After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  Freddy had been in the closet for forty minutes, a low ache creeping into his knees. He was getting ready to call it quits when a key rattled in the lock. The door banged open and something in the front entrance fell over with a heavy crash.

  “Oh fuck,” Sobeleski slurred. “Ah fuggit!” The door shut and a light came on in the kitchen. Glasses clattered in a cupboard. Ice cubes rattled in a glass. Freddy heard the distinct snap and scrape of bottle cap on glass bottle, the clink and glug of a heavy four fingers.

  Sobeleski lurched out into the living room. The light in the kitchen cast the room in the stark, black and white pall of an old film noir classic. Like Bogey himself, the cop carried glass and bottle to the sofa. He sat heavily. Whiskey spilled across the back of one hand and he cursed again.

  The cop set the bottle down and switched the drink to his other hand. He wiped booze on his pant leg and took a long swallow. Ice clinked and his throat worked. Sobeleski groaned as the booze burned. He lay back and didn’t move. For nearly five minutes he didn’t move.

  Freddy began to suspect he had passed out but Sobeleski roused himself and sat forward again. He took a smaller drink and set the glass down beside the bottle. He dug through his pockets and pulled out his wallet. He was looking at something, a photo, when Freddy realized he was crying.

  Sobeleski went into his coat again and drew something else out, something hard and glittering darkly. The kitchen light shone down the length of his service pistol and Freddy held his breath. The cop was going to do it on his own – Freddy was sure of it. He forced himself to breathe while out in the living room Sobeleski shifted his vision back and forth between the photograph and the gun.

  He set the photo down and scooped up his drink. He drained the glass, refilled it and drained it again. He flipped open the revolver’s cylinder with surprisingly steady hands and dumped its loads out onto the coffee table. In one smooth motion he snapped the cylinder closed, reversed the gun, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Freddy jumped but the hammer only fell on an empty chamber.

  “Jus’ like that, Danny-O!” Sobeleski said with a humorless laugh. “Ain’t hard at all.” He refilled his glass and set the bottle down at the limit of his reach. He took a small sip, barely enough to wet his lips and set about reloading the gun.

  Freddy decided he wasn’t going to do it on his own. He would need a little encouragement. Sobeleski set the revolver down on the cushion at his side and went into his coat a third time. A lighter flicked and its flame haloed Sobeleski’s head and shoulders as he lit a cigarette. He picked up his drink and downed a third of it.

  For ten minutes he only smoked and drank. Freddy could not see his face and he wondered what he was looking at. He was most likely only thinking. The weight of the moment would lend unnatural clarity to his thoughts.

  Freddy waited but he only lit another cigarette, poured another drink and thought. At this rate the bottle would not hold out for long. How long the cop held out was another question entirely.

  “Maybe not tonight,” Sobeleski said aloud. “I’m not done yet. Gotta get ‘im. Gotta … nail ‘im!” He jabbed an imaginary knife at the air over the coffee table. Freddy knew Sobeleski was talking about him and smiled. “Tomorrow might be better. Tomorrow. Yeah.” He agreed with himself and took another drink.

  Freddy knew he was making excuses to stay alive. He figured the cop might kill himself in time but he was not willing to wait any more. I could have told him Sobeleski was about as likely to commit suicide as I was. Like me he had his own high places to look out from. He had his own place to jump from. But just like it was for me that railing – that fucking guard rail – was just too damned high. Like me he was a coward in that respect but in life he was anything but cowardly. His reason to die was the very thing preventing him from pulling the trigger. He knew it and I knew it – after Freddy told me. But that thing was the very thing that was going to get him killed.

  “I’m sorry,” Sobeleski sniffed. He was crying again, just leaking a little. The leak became a flood. “Oh God Fuck!” He leaned forward, head between his knees, big shoulders heaving.

  Freddy moved. The closet door was silent and his bootie-clad feet made no sound on the carpet. He crossed the room and scooped the gun up before Sobeleski even sensed he was there.

  The cop stiffened. His hand shot out to the cushion, hunting for his piece.

  “Looking for something?” Freddy asked mildly. He lifted the hammer; the clockworks rattle of the revolver’s cylinder rolling over was impossibly loud in the still, dark room. Only the faint throb of base from the party below intruded.

  Sobeleski sat back, hands out, palms flat. He did not look around. “Cartwright?” Oddly enough he did not sound surprised.

  “The one and only.”

  “One too many, asshole.” He sounded nearly sober. “’The fuck do you want?”

  “I’m only curious,” Freddy told him. “I want you to tell me something, Dan.”

  “Fuck you,” Sobeleski replied flatly. He had not moved.

  Freddy could smell the alcohol on him. He could smell it leaking from his pores and puking out of his lungs with every breath. It disgusted him. “Did you beat your wife, Dan? Is that why she left you?”

  “Fuck you,” he repeated.

  “My father beat my mother,” Freddy confided. “He beat me too. He was a drinker – like you. But you weren’t always a drinker. Did you beat your wife, Dan?”

  Sobeleski hesitated. “Fuck you.”

  “Pour yourself another, Dan. It does a body good.”

  Sobeleski didn’t move. He sat there; hands splayed like he was playing an imaginary piano with a look of contempt on his flushed face.

  “Whatever,” Freddy sighed. “If you don’t want it, I don’t care. But you are going to tell me why she left you. You’ll tell me eventually. You know that, don’t you?”

  Sobeleski’s eyes flicked up to him. They stared at each other for half a minute before the cop’s eyes lowered. “Fuck you,” he said finally.

  “Okay, let’s start fresh.” Freddy heaved his shoulders, the joints cracking audibly. “I want you to reach into your pocket and pull out your baton – the one you hit me with. Do it or I’ll kill your daughter next. She’s a little young for Jack Frost, but I’ll make it work. Raped and beaten to death by some random bum.” He grinned.

  Sobeleski said nothing. He did not move.

  “I should have told you this is how it was going to be. Sorry.” Freddy lifted a foot and slid the bottle over to him. “Now pour yourself a drink, Dan, and then toss the baton over by the window. I doubt you’ve cleaned my skin and blood off it yet. If you don’t do as I ask, I’ll make you look like a suicide and next week your little girl will die badly. It’s about time I expanded my horizons.” Freddy frowned. “That’s what got you onto me in the first place, isn’t it? It was the little realm I worked in, wasn’t it? Come on, tell me what I did wrong.”

  “You’re gonna kill me no matter what I do so fuck you, you freak.”

  Freddy shook his head. “No, I never said that. I’m not a monster you know. I can be quite reasonable but you’re not helping me here. You have absolutely no evidence connecting me to any crime. I know you don’t because I’ve never left any. If I let you live there will be nothing in your place to even suggest I was ever here.

  “You will retire early – stress. Your child will live. Everything will be just hunky-dory.” Freddy indicated the bottle with his empty hand. The gun never wavered. “Now pour yourself a drink and give me your baton. Life can be yours still. Just as it can for your family.”

  Sobeleski reached into his coat and came out with a slender, black rod no bigger that Freddy’s pen light. He set it on the table and sat back.

  “Toss it over by the patio door, Dan. If I do shoot you and I pick that up off the table your blood just might leave interesting marks where it was.”

  Sobeleski swallowed and did as he was asked.


  “And the drink, Dan. Don’t forget the drink.”

  He poured the drink and sat back. “It’s your fault, Freddy. You know that?”

  Freddy smiled patiently. “What’s my fault?”

  “My wife leaving me.” Sobeleski closed his eyes and sighed. “Just fucking shoot me. Get it done. I don’t believe you’re even considering letting me live. Just don’t make it look like a suicide. That’s all I ask. You’re too good to get caught anyway.”

  “I know,” Freddy inclined his head slightly, “but thank-you. Why is it my fault?”

  “Susan Emery,” Sobeleski replied.

  “Ah!” Freddy nodded. “The random. Why?”

  “You know everything, asshole. Just think about it.”

  “Don’t feel like it. Tell me.”

  “My wife – my ex-wife – is Rachel,” Sobeleski told him through gritted teeth. “Rachel Emery – Susan was her sister. You killed her.”

  Freddy laughed. It was about the coldest thing he could have done. “So, she says to you, ‘catch the bastard’, and you become obsessed. The she says, ‘Honey, you’re never there for me’ and she fucks the plumber or the mailman and asks you for a divorce. Is that about right?”

  “She didn’t fuck anybody, Freddy.” He could have screamed it. He probably would have screamed it under most ordinary circumstances. The gun was in his face but that wasn’t what stopped him from screaming. It was the God-damned look in Freddy’s eyes. It was the chill of winter, the furnace of summer. His eyes were the stark death of an autumn night and the vibrant life of a spring morning. He didn’t bother with the thousand-yard stare any longer. That stare was an escape. He only used what followed it. That look saw everything. It was a vise clamping down on the very soul.

  Freddy shrugged. “Whatever. So why are you still obsessed? Got nothing better?”

  “I need,” Sobeleski tried before his frustration silenced him.

  “You’re like a song,” Freddy decided, “a Bob Seger tune I still catch on the radio sometimes. ‘Turn the Page’ – you remember that one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My father used to love Seger,” Freddy told him. “You know I killed my father, right?”

  “Yeah, I read the file. You killed her as well, the girl.”

  Freddy was genuinely surprised. He gasped but in delight. “Good boy! Yes, I did. I think you’re the first to even suspect that.”

  “Why?”

  Freddy shook his head. “We’re turning the page here, not turning tables. Be careful, Dan. I can still kill your daughter you know. She’s safe right now but that could easily change.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No back tracking. Drink your drink and listen.” Freddy was standing squarely in front of him now. The kitchen was to Sobeleski’s back, to his left a little. His face was cast in deep shadow. “Do you want to know why you remind me of that song?”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “It’s the drive,” Freddy said. “You’re no rock star but you are on the road. And folks watch you when you come in from the cold. But you won’t come in from the cold. Not yet, not until you have me in tow. Their stares won’t stop you either. I admire that – your drive.”

  The darkness that was Sobeleski’s face sniffled. He said nothing.

  Freddy glanced at the clock, just a quick flick of his eyes. He didn’t want the cop getting any ideas. “Time’s getting tight here. Sorry, Dan.” He indicated the glass. “Drink up.” The ice had long since melted and only whiskey remained. “Every drop now, m’kay?”

  “From there, Freddy. Please.” He lifted the glass. A slight shake took his hand but steadied as he drank.

  “You know I can’t do that. Just behave – for your daughter’s sake.”

  The glass thunked down on the coffee table and he leaned back heavily into the cushions and closed his eyes. “You won’t hurt her?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “And hope to die?”

  “And hope to die.” Freddy closed on him. The barrel was a finger’s breadth from his chin.

  Sobeleski opened his eyes. “Why do you do it, Freddy? I just want to know.”

  Freddy had the same pound and a half on the trigger Sobeleski gave him that morning. He could feel how close it was – a cam poised on the brink a hair’s breadth from rolling over.

  “I just need to know that. Maybe I’ll be okay if you tell me.”

  “Okay,” Freddy decided, “I’ll tell you.” He thought for a second and frowned. “Honestly I don’t know anymore. Things have changed for me. Why have I done it? Why have I been doing it? It’s the energy of it I think, the energy and the purity of it. I do it because I can, because I want to. I don’t think I need to anymore but I still like to. I do it because this is what I’m meant to do – at least right now. Something more will come along in time.” He paused and looked into Dan Sobeleski’s eyes until they closed again. “This is my gift, Dan. It is divine.”

  With that he pulled the trigger.

  Ch12. The Light, The Tunnel

  The Light, The Tunnel

  Dan Sobeleski was the only person Freddy ever murdered. That’s what he told me. Dan was different because he was not a sacrifice. He was not a victim. John Cartwright had not been a sacrifice and neither had Carrie. But still he said they were not murdered. They didn’t count.

  Freddy tucked the plastic bread bag he had worn over his hand and arm inside-out into his coat pocket. He rubbed the pistol on the cop’s hand and dropped it in his lap. Freddy back-tracked to the closet. He closed the door and scanned the floor. The booties usually did the trick but a little melting puddle of snow on the rug, a flake of black paint from the railing outside – they would give him away. He locked the front door and went out onto the balcony.

  With barely a glance outward or downward he swung himself over to the vacant unit to wait. It was nearly midnight when he left Sobeleski’s apartment. At this time of night, he could afford to wait almost twenty-five minutes and still make it home by one. If no one responded by then, no one would.

  He waited. In the empty unit the furnace hummed. The refrigerator buzzed briefly and was quiet again. Freddy could still hear the distant throb of base from the party below and beside. They had not heard the shot. He waited.

  The wild card was the unit across the hall. He should have gone around back and checked for lights in the windows. That was stupid. But this was a solid building and whatever anyone heard of the gunshot would be muffled and distorted. Besides, no one knew what a gunshot sounded like anyway. The movies exaggerated and people only knew from the movies.

  Sobeleski’s .38 sounded like the world’s biggest cap gun. It was loud but it was a pop rather than the boom everyone expected. Even pulling the trigger himself in the closed apartment his ears rang for barely a moment or two. It was barely louder than the umbrella stand Sobeleski had knocked over on his way in. Still he waited.

  Freddy knew he could stay in the vacant unit all night if he needed to but he didn’t think it likely he would have to. But still he waited. This kitchen had a stove as well. The stove had a clock on it. He waited fifteen minutes with the patio door slightly ajar and listened.

  At one point, sirens began to warble in the distance but they quickly faded. The furnace hummed and the fridge buzzed. The party continued into a new morning without interruption. Freddy knew it was safe to go down but still he waited. He waited a full fifteen minutes – plus one to be safe.

  Going down was easier than going up. No one came out to smoke. No one even drove by on the street below. He made it down in less than two minutes. A hard wind had picked up and it scattered his shallow footprints in the previous day’s skim of snow. At ten after midnight on Sunday morning, he slipped through shadow and reached the street. He walked away from the complex and crossed a street over before doubling around to come at the strip mall from the opposite direction. He started Tina’s little Corolla and headed home an hour before the Bear and Beaver rang for last call.
>
  Freddy walked into the living room to a game of naked charades. He was wearing a pair of boxers, his Batman mask and a pair of black socks and nothing else. He watched the game for a few rounds and discovered the point was to act out a sexual act without doing anything sexual. Blowjob was acted out as two words – first by literally blowing and then pretending to strike a punch-clock, shoveling dirt and striking the punch-clock again. It looked like fun but the teams were full.

  He found Tina in the kitchen chatting with a couple of girls. Their masks were off. They had most things off.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” She demanded upon seeing him.

  Freddy kissed her on the cheek and chuckled. “I haven’t been hiding. I’ve been … burrowing.”

  “Ha-ha. Erica was looking for you.” She indicated one of the two girls. All three of them were dressed in T-shirts that came from his dresser. It didn’t bother him. He wondered if any of them were wearing underwear. “I told her about that thing you do.”

  “That thing?”

  “You know, with your thumb and index finger?”

  “Ah,” Freddy nodded. “The claw.”

  “You’re not done, are you?”

  Freddy kissed Tina again full on the lips. He had not kissed her like that since before they broke up. “Done?” He made a broad sweeping gesture to all three women and ushered them towards the back bedroom – his bedroom, the one with the king-sized bed. “My dear, I’ve only just begun.”

  -

  The next years are a blur to me. I lived in a kind of trance-awake state where time had no meaning. I had thoughts, feelings and notions of things but no more. I was in limbo floating freely.

  My memories of that time – the time between Inspector Sobeleski’s murder and the Tuesday morning in April of 2003 when I sat and watched Freddy defend his PhD. dissertation in front of the faculty – were like watching a movie in fast forward. Bits and pieces came through, fragments of thought or action, an idea of something that might or might not have been – these all began to coalesce but only for the briefest of moments. My memories broke up, scattered and spiraled back down into the gloom. Water rushed there, black and deep.