Chapter 2 - Chamber One
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then Chamber One shook again.
BOOM.
My mother screamed from behind the steel door.
“Don’t open it! Adrian put someone in here!”
The surviving officer, Deputy Marcus Reed, moved toward the control panel.
The night technician, whose name I would later learn was Walter Dean, dragged himself upright with blood running from a cut near his hairline.
“Do not start the main release,” Walter gasped. “If someone altered the chamber lockout, opening it wrong could activate the feed system.”
That stopped Marcus.
“Can you kill power?”
“Emergency circuit is separate.”
Another blow hit the chamber door.
My mother shouted:
“Evelyn!”
My own name.
Then a man’s voice screamed something unintelligible.
I tried to stand.
My legs failed.
Marcus crouched beside me.
“Stay down.”
“My mother—”
“We’re getting her.”
Vanessa lay near the rail, conscious but dazed. Another officer had entered and was securing her wrists after seeing the metal tool beside her.
Adrian was nowhere in sight.
The gunshot had come from the corridor where Officer Ruiz followed him.
Ruiz now lay near the preparation-room entrance with a wound high in his shoulder, alive and calling weakly for help.
That meant Adrian had a gun.
And the funeral home had more exits than the police knew.
My mother had designed the building before I was born.
Service corridors.
Casket loading doors.
Ventilation access.
Old body-transfer tunnels from the original building.
Adrian knew them all.
Walter studied Chamber One’s panel.
“Someone bypassed the standard sequence.”
Marcus asked, “Can you open it manually?”
“Yes. But I need the mechanical key.”
“Where?”
Walter looked toward the office.
“Manager’s lockbox.”
Adrian had the manager’s keys.
Of course.
My mother’s voice came again.
“Walter! Lower access plate!”
Walter stared.
Then slapped his forehead.
He dropped to his knees beneath the chamber and pulled away a narrow maintenance cover.
Behind it sat an old mechanical linkage.
“Your mother insisted we keep this after the renovation,” he said.
“She never trusted computers.”
Despite the terror, something inside me almost laughed.
That sounded exactly like Mom.
Marcus helped Walter disengage the lock.
The chamber door opened three inches.
Smoke?
No.
Cold vapor.
Chamber One had never ignited.
Someone had set the system to simulate an active cycle on the exterior panel while keeping the burner locked out.
My mother had known.
She crawled out first.
Her burial dress was torn.
One side of her face was bruised.
She looked seventy-eight instead of seventy-four.
But alive.
Behind her was a man wearing only undershirt and trousers, wrists loosely bound with plastic restraints.
I recognized him.
Dr. Calvin Mercer.
The physician who signed my mother’s death certificate.
He collapsed onto the floor.
Marcus stared.
“You pronounced Evelyn Whitmore dead.”
Calvin coughed.
“I was forced.”
My mother turned on him.
“You were paid.”
His face crumpled.
“Both.”
That distinction would matter later.
At that moment, I wanted to kill him.
My mother stopped me with one look.
“Evidence first.”
Still Mom.
Always.
Walter asked how she ended up inside Chamber One.
She pointed toward the ceiling speaker.
“Adrian came back through the service corridor when the lights went out. He dragged me away while everyone was looking at Ruiz.”
“How?”
“I was still drugged. I couldn’t fight him.”
“And Dr. Mercer?”
“He was already in there.”
Calvin stared at the floor.
Adrian had apparently hidden him inside the unused chamber before the coffin incident.
Why?
Because Calvin had panicked.
He signed a fraudulent death certificate for my mother after Adrian drugged her. Then, hours before the cremation, he told Adrian he wanted to go to the police.
Adrian imprisoned him.
“Why not kill you?” Marcus asked.
Calvin laughed bitterly.
“Because I had records.”
“What records?”
“At my clinic. Copies of everything.”
My mother looked at him sharply.
“You told Adrian that?”
“I told him if I disappeared, my lawyer would release them.”
Smart enough to stay alive.
Not smart enough to avoid participating.
Then Marcus ordered the entire building cleared and searched room by room.
Paramedics treated Ruiz, Walter, Mom, and me.
Vanessa began crying as officers escorted her upstairs.
“Adrian did this,” she kept saying. “He planned everything.”
My mother watched her.
“No,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Vanessa knew more than she’s pretending.”
“How do you know?”
Mom reached beneath her burial dress.
The recorder was gone.
My stomach dropped.
“You had it in the coffin.”
“Yes.”
“Adrian took it?”
She shook her head.
“I hid it somewhere else before he drugged me.”
“Where?”
She looked toward Vanessa disappearing up the stairs.
“In Vanessa’s purse.”
I stared.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“How?”
“I knew she was meeting Adrian here after closing.”
“You knew about them?”
“For months.”
My mother had known about my husband’s affair.
She had known about suspicious cremations.
She had known Adrian was trying to seize the company.
And she had told me none of it.
Anger rose through the pain.
“Mom—”
“Later.”
“No. Not later.”
She looked at me.
“I was trying to protect you.”
I almost laughed despite the blood in my mouth.
“That worked beautifully.”
She flinched.
Before either of us could continue, Marcus returned carrying one of the sealed evidence boxes from the hidden freezer.
“This one was already open.”
Inside were:
a wallet,
a burned watch,
a set of dentures,
a USB drive sealed in plastic,
and an unsigned cremation authorization.
Name on the box:
Harold Mays.
I knew Harold.
He had been my mother’s accountant for eighteen years.
He had supposedly died of a heart attack eight months earlier.
Adrian handled the cremation personally.
My mother stared at the USB.
“Harold told me he had found duplicate payments.”
“What payments?”
“Funeral contracts.”
Marcus frowned.
My mother continued.
“Families paid once.”
She looked toward the hidden freezer.
“Insurance companies paid again.”
Then Calvin Mercer whispered:
“That wasn’t the worst part.”
Everyone turned.
He swallowed.
“Some of the people Adrian cremated…”
May you like
His face went gray.
“…weren’t the people listed on the permits.”
