Where Bodies Lie

by D. K. Greene

  Forty-Eight

  In the early hours of the morning, Peter stares at the ceiling. He can’t believe he was dumb enough to search cyanide compounds from his apartment. He’s been careful to keep as much of the fake murder searches separate from his personal life as possible up to this point. A slipup like that could mean big trouble.

  He deletes the search history, even though he knows some remote database watchdog has probably already flagged his IP for suspicious activity. If anyone ever asks about it, Peter decides he can tell them he’s worried about poisoning himself with the body wash by accident. It isn’t a total stretch. This is Portland; land of chemical phobias.

  There’s nothing more to do about the impulsive web browsing, so he forces it from his mind. He writes himself a note to buy some all natural, fragrance free, organic body wash the next time he’s at the store. That’ll help his story stick.

  But, if he’s going to fix Glen, he’s got to do more research. He considers going back to the thrift store to see if he can find another laptop. Shopping there is hit and miss. He’ll go to the library instead.

  He thrashes around in bed for a few more hours until his alarm clock says it’s time to get up. As he’s dressing, he rifles through his chest of drawers until he finds a stack of old library cards. One benefit of a lifetime in Witness Protection.

  He’s turned most of the IDs from his former names in to the authorities. But Peter’s always had difficulty letting go of his prior lives completely. He pulls a library card from Chicago. The name Neil Apollo appears in tiny block letters on the front, and a signature in Peter’s handwriting flows with broad, looping letters across the back. A faded yellow sticky-note tacked to the card reminds him Neil was an adventurer, an avid researcher of oddities, and a volunteer at understaffed schools.

  As Neil, his specialty had been performing science experiments like magic tricks. Peter nods at the card and tucks it in his back pocket. He’s sure he’ll need a proof of address, so he rifles through his stack of mail and pulls a bill from the collection. He removes the statement from the envelope and drops it back in the pile. He ducks out of the apartment with a sheet of blank address labels and trots over to the complex leasing office.

  Becky, the little old woman who works at the property office, isn’t at her desk. He’s in luck though, as she’s already unlocked the common areas. Assuming she’s gone out for coffee, Peter lets himself in the business center and shoves his labels in the cheap printer beside the communal computer. It’s ancient, but he manages to print a label with Neil’s name and his current address. Before Becky comes back from her break, Peter’s closed the program and exited the building.

  He returns home to put the printed label on the utility envelope. Before he leaves again, he makes himself a bit of breakfast. He smiles at the tinkling sound of cereal hitting the bottom of the glass bowl as he pours himself a serving of Alphabet Apes. After all these weeks talking about it, it’s become his favorite cereal.

  After eating, he gathers his wallet and keys. His phone rings. Inspector Douglas’s number scrolls across the screen. Peter’s not over being used by Dougy and Ollie, but feels jovial enough to answer.

  “Hey, Peter,” Dougy says in a hushed voice. “I’m at the prison. Oliver says he’s willing to let three more bodies go if you’ll come.”

  “Not interested,” Peter quips as he locks the apartment door.

  “Look, I know you’re pissed. But you’re the one who talked me into getting back into this thing over Thanksgiving, remember? I wanted to walk away, but you wouldn’t let me. It’s as important to me as it is to you. Let’s help each other get through this.”

  “Eventually, Dad will tell you where the bodies are if he really wants to give them up.” Peter slides into his car and puts the keys in the ignition.

  Inspector Douglas sighs into the phone. There’s a scratching when he moves around, then his voice comes back, clearer than before. “He won’t. He’s irritated we’re prosecuting that corrections guy who prank-called you. Apparently, Officer Cult-Follower was smuggling in comfort items. Your dad’s life has gotten less cozy without him.”

  “Get Mac to sweet talk him,” Peter suggests.

  “She was there for the formal arrest. He’s pissed at her, too,” the inspector says with a sigh. “There’s no way around it. We need you.”

  The Portland skies spit a drizzle of rain on the windshield. “I’m busy, Dougy. I’ve got things to do. I don’t have time to come down there.”

  “Cut the crap, Henry!” Inspector Douglas bellows, “Put off whatever asinine thing you’re doing and get over here. We know about the toys you’re handing out. You can take a day off from playing Santa.”

  “It’s the holidays. I volunteered to hand out presents. I can’t just walk off my shift,” Peter insists.

  Dougy’s grunt makes it known he doesn’t agree. “When did you get to be so charitable?”

  After strapping the seatbelt, Peter stares out the windshield. He doesn’t see anyone in the parking lot watching him, but he’s sure the inspector has someone out there. “Giving stuff away makes me feel good. Helps me remember there are people out there who aren’t murderous freaks. You should try it sometime.”

  “I don’t think the kids will be nearly as excited about their presents if they find out Santa Claus is the spawn of Oliver Roberts.”

  “Wait. If I don’t come down there, you’ll out me to the public?” Peter sighs. “Just think of all the paperwork you’ll have to fill out.”

  “Witness Protection is a pain in the ass,” the inspector grumbles.

  Peter thinks about the library card in his back pocket. “Tell me about it.”

  There’s a lengthy pause before the inspector finally speaks again. “I won’t tell anyone who you are. You’re right. I don’t want to have you moved again, and there’s no point in upsetting the kiddies. Though I’m sure your ex-girlfriend would love to break this story.”

  Peter has tried his best not to think about Elsie for weeks. Dougy’s mention of her makes his stomach churn. “If you ever go to the media with anything about me, I hope you’ll give the story to someone else.”

  A chuckle fills his ear. “If you give me anything worth going to the news over, I promise I’ll find some other chump to report it.”

  A midnight blue car pulls into the parking lot. It isn’t someone from Dougy’s office though, unless he’s gotten smart enough to have puttering old women act as lookouts. Peter considers getting out and offering to help her with her bags. The feeling of charity passes by the time she’s loaded her walker with groceries and locked her car.

  “I’ve got to go,” Peter insists.

  The inspector sighs. “If you change your mind, let me know. I’ll send Mac to pick you up for visitation.”

  “Have a Merry Christmas, Dougy.”

  “Yeah, Henry. You, too.”

  Forty-Nine

  It’s remarkably easy to get a library card. A flash of his Chicago membership and the utility bill with his current address, and the librarian handed him his new card. Forty-five minutes later, Peter is staring at a computer monitor. The library is busy with kids out of school for winter break. Peter pretends he’s casually surfing the internet while he waits for the people on either side of him to vacate. His time at the keyboard is almost up. He’ll have to add his name to the waiting list again.

  When he’s five minutes from logging off, he finally has his opening. The kid on his left leaves and the young woman on his right asks him to watch her bag while she goes to the bathroom. As soon as they’re both out of sight, he works furiously to get into the computer’s security settings so he can disable the block that prevents users from downloading content.

  Before his neighbor comes back for her bag, he’s installed an incognito browser and buried the icon. He doesn’t have time to take advantage of the search tool now, but when he’s called from the waiting list again, it’ll be here. He doesn’t know how he’ll return to the same co
mputer. He’ll cross that bridge when he gets there.

  The librarian touches his shoulder and tells him it’s time to give up his seat. A wild frame of corkscrew hair surrounds her face. Peter watches her wander back to the desk overlooking the computer area. She’s buried her pert little nose in a book before she sits down.

  Peter takes casual strides across the room to the sign-up list. It rests at the edge of the librarian’s desk. He writes Neil Apollo at the bottom of the page. “Hey, do you know how long the wait will be for another computer?”

  The woman’s eyes flick over the edge of her book. “One minute, please.” She finishes reading the page she’s on and puts the book down with an irritated exhale. She scans the list of names. She’s wearing one of the most hideous holiday themed sweaters Peter’s ever seen. He wonders if she’s swept up in the ugly sweater craze, or if she’d wear it regardless of current fashion trends.

  She licks her plump lips and counts the names in silence. Her mouth twitches with each name she reads. She raises an untrimmed eyebrow. “It’ll probably be a couple hours.” She looks at the bank of computers and he follows her gaze to the still empty seat he vacated. “Unless some people don’t check in for their turn.”

  As if on cue, a homeless looking teenager heads their way. He grabs the list from the librarian and scrawls a signature beside a name at the top of the list. He may look as though he’s just come from the corner, but he smells like cinnamon and pine needles. He smiles and says hello to the librarian before going to claim the vacant computer.

  The librarian picks up her book. Before she loses herself in pages bound by a bare-chested man, she announces, “It doesn’t happen often. Just come back in an hour to see if one’s available.”

  Fighting the urge to complain, Peter groans. The sound annoys the librarian, who slides a bookmark into the novel and roughly tosses it on the desk. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Maybe. I need to do some research on poison. I wasn’t able to find much useful information on the computer. Any chance you’ve got some books about that here?” Peter braces himself for an accusing glare, chiding himself for the bold request.

  The dull lifelessness of the librarian’s expression shifts. Her cheeks blush slightly, and the corners of her mouth turn up. “Sure, we do. Come with me.”

  Peter follows. He’s overwhelmed with self-consciousness, so he drops behind her a few paces. She notices the change in his stride and slows her gait to wait for him. Her smile radiates excitement. He doesn’t know how to handle the change in her demeanor. “Sorry for lagging behind,” he sputters.

  “Don’t worry about it. So, why are you interested in poison?” She walks beside him now, gesturing when they come to a set of shelves where they need to turn.

  His brain flickers back to his notes about Neil Apollo. “I’m putting together a talk for some high school kids and need to make science more exciting. The kids think standard-issue chemical reactions are boring. My colleagues and I are on a mission to find a topic to pique their interest.”

  “Very cool.” She flips a clump of red hair over her natural part as she smiles, but it returns to its original position when she turns her head to read the labels at the end of the next aisle.

  They reach a long row of shelves, bowing under the weight of hundreds of books. The librarian traces her fingers along their spines until they reach the end of the section. She opens her arms as if she might hug the shelf. “Here’s the place to start. There are books on a variety of toxins, both natural and synthetic.”

  Trying to flirt with the awkward woman, he asks, “Have any favorites?”

  Her putrid green sweater wiggles across her chest when she bends over. She reaches for a thick book with pictures of mushrooms on the cover. “I do.”

  “Wow. You didn’t even have to think about that. Should I be worried?” Peter crosses his arms and takes a step back, as if the book and the woman holding it might bite. She laughs.

  “I write Victorian era murder mysteries in my downtime. Everyone who writes that time period seems obsessed with arsenic poisoning. It helps to know there were plenty of other things that could kill you.” She bounces on the balls of her feet with sudden giddiness. “Keeps the readers coming back for more.”

  “Creepy,” Peter says with a shudder.

  “Yeah.” She giggles and extends the book to him. “I’m Laura. Let me know if you have more questions.”

  “I’ll do that.” Peter accepts the book and watches her skirt sway around her boot-laced ankles as she darts out of the aisle. He pulls a few more books off the shelf and piles them on a table at the end of the row. He sets a timer on his phone to remind himself to check the computer lab in an hour and pores over the pages.

  Taking care of Glen won’t be as simple as getting him to take a dose of arsenic like the characters in some Victorian mystery. Peter reads through his alarm sounding, submerged in a book about over-the-counter poisons banned from consumer use. The topic is so engrossing, he takes the entire stack of books with him when he’s ready to return to the computer lab. They’re like treasure, both in their wealth of information and their heft. Lugging them across the library, Peter’s arms protest their weight.

  He checks in at Laura’s desk to see how the wait for the computers is coming. Someone scratched out the order of the list and renumbered it so he’s next in line. She mouths words at him with an innocent look in her eye. For the kids.

  They share silent smiles while he waits for someone to vacate. The good smelling homeless kid who took his seat is among the people packing their bags and Peter jockeys for position, ready to pounce the second the guy moves away from the desk.

  He pulls on his jacket, which Peter notices has holes ripped in strategic places. The tears are in locations that don’t impede access to his pockets. The area around each hole is machine-stitched to prevent it from fraying farther than its intended placement. It occurs to Peter that the kid likely paid a lot of money for the coat and is trying to achieve the hobo look on purpose.

  His clean scent lingers in the cubicle surrounding the computer. Peter shakes his head. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever understand people. He waves one of the smaller texts through the air to disperse the fragrance, then deposits the stack of books onto the tiny desk. When Laura has her nose replanted in her romance, he opens the incognito web browser.

  While he’d love to buy a case of noxious powder to dump on Glen’s head, he has trouble buying anything toxic. Peter thinks back to when he was a kid. There was a big Tylenol scare. Peter looks up the Time Magazine article on the poisonings and tries to figure out how the tax consultant suspected of the crime might have gotten a hold of enough potassium cyanide to kill all those people.

  If Peter were really teaching kids science like Neil Apollo had, he’d have a much easier time finding all these answers. Proper science teachers have access to a variety of chemical compounds. He looks up lab supply catalogs and scrolls through dozens of pages that list all the chemicals he could ever hope for. They embellish each page with giant red letters.

  This product will ship to a school or industrial business address only. Don’t even think about trying to ship this to your apartment, dumbass.

  Peter considers creating a laboratory company. He could rent a small warehouse and have the chemicals shipped there. Maybe he’d pull it off, but it would take weeks to put together. Not to mention that starting an entire company to take care of one man screams “premeditation”. Peter doubts he could get something of that magnitude done with Inspector Douglas and Special Agent Jones tailing him.

  He glances at the pile of books on his desk. The one Laura first suggested is suddenly more interesting. He searches Poisonous Mushrooms of the Northwest and discovers thousands of pages of mushroom identification sites. It doesn’t take long to find stories of people who’ve accidentally poisoned themselves or others after mushrooming in Oregon.

  He closes the browser and sifts through the books. He
pulls three volumes that have sections on toxic plants and fungi, and stacks them on top of the book Laura gave him. He puts the rest of his stack on a returns cart. After gathering up the stuff he wants to take home, he stops by Laura’s desk.

  “Hey, thanks for the help,” he whispers.

  She winks from behind her book. “Anytime.”

  Fifty

  Peter doesn’t notice the Suburban until he passes the last exit for Salem. At first, he thinks it’s just another guy headed south on a sunny winter morning, but when he tests the theory by pulling into the slow lane, the other driver follows suit.

  Peter realizes he saw the same black SUV about a half hour ago. He must have been doing an expert job keeping distance between them until now. Whatever cover he’d been using has vanished since most of the traffic pulled into the city. The farther they get from Salem, the less there is for him to hide behind.

  There comes a point wherein a person gets so used to being followed by cops, it doesn’t scare them anymore. Instead, they stare in the rearview mirror and comment to themselves about all the stupid things people do while trying to be incognito. For example, driving a giant blacked-out Suburban. Don’t they realize if they want to blend into the Oregon landscape, they should plod along in a vintage teal Volvo, or a forest green Subaru with a roof rack?

  Peter flicks his hazards on and pulls to the shoulder. Contrary to the warm sun streaming through the closed windows, a blast of frozen air assaults him when he opens the door. Peter fiddles around in the car a minute, keeping his eye on the mirror to see what the Suburban does. Its driver pulls over, and Peter watches the guy behind the wheel hurriedly put on a dirty flannel trucker’s jacket and tattered baseball cap.

  Because that will convince Peter he’s a regular dude pulling over to help.

  Peter gets the rest of the way out and moves along the side of the car to the trunk. He pops it open, moving to lean over the side so his back isn’t fully facing the other rig. He keeps his eye on the guy getting out of the Suburban as he pulls out his emergency tool kit and digs around to find his tire pressure gauge.