The Embalmer's Confession

I am the embalmer they call when there is no face left.

Crushed bone, peeled skin, the dermis fire has cooked to leather — bring it to my prep room and I will give it back the dignity it had at viewing.

Detective Auguste Marigny is the one NOPD calls when there are no leads left.

He can put his hand on a body and tell you what it saw last.

We worked together three years.

I rebuilt the evidence on twenty-seven cold-case corpses; he read whatever the dead had to say about them; the Cold Case unit closed every file.

Then the twenty-eighth body came in.

A young woman, face beaten past recognition.

I sutured, sculpted, restored every landmark of her face. Marigny laid his palm on her cold hand.

A second later he was white, and the cuff of his other hand had closed around my wrist.

He said, *"Delphine. She says the killer is you."*

I looked down at the face I had just finished — the face I had spent nine hours putting back together — and finally recognized her.

She was the girl who died at my hands seven years ago.