Club Monstrosity Read Online Free

the faux pas of pointing out her faint odor, she could say, “Autopsy assistant in the ME office, City of New York.”
    That normally shut people up or got them asking questions about autopsies or the latest high-profile murder case, and not noticing the scars she worked so hard to cover up. She wore turtlenecks in the summer. Enough said.
    Of course, there were times when she wondered at the irony of the situation. After all, her “dad” had been a bit obsessed with death himself. He would have loved her job. Like Grimes, he would have drooled over the weird deaths and spent hours analyzing broken limbs and exploded livers (that had actually happened . . . once).
    Then again, he probably would have lost the job in ten minutes for stealing body parts or, worse, reincarnating someone with the shredded wires of a coffeemaker and the help of a thunderstorm.
    “Natalie?” Grimes asked, and her tone was a bit terse.
    Natalie snapped back to the present and nodded.
    “A mob?” she asked with a look for her boss. She had a bit of a history with mobs herself, back in history. She wanted to keep it that way. “Wow, that hardly ever happens anymore.”
    “Yup, those clean-up-the-city movements really changed our jobs.” Grimes sighed almost wistfully. “Not that you’re old enough to really remember that.”
    Natalie swallowed back a snort. Grimes looked older than Natalie by at least ten years, though in reality Natalie had a good two centuries-plus on her; she just had the monster aging factor on her side. Her boss had a thin face and long, straight black hair that was actually a bit reminiscent of Cher . . . or the Addams Family (yet another show that got it wrong about monsters, but at least it had given them a smidgen of humanity).
    She remembered the Civil War (though she hadn’t been stateside for it). The crackdown on crime in New York hardly registered on her radar. In another hundred years, she wouldn’t remember it at all. Assuming she didn’t encounter her own mob in the interim.
    “Yeah, but everyone knows what it used to be like. I’ve read some of the old reports. It was pretty ugly here not that long ago,” Natalie said. “Normally these kinds of things only happen now when it’s New Year’s or the Nets win a championship.”
    Grimes nodded. “Aw, yeah, that case two New Years ago. I’d forgotten that. That was a good one.”
    Natalie tried not to shudder. Morbid.
    “Where did this happen?” she asked.
    Grimes shook her head and there was an actual delighted gleam in her eyes. Shit, she really had to believe this case was going to make her more famous than she already was.
    Natalie had a theory that Grimes was hoping some writer would fashion a plucky heroine after her and suddenly there would be a television show or movie starring Angelina Jolie or Olivia Wilde or something. Grimes! Or Death Grime . Or Grimey, M.E.
    “It didn’t happen where you might guess,” Grimes teased as she passed her key card through the reader at the door to the morgue. It swung open automatically and the two of them walked into the cold, sterile room. “The beating happened on the Upper East Side.”
    Natalie didn’t mask her disbelief. “You’re kidding me! The worst that happens up there are white-collar crimes, maybe the occasional mugging.”
    Grimes nodded. “And the occasional murder-for-hire. Remember that case in ’08.”
    Natalie paused as nostalgia flooded her. Maybe she was a little morbid, too. “Oh yeah, the Swansons and their War of the Roses. But a mob beating couldn’t be a murder-for-hire. That just doesn’t make sense. Maybe . . . drugs?”
    “ Nope. The cops say they don’t suspect drug involvement, although of course we’ll run the usual tests,” Grimes said with a shrug. “It’s all part of the big, fat mystery.”
    Natalie blinked in confusion. “That is weird. Do they have any theories about what made a mob attack this poor person?”
    “ That’s what makes the case