The Crymost

by Dean H Wild

  Mick glanced at the posters Cy practically shoved into his hands. “I thought you were a Mellar’s Out kind of guy. What has changed? Do you know something new?”

  “What I know is I got an insurance adjuster coming out in a couple days to snuffle through what’s left of the village hall,” Cy said and stepped toward the bay doors, “and a fire marshal from Royal Center who’s itching to study the burnt remains on account of you said you suspect somebody lit her up. I don’t know why, but I’ve been putting them both off as best I can. Some of this other stuff is my way of pushing back, following my gut, Logan.” He suddenly seemed more weary than ever. “In the next few days, I suggest you do the same.”

  PART FOUR:

  THE LAND OF NOD

  CHAPTER ONE

  BY THE TIME MICK and Harley transported the voting booth sections and assembled them in the front yard of the Mellar Borth house it was nearly midday. They arranged the booths into a pod of three, facing inward with a vinyl privacy flap at the entrance to each carrel. Carrel, a word from his school days. Not quite accurate, but Mick still liked it.

  He noticed two newly constructed stages on the property, a tiny one bearing a podium and PA system, and another larger structure near the carriage house/garage where a pair of workmen were arranging power cables.

  “She having a band?” Harley said as they put the final touches on the carrels. “Looks more like the Baylor Picnic than a town vote.”

  “Trying to sway tomorrow’s crowd in her favor, maybe?” Mick said and indicated the Mellar’s Out posters which covered each window at the front of the house. Patriotic bunting covered the porch. He was sure by tomorrow, when the voting opened, there would be balloons as well, and perhaps streamers trailing in the wind.

  A sudden breeze swept across the yard and snatched away one of the canvas coverlets meant for the booths. Harley responded by sprinting after it and grasping it before it escaped into the open fields behind the house. He walked back with a pleased smile. He was barely winded as he handed the canvas back to Mick. “What? You suddenly look like you got a mouthful of crap from somewhere.”

  “This is as good a time as any,” Mick said. “Our wives went to The Crymost last night, and Beth Ann asked for help. For you. And now you can bounce around like a kid. Thought you might like to know.”

  Harley dropped the coverlet inside one of the carrels and gave it a punch for good measure. “The Crymost?”

  “There’s more. I’ll squeeze it into the rest of the plans I have for our day if you’re on board with it. I say we round up Kippy and our ladies and get ourselves over to The Chapel Bar. Maybe do some tunnel exploration. Hunt down a certain double barrel.”

  “Sure,” Harley said with a stunned blink. “Why not?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The memory was caught up in Cy Vandergalien’s head, sudden and relentless. Amber light was a big part of it because it was close to bedtime (little Cy was in his pajamas, which were blue and had rocket ships on them) and his daddy used an old-fashioned square lantern with cloudy orange-brown windows to light up the garage workbench.

  “Jes’ doing my duty here, son,” Daddy whispered, and executed a little stumble-hop as if the ground tried to skate out from under him. His breath smelled sharp and maybe a little bit fruity; it overpowered the grease and gasoline perfume in the back of the garage. “You looka this, and look good. If you don’t ‘member it and draw it back for me, I’ll knock it into your head but good. Got it?”

  Daddy’s eyes gleamed with a familiar meanness in the amber light. If Momma knew Daddy’s eyes were gleaming that way she’d beg them to come in the house. He almost wished she would.

  Daddy showed him a piece of paper, and Cy thought it must be a treasure map, only this one didn’t have a big X to show you where to dig for gold like the ones on cartoons.

  “This’s our place.” Daddy’s finger tapped the paper. “And this’s the bar. That there is the dump.”

  A map of Knoll, then. A map of home. Daddy saw it was sinking in, puffed out his lips and then traced his finger along a singular pencil line that intersected the streets of the map in a funny way. “This is what I gotta show you. See it? This here? See that bitch, the way she goes?”

  Cy nodded. It was important for this to sink in, he could tell, not by what Daddy said but by the way he trembled despite his fruity-breath looseness. This was not sharing like giving him a drag off of his cigarette for laughs but sharing like teaching. Sharing something of heavy significance.

  “Now you,” Daddy said and flipped the sheet over. He made quick slashed marks with a pencil he took from his pocket—the pencil said F&F FEEDS on it—to make a rough rendering of the town and then he handed the pencil over. “Draw the line I just showed you. Garden Street is at the top, down there is Pisch Road . . . Pitch Road, goddamn it. Draw.”

  He drew slowly and not very straight, but he connected the areas of town just the way Daddy showed him. He even put dots at each end because he knew maps did that sometimes.

  “Holy Christ, you got it,” Daddy said. In the amber light he seemed unreal, like a hunched shadow you could pass right through. “Okay, I showed you what I was s’posed to. Now remember it. For the rest of your goddamned life.”

  Cy evaluated the line with a seven-year-old’s fascination. “What is it?”

  “Some dipshit’s idea of good air. Supposed to be a shaft, but it works more like a passage to the double barrel. And don’t think you can go farting around in there. Only one ‘scuse to go down there, ever.”

  “What?” he asked and his eyes felt very wide.

  “Bad fucking news, is what.” Daddy made another stumble-hop. He grabbed the edge of the workbench just in time to keep from falling over. “Your gut’ll tell you. Now get out of my sight . . . ”

  The memory walked with Cy until he got to the place where the southern end of Garden Street hooked around and became Backbank and he was standing before the sign for The Chapel Bar. The Wistweaw chuckled behind its barrier of trees just to his right. He could see glints of it through the branches. There was no other sound in Knoll just then. No indication that the town was fucked. But he knew it was, because his gut told him. Hell, his own ma told him. It was time to share what he knew for all of Knoll to see. It was time to draw. He took a can of black spray paint out of his backpack and began to make his mark.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Your judge is making the rounds today, did I tell you?” Harley asked him as they drove over to Field Street in Mick’s car. “Beth Ann and I saw him when we got back to town. Like a door-to-door salesman, he was.”

  Mick managed an acknowledging grunt.

  He felt anxious. Kippy didn’t answer his phone. It could be that the old boy was tooling around town on his bike somewhere, but a deeper undercurrent of dread ran strong and steady in his head. He choked up on the steering wheel and parked in front of Kippy’s house.

  “Bike’s here,” Harley observed.

  Both of them noticed the small wooden box near the front door as they approached, and an extra, nearly silent alarm went off in Mick’s mind. He knocked, hoping Kippy would answer with sleepy seeds still in his eyes. When no answer came, he turned the doorknob. The door opened easily.

  “Kippy?” he called inside.

  When they were answered by silence, Harley said, “Maybe he’s out back.”

  They stopped in the living room where the cover of a book, its pages strangely absent, was tossed next to Kippy’s tatty sofa. Mick held it up so Harley could read the hand notation on the ancient cover.

  “River Church notes. I.C.”

  “He said he had some ideas. Maybe he found a connection between the die-off and the church.” He raised his voice. “Kippy?”

  Harley tapped his shoulder. “The cellar door is open. Look.”

  Mick’s feet turned heavy with dread. Old men fell down sometimes. Old men got sick. Old men were perhaps more vulnerable to forces preferring to be left unchallenged.


  He went first, switched on the stairway light and went down the first step before the smell of blood hit him.

  Kippy Evert was a motionless sprawl midway up the stairs, arms outstretched, one hand clinging stiff and gray to the lip of the next riser. His back bristled with jutting metal objects and his face was turned toward the upstairs door, toward an escape that never came. Mick glanced at his filmy blue eyes as if to confirm what the blood and the rigid posture already told him. His knees buckled with cruel acknowledgement.

  “Ho, Jesus,” Harley said and snatched the back of Mick’s shirt. It was the only thing that kept him from pitching headlong down the stairs. “Come on. We don’t need to get any closer.”

  “He’s dead,” Mick said, only because the words needed to come out. They were blocking everything else. “And somebody . . . do you see?”

  “Yeah,” Harley said, and took a moment to stare and to process.

  Two of the long objects in Kippy’s back were pressed in deeper than the others. On the step above Kippy’s head and then another step two risers higher, which put it near Mick’s current position, were spade-shaped prints rendered in blood. Shoe prints. Going up.

  “They stepped on him,” Mick said. It was another blockage that required clearing. “Whoever did this stepped on his back on the way out.”

  Harley tugged his shirt again. “Let’s go make some calls. On the porch, in the fresh air. Damn.”

  They took a moment to lean on the porch railing and collect their thoughts. A car sailed by and Geralyn Medford waved from behind the wheel. They did not wave back. At last, Harley nudged him. “You want to get out your phone, or should I use the one in Kippy’s living room?”

  “Let me check one thing before the whole place is locked down as investigative evidence.”

  His gaze switched to the box near Kippy’s door, knowing with impossible certainty it was the one he’d seen Kippy toss into The Crymost only a few days ago. He picked it up, turned it over, opened it.

  “Not the kind of thing you leave outside, usually, is it?” Harley asked.

  “Not unless you want somebody to notice it,” Mick said and took a single slip of paper from the interior of the box. He read it and turned it over for Harley to see.

  An equation of sorts was written in a halting hand.

  THEKAN = CLOSED DOWN RIVER CHURCH = IRMA CASPER

  “Kippy’s research.”

  “Orlin’s widow?” Harley took the note, eyed it. “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “I.C. is Irma Casper. That book inside, or what was left of it, was hers. Probably full of information about the church, and anyone involved in its closing, judges included.”

  Another car rolled by, this time with a friendly toot of the horn.

  “Jesus, we better call before half the town sees us standing out here,” Harley said.

  Mick put the box and the note in his car before making the necessary call, waves of sick rage pulsing through him.

  Soon Field Street was lined with official vehicles including a Twin Lakes County Sheriff’s car and a coroner’s van. Neighbors gathered in clutches, and Mick and Harley were separately questioned on the scene. When the detective questioning Mick told him not to leave town, Mick asked if he was a suspect.

  “We’ll be in touch,” the detective said and snapped his notebook closed, ending the exchange.

  Harley was still talking with a second detective, so Mick took the time to call Judy.

  “I heard,” she said with a hundred questions stirring behind her words. “Connie Gassner told me you were there, and not to call you because the police were talking to you. What happened?”

  “I’ll give you details when I see you, but the Cliff’s Notes version is this: I think Kippy was on to something about the die-off and it got him killed.”

  “God, Mick. Where is this headed?”

  “You should call Beth Ann.”

  “Already did. I’m on my way to see her right now.”

  “Good. You two stay at Kroener’s. We’ll come as soon as we can.”

  Behind him a van sporting the logo for Channel Seven News pulled up and Jim Scanlon himself, star of the local evening news, climbed out, brushed at his silver hair and set his square jaw.

  Harley walked over a minute later. “God, I hate this shit. Been through it before, when George Bintzler keeled over on a job just the other side of Pitch Road. I was mucking out culverts for the spring runoff when I found him. And the cops’ first protocol is to think you’re not a finder at all, but some kind of killer.”

  Mick put on his best gruff detective face. “We’ll be in touch.”

  His phone rang and he was met by Will Adelmeyer’s voice. “I think you better come over to the bar. There’s been a development.”

  He dealt Harley a what now expression. “We’ve got problems right now.”

  “I heard. Just come as soon as possible, okay?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Will Adelmeyer came out to meet them when they got to The Chapel Bar.

  “This wasn’t here when I left.” Will indicated a spray-painted line traced across his parking lot. It continued between the houses on the other side of Backbank in an easterly attitude. “But I get the feeling it adds to our worries. This and poor Kippy. Was it murder?”

  “We know it was,” Harley said.

  Will nodded slow and thoughtful. “Here’s the other thing,” Will said at last and swept his hand close to the painted line. “Look at the way it starts at the edge of my building and goes off this way. It almost seems like somebody is—”

  “Tracing out the tunnel.” Mick finished it for him because he saw it too. “That means somebody else knows about it.”

  Will furrowed his brow. “But who?”

  The voice from the sidewalk made them all turn to look. “Why don’t you ask Cy Vandergalien?”

  Nancy Berns stood on the sidewalk behind them. She held the leash of a tiny, breed-ambiguous dog who was currently doing his business in the terrace grass. When none of them spoke, she went on. “Cy is painting a line all the way through town, across people’s yards, over the sidewalks, the streets, leaving empty spray cans as he goes. I thought maybe it had something to do with tomorrow’s vote, but that can’t be right.”

  Mick watched her. “How did he seem to you, Nancy?”

  “Nervous.” She stooped to collect her dog’s deposit in a plastic bag. “But after poor Kippy, I suppose we’re all going to be a little twitchy. Who would want to murder a nice old man like him? And right here in Knoll.”

  Mick approached her. “Listen, Nancy. We’re trying to keep close tabs on what’s been happening in town. Sort of watchdogging. Do you think you can do something for us?”

  An intrigued smile blossomed on her face. “Name it.”

  “If you hear anything out of the ordinary, whether you’re walking your dog or out on one of your emergency calls, could you let us know? Me or Harley, or Will? Anything at all.”

  She laughed as if he’d just made a gross understatement. “In this town, I can almost guarantee there’ll be something. Sure, I’ll keep you posted. By the way, last time I saw Cy he was crossing Tier Street. Maybe twenty minutes ago. It looked like he was painting his way right out of town, in case you’re interested.”

  “Thank you, dear,” Harley said and waved her on.

  Mick dialed Cy and got no answer. He glanced plaintively at Harley and Will. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Harley began walking to the car. “You bet your ass. Let’s go.”

  “Guess I’ll be opening the bar late today,” Will said and followed them.

  ***

  Mick drove with Harley riding shotgun and Will in the back. There was no sign of Cy on Tier Street, just the diagonal line of black paint across the pavement.

  “Let’s go right to the mercantile,” Mick said and made the turn onto The Plank.

  “Somebody’s out there, all right,” Will said as they pulled off the road near
the mercantile’s weedy driveway. “But it’s not Cy. Why are they in the middle of the parking lot like that?”

  Chastity Mellar Borth’s gleaming black car was parked thirty feet or so from the side of the building. Two people stood near it, examining the ground. One was Chastity Mellar Borth wearing a colorful, very new blouse and skirt combination. The other was Thekan in a white shirt with cufflinks and charcoal slacks. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail. They looked up at the sound of the car.

  “Let’s go make nice,” Mick said. “Test the water.”

  “Left my diplomat’s hat at home,” Harley said.

  They got out and walked to the shoulder where the drive-around at the front of the mercantile fed into the remnants of the parking lot. This left an expanse of twenty feet between them and the place where Chastity and the Judge stood. The paint line lay stark and neat on the shattered shell of pavement between them.

  Mick said the first thing to come into his mind. “Something historical about that line, Your Honor?”

  Chastity took a step forward and placed her sandaled foot on the paint. “Nothing historical about petty vandalism, Mr. Logan. Nothing in the least.”

  “Not much of a vandal, making a single stripe.”

  The line, he saw now, ended just behind Thekan’s heels, even though Cy’s last abandoned spray can rested another thirty feet away next to the building.

  “An uncreative attempt,” Thekan said and held out his hands over the sorry state of Knoll’s miscreants. He glanced backward at the mercantile, but only fleeting. “If there is a message here, I’m afraid it is lost on me.”

  “And yet, somebody went to the trouble,” Mick said.

  His eyes remained fixed on Thekan’s black dress shoes with their unfashionably pointed toes for two reasons. First, he was unable to stop replaying the image of the bloody spade-like shoe prints on Kippy’s stairs. And second, the paint line near Thekan’s feet was fading inch by inch, as if evaporating off the earth as he stared. A few days ago he might have gawped at such an occurrence with amazement, but not now. Not after Peter Fyvie, and the bar, and Harley’s hospital room. Now his regard was one of dour acceptance.