After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

“Don’t, please,” Freddy stopped him. He let himself lean on the wall. His legs should be weak but he kept his feet under him. “I understand perfectly well.” Somehow, he managed to let his eyes grow moist.

  “Dr. Cartwright,” Glynn began. He put his hat back on. His partner followed suit. “We’d like you to come with us. We’re not arresting you. You do have the right to refuse or seek legal counsel.”

  “No,” Freddy shook his head. He waved them in. “Come in for a minute. I’ve got to make a phone call and put some food away.” He called Stacy and told her everything was fine. He didn’t lie to her which probably upset her even more. He promised to call her when he got home. He told her he loved her. He had planned to say it and more at dinner. It was the first time he told her.

  -

  The interview room was a dressed-up version of the iconic image from every action movie and TV show ever made. It had the wall-length mirror that everyone knew was not a mirror and the reinforced steel door with a little square of shatterproof glass. The similarities ended there. The walls were painted a warm orange the color of pumpkin pie and the floor was a dark cherry laminate. They put Freddy at an oak veneered conference table big enough for ten swivel office chairs to pull up but only three others joined him.

  “Did you kill Claire Simmins?” Lieutenant Alberts asked as the first words out of his mouth after introducing himself, Constable Glynn and Inspector Harris. Glynn, he knew of course. Harris was in her forties and had penetrating eyes. She would be the tough one. Alberts asked his question off-hand. His head was down when he asked it but the other two watched Freddy’s reaction intently.

  Freddy was genuinely stunned. “Christ, just cut to the chase already! What, do you guys already have my confession typed up? When’s the trial, after supper?” He looked at all three in turn but addressed Alberts when he replied. “No, I didn’t kill her.” Freddy had come to realize the way he had dealt with Sobeleski had been flawed from the start. He had been so naïve back then, so completely foolish. This time he would keep his answers minimal. His responses would be on point when the point was all that mattered.

  “I apologize, Dr. Cartwright.” Alberts looked up at him and offered him a tight smile. “I just ask it to get it out of the way. You are not a suspect at this time. You are what we refer to as a person of interest.”

  “It amounts to the same thing in the public eye.”

  “You’re probably right. But unless I am completely mistaken you will be sleeping in your own bed tonight.”

  The questions began. Freddy’s past was unearthed. They asked about his father. They asked about Carrie Hicks. They asked him about his relationship with Angie Cross and several other women before they even got to Claire.

  Freddy answered the questions. They were bombarding him, not giving him time to think but he answered them as they came. They were asked again and again from different directions and different mouths. Each time his response was the same.

  They wanted to know how it came to be that he was intimate with at least two of the victims. Lieutenant Alberts was deeply interested in the response to that question.

  “When you travel in the circles I used to travel in, you become intimate with quite a number of women, sir,” Freddy told him. “I think you might be stunned to know just how many women – many students during my time at the University as a student myself and later – I have come to know on something more than a first name basis.”

  Inspector Harris raised an eyebrow. “Just how many women are you talking about?” She asked.

  Freddy could see the disgust simmering just beneath her tightly controlled visage. He told them about the parties that went on monthly or more for better than six years. He told them he had been with two or more women on numerous occasions. He also told them he really had no idea how many women he had been with. “If you want an estimate, I could say eight hundred – maybe more. Probably more.”

  The expressions of his three interviewers writhed but they remained stony. Alberts had paled slightly but Harris was white as a sheet beneath her foundation.

  “That’s behind me now,” Freddy assured them. “Tonight, if you had not come for me, I would have proposed to my girlfriend and I think she would have said yes.” He smiled to himself. “Yeah, she would have said yes. I’m in love. Six months ago, I couldn’t have told you what love is but now I can.”

  Freddy was left alone for nearly half an hour. When his interviewers came back Alberts asked him if he would be willing to take a polygraph test. Freddy said he didn’t believe those things worked but he was willing if they thought it would help them.

  The test was done quickly. He was asked twenty-five yes or no questions. None of his responses raised any flags. He lied perfectly. He told me when we were younger the trick to lying was to believe it before you said it and when you said it, it was true. For him it was true. The probes and wires were removed and again the cops retreated from the room.

  Freddy was fed a meal of canned spaghetti and vending machine coffee to wash it down. The questions began again but he could sense a greater reservation from these three. Like a sense of awe buried beneath the granite he was not supposed to see.

  “You may or may not be aware, Inspectors, Constable,” Freddy began during a lull in their bombardment, “I have done a fair body of research into the deviant mind. That is my area of expertise. In addition to my PhD I have an undergraduate degree in psychology.” He leveled his gaze at the three in turn. “I’m not a psychologist but I am quite certain I wouldn’t be telling you anything your own docs aren’t saying when I tell you you’re barking up the wrong tree with me.”

  “Oh?” Alberts leaned back in his chair. “And just what tree should we be barking up?”

  Freddy toyed with the remains of his dinner. “Your killer – if it is one killer – is a loner. He is a powerfully built man and likely very intelligent or you would have caught him by now. Likely he would demonstrate obsessive-compulsive tendencies in his day-to-day life.” Freddy looked up at Alberts. “It is likely he never was a student at the University. He probably works in maintenance or, if not, he lives nearby. Anyone can wander in and out of campus. He lives alone. He’s that ‘quiet guy’ at work. People have probably joked that he’s the campus killer or the cold killer or Jack Frost or whatever it is the media’s dubbed him of late. They say it at coffee breaks behind his back because they’re probably a little nervous around him and they don’t know why. He rents an apartment or more likely a basement suite. Either way he doesn’t have a place he can take his victims. He doesn’t have privacy. And I doubt he has many friends. I own my own home and I’m quite popular.” Freddy shrugged, spread his hands out on the table top. “Sorry.”

  They asked him more questions. After the polygraph they had been nervous but his analysis broke that. He managed to describe the exact person their own profilers were talking about. I realized in horror he was describing me. The only reason they finished their session was for the sake of protocol. They had to be thorough in order to eliminate a suspect.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when Freddy was escorted out to an idling cruiser for the ride home. Freddy had a headache from the coffee and the tinned air inside the police station. He had indigestion from the spaghetti. The news crews were waiting in the parking lot, vultures out for a meal. They would be denied.

  Lieutenant Alberts was walking on his right. Harris was on his left. Glynn had gone ahead to open the back door.

  “You know something, Lieutenant?” Freddy murmured just for him.

  “Hmm?”

  “If you shake my hand in front of those cameras, you’ll have made a good friend.”

  “What makes you think I want you as a friend?”

  “Have you ever heard the expression, ‘a good friend is better than a good enemy?”

  “No.”

  “Hope not. I just made it up.”

  Alberts actually smiled. It was a little smile but it was still a smile. “Okay, Doc, I’ll sha
ke your hand. Just don’t expect a Christmas card.”

  “I’m not the kind of friend that expects one,” Freddy gripped his hand firmly. He held it a moment. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t help out every once in a while. Remember that I have been affected by this more than most. My offer is on the table as of now.”

  “I think I might remember you said that.”

  Freddy got in the car and he was driven home. He didn’t quite know what to make of the lieutenant’s last comment. He didn’t know if it was good or bad. It just was.

  Freddy told me all about his visit with the police. He met me at the 24-hour donut shop just north of campus and talked to me while I ate my lunch. He told me he deflected their suspicion to someone like me because he used to be someone like me. He said he had changed but I remained the same. I could have killed him just then. If I had a gun, I would have shot him dead right then and there and ended it.

  -

  Three and a half years have passed since the police noticed and dismissed him. I have my own life now. I have had it for a while. I don’t have Walden Pond but I do have my place in the woods. It’s an apartment actually, a small place with my own refrigerator and a microwave and a two-burner stove. I have my books but I don’t read them as often anymore. I can’t seem to find it in me to read them. The place is a shit-hole but it is mine. And what money I make is mine – or so it seems.

  We still talk but not often. Freddy is in love in a way that I will never know. I have had my own girls when I could afford their services or they were too drunk to notice my ineptitude. But I have not loved – not since Carrie. After her I knew I would not love again.

  Freddy stopped talking about the past when he walked out of that police station. To him it had become a darker void than the future. He stopped killing – I do know that. In love he found something he could never hold onto in death, in the dealing of it. He found himself and he surrendered to it. He found it was a good thing.

  Freddy gave me an invitation to their wedding. It’s in the spring. I have no idea how he expects me to go. To me his life has become a post card. He has money and he has some modicum of fame. He is in love with a beautiful young woman who is absolutely devoted to him.

  He was better. He really was better. I never stopped watching him. These last few years I have watched from the shadows and I have gotten good enough so that he didn’t know I was there. My vigil had relaxed and I found I could sleep at night. I only stood in the shadows when I had nothing else to do. I watched when I needed something real.

  Life was going on – is going on. The present tense of it. It has been happening right in front of me and I have played no part in it. Life had been going on without me since that autumn morning when Nancy Hicks rolled through the stop sign at the end of Maple. God – that seems so long ago. Yet it is so fresh, so vivid it may have happened only yesterday.

  But the dominoes were stacked. They have been for some time now. The monster did not die off. I knew it had only been neglected in the remaining shadows. The lights might have stayed on and the shadows may have vanished given time. The monster might have eventually been beaten if not for that dinner party. That fucking dinner party.

  -

  The Friday night dinner parties had replaced the Saturday night orgies and the guest list was altered accordingly. Elsie Childress had come up with the idea. She might have heard something about Freddy’s past but if she had it would have been a dressed-down version of it from her husband. Either way Freddy had changed. He was faithful to his fiancée. He had been faithful to her since the moment he laid eyes on her. Clearly for her, a nice dinner and nice company at the Childress’ would be preferable to the alternative. It was now preferable to Freddy as well.

  About once a month, typically the last Friday, they would arrive around five o’clock. Stacy would either join Elsie in the kitchen or go and hang out with Chelsea in her bedroom. She could interact with either of them seamlessly. Freddy would be forcibly removed from the kitchen and he and Ryan would sit in the living room talking school business until the rest of the guests arrived.

  Three or four couples were the norm. Chelsea rarely joined them for dinner. At fifteen it was no longer deemed cool to hang out with your parents and their friends. She liked Stacy and she adored Freddy. They were about the only exceptions.

  The other guests were typically faculty members and their spouses. Ezra and her husband Elton were regulars as were several others in the department. There was no rhyme or reason to the invitations and Freddy was introduced to a fair number of people he might otherwise not have met.

  This Friday was no exception. Freddy and Stacy arrived early. Elsie was putting the finishing touches on a new recipe for blackened duck. It called for a sauce made with Andouille, but for the sake of some of her guests I believe she substituted it for a more conventional beef or bison sausage. Freddy joined Ryan in the living room after giving Stacy a quick kiss on the cheek. An associate professorship was opening up in the winter semester and Freddy was the leading candidate. Unofficially he had already received it. Of course, unofficially everyone else already knew. He was only thirty-one and already well on his way to receiving tenure.

  The promotion was not without controversy. Most of the assistant professors had seniority over him and most of them did not like the idea of his being promoted ahead of them. He didn’t care. He knew how hard he had worked for it. He knew he earned it. He wanted it too badly to not get it. Some of his colleagues were growing openly hostile about it. He wasn’t letting it get to him however – or at least he was trying not to let it.

  Ryan Childress pulled him aside as soon as he stepped into the living room. “I need to warn you before the others arrive.”

  I was crouched outside. I was watching through the big bay window, hidden from the street by a dense screen of evergreen shrubs. Something told me to come out tonight. I can’t explain it but I just knew. Their voices carried to me easily and I could see the flicker of alarm briefly cross Freddy’s face as the dean spoke.

  “Elsie invited Sam and – Christ, what’s his wife’s name?”

  “Rajni,” Freddy told him. His voice had gone flat. Sam was the one most opposed to his promotion. Sam was convinced it should have been his. “Why did she invite them? He’s pissed off enough about being passed over. I can’t see him being good company.”

  “Elsie ran into her – into Rajni – in the grocery store the other day. Dan and Liz Carter cancelled and she needed another couple. They got talking.” Ryan shrugged. “The damage is done.”

  Freddy squeezed the bridge of his nose. He paced the living room. “Well I promise I won’t start anything.”

  “Please try and not rise to the occasion. I’m sure he’ll try and goad you. He has resorted to everything short of thumbtacks and whoopee cushions thus far.”

  Freddy tried to smile. It looked forced. “I’ll behave.” Some degree of animosity had existed between Freddy and Sam for years – ever since Sam and Jason had cornered Freddy in his cubicle. Freddy was right in not inviting Sam and his then fiancée and even if Sam knew he was right, it had still taken it as a personal offense. “Who else is coming?”

  “Ezra and Elton of course.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s it.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I invited Karl Goenz. You’ve met him – he teaches philosophy.”

  Freddy nodded.

  “His wife was in a car accident yesterday. Nothing major he assured me, but she is a little sore. It was too late to find anyone else. I was afraid if I told you, you and Stacy wouldn’t come. Call me a coward but I didn’t want to spend an evening with Sam without you.”

  That forced smile returned. “You would have had Elton to back you up.”

  Ryan tried to laugh. “Don’t tell Ezra I said this. Elton is a nice enough man but he’s so boring. One can only spend so much time talking about beer. And Sam would just spend the evening pestering me about Harry’s old cha
ir.” He winked. “No, I need you here, my boy.”

  Freddy glanced at the dean. “This isn’t some kind of experiment, is it?”

  Ryan shook his head with a bark of nervous laughter. “God, no. I might be a sadist with my staff but even I am not so cruel as that!”

  The sun was nearly set and the overcast added to the deepening gloom. I did not yet have his coat. I had nothing against the growing chill. I could smell the snow in the air. This would be our first of the year but I knew it wouldn’t stick. The sun will shine again tomorrow and tonight’s snowfall will steam and run in the gutters before noon.

  Freddy glanced out the window as headlights raked the length of the house. I ducked into the bushes. I don’t think Freddy saw me or if he did, he made no indication of it.

  A mid-nineties Honda Civic turned into the cul-de-sac and pulled up to the curb in front of Freddy’s new car.

  “Game time,” Ryan said through his teeth.

  “Is it too late to forfeit?”

  Ryan chuckled wickedly. “Not a bloody chance, my boy.”

  -

  Rajni was a picture of charm and grace. She arrived wearing a traditional Sari under her coat and wore her hair up in a net of beaded gold. She wore no caste mark to match her costume but then again very few Indians do so far from home. I would have been speechless but Freddy and Ryan managed to gush over her quite expertly.

  Sam started out polite enough but I could hear the tension in his voice. I suppose he was allowed to be upset but even I knew Freddy was more deserving of the promotion. Freddy had told me about Sam’s minimalist approach to research. Sam has only published twice in the past six years – one of which was merely a revision of a previous essay. In that time Freddy has published seven papers and is well on the way to finishing his first book.

  Ezra and Elton arrived. They’re an amusing couple. Put together they are as stereotypically Jewish as can be seen outside a New York based sitcom. Although not entirely kosher themselves Elton runs his own kosher micro-brewery here in town and he always came with samples and stories. They sensed the tension in the room and their typically boisterous personalities were subdued.