The Lightning Rod: A Zig & Nola Novel Page 2

  “You steal my car . . .” Cap roared.

  Ten seconds.

  “. . . and break into my house!?”

  “If we don’t— Please . . . He’s—” Wojo begged. “If we don’t go, he’ll kill us . . . !”

  “He?” Captain America asked. “Who’s he?”

  Tink. Tink.

  Outside the driver’s window, a knuckle tapped against the glass.

  In perfect sync, both Wojo and Captain America turned left, looking up at a saggy, askew Oscar the Grouch mask. The man in the mask raised his gun.

  Pffft. Pffft.

  Two quick shots. Then a third when he saw who else was in the back seat.

  Anthony Wojowicz wilted sideways. A small burn mark from the bullet appeared in his temple and sent a spray of blood across the passenger seat. Dead at thirty-two years old.

  Behind him, Captain America—an Army veteran named Archie Mint—slumped forward, a matching burn mark on his cheek.

  Wojo’s luck had finally run out. But when it came to Archie Mint, well . . . even in death, Mint still had a bit of luck coming.

  1

  Wonderly Square, Pennsylvania

  Four hours. He spent four hours working on her body.

  “Ziggy, let her be. She looks good.”

  “Good?” Jim Zigarowski asked, standing over the coffin, makeup brush in his hand. “Not great?”

  “Let me rephrase. Great. Beautiful. Michelangelo would say you’re Michelangelo,” said Puerto Rican Andy. Zig never liked the name, but Andy had been calling himself that since fourth grade, when there were three Andys in his class. Today, at three hundred pounds, Puerto Rican Andy lumbered through the viewing room at Calta’s Funeral Home, carrying a metal easel with a bushel of bright daisies that he placed at the foot of the coffin. “She hasn’t looked this good since Reagan was President.”

  “Don’t listen to him, ma’am,” Zig whispered, leaning down toward the dead elderly woman with high cheekbones and pale pink lipstick. Fallen #2,546. Mrs. Leslie Paoli, ninety-three years old. Dead from stomach cancer and whatever else you catch when you spend your last decade in a nursing home. “You look even more beautiful now, Mrs. Paoli.”

  Zig meant it. For four hours, he’d polished her nails, cleaned her dentures, used putty and makeup to cover the bruises on her neck and arms from all the machines at the hospital, and washed and restyled her hair, which probably hadn’t been shampooed in months. He even put her in the same dress—gold sequins with a crystal butterfly pin at the shoulder—that she was wearing in the photo next to her b—

  “Bossman, they’re here!” Puerto Rican Andy called out, sweat running down his shaved head, skating toward his neck tattoo—a phoenix—that poked out from the collar of his white dress shirt. Andy was big and looked like a convict, but as his parole officer had told Zig, the phoenix referred to Dumbledore, Puerto Rican Andy being the biggest Harry Potter fan in rural Pennsylvania. Ravenclaw, Andy would say to anyone who asked.

  “Bossman, y’hear what I—?”

  “One more sec,” Zig said, adding some final blush to Mrs. Paoli’s cheeks.

  As always, the hardest part was getting the coloring just right. People think corpses are gray, but by the time they arrive at a funeral home, they’re white. “Like geishas,” Zig’s mentor used to say. Once your heart stops and your body is on its back for a few hours, gravity sets in, blanching your face, chest, and legs—that is, unless an artful mortician gives you back your color.

  “I told you, ma’am, we’ll take care of you,” Zig whispered, moving a stray silver hair from her forehead and flashing that charming smile that had gotten every mah-jongg group gossiping back when he first moved to the small town of Wonderly Square. Zig’s silver-and-black hair was shorter now, for summer. Across his jaw was the hairline scar that he’d used to his advantage during those wild years after his divorce.

  For most of his adult life, Zig had been a mortician at Dover Air Force Base, home of the mortuary for the U.S. government’s most high-profile and top secret cases. On 9/11, the victims of the Pentagon attack were sent to Dover. So were the hostages who were killed in Beirut, the victims who were shot at Fort Hood, and the remains of well over fifty thousand soldiers and CIA operatives who’d fought in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and every secret location in between. In Delaware, of all places, at Dover Air Force Base, was America’s most secretive funeral home.

  Two years earlier, Zig had left it all behind. There was too much pain—too many old scars torn open from spending every day with dead young soldiers. Within a month, he’d found the job here at Calta’s Funeral Home, in a building that, back in the seventies, had been a Dairy Queen, complete with a red mansard roof that was now painted beige. Zig took it as a sign, hoping things could be a bit more nice and easy. But really, when was anything in life nice and easy?

  “I’m looking for Jim Zigarowski,” a man in his late thirties called out, stepping into the viewing room, then taking a half step back once he spotted the coffin. He wore a shiny blue suit, no tie, like he was going to a beachfront wedding.

  “You must be Mr. DeSanctis,” Zig said as the man took off his Mercedes baseball cap, which he’d clearly gotten from the dealership.

  “Is he actually wearing a Mercedes hat?” Puerto Rican Andy whispered. “Ten points from Slytherin.”

  “Is that—? Is she—?” DeSanctis motioned to the coffin.

  “Your mother is—”

  “Mother-in-law. She’s— Mother-in-law,” DeSanctis insisted.

  “My apologies,” Zig said, putting on his funeral home voice, which made him sound like an NPR host. “As you’ll see, we got her all cleaned up, so if you want to take a look—”

  “Y’mean at the body? No. No no no.” DeSanctis laughed nervously. “We’d rather remember her how she lived, not how she died,” he explained, glancing around at the chairs, the flowers, even at the framed vintage metal sign from the funeral home’s original 1908 location. Offering Understanding, it read in antique lettering. He glanced around at everything, really, except Mrs. Paoli. “Anyway, if you wouldn’t mind . . . y’know . . . closing it . . . ?” he said, pointing with his fancy baseball cap toward the coffin.

  “Of course,” Zig replied with a polite grin.

  DeSanctis stood there an extra few seconds. “Gotta be a horrible way to go, right? Like I told my own kids, don’t ever put me in a nursing home. Last thing I want is to spend my final years collecting dust.”

  Zig nodded, still faking a grin. But as he looked around the ancient funeral home, Zig was surprised by how much the words stung. Collecting dust. Was that all he was doing these days?

  DeSanctis headed out to his family, as Zig felt a buzz in his pocket. His phone vibrating. To his surprise, caller ID showed a familiar number.

  302-677 prefix: Dover Air Force Base.

  The life he’d left behind.

  “Ziggy, it’s Wil! What’s cooking, good looking?” Wil-with-one-L announced.

  Enthusiasm was always Wil’s major. But Zig and Wil weren’t buddies. Or even acquaintances. In the two years since Zig left Dover, Wil had called him a grand total of zero times. Still, Zig was so surprised by the call, he didn’t give it much thought. That was his first mistake.

  “How’s private practice?” Wil asked.

  “Wonderful. Couldn’t be better,” Zig said, eyeing Mrs. Paoli, frozen in her coffin.

  “Listen, sorry to bother you, but we got a case that just came through—a lieutenant colonel, one of our own,” Wil explained, meaning it was someone who worked at Dover. “The point being, the funeral’s near you—just a few towns over—and we want the body treated perfectly, so . . .” He put on his best Godfather voice. “You up for letting us pull you back in?”

  “Wow. Al Pacino impression. Topical. Wanna hear my Mr. T?”

  “I’m serious, Ziggy. We could use the help. It’s a good case. Funeral’s tomorrow. You up for this or not?”

  Zig stared at the coffin, at Mrs. Paoli and the crystal butterfly on her dress. Outside, down the hallway, DeSanctis was grabbing a handful of mints from the welcome bowl and stuffing them in his pocket.

  “Yeah. I’m in,” Zig said, thinking maybe this was just what he needed.

  The following morning, Zig left his house at 5:00 a.m., his camouflage backpack stocked with his mortician kit: baggies, modeling clay, makeup, and all his tools, including scalpels, forceps, draining tubes, and even a sternal saw, just in case.

  Running down the front steps, he felt good to be in the mix . . . to be helping a family that truly needed his expertise. Zig was a sculptor. With bullet wounds to the face, you need to be prepared for the worst. And he was.

  But the one thing Zig wasn’t prepared for and didn’t see was the man with the buzzed hair and pointy face who was parked diagonally across the street.

  From his own car, the man watched Zig leave his house and head down the front steps, a travel mug of coffee in his hands.

  If Zig was smart or even a bit suspicious, he would’ve checked over his own shoulder. But the only ones who do that, the man thought to himself, are those who know they’re in trouble.

  2

  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  Zig knew that sound, the low mesmerizing hum vibrating through the building. It was coming from the school’s gym, the only place in town big enough to hold the nearly one thousand mourners who were packed into the bleachers, waiting to pay their respects.

  It was the same in every small town. Fallen soldiers’ funerals were community events. Outside, fire engines lined the streets, flags hung from every storefront, and folks lined up early. From the rumble, the crowd was restless.

  “You got a prep room for me?” Zig called out, moving fast, like he was in an emergency room
scene on one of those doctor TV shows, both hands on the metal rolling cart that held the flag-covered coffin.

  Fallen #2,547. Lieutenant Colonel Archie Mint, forty-eight years old. Almost my age, Zig thought, steering the coffin down the long hallway of Elmswood High, pretending it was normal to push a coffin down the corridor of a high school.

  “End of the hall, make a left,” said the man who was running just ahead of the coffin.

  Clifford. Like the big red dog, Zig thought, nodding thanks as he followed the thin, six-foot-four-inch, sixty-year-old man with a mediocre handshake and the build of a Q-tip. God, why’s the head of every local funeral home always look the part?

  “A prep room . . . ? Is the damage really that bad?” Clifford asked.

  Zig stayed silent, spotting a stray blue thread on the American flag. He reached down to grab it. Whether it was a ninety-three-year-old civilian or a forty-eight-year-old lieutenant colonel, every one of the fallen deserved the very best.

  “We’ll take care of you, Archie,” Zig whispered toward the coffin.

  The tricky part was that in summer heat like this, the coffin acts like an oven. Makeup on the fallen soldier begins to melt. So does the wax that’s used to smooth over bullet holes or other wounds in the victim’s face.

  “Mr. Zigarowski . . . I should warn you . . . Mint’s family . . .” Clifford said. “His wife wants an open casket, but maybe we should just tell her—”

  “She’s getting an open casket,” Zig insisted, picking up speed.

  With a sharp left, Zig turned the corner, leaving the narrow hallway. Royal-blue metal lockers with built-in combination locks lined one wall; a colorful hand-painted mural of Martin Luther King Jr. lined the other, along with an educational poster that read, Don’t Quit Your Day Dream!

  As Zig looked around, something clenched in his chest.

  “You okay?” Clifford asked.

  Zig nodded, taking a half step back, his heart feeling like it was made from a thin-stretched cloth. This school . . . My daughter went to this school, Zig thought, though he knew that wasn’t quite right.

  The layout . . . the bright blue lockers . . . even this exact gray-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor . . . It was the same layout the Pennsylvania Department of Education used for dozens of local high schools, including the one in Zig’s hometown, where he used to take—

  Magpie, Zig thought. His daughter, Maggie. Images flooded forward and there she was. He could see her—back from the dead as old memories were laid over this new one: young Maggie walking down the hallway, running her fingertips across the combination locks, sending their dials spinning like pinwheels, each of them losing steam, slowing, returning to their lifeless, inert state.

  Maggie was only twelve years old when she died, but right now, Zig could see her so clearly—the light freckles on her nose . . . the smell of Thin Mints on her breath . . . and of course, that night at the Girl Scout campout, when a soda can exploded in the campfire, sending shards of metal straight for Maggie’s face.

  On that night, fellow Girl Scout Nola Brown shoved Maggie out of the way, saving Maggie’s life and giving Zig an extra year with his daughter. The time went too fast, Zig suddenly picturing Nola when he saw her two years ago, on that case they worked together at Dover.

  The hardest part was seeing Nola fully grown, a reminder of what Maggie never got to experience. He could still see his daughter now, walking hallways just like this every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon so she could take singing lessons with Mrs. O’Keefe, the choir teacher.

  “—igarowski, you hear what I said?” Clifford asked, Zig now humming that song she’d been practicing in choir. “La Vie Bohème” from Rent. Even then, Zig knew that Maggie’s favorite part was watching Zig squirm when she sang all the curse words.

  Six days after her final choir practice, Maggie was dead on that night that Zig could still conjure so quickly. It was the most potent weapon in grief’s arsenal: the speed of its return.

  “Yeah . . . no . . . I’m fine,” Zig insisted as they reached the double metal doors at the far end of the hallway.

  Weight Room

  Athletes Only

  One of the few rooms with a doorframe wide enough for a casket.

  “We tried cleaning it up,” Clifford said, motioning to the bench press and squat rack that were shoved into the corner. But all Zig could focus on were the two men across the room, blocking the doorway to a connecting conference room.

  Both were beefy, late twenties, in tight suits that they hadn’t worn since high school. Local firemen, Zig wagered. Or cops. With big funerals like this, you hire all the local help you can get, though the way they were standing at the threshold—like Secret Service agents—their real job was to protect—

  “Oh, Tessa!” a woman’s voice called out.

  “Tessa, I’m so sorry!”

  There was a chorus of sniffling and nose-blowing.

  The family.

  Zig could feel them, even from here.

  Before Zig could react, the door slammed shut, the two beefy guys following Clifford into the room with the family, which left Zig alone. No surprise. No one wants to be with the body.

  “Okay, Colonel—it’s just us now. You can tell all the dirty jokes you want,” Zig whispered, locking the wheels of the rolling cart and taking off his camouflage backpack. “By the way, your family loves you. A lot.”

  With a gentle tug, Zig removed the flag from the coffin and folded it carefully, making sure it never touched the floor. “I saw your wife next door. Lucky man,” Zig said, now thinking of his own ex, which caught him by surprise. They’d been divorced for nearly fifteen years. “Just remember, sir—your wife was lucky to have you, too.”

  Zig snapped on a pair of nitrile medical gloves, then lowered his head for the quick prayer he said in every case. “Please give me strength to take care of the fallen so their family can begin healing.” Yet no matter how much strength Zig prayed for, he knew the grieving family would always need more.

  At that moment, Zig thought that the government was taking extra good care of Mint. But as he was about to find out, he had no idea what the government was really up to.

  Unhooking the coffin’s wooden latch, Zig lifted the lid and got his first good look inside—at Archie Mint’s broken body.

  3

  A clear plastic bag covered Lieutenant Colonel Mint’s face, like he was suffocating. Standard Dover procedure—to make sure that in transit, makeup didn’t get on the fallen soldier’s uniform.

  Zig pulled out his phone and some earbuds. Fighting the urge to put on “La Vie Bohème,” he instead went with Paul Simon’s Graceland. “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.” Zig’s best work was always done with music.

  “There you go—just like that,” Zig said, gently removing the plastic, then carefully lowering the colonel’s head back onto the satin pillow.

  “You earned your rest, sir,” Zig said, taking a longer look at Mint’s face. Chiseled features, jaw like a movie star. Handsome, even now, Zig thought, noticing the ribbon rack on Mint’s chest, decorated with medals. Among them, one stood out—the Soldier’s Medal, which was awarded for a heroic act that didn’t involve enemy combat, like saving someone in a fire. “Real superhero, huh?” Zig asked as Paul Simon sang in his ear about a poor boy who was empty as a pocket with nothing to lose.

  Whoever prepped the body at Dover had done tremendous work. The problem was, so had the heat. With the high temperatures in the hearse, the molding clay that’d been used to rebuild the colonel’s face was now waxy and melted, revealing the outlines of the bullet hole in his cheek, as well as the pockmarks from the glass that had torn through his skin. According to the medical examiner’s report, Mint was shot through a car window.

  “Um . . . Mr. Zigarowski? I’m sorry to do this, but in terms of timeline . . .” Clifford called, sticking his head in the room. He motioned to Mint’s family behind him. “They’re . . . uh . . . they want to know when they can begin.”

  “Five minutes,” Zig said as Clifford shut the door.

  Turning up the Paul Simon, Zig pulled out a bottle of . . . “Got you some lighter fluid,” he told the colonel, wetting a makeup brush with one of the few liquids that would break down the wax and make it more pliable. “Don’t tell the suburban moms—this is the cheapest face-lift of all.”