Chapter 87: Dead Man

While I was accustomed to dead bodies by now, having one laying across my lap for any length of time had a vastly different feel to, say, finding one drowned in my koi pond or observing from a distance as one collapsed into a dosed slice of chocolate cake. Up close and personal? Not exactly my favorite.

I know there was screaming (likely my own) and shouting (from all around me) and panic (combination of the two), but the time it took for Skip Anderson to gasp his last and someone to manhandle the bulky body from my person seemed far longer than absolutely necessary. Mind you, I would have preferred not to be part of the process at all, thanks very much, but in retrospect I suppose a few seconds with the freshly dead corpse wasn't that big a deal.