The Death Agreement Read Online Free PDF Page B

have anything to do with Jesse's
death."
    "You're right, it's nothing." Yang
stepped out of the car. "Come on, let's make this
quick."
    Stepping from the car, I shook my
head, wondering what the fuck he was talking about.
    "This way," Yang said.
    Instead of going in through the
front door, Yang and I walked around to the rear of the building.
Graffiti covered the red brick and metal door. A security camera
perched above the top right corner of the doorway peered down at
us. Yang flashed his badge. The door buzzed and we walked into a
dimly lit hallway.
    "I hate this place," Yang said as
we made our way through the maze of grey cinderblocks. We turned
another corner and the area opened up into a waiting room where
twelve foldable brown chairs were lined up in three rows of four.
Dusty inspirational posters plastered the walls. In one corner, I
noticed a display shelf filled with brochures about dealing with
loss, all of which looked as though they had been printed in the
seventies. One in particular showed a hand holding out a plain
cardboard box with red packing tape. The caption read: Don't Pack
Pain Away. Another showed two men with long hair and even longer
sideburns, their faces pressed together and wet with tears. The
caption read: Time Heals All Things.
    I heard someone clear their throat
and looked up to see an old lady with blue-tinted hair sitting
behind a Plexiglas window. Yang walked over to her and slid a piece
of paper through the small opening. She read it and pressed a
button. Another door buzzed, which I opened and stepped
through.
    "Hello," a voice called from down
the hallway in front of me. "Come on in!"
    Yang pushed past me, and I
followed him to a frosted glass door printed with the words: Cold
Storage. Inside the room, a medical examiner stood over a
stainless-steel slab covered in blood.
    "Oh, sorry about the mess," he
said. "You're here for the Taylor case, right?"
    "Yes," Yang said. "Took us a while
to find someone for positive identification."
    "Used to that." The medical
examiner walked over to a wall with nine mini-fridge-sized doors.
"He's in three."
    "You okay?" Yang asked me as the
medical examiner opened the door and grabbed the handles of the
tray.
    "Yeah, let's get it over
with."
    The medical examiner pulled on the
handles and a covered corpse slid out of the ice-cold mist. Yang
grabbed the sheet and peeled it off the body.
    "Jesus Christ!" I
screamed.
    "What? It's Taylor,
right?"
    I stumbled backward. "Oh God, what
the fuck!"
    "What's wrong, Jon?"
    " What's
wrong? !" I screamed as loud as I possibly
could, then pulled up my left pant leg, revealing my prosthetic.
"You said he was killed by a lightning strike…" I looked back down
at Taylor's body. "His leg is gone, Detective! What happened to his
fucking leg?"
    Yang shot the medical examiner a
surprised look.
    The medical examiner clicked his
tongue. He shook his head, then said to Yang, "You boys need to do
a better job of reviewing the updated reports."
    Yang raised out his hands, palms
up. "What are you talking about? What report?"
    "The reports my office sends
over."
    "Just tell me what it
said."
    I stared at Taylor's dead face.
The corners of his lips were upturned as if he knew the punchline
of a joke that he couldn't wait to share.
    "Initially we reported Mr.
Taylor's cause of death as a lightning strike. Most of his wounds
were consistent with that conclusion. Upon further evaluation I
determined Mr. Taylor did indeed suffer from some sort of
electrical discharge, however this happened days prior to his
actual death."
    "You mean he was electrocuted but
that's not what killed him," Yang said.
    "Exactly."
    "What did kill him
then?"
    "Blood loss," the medical examiner
said. "As your friend here pointed out, the body is missing its
left leg. Though rare, it's not completely unheard of for lightning
to sever an appendage, but in this case…someone cut it
off."
    "What are you saying?" I asked.
"Who did this to him?"
    Yang stared at me,