A Name on the Tag

“We found the name,” Ruth said. She set a thin county folder on Iris’s desk and kept one hand on it. “The remains from the cremation Edwin used. They weren’t unidentified.”

Edwin stood beside the desk, still wearing the coat he’d had on when he went to Ruth’s office that morning. He looked at the folder. “Whose?”

Ruth’s fingers tightened against the cover. “Peter Gant.”

For a moment, nobody moved. Iris had heard the name. The town had printed it on a missing-person flyer years ago, before the paper faded in shop windows and the search became an old item on the county website. She remembered the face as a small photograph: a narrow smile, dark hair, one eyebrow raised as if the camera had interrupted him.

“His sister filed the report,” Ruth said. “We’re notifying her now.”

Edwin sat down. He didn’t ask how the match had been made.

Ruth opened the folder. “The cremation contractor’s batch sheet gave us the tag number. That tag was also on a county release for an unidentified male. The examiner matched the dental records. A plate in his left arm confirmed it.”

“Where did the release come from?” Iris asked.

“The county morgue. The transfer to your father’s funeral home was logged as an indigent cremation.” Ruth turned a page. “The name was missing from the copy we received. Calloway’s receipt has the tag, the date, and Edwin’s signature.”

Iris looked at the signature. It was compact and familiar from old paperwork, a firm downstroke and a short hooked tail. Her father had taught her to keep client records clean. She’d learned not to ask why some entries were cleaner than others.

Edwin’s signature was also on the copy, beneath his father’s. “I was there,” he said. “I knew the body was unclaimed.”

Ruth watched him. “Did you know who it was?”

“No.”

“Did you try to find out?”

He looked at the tag number. “No.”

Ruth wrote something in her notebook. The pen moved with a scratch Iris could hear over the wall clock. Edwin did not offer another explanation. Iris wanted one anyway. A reason with hard edges could be picked apart. A reason might let her move the damage into a file and shut the drawer.

Instead she asked, “What happens to the record now?”

“It’s corrected. Peter’s identity is going into the death review. The cremation certificate has a false name, and the contractor will have to account for who authorized the switch.” Ruth closed the folder. “That includes Edwin. It includes your father. It includes you, if there’s more in the funeral-home records.”