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would every member of Susan McCarthy’s family.
    Connie was hungry. How many hours ago had he eaten his boiled eggs and tuna? The flickering images faded to coverage of the grieving family and friends, who talked about what a good, caring person Susan was.
    What were people supposed to say about Susan? Should a jealous sister say that she hated Susan because Susan was always their mother’s favorite? Should a co-worker competing for a promotion say that Susan was a backstabbing brownnoser? No one was going to say anything bad about Susan McCarthy now that she was dead.
    Connie’s grandmother had often used the expression “Never speak ill of the dead,” but he’d always thought it ridiculous. Did it mean you shouldn’t speak ill of Hitler? Mussolini? Stalin? What about mass murderers? Nobody could speak ill of Ted Bundy, who killed college students at the University of Florida and women throughout the Pacific Northwest? Or Richard Speck, who killed an apartment full of nursing students during one bloody night of self-gratification? Or Jeffrey Dahmer, who raped, sodomized, murdered and ate people in his apartment in Milwaukee?
    Nobody was going to “speak ill” of Susan McCarthy, just like they never said anything bad even when a drug-dealing gangbanger was killed on the city’s streets. Connie was sure that the day Jesse Wilcox turned up dead from lead poisoning on some street corner, his mother would be on the television saying he was a good churchgoing boy. Every one of these gangbangers was a good kid who’d just turned his life around when this tragedy struck him down. Alves liked to joke about how there must be a serial killer who specialized in knocking off drug-dealing gang members who’d just turned their lives around.
    When he looked back at the screen, the voice-over was talking about where Susan McCarthy had gone to school, where she worked, where she volunteered her time: Rosie’s Place, a women’s shelter for survivors of domestic violence. An elderly neighbor talked of how “Suzie” bought her groceries every Saturday and shoveled her walk in the winter. A blank-faced newspaper boy said “Mrs. McCarthy” would leave him a bag of homemade cookies with his tip every week. It was amazing how many people had been affected by her death.
    Connie felt as though he really knew her. He wasn’t getting a complete picture of who Susan McCarthy truly was, but she was certainly the type of person he’d have liked to have had as a friend when she was alive.
    The segment ended with a Boston Police hotline number anyone could call with information on Susan’s disappearance. Authorities were still calling it a disappearance, and she was officially considered a missing person. But Connie had been in that bathroom. Susan McCarthy was dead. No phone calls to a hotline were going to change that fact.
    It was getting late. He had to fix some dinner and get to work. He turned off the television and closed his eyes. He truly believed that she was in a better place.

 
    CHAPTER 10
    R ichter lifted Susan McCarthy out of the refrigerator. He didn’t like leaving her in there all day, but it took time for the rigor mortis to dissipate. Now, twenty hours after, her limbs were moving smoothly. He could have worked out the rigor with a little massage and slow movement of the joints, but waiting was easier. He wasn’t in any hurry.
    He placed her on the large, white enamel table he had once used to fold his laundry. At first glance it looked like a vintage laundry table from the 1920s, but it was actually an antique embalmer’s table he’d purchased at a bankruptcy auction at an old, family-owned funeral home.
    Susan McCarthy’s skin was cold but still soft. All those years of moisturizers had paid off. The peaceful look on her face told Richter she was enjoying Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, music he’d selected especially for her.
    With the first few notes, he thought of the scene in Apocalypse Now when Robert