Covenant Of The Flame

by David Morrell

  Tess reached for the folder. She slowly removed what felt like six photographs, discovering that they were frontside down. A short reprieve. Tense, she turned the first one.

  She gasped.

  What once had been a head now resembled a roast that had been seared, scorched, blackened, charred, and.

  'Oh, my God.' Tess jerked her eyes away, but the image of the grotesque mutilation remained in her mind. The blistered skull had no hair, no features, nothing that could possibly resemble Joseph's handsome face. Soot-filmed bone protruded from dark whorls of crisped.

  Her voice quavered. 'Lieutenant, I'm sorry I doubted you.'

  'Here. Let me. There's no need to torture yourself any further.' Craig reached for the photographs.

  Tess shook her head fiercely. 'I started this. I'll.'

  She turned the next photograph. Another head shot, equally repulsive. In a rush, she set it aside. Only four more to go. Hurry, she thought.

  She wasn't prepared for the next photo. The corpses on the platform beyond the window had each been covered with a sheet to the neck. But now she winced at a full view of a naked, almost totally charred body. Only the legs to the knees and the left arm below the elbow hadn't been scorched. However, what Tess noticed most, with mounting nausea, were the bulky stitches that ran from the pelvis up to the ribcage, then right and left, forming a Y, where the pathologist had closed the body after the autopsy had been performed.

  I can't take much more. Tess inwardly moaned, hands shuddering, and flipped another photograph. Whatever horror she'd dreaded she would see, she discovered - exhaling sharply, reprieved - that she was staring at the corpse's unburned left leg and foot. Thank you, Lord. Now if only. She turned the next-to-last photograph and again exhaled, reprieved, viewing the corpse's unburned right leg and foot.

  One more to go.

  One last photograph.

  And if I'm lucky, Tess thought.

  She was.

  At the same time, she wasn't, for although the final photograph wasn't threatening (indeed it was predictable, given the logic of the sequence - a shot of the corpse's unburned left arm below the elbow), something in it attracted her shocked attention.

  Abruptly her memory flashed back to when she'd talked with Joseph in the delicatessen last Friday afternoon.

  'We can only be friends,' he'd said.

  'I'm not sure what.'

  'What I mean is, we can never be lovers.'

  His frankness had startled her. 'Hey,' she'd said, I wasn't making a proposition. It's not like I asked you to go to bed.'

  'I know that. Really, your behavior's impeccable.' Joseph had reached across the table and tenderly touched her hand. I didn't mean to offend or embarrass you. It's just that. there are certain things about me you wouldn't understand.'

  And while he'd said that, Tess had glanced down at the back of the hand, the left hand, that Joseph had placed on hers.

  Just as Tess now glanced at - no, riveted her eyes upon - the back of the left hand in the photograph.

  She felt as if she'd swallowed ice cubes, as if her stomach were crammed with freezing chunks of.!

  A choked sound escaped from her throat. She slumped back in the chair, forced her eyes away from the photograph, fought to speak, and told Craig, 'It's him.'

  'What?' Craig looked surprised. 'But how can you be.? The corpse is so.'

  'On Friday, when we ate lunch, Joseph touched my hand. I remember glancing down and noticing he had a scar, a distinctive jagged scar, on the back of his left wrist.' Weary, heart sinking with grief, Tess pointed toward the photograph. 'Like this scar on this left wrist. He's dead. My God, Joseph's.'

  'Let me see.' Craig grasped the photograph. As if clinging to Joseph, she resisted. The lieutenant gently pried at her fingers and carefully removed the photograph.

  Craig scowled down, frowning, nodding. 'Yes. An old scar. Judging from its thickness, the wound was deep. No one mentioned this to me. Otherwise I'd have told you about it and saved you the pain of looking at the other photos.' He raised the picture closer. 'Not a knife scar. Not jagged the way it is. More like a wound from a broken bottle or maybe barbed wire or. Tess, are you sure?'

  'In my mind, I can see his hand on mine as vividly as I see that photograph. There's no way to measure them. But yes. I'd give anything not to be. I'm sure. The scars are identical. This is Joseph. Joseph is." Tess felt pressure behind her ears, in her stomach, but most of all, around her heart.

  Her voice sank. Abruptly she felt numb. 'Dead. Joseph is.'

  'Tess, I'm sorry.'

  'Dead.'

  FOURTEEN

  In the mortuary's parking garage, Tess's walk became more unsteady. She was barely conscious of Craig helping her into the car, then going around and sitting behind the steering wheel. She fumbled to put on her seatbelt, again barely conscious that Craig snapped it into place for her. With unfocused eyes, she stared toward the blur of other vehicles in the dimly lit garage.

  At last Craig broke the silence, coughing. 'Where shall I drive you? Home? After what you've been through. You're trembling. I don't recommend that you try to go back to work.'

  Tess turned to him, blinking, only now fully aware of his presence. 'Home? Work?' She crossed her unsteady arms and pressed them hard against her chest, restraining her tremors. 'Would you.? This'll sound. Do me a favor?'

  'I already promised I'd help as much as possible.'

  'Take me to where he died.'

  Craig furrowed his brow. 'To the park?'

  'Yes.'

  'But why would you.?'

  Tess hugged her chest harder, wincing. 'Please.'

  Craig seemed about to say something. Instead he coughed again, turned the ignition key, put the car in gear, and drove from the garage, emerging onto First Avenue, following the one-way traffic northward.

  Thank you,' Tess said.

  Craig shrugged.

  Tomorrow, first thing, I'll make a point of telling Walter how cooperative you've been,' she said.

  'Walter? Hey, you've got the wrong idea. I'm not doing this for Walter. I'm doing my job. Or have been. But at the moment, I'm doing this for you.'

  'I'm sorry. I apologize.' Tess almost touched his arm. 'I didn't mean to sound insulting, as if I thought you were only paying back a debt or.'

  'You didn't insult me. Don't worry about it. But I like to make sure things are clearly understood. Not many people would have done what you just went through for a man they'd only met a few times but considered a friend. Loyalty's a rare commodity. You'd be amazed how many people don't care when someone's missing. I admire your persistence - your sense of obligation - so if you tell me you want to go to the park, fine, that's where we go. The office will just have to do without me till this afternoon. Joseph Martin must have been special.'

  Tess thought about it. 'Different.'

  'I don't understand.'

  'It's hard to explain. He had a. Sure, he was handsome. But more important, he had a kind of. magnetism. He seemed to. the only word I can think of is. he seemed to glow.' Tess raised her chin. 'And by the way, in case you've been wondering, there wasn't anything sexual between us.'

  'I never suggested there was.'

  'In fact, the reverse. Joseph insisted that we could only be friends, that we could never have sex.'

  Craig turned to her, frowning.

  'I know what you're thinking, and so did I. Wrong. He didn't say that because he was gay or anything, but because. How did he put it? He said a platonic friendship was better because it was eternal. That's how he talked. Almost poetically. Yes.' Grief squeezed Jess's throat. Sorrow cramped her heart. 'Joseph was special.'

  Craig concentrated on driving but continued frowning. They crossed the intersection of Forty-Fifth Street, passing the United Nations building on the right, heading farther northward.

  'So.' Tess quivered and straightened. 'What happens next?'

  'After the park? I talk to Homicide and tell them we've got a tentative identification of
the body.'

  'Tentative? That scar is.'

  'You have to realize, Homicide needs more than that to be absolutely certain. They've sent the fingerprints they managed to get from the left hand to the FBI. Even with computers, though, it can take several days for the FBI to search its files for a match to those prints, especially given the backlog of cases. But now, with a possible name for the victim, they can speed up the process, go to Joseph Martin's file, compare prints, and. Who knows? It could be the scar is coincidental. You might be wrong.'

  'Don't I wish. But I'm not.' Tess felt dizzy.

  'I'm just trying to give you hope.'

  'And I'm afraid that hope's as rare as loyalty.'

  Tess's breathing became more labored the closer they came to Eighty-Eighth Street. Tense, she watched the lieutenant steer right, cross two avenues, and just before the final one, manage to find a parking space. With greater distress, she got out of the car with him, locked it, and in hazy sunlight faced the opposite side of East End Avenue.

  To the left, partially obscured by trees, was the six-foot-high, stockadelike, wooden barrier that encircled Gracie Mansion. One of the first New-York- City houses along the East River, it had been built by Archibald Gracie in 1798. Huge, with many chimneys and gables, as well as numerous verandas, it had once been the museum for the city but was now the well-guarded mayor's residence.

  Straight ahead, however, compelling Tess, was the wrought-iron fence that encircled the woods and paths of Carl Schurz Park.

  'You're certain you want to-?'

  Before the lieutenant could finish his question, Tess clutched his arm and crossed the avenue. They passed through an open gate (a sign warned that no radios, tape players, or musical instruments were permitted between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.) and proceeded along a brick walkway. Thick bushes flanked them. Overhanging branches of densely leaved trees cast shadows.

  'Where?' Tess sounded hoarse.

  The guards at Gracie Mansion saw the flames at three o'clock Sunday morning. Just about.' Craig glanced around. There.' He pointed toward a cavelike contour in a granite ridge behind bushes to his right. The mayor's guards are pros. They know, whatever happens, they don't leave their post. After all, the flames might have been a diversion, a trick intended to draw them away and expose their boss. So they called the local precinct. In the meantime, the mayor's guards saw the flames streak from here' - Craig indicated the cavelike contour, then gestured ahead past bushes toward a miniature amphitheater beyond an overhead walkway -'to there, toward that statue.'

  Tass wavered, approaching the human-sized statue. It increased in definition, becoming a bronze child, knee raised, peering sideways, downward, toward the brick surface in the middle of the fifty-foot perimeter of the circular enclosure.

  The statue resembled a nymph. Perversely, it reminded Tess of Peter Pan.

  'And?' In the stone-lined basin, Tess heard her voice crack as she swung toward Craig.

  'Remember, you asked to come here.'

  'I haven't forgotten. And?'

  The officers from the local precinct found. The rain had pooled on these bricks. The victim.'

  'Yes, you told me. He tried to roll in the water and put out the names. Where?'

  'Behind the statue, Tess.' Craig raised his hands and stepped closer. 'I don't recommend.'

  'It's necessary.' Tess slowly rounded the statue.

  And sank to her hips on a ledge at the statue's feet.

  The contour of a man, lying sideways, his knees pulled toward his chest, had been blackened into the bricks.

  'Oh.'

  'I'm sorry, Tess. I didn't want to bring you here, but you kept insisting.'

  With a sob, Tess stooped toward the dismal dark shape on the bricks. She touched where Joseph's heart would have been. 'Do me another favor?' Her voice broke. 'Please? Just one more favor?'

  'Take you away from here?'

  'No.' Tears streamed from Tess's burning eyes. Through their blur, she begged him silently.

  Craig understood. He opened his arms, and sobbing harder, she welcomed his embrace.

  FIFTEEN

  Memphis, Tennessee.

  Billy Joe Bennett couldn't stop sweating. Moisture oozed from his scalp, his face, his chest, his back, his legs. It rolled down his neck. It soaked his shirt. As he nervously drove through one a.m. traffic in this bar-district of the city, he felt as if he was sitting on a puddle. The problem was that he didn't sweat because of the hot humid night. In fact, he had the windows of his Chevy Blazer rolled shut and the air conditioning on full blast. Still, no matter how much he shivered from the cold air rushing against him, he couldn't stop sweating. Because he shivered from something else and sweated for the same reason. Two reasons actually. The first was tension. After all, he was due to testify before a shitload of government investigators this morning. And the second was a desperate need for cocaine.

  Jesus, he thought. How could anything that made you feel so good when you snorted it put you through this much hell when you didn't have it? Billy Joe's insides ached as if every organ scraped against the other. His muscles contracted so forcefully that his cramped hands seemed about to snap the steering wheel. God Almighty. The glare of headlights stabbed his eyes. The blaze of neon signs over taverns made him wince. If I don't get some nose candy soon.

  He kept glancing furtively toward his rearview mirror, desperate to make sure he wasn't being followed. Those damned government investigators were worse than bloodhounds. Since Sunday, they'd been tailing him everywhere. They had a car parked on his street when he was at home. Each day since the train's derailment, they'd forced him to give them urine samples, the tests on which he'd passed, because Billy Joe wasn't any dummy. No, siree, boy. He read the papers, and he watched the news on TV, and months ago he'd realized that random drug testing would soon be required for anyone who worked in transportation. So he'd planned for the day when he might be tested. He'd paid his brother, who never touched cocaine, to piss in a sterile jug for him. Then he'd taken the jug home, poured urine into several plastic vials, and hidden them behind the toilet tank in his bathroom. The second he'd heard about the derailment, he'd gone to the bathroom, smeared Vaseline over one of the vials, and inserted it - Lord, that had hurt! -up his rectum. And sure enough, Sunday, a government investigator had knocked on his door, shown him a court order, handed him a glass container, and requested a urine sample.

  So Billy Joe had said, 'Of course. I've got nothing to hide.' He'd gone into the bathroom, locked the door, removed the plastic vial of urine from his rectum, poured the warm fluid into the glass container, returned the vial to his rectum, and come out of the bathroom, telling the investigator, 'Sorry, I don't piss so good on demand. This is the most I could coax from my bladder.'

  The investigator had given him a steely look and said, 'This is all we'll need, believe me.'

  'You're wasting your time.'

  'Yeah, sure, we are.'

  After that, Billy Joe hadn't gone anywhere without a Vaseline-slicked vial of urine up his rearend. Talk about cramps and pain. Man, oh, man. But he was a railroad worker, broad-shouldered, big-chested, from twenty years of lifting rails, shifting ties, and hefting a sledgehammer. He was tough, he told himself, right on, no two ways about it, and if those government investigators thought they could scare him, those pansies in their cheap suits had another think coming.

  At the moment, though, Billy Joe did feel scared. Because on Monday, he'd used up his carefully hidden stash of cocaine, and the first day without it hadn't been too bad, a slight case of the shakes is all, but the next day his stomach had started to squirm, and the day after that, he'd thrown up and couldn't stop sweating. Now at one a.m. Thursday morning, soaking wet, trembling, doing his best to drive without wavering, he feared he'd go fucking out of his mind if he didn't get a jolt of coke soon.

  Dear God in heaven, he couldn't testify before those government investigators this morning if he looked and shook and sweated like this. He couldn't keep his thou
ghts straight. He wouldn't be able to concentrate on their questions. He'd stammer or, worse, maybe even babble, and they'd know right away that he wasn't just nervous, like from stage fright, but suffering from withdrawal, and that would be that. He didn't know what the government could do to him if the investigators proved he was an addict, but this much he did know - he wouldn't like it one damned bit. Three hundred people were dead because that section of track had given way, toppling the train. Twenty cars of anhydrous ammonia had split open, and ever since Sunday, the newspapers had been full of stories about possible criminal negligence, even manslaughter. Shit, man, they put you away for that.