“Coincidence. Why have you called?”
There was a moment of silence only interrupted by the sounds of the engine and the shock absorbers. The road was in really bad shape. They were already on the way to Lake Hill Lake. Tom’s lake.
“The blue one. When Tom arrived at the precinct and he told me about the blue hair, I felt something within me. Then I remembered. At first, I thought it was one of his stupid complaints. You know, just another curmudgeon, but that blue hair got stuck in my mind. We’re on our way to Tom’s lake, you know...”
“Ava Cox?” Andrew interrupted, thrilled, even though he tried to hide it unsuccessfully.
“He says he found her only one or maybe to hours ago, who knows, that guy is a reprobate...”
“Reprobate?” Andrew replied, this time with his characteristic deep voice. He leaned his wide back on the backrest that cracked underneath his weight.
“He said she was naked, imagine.”
“I see!”
“Can you come?”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes if my fucking Ford starts.” Andrew spurred staring in a worried way at Ava Cox’s photograph. The first one on the right. He felt the urge to caress it again. He would soon do it on her real skin.
“Perfect. Uncle Tom complained about that poor bastard’s hair color.”
“Uncle Tom?”
“Well, you know. The wound has opened up again. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Ava Cox had hair blue when she went missing.”
“Ah!”
And he hung up.
26
Andrew put his trench coat on, staring at the wall as if he were looking at the mirror. He looked with inquisitive eyes and got closer to de Ava Cox’s photograph putting his chubby fingers on it, it was the thirtieth time that day. An intense tingling rose up from his stomach through the gullet. His headache appeared in his temple along with the banging of his heart. It was the first time he got nervous.
During that morning and part of the afternoon, all his brain’s precognitive powers got together, from a simple idea to Remote Vision, something trivial in him but that spring day it had become significant. An ecstasy got mixed up with some sort of sorrow and confusion along with doubt.
“Fucking Andrew.” He said to himself, whining. It hadn’t even been a whisper.
He withdrew his fingers from the photograph and headed to the window to close the shutter even more. On his way, the tingling was now in his balls. His bladder seemed to have needles inside and he felt as if a big stone ball was about to explode. He noticed some humidity in his penis. He was peeing. He couldn’t take it anymore. As sweaty as he was, he headed to the bathroom that was located at the end of the lugubrious hall to the right. He turned on the light while the little drops of pee escaped like when a faucet is damaged. He unzipped his pants in a sudden movement that could cut several sheets of paper.
He started to urinate.
A piss like the one of a huge dog started leaking on the bottom of the toilet. Several yellowish drops, like his light bulb, sprayed everywhere. While he breathed slowly and deeply in a satisfying vicious circle, along with the relief typical of an orgasm, he thought that after all, he had woken up different that morning. He realized that something within him was not calm and that a hidden voice was trying to tell him something. He remembered the damn white Ford abandoned in a distant place. He wondered if it really was Ava’s car.
As he dried his dick with some toilet paper, his lips arched in a mild smile but immediately wrinkled in a contrite gesture.
He zipped his pants in another inquisitive movement and turned off the bathroom light. Tapping the floor like stones, he headed to the exit door and his fingers grabbed its handle. The sun hit him like the punch of a furious boxer. His eyes closed, and they started aching, not as hard as his head would ache, and by now, it was already dissipating. His face wrinkled in a comical gesture and he turned his back on the sun’s long fingers on that spring afternoon. A colorful butterfly hovered over his bald head and with its nearly inexistent legs it made his head tickle
When he opened his eyes, he saw hundreds of black dots fluttering around just like flies looking for shit. Little by little those dots started disappearing and, with them, the slight dizziness he felt. He slammed the door shut and it echoed in the frame. He didn’t lock the door and, by the time he got closer to his blue Ford, blue like that poor bastard’s hair, he remembered he hadn’t turned off the light of his office. He didn’t think it was important, though. He was wearing his beige trench coat that flew on his knees. It was starting to get hot in there, but nothing compared to the heat that was trapped inside the vehicle
The wheel was burning, and the door creaked reluctantly under the severe sun. As he closed it, it didn’t sound as pressed rubber but instead, it chose the sound of the drums of a Rock ‘n Roll band.
The air was unbreathable in there and Andrew pulled from the buttons of his shirt with an instinctive gesture. He had the trench coat on, though! He introduced the key in the ignition and twisted to the right. A huge cat seemed to have meowed inside the hood, just woken up and with crusts in its eyes. The electric engine rotated several times with its prestigious sharp sound and as if brushing the pavement, the engine started to protest like a wild bull. The convulsions had reached Andrew’s right foot as he tried to hit the accelerator. He was choking it, he always had that fucking habit. After a few seconds of anxiety, the engine roared and spat through its exhaust a blue smoke that got tangled with the sky until it completely vanished. Andrew could smell the gas and he wrinkled his nose and he threw an expletive.
After the compulsive hammer blow, he purred and smiled behind the wheel, with his face full of joy.
He accelerated as he hit the clutch and by the time he let it go, the Ford started moving as if it had square tires. The vehicle hadn’t passed the technical inspection, but he didn’t care about it. As long as it could start the engine and take him to his destination, even complaining, everything was okay.
He had taken the road to Lake Hill Lake.
Tom’s lake.
Nor his head nor his bladder hurt anymore. He had, however, a yellowish stain right next to his zipper and on the right thigh of his gray trousers.
27
Tom was going last and the blue lights of the cars before him could be barely seen in the sunlight. The trees didn’t receive the heat of those intermittent and hysterical lights. The tires of the police patrols, two of them, spat dirt and dust to the back and Tom gave in in a sudden coughing fit.
He took his hand, in a fist, to his mouth moving the tobacco ball as he started to complain about the dust. Immediately, he rolled the window down and spat the biggest phlegm in the world that looked like a black frog that had just jumped off a cliff. The tobacco ball got stuck on the pavement and the sun took care of it.
“Damn cops! I’m going to die if I keep swallowing so much dust.” Tom complained while he looked at the rearview mirror without knowing why. In that mirror he saw the black tobacco stain that he had spat, but nothing else.
Vietnam veterans used to swallow a lot of dust, a lot. However, Tom was just an old curmudgeon who was upset with the entire world. Even with his own existence. His wrinkly eyes and his dry skin covering his whole dirty face, as if he were a mechanic full of grease got drawn in the rearview mirror’s crystal.
He thought about that woman’s nipple.
A cynical smile showed a new face for Tom.
The vehicles slid on the dusty highway like in a car race until they could see the reflection of the water, shining like thousands of diamonds.
The rubber tires slipped in the gravel and span out leaving the vehicle traversed at the end of the road. There was an esplanade and from there they could perfectly see Tom’s cabin. The lights kept scanning the view, but nothing reflected as the lights beamed. The colorful flowers absorbed that light and the leafy forest that hugged the green lake breathed as a huge whale full of seaweed.
None of the police officers had come out of their vehicles yet, not even the sheriff. It was around five thirty.
The Chevy’s door opened slowly followed by a huffing sound, hissing like a cat. Afterward, there was a jab which was followed by the sound of boots scratching the floor. Yes, he was a bit heavy, but those fucking boots were too noisy in that path surrounded by vegetation.
This time, he didn’t have anything to spit.
He rose his arm and with his index finger, stiff as the branch of an old tree, he pointed to the end of the way while he said something that the officers couldn’t hear.
Immediately after, the doors and thumps were heard as they closed one after the other as if a child had thrown his crystal balls game to the floor. The gravel started to crush and to squeak under those boots while Landon was adjusting his sunglasses with his usual tic.
“Where is she, Tom?” His voice sounded cracked. He was drooling a little and his mouth was a bit dry.
“Damn! I’ve been pointing at the place all the time!” Tom scolded making a bulge in one of his wrinkly cheeks that were covered by his scruffy beard. It was his tongue. He was licking the rest of the chewed tobacco that had been trapped between his teeth.
“We can’t see anything from here, Sir.” Henry Ford said. The agent was thirty-two years old, athletic, tall and blonde, with the bluest eyes that Tom had ever seen. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and he didn’t wear sunglasses nor any other kind. He was now with the palm of his hand leaning on his vehicle’s hood as if holding a fallen tree.
“But, if you go through that path that surrounds the lake, you will see her,” Tom explained without putting down his arm. You will see a chick sleeping by the shore, he thought. A small smile tried to show in his dry lips.
Landon leered and nodded. It was as if Tom wasn’t drunk, he thought. He was a damn curmudgeon, that he was, but he always told the truth. That woman would be there where his finger was still pointing, like the statue of Columbus. Just like Maine’s forensic state office, Augusta’s would be packed with junkie-related cases. Oh, boy. He knew. He didn’t need special powers to know that. He also knew that in some areas of the country such as California’s counties (San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, and Ventura) the sheriff’s office also had the responsibility to run a forensic office in charge of the recovery of mortal remains within its county as well as performing autopsies. Not in Maine, though. He really knew all that stuff.
He knew all that as well as he sensed that that poor woman was not there getting a tan and sooner than later she would travel in a hearse to end up in an autopsy.
His heavy boots started to rake the gravel on the dirt path. The open flowers were like beautiful lips that you wished to kiss and the smell of all of them together took over the water’s humidity, evaporating under the sunlight.
Tom took a step ahead of them leaving small clouds of dust behind his heels that looked like spinning out on the ground. His eclectic body, almost as a living dead man, was torturing itself with every step he took. He wasn’t very agile, to tell the truth. He had a scar in his forearm, extremely long. It had been a bullet that had touched him when he was in Vietcong like he used to call it. Without anything to spit, he moved his playful tongue while he was talking, one step away from the agents and the sheriff.
“Damn Tom you shouldn’t have touched her.” Landon suddenly said with his fingers hidden behind the best that hugged his waist like a stole.
“I was just fishing when I saw her from afar. I thought I saw something. When I got closer, I saw those blue eyes and I laughed, sorry about that.” Tom took some time to breathe deeply and added: “When I got close to her and found that she didn’t stink like shit, at first I thought she was asleep and that’s why I wanted to open her eyes.” Tom didn’t know how to disguise the facts. His story wasn’t entirely true.
Kevin, almost as thin as Tom, had put on some glasses. Tom hadn’t seen him wearing them back in the precinct, he could swear he didn’t have them. The sun hit his tiny glasses and Kevin started talking:
“You should never touch a body. That can erase print or, even worse, leave your own fingerprints and have you arrested as a suspect.”
He was also wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Kevin was a pain in the ass and he was also Landon’s personal ass-licker. He was short and brunette, with his hair to the side and a pointed nose. Tom thought he must have a small dick. A stupid idea but it just appeared out of the blue while he dragged his boots instead of walking normally.
The path was earthy and dry like a cinchona shrub; that damn fall had had no rain; luckily, he walked tip toeing. Even then, Mother Nature had challenged the laws of physics and showed its most beautiful side. A wasp flew near Kevin’s ear and buzzed like a trumpet in his eardrum. All of a sudden, his hand hit his ear and he heard a jab followed by a lacerating pain that made him groan.
Tom smiled like a bad boy.
“You get dumber every day, son,” Landon said as he caressed his gun with his right-hand fingers.
“There she is.” Tom pointed with his shabby finger.
Landon stepped up his pace and saw in awe, even though he knew, a figure covered in beautiful colorful petals. It looked like a farewell in a cemetery with all the crown florals on the coffin. Every time he stepped forward, that silhouette grew bigger until a pinkish face with her eyes closed and her uncovered chest was recognizable.
He glanced at Tom, who was pressing his teeth with his eyes lost.
“You just tried to open her eyes?” Landon asked with a hoarse voice.
Tom coughed.
“The wind takes things away,” Tom replied with a raspy voice. He had a knot in his throat and his heart had accelerated a bit, pushing his thick blood through all his stuck veins.
Kevin, interrupting the conversation, took his thumb to the mouth and wetting it with saliva pointed to the sky as if waiting for a stroke of lightning.
“No wind, my friend,” he said, and his deep brown eyes seemed to shine behind his glasses.
Landon was three feet away from the woman in blue hair and Tom one feet and a half away from her.
He occurred to touch her with the tip of his dirty boot, but he didn’t, however, his finger was still pointing at the corpse.
“See? It’s real. Here she is. I was fishing when...”
“We already know the rest!” Landon interrupted while he was getting on his knees. His eyes were no longer fixed on Mother Nature but on the pinkish face of that woman.
“Sir, it appears as if she died recently.” Luke urged. The chubbiest of the team. Why is there someone with overweight in a group? Whether it is a group of friends or police agents, there’s always one.
“Really? You don’t say.” Landon said with the lascivious side. “Check her tits.” Landon looked serious now.
Luke, who was over 220 pounds, looked like a balloon with his huge love handles that hugged his waist. His belly hanged right above his balls and it was impossible to see his belt’s buckle. Every morning, he ate four chocolate donuts in the precinct. He wasn’t especially tall, but he was definitely taller than Kevin. His eyes were not clear, but brown, instead and he had almost blonde curls, more like mahogany brown. His narrow shoulders and his plain chest could describe his physiognomy as a spinning top. He was slow and the funniest in the team. His forehead was always sweaty. His chubby fingers ended up in bitten nails and his ass was the size of a chair. He had no beard.
“Sorry, Sir,” Luke said.
The agents turned their eyes to the body and, mainly, to the hair, spread like a carpet by the lips on the shore, cocooning some wildflowers.
Landon’s thumb pushed the eyelid up, softly at first, just like Tom had
done an hour or two before and then he did it harder.
“She has her eyes glued,” Landon complained as if he had discovered it himself.
“Told you.” Tom improvised as a bent tree right next to him. The woman’s hand was brushing Tom’s boots. He almost stepped on her fingers. Her nails had nail polish on them.
28
Purring like a dog with rabies, the Ford Mondeo was running on the asphalt complaining about the holes and the patched areas. The rattling inside the vehicle was as if in a plane with turbulence.
Andrew held the wheel with both hands, with his eyes up front conscious and observing what was ahead of him. The crystal was tainted with dust, but he would see a horse if it got in his way.
Spitting blue smoke that expanded as fingers in the air, the Ford moved forward towards his destination.
Andrew couldn’t think about anything else but to get there as soon as he could.
The speedometer wasn’t going any faster than fifty miles an hour.
The relentless sun, as in summer, was still caressing the Ford’s chassis and the road with its golden linen.
A lizard showed its tongue to the sun.
29
They had surrounded the woman’s body with yellow tape. Landon couldn’t remember her name, but he did recognize her by the peculiar color of her hair. The soft breeze made the plastic tape wave like a leaf in the middle of a storm. The agents, with latex gloves covering their hands, worked hard putting yellow tags with numbers that Tom didn’t understand.
“I don’t why we’re signaling with “no trespassing” signs if not even the rats come here,” Tom mumbled, and he spat on his side turning his head. His vertebrae cracked as he twisted, and Tom took his hand to the neck as if that was the only solution.
Landon, who was talking on his handy and which had previously been on his left shoulder like a frog, withdrew the microphone that was attached to a coiled cord and said:
“Tom, you will have to testify in the precinct. It’s part of the process.”
“Sure, just like in the war, you just had to pull the trigger and boom, fuck everything.” Tom made the gesture with his hands as if shooting a rifle.
Eyes that do not Open Page 6