Frozen Stiff Read Online Free Page B

hood of the car. I make a half-assed attempt to catch it, ensuring that it tips upside down, dumping its contents onto the road.
    “Oops,” I say. “Sorry about that.”
    “Goddammittohell!” Richmond slurs past another mouthful of pizza. With a grunt and a groan he bends down and starts picking the slices up from the ground, placing them back in the box. If I think I’ve saved him from himself, I quickly realize otherwise as I watch him flick some gravel off one of the slices and then proceed to eat it.
    Muttering to myself, I head back to the body site and trudge two more buckets up, passing Colbert along the way. I wait for him to bring the final two up and place them in the back of the hearse.
    “Thanks, I appreciate the help,” I say loudly for Richmond’s benefit. I slam the tailgate door closed and glare at Richmond, who is still stone-picking his slices. “I’m ready to head back to the morgue,” I tell him.
    “I’m not,” he says, shoving more pizza into his maw of a mouth.
    “Guess I’ll see you back there then.”
    He shakes his head at me and swallows down his food. “I should go with you, to ensure the chain of evidence.”
    “As a deputy coroner, I can do that alone. But if you want to come with me, you better do it now because, ready or not, I’m leaving.” I climb in my car, start the engine, and have the satisfaction of seeing Richmond’s face flush nearly purple as he grabs his pizza box, throws it into the passenger seat of his car, and then dashes—if that lumbering gait can be called a dash—to the driver’s side of the car. As he squeezes in behind the steering wheel his car dips heavily to one side, and as I pull out I see him start his car with one hand as he shoves another piece of pizza into his mouth with the other.

Chapter 4
    R ichmond follows me back to the morgue, steering with one hand while he shovels food into his mouth with the other. I want to be disgusted by him, but truth is, I’m envious. My love affair with food rivals his, and his who-gives-a-shit attitude about his physique is one I wish I could adopt. Maintaining my weight has always been a battle, and lately it’s become more like a war. Just being within breathing distance of food makes me gain.
    Plus I have a theory about weight ups and downs. I’m convinced there are set amounts of fat that exist in the universe, as well as within every little microcosm of society, be it a work group, or a family, or a set of friends. Like other forms of mass, fat can’t just disappear, and it tries to maintain a state of equilibrium. So if one person in a given microcosm loses weight, someone else in the same group has to gain. It’s the basic physics of fat and, unfortunately, my little niche of the universe seems to be populated with a bunch of persistent, consistent losers who keep trying to shift their share of the fat onto me. If I ever figure out who they are, I’m going to start spiking their meals with Ensure.
    I realize then that I should be nicer to Richmond. Since he’s now within my circle of acquaintances, he may be the only thing keeping the local animal advocates groups from thinking I need to be pushed back into the ocean. Well, that and the fact that there’s no ocean within a thousand miles of here.
    By the time I pull into the morgue garage, some of the snow in my buckets has started to melt and the weight of them seems to have tripled. I struggle to lug two of them inside and then commandeer Izzy and our lab assistant, Arnie, to help with the rest. Richmond, who followed me inside with the first batch, stands by watching as the rest of us do all the work. We store the buckets in a utility room where Arnie will oversee the straining of the resultant water to look for trace evidence.
    After taking off my coat and boots, I change into scrubs and make my way into the autopsy area, where I find our victim already laid out on one of the tables. Someone, Izzy I assume, has removed her body bag and