomorrow as soon as possible, then?”

    The younger Mr. Hutchinson swallowed. He found it difficult to remain completely calm under such hard-edged examination.
    "Well, no, we could have everything ready by tomorrow afternoon . . .”

    "Do so, then.”

    It wasn't a tone that could be argued with. It wasn't even a tone that left much room for discussion. "Is two o'clock suitable?”

    "Yes.”

    "About the casket . . .”

    "Mr. Hutchinson, I understood that my mother prearranged everything .“

    "Yes, she did . . .”

    "Then," Vicki stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, "we will do exactly as my mother wanted.”

    "Ms. Nelson." He stood as well, and pitched his voice as gently as he could. "Without a notice in the paper, you'll have to call people.”

    Her shoulders hunched slightly and the fingers that reached for the doorknob shook. "I know," she said.

    And was gone.

    The younger Mr. Hutchinson sank back down into his chair and rubbed at his temples. "Recognizing there's nothing you can do to help," he told a potted palm with a sigh, "has got to be the hardest part of this business.”

    The old neighborhood had gotten smaller. The vast expanse of backyard behind the corner house at Division and Quebec Streets that she'd grown up envying had somehow shrunk to postage stamp size. The convenience store at Division and Pine had become a flower shop and the market across from it, where at twelve she'd argued her way into her first part-time job, was gone. The drugstore still stood at York Street but, where it had once seemed a respectable distance away, Vicki now felt she could reach out and touch it.
    Down on Quebec Street, not even the stump remained of the huge maple that had shaded the Thompson house and not even the spring sunlight could erase the shabby, unlived in look of the whole area.

    Standing in the front parking lot of the sixteen-unit apartment building they'd moved to when her father's departure had lost them the house in Collins Bay, Vicki wondered when it had happened. She'd been back any number of times in the last fourteen years, had been back not so long before and had never noticed such drastic changes.

    Maybe because