A World the Color of Salt Read Online Free Page B

couldn’t.” She was holding her glass with both hands, wagging her head at me. She rested both thumbs on the side of her nose and peered at me over the glass.
    â€œYou think I’m bad. You should meet a coroner.”
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    â€œThere’re some cute marines working autopsy.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYeah. Big, handsome guy the week before I left. You would’ve loved him. He’s cuttin’ skulls and clippin’ ribs with the best of ’em.” She was looking at me with the silent fascination and repugnance most people show on their faces when I get feisty and talk about it. I said, “Of course, the reason he was there was because he was on detention. One too many DUIs, so they put him on morgue duty for a week. No indoctrination. Just, wham! Here’s the hedge clippers, here’s the saw. You’d think that would deter the stupid shits, but it doesn’t. Last year they had a guy doing cut-ups one week, two weeks later he’s back, only this time through the rear door. Stubborn.”
    Patricia took a drink, then her voice dropped low. “I still can’t match you up with that . . . stuff. Police work, yeah, maybe, but even that. . . . I mean, cops are so often jerks. You’re not. Except when you’re trying to gross me out.”
    â€œIt’s science. Mental.”
    â€œWhat bothered you about the one you said—?”
    â€œThis was close to home, sort of. An acquaintance of mine. A kid, twenty, a college student. He worked at a store near me. He has no face this morning. They did a true number on him.”
    â€œI don’t want to hear about it,” she said quickly. But she did. She always did. Until the stuff got too grisly, and then she’d begin her nervous giggles. Usually I’m careful not to enhance the gore, unless I’m feeling bitter. It was hard for me to restrain myself, but, with very few details, I told her about the Dwyer case. Her attention held until I said the creeps got only about two hundred. Say it was a hundred thou and people’s interest picks up. That’s cynical of me, I know, but it’s true. Like, Don’t bother me with fifty-cent murders.
    A distraction at the bar saved Patricia from hearing more:Some dude with muscles up the wazoo telling a red-faced blond guy to go for it, the other guy saying sure, sure he would, right after you. Had to be they spotted Patricia. Nobody else around, to speak of.
    Patricia poked a hole in the air in my direction and said, “We got to get you a guy, Samantha.” She looked over at the pickings along the bar. The dark-haired guy smiled. Then the blond. Yep. Patricia. Patricia doesn’t know me as Smokey, doesn’t know anything about my reckless days. I was going to tell her sometime, if it seemed right. She always uses my full name—not Sam; not Sammi, as my family does; not Mandy, as a few in high school tried to—because she doesn’t like people to shorten her name.
    I said, “Don’t worry about it, please.”
    â€œA guy is what you need, my friend. And look, you’re lucky, you got no worries now. No pills, nothing.”
    â€œThere’s just forty kinds of disease around,” I said. I really didn’t want to get into it.
    She whacked four fingers on the edge of the table. “Girl, we’re having a party, we’re getting you laid.”
    â€œThis is giving me a headache,” I said, and she screamed at this. It unglued the ice in her glass. She leaned in and said, “Poor baby. Eat two men and call me in the morning.”
    I love that girl.

CHAPTER
4
    Santa Ana, the seat of Orange County’s government, is cut through by one of the ugliest and most clogged freeways in the world, day or night. 1-5 tries to ride on top of the city, but signs for motels, service stations, RV rentals, and U-Haul yards peep over its shoulders. Down the median, a concrete