Ice, No Sugar
Scully had never seen a morgue like it before. "Is this hygienic?" She was not impressed.
Her guide, a little woman from the fish mart next door, looked impatient. "With the amount of soap and detergent in here, I would say so, yes."
Scully looked up at the roof of the barrack style building. She could see the inky darkness of the night sky through patchy rips in the corrugated iron. "Does it rain a lot?"
"Not much. But the good thing about working next door is that I can come thru and keep an eye on things. Don't get much call for a laundromat at this time of year anyway. No tourists. I just keep it locked until someone comes knocking for the key. Like yourself, my dear. Let me switch the lights on."
"Well thank you for letting me in, Mrs. Chang." Scully shivered within the heavy padding of her winter jacket. She could hardly believe that such a public place would be used for the storage of animal remains, whatever condition they were in. The building was near to freezing inside so that helped maintain the carcass at least.
The end of the barrack where they stood by the door flashed into visibility. One wall was lined with washing machines, the opposite wall with large driers.
Mrs. Chang stayed by the door. She looked sad. "We should really have left the remains where they were. Nature would have taken better care of them. But our doctor friend called. He told me to gather them up somewhere safe."
"You know Carlos?" Scully had felt until now that this whole excursion was a little tenuous. Perhaps there was a lot more planning in the background, a lot more than she realized.
"Oh yes. Carlos cleans me out of shellfish whenever he appears. He's a bit of a one-man eating machine." Mrs. Chang looked very pleased with herself, and with the tastes of Carlos Pérez.
"How often do you see him up here?" Scully had taken the opportunity to do a little exploration for her own interests. She had thought of this being a journey into the unknown.
"It used to be quite a lot. Originally, I think it was just to recover. He has some high-powered job with those Federal Emergency people." Scully nodded. "He went hiking and a bit of foolish swimming in the lake. I think I even saw him with a paint-brush once. Since last Summer, he's just been calling a lot, asking for pictures of the lake, maps, getting me to arrange accommodation, meeting the helicopters. No problem. All very exciting. But all a lot of fuss over nothing."
"What were these other people like? Do you know what they're doing for him?" Scully looked briefly around the machines then moved towards the back of the barrack, her breathe clouding in front of her as it had done outside.
"I don't think many of them knew what they were doing. They seemed to stay overnight and go home." The woman flicked another row of switches. The back half of the barrack lit-up in front of Scully.
"I got that nice man from the bar to bring them in. He has a pick-up truck. Most of the men do round here. He parked round back where the loading doors are. Carried them in there." Mrs. Chang still stood by the light switches.
Scully braced her hand on the large drier beside her; stepped forward. The back half of the barrack was a series of long tables meant for pressing and stacking laundry items. Some rusty makeshift shelves still held enough folded towels for a small settlement. Today the long tables were serving a much less prosaic purpose.
"What have you got here?" Scully decided to launch straight into reviewing the situation. She had a little note book which she had bought for this trip; nothing official.
Mrs. Chang still stood by the door, hands by the rows of light switches. She sighed. "A couple of the working dogs. Lots of little- and medium-sized birds." She paused. "And an elk."
Scully pulled back the sheets from the first table which appeared to contain two dog-sized mounds.
She looked slowly at the mess before her. The two shapes were packed around with lots of big plastic bags of mechanically cubed ice. Small rivulets of water had refrozen toward the edge of the table.
Scully called back over her shoulder. "Did you use the ice from your market, Mrs. Chang?" Scully had recognized what the unpleasant smell was. She also figured that any bacteria from the dead fish might be swarming on the dead animals in front of her.
"Yes. I don't make large amounts of ice for my stalls. I had to re-use what I would have thrown away at the end of the day to pack around the carcasses. I topped up the piles with any spare chunks that we didn't need. Did I do wrong?"
"No. This is probably the best I could have expected. Thank you. You've done well for Carlos."
Mrs. Chang whispered. "Can I go now?"
Scully looked back reassuringly. "I'll only be a few minutes if you don't mind staying. I'll just review what there is and make up a plan. I can do a more detailed review on my own in the morning."
The second table contained a dozen birds of various types. She would need to take pictures and try to figure out what they were. Not that that would have any impact on the cause of their injuries. But anything out-of-place might provide a clue.
The last two tables were not quite what she was expecting. Pushed together in the darkest corner of the laundromat, presumably as little distance from the loading door as possible, they held a single stiff form about as a big as race-horse. Scully already knew what she was looking for and flipped back the sheet enough to see only the head. She resisted the urge to gasp.
"Mrs. Chang?"
"I know. It's horrible. Such a noble creature. All torn up."
Scully flipped the sheet back over the table, put away her note-book. "Yes. Terrible. But where are the antlers? It looks like this poor thing had antlers. They're not there now." Scully walked back to the door where Mrs. Chang stood, fixing her coat, ready to go.
Mrs. Chang covered her mouth. "I don't know. Maybe they couldn't get it on the pickup; or thru the door? I'm sorry. I just don't know."
As Mrs. Chang locked up the door of the Laundromat, Scully kept a further question to herself. "And where did all the skins go?" Scully thought.