Shame

Knight-Nights show coming to you live from our nation’s capital in Washington, DC.”
    No more late-night book promotions on radio, vowed Elizabeth.
    “This is The Kipper,” he said, “and we’ll be continuing for the next hour with our special guest, true-crime author Elizabeth Line.
    “For those of you who were with us during the last hour, you know we’ve been talking murder, folks. Elizabeth’s latest is
A Magnolia Hanging
.
    “We’ve got Dave from Springfield, Missouri, on the line, and I do mean line as in our guest Elizabeth Line. How ya doing, Dave?”
    “Doing fine, Kip. But after listening in tonight, I went around and made sure all my doors and windows were locked, and I just now put a loaded gun under my pillow. I can’t say you’ve got a very reassuring guest.”
    As if, Elizabeth refrained from saying, Dave and the loaded gun under his pillow were cause for comfort.
    “She does have some mean stories, doesn’t she, Dave? But you’d never know it to look at Elizabeth. You’d think she was some model, not some milk carton chronicler.”
    Elizabeth supposed that was a compliment. “Thank you, Kip,” she said.
    “Well,” Dave said, “I wanted to ask her a few questions about Shame.”
    What a surprise, Elizabeth thought. In her first hour on the show, most of the questions had been about Gray Parker. They always were.
    “I’m listening, Dave,” Elizabeth said.
    Usually she was able to get out of coming to the studio. She preferred being a call-in guest, doing the so-called phoners. Radio booths made her feel claustrophobic. But her publicist thought it was good PR to make occasional personal appearances, especially on shows with a national audience. In a weak moment she had agreed to do the spot.
    “Yeah,” Dave said. “I’ve heard that after Shame died they cut him up and sold his body parts. Supposedly some college got his brain to study. But I also heard some woman paid twenty-five thousand dollars for his, um, Johnson. I was told it’s floating around in this ten-gallon bottle. Word is that it’s, uh, aboutas big as Einstein’s brain, you know, real oversized, and that it’s available for private showings.”
    “You mean
privates
showing,” Kipper said.
    The two men laughed.
    “Well, how about it, Ms. Line?” Kip asked. “We got a killer’s genitalia on the loose?”
    The Kipper offered his question while stroking the large microphone in front of him. There was a good reason, Elizabeth thought, why many radio personalities did much better as voices than as people. Kip thought he was God’s gift to women. During the break he’d suggested that Elizabeth hang around until he was off at 1:00 a.m., at which time they “could catch a bite, or whatever.”
    That’s why very long bubble baths had been invented, Elizabeth thought. To wash away certain days.
    “I’m afraid the reports of Gray Parker’s body parts,” Elizabeth said, “have been greatly exaggerated.”
    Even Shakespeare, Elizabeth comforted herself, had often resorted to ribaldry to amuse the groundlings. Over Kipper’s laughter, she continued. “I’m not referring to the size of his organ. Of that, I have no knowledge to offer. But the rumors of his bodily remains have persisted for years.
    “The basis for the talk, I’m fairly certain, stems from his attempts to have his organs donated. Parker wanted his death to have some meaning, or at least that’s what he publicly stated, but his method of execution didn’t allow that. To be usable, organs have to be removed while the donor’s blood is still circulating, and his being electrocuted eliminated that possibility.”
    “You don’t think there’s any chance, then,” Dave asked, “that someone collected a souvenir?”
    “No,” Elizabeth said. “He was cremated just a short time after his execution.”
    “Then how’s come I keep hearing there’s a big market out there trafficking in everything from his fingers to his ears to his, well, you know?”
    “Guess we’d call that a
Gray
market,” Kip said.
    Elizabeth let their laughter die down before answering. “No part or parts of Gray Parker survived his execution,” she said, “but that’s not to say there hasn’t been a morbid history to collecting of such souvenirs. There was a hanging in Kentucky in the thirties where people fought over the disposition of the death mask, and worse, hacked off pieces of the body as keepsakes.”
    “You got
whut
in your freezer?” said