Page 40 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
“See you in hell, Wells Fargo.”
“Do you know what I would like, Ava?”
She brought her brain back online to focus on the present. “I can honestly say I haven’t the vaguest clue,” she replied. “But I can’t wait to hear it.”
He smiled before he could stop himself. She was refreshing, no question. And she seemed genuinely interested in the things he said, even when they were gruesome things or blunt things. If she wasn’t a sociopathic murderer, he couldbe halfway in love with her by now, which was—he hated to overuse a word but this one was apt—absurd.
(“Yeah, but absurd doesn’t mean impossible, big bro.”)
He silently told the ghost of his sister to hush. “I would like to go to Danielle’s memorial tomorrow.”
“Oh. Yeah. Day two, I forgot.” She scrubbed her hands through her hair, then grimaced when she remembered she had greasy catfish fingers. “Well. Forgot on purpose. Going the first time was bad enough.”
“It’s unfortunate you have to go back to work. I had rather hoped we could get together. Ah. At the memorial. Toattendthe memorial,” he corrected himself, internally wincing.
“Well, it’s your lucky night, pal, because it turns out I’m here for a couple more days.”
“You are? But that’s excellent.”
She shrugged.
“Will you attend with me?”
“Sure, but why d’you want to go? Are you hoping to interview family members there? Because, not to tell you your job, doing that at a funeral is gonna piss people off. And there’s nothing worse than being thrown out of a funeral. I wish I didn’t know that from personal experience, by the way.”
He almost laughed. “Noted. But my intention is otherwise. Killers often attend their victim’s memorial. And if, in this case, the vandal isn’t the killer—”
“What, a run-of-the-mill vandal? Just passing by and figured he’d trash a funeral home?”
“—I would imagine he or she wouldn’t be able to stay away regardless. They’ll want visual confirmation that their actions upset the family. They’ll want to see how the cleanup went. They’ll be looking everywhere for something the crew missed.”
“Creepyandinconsiderate.”
“Indeed.”
“I mean, would they at least bring a side dish for the potluck after the service?”
This time hedidlaugh. “Who can know the depths of the funeral-crashing killer’s mind?”
“Depraved bastard,” she agreed.
“Regardless, it happens an astonishing amount of the time. It strikes me as unfathomably risky, which is why it’s part of their pathology. They need the adrenaline surge. They love looking at the chaos they wreaked and the family members they’ve devastated. They want to see the mess they made, and then they want to walk away without cleaning it up.”
“This goes back to your theory, doesn’t it? That Danielle’s killer was at her memorial. You think they’d come back a second time?” Ava looked visibly distressed at the thought, and he fought down the urge to comfort her. “Well, why not?I’mgoing back a second time, which in itself is unfathomable to me.”
“There’s a chance, which is another reason why I wished to attend. But I fear my attendance as a medical examiner would be viewed by the family as inappropriate, in particular since this is not my case and I was a teenager when she died.”
“I’ll get you in.” Ava tried a smile, but it looked wrong on her face. “You’ll be my plus one.”
He snorted.
“Right? Awful. All of it. But we could make something up. We don’t have to tell them who you are.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, we could lie,” she suggested. “You don’t have to be the ME. You could be… um… someone passing themselves off as my coworker?”
“I can’t.”
