“How long do you think it will take?” Jenkins had asked. There was no smile on his face, no horrible glint in his eye, and that somehow made it all worse. He wasn’t enjoying himself; he was curious.
Mrs. Davis ate most of her right arm before the trauma killed her. On the back of his eyelids, Thomas watched her body flop and buck against the floor like a sick imitation of grease in a skillet.
“I want you to handle this one.”
He opened his eyes at the sound of the old man’s voice. Thankfully, he hadn’t started or gasped in any way. It took him a second to make sense of the words, but once he understood them his body went cold with dread.
“What?”
“You heard. You know.”
“I...” Again he looked to the street, hoping something out there might distract him. There was nothing, though. A quiet street on a quiet day. Damn.
“I don’t believe I’m ready.” His voice quivered, and he hated it.
“That’s quite unfortunate. I don’t want you thinking you have a choice in the matter.”
Thomas blinked. He turned to face Jenkins, found him looking out the window at the house that held Doris Hubbert, the last name he’d given the old man.
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve been coasting. People have noticed. The word has come down that you need to step up to the plate. You’re not performing as you should, and you have no choice but to improve. Like it or not, you signed a contract, and that means you have obligations.”
Thomas remembered signing, remembered the dry scratch of the pen on paper. Earlier, the old man’s pencil had made the same noise. He recalled the heavy, suffocating despair that had filled him at the time, and how hopeless and gray and wounded the world had seemed, bloody slashes across his mind and his heart. He wondered if Jenkins had felt the same as he signed his contract.
“I don’t—”
A dry, firm hand appeared on his wrist. This time, he did start, and the hand clamped down like a vice.
Thomas looked into the old man’s eyes. Anger brewed there like stormclouds.
“This is our job,” Jenkins said. “This is what we do.”
Slowly, Thomas nodded. He knew in that moment that the world was still hopeless, that his wounds hadn’t healed and may never. But that didn’t change anything. The old man was right.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“Has anything weird happened, lately?”
Standing in the break room, Melissa gives him a look like he’s just asked if she’d considered adopting a man-eating donkey for a pet. Her eyes narrow, and then a sarcastic grin creeps across her face. “Like hanging out with my ex? Yeah, I guess that one happens a lot.”
“Not quite what I was going for, but good to know.”
“What’s going on?”
He stands there for a moment, dipping a teabag into a mug of hot water and wondering how much he should reveal. Scaring her is the last thing he wants, but if somebody has it in for him, they might decide to make life hell for everybody else in his life. The thought of Melissa experiencing what he’s gone through feels like a barbed spike in his chest.
So he tells her everything. He starts with the knock on the door and takes her through all of it, finishing with the police car that waits in the parking lot, the officers inside doing their best to keep an eye on him. Her expressions start with amusement and anticipation before taking a sharp turn into shock and horror and finally settling on genuine concern with a healthy amount of fear. When he finishes, he stands there and waits for her to say something. The silence remains for a long time, and he wonders if she’ll say anything or just storm away.
“Holy shit,” she finally says
They’re the same words that have buzzed around his cranium for days. Few things sum up the bizarre turn his life has taken as well as those words. He nods, giving Melissa a look that says he knows exactly what she means.
She sets down her drink and throws her arms around him before he can think to reach. In the circle of her arms, it feels like home, and he wants to return her embrace, but there’s still a mug of hot tea in his hand. “Okay,” he says. “All right, don’t make me spill this.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” She steps back, and he sets down his mug before she can change her mind.
“I don’t know. I called because I was concerned, but then I just...I guess I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Bother me?”
“It’s not the best way to word it.”
“No, it isn’t. Bother me? What kind of a bitch do you think I am?”
“Did I say that at some point?” he asks.
“You know what I mean.”
“And I’d hoped you would know what I mean.”
She grins. “Well, you used the wrong words.”
The laughter bubbles out of him before he knows its coming. It feels good, the surge in his chest and belly. How long has it been since he really laughed? Soon, he stands with his hands on his knees, fighting for air as the laughter tumbles free.
He looks up and sees Melissa join him. The smile on her face is enormous and natural, and he thinks it’s the most beautiful she’s ever looked. He wants to watch her smile all day, but then her expression changes, becoming harder. The change is so fast, it feels as though her happy expression has been torn away.
“You didn’t just leave Simon in the apartment, did you?”
Her words hit him like a slap from a cold hand. For a second, all he can do is stare at her with what he’s sure is an idiot’s expression. Why hadn’t he thought to take Simon somewhere else? Jesus, the cat had been in the apartment when somebody left a bag full of ears on the kitchen counter! He wonders if Simon hid or if the intruder simply didn’t care. In the next second, his mind shows him pictures of his cat dead, maybe stuffed inside the refrigerator or strewn across the living room as some kind of horrible message.
“Can I take him to…your place?” Referring to the house as anything other than home still feels alien.
“Of course,” Melissa says. “Do it fast, though. Shit!”
He nods and rushes past her.
Preparing the body for dumping took longer than Rose expected. Jim tried to wrap the entire thing in one go, but the bones didn’t want to stay together. For ten minutes, she watched as her boss fumbled and fussed and cursed before he finally grew too frustrated and started stomping on it. Bones splintered. The legs fell apart, followed by the arms. The thing’s ribcage collapsed into a pile of thin bones and vertebrae. Rose watched it all, shivering. Jim probably wanted help, but breaking apart dead bodies didn’t fall within her job description.
After several minutes, Jim stopped his demolition. He stood over the shattered skeleton with his hands on his sides, sucking wind. When he looked at her, an embarrassed smile appeared below his eyes.
“Some fun, huh?”
“Looked like a blast.”
A groan crawled out of him, and then he rubbed his face with both hands, trying to clear away the sweat that beaded there. “Good thing you thought to bring those garbage bags. Gonna make this a lot easier.”
“Yeah, it will. Kinda embarrassed we didn’t think about disassembling that damn thing, though.”
He shrugged. “We can’t all be geniuses. Or is it geni?”
“Does that even sound real to you?”
“Excellent point. Okay, let’s glove up and do this shit.”
The gloves felt like faulty armor over her hands. Looking at the pile of bones and the chain, Rose thought she wanted a whole lot more than a single layer of latex protecting her. As she pulled the gloves over her hands, she wondered how doctors and surgeons could stand to trust such a thin layer of protection. Maybe it had something to do with them not being ripped on coke. Clean living probably shut down paranoia pretty well.
Jim shook out one of the garbage bags and handed it to her. She took it and stared at the skeleton, trying to decide where to start while Jim opened a second bag. After
a moment of thoughts that left her shivering, she crouched and picked up one of the thing’s feet. Through the latex, the bones felt brittle and impossibly light. A part of her mind wondered if maybe it was a prank, if maybe somebody had dropped a convincing replica in the lake as a sick joke. Then, she thought maybe Jim had done it just a few hours ago, thinking was really fucking hilarious. She looked at her boss with a glare in her eyes, but he looked disgusted as he plucked bones from the ground and dropped them into his bag.
They worked in silence until they were done. Every time she thought they were finished, she spotted another bone. When she went close to a minute without finding one, she risked using her cigarette lighter to provide a tiny pocket of illumination. It revealed more bones, pieces and splinters that they retrieved like criminals scooping butts from highway shoulders.
“I think that’s everything,” Jim said in a weary voice. He picked up the chain and let it rattle its way into his garbage bag.
“You’re right.”
“Not a lot of dark left. Think there’s a spot in the walk-in we can stash this until tonight?”
“No.”
“Not even—”
“Health department, porters, prep cooks, servers running in to get more creamer. Too many risks, so no.”
Jim tied his bag shut and set it on the ground. He stretched, and Rose heard his back pop in a few places. “Okay. Let’s shag ass, then.”
When Doris Hubbert opened her door, Thomas knew at once that she remembered the thing in the bag. It was written al over the expression that was both terrified and exhausted. He wondered how poorly she’d been sleeping, and then he wondered why she hadn’t simply skipped town. The answer appeared in his mind a second later. Sometimes frightened people just turtle up. Doris hadn’t fled for the same reason the other three hadn’t: they were too damn scared.
“Miss Hubbert?”
“Yes?”
“Hello. My name is Gregory Thomas, and this is my partner. We’re with The Department of Wildlife and Natural Resources.”
She watched him expectantly, half her body hidden behind the door.
“We were hoping we might be able to come in and speak with you for a minute.”
“What about?”
“Well ma’am, we’ve had some coyotes spotted in the area—coming down out of the hill country, we imagine—and we were hoping to talk to you a bit about what to do, should one wander onto your property.”
“Oh. Well, wouldn’t I just call animal control?”
“I’m afraid not. See...these particular animals are protected by various Texas agencies, and we’ve found animal control tends to operate on more of a lone wolf philosophy. The average animal control worker is a thug. They’re more likely to beat or kill the animal than to contain it and return it to the wild.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said. Sadness appeared in her eyes. Maybe a little outrage, too.
“Most citizens don’t. It’s one of those truths that likes to stay...tucked away.”
“Oh.”
Thomas felt the old man’s gaze on his back, chilling him like a layer of frost. “May we?” he asked, gesturing toward the door. Doris eyed them for a second, and then she stepped back and opened the door the rest of the way.
“Of course. Come in.”
Thomas breathed deep as he walked through the door. He needed to steel himself. As he nodded a thank you at Doris Hubbert, he wondered how he’d wound up in this awful line of work in the first place. The answer was a simple one, and he knew it. Some people screw up so badly they have nowhere else to go. He’d done exactly that, and now he got to spend the rest of his life doing things like this, moving through Texas with Jenkins and cleaning up messes that needed cleaning.
Doris led them into the living room and asked if they wanted tea or coffee. He said he was fine, but Jenkins wanted coffee, black. As she puttered out of the room, her eyes active and searching, he examined the place. It was quaint. Tasteful wallpaper covered the walls, and the couch was clean, the carpets recently vacuumed. An upright piano stood against one wall, and a black and white photo hung above it showed a respectable-looking couple. Her parents, he guessed. Or maybe her husband’s.
Heat flared through him as he remembered Doris Hubbert was married. He wondered if she’d told her husband what she’d seen, if he’d believed her or told her she was being hysterical. With his next thought, he wondered how her husband would react when he came home. He doubted it would be a nice scene.
Doris returned, a ceramic mug in her hand. She crossed the room and handed it to Jenkins, who muttered his thanks as he accepted the cup. Thomas thought about the last time he’d seen the man drink coffee, about the waitress hiking her skirt up to expose her panties, and he felt ill. Would he really end up like the old man? He hated the idea.
Doris sat in a recliner on the other side of the room. She still looked worried, but she appeared to have calmed some. “So what should I do if I see one of these coyotes?”
Thomas started to speak, but Jenkins cleared his throat. It was a harsh sound, and he knew it was supposed to be a reminder of what they’d come to do. A deep breath eased out of him, and the knot that was his guts tightened a little bit. Fine, he could do this, even if he hated it.
“Well, Mrs. Hubbert, I’m afraid we need you to do something for us.”
Her face darkened with worry. “I’m sorry? What do you mean?”
Thomas swallowed, and it felt like a lump of ice travelling down his throat.
“I’m afraid we need you to kill yourself.”
Ben works only a few miles from the apartment, but the drive feels like an eternity. He runs through lights and cuts off other cars. A chorus of angry horns chases him down the street, but he doesn’t care. A part of his mind tells him it’s ridiculous to do this for a cat, but the rest of him sees Simon’s face, wide eyes full of love and need. He hears the cat’s purr, his hungry yowls that wake him up just after three o’clock every morning, and he thinks to himself that the cat is the only family he has left. The gray and black feline is important. He represents that last vestige of normalcy, and Ben refuses to let anything bad happen to him.
He turns his car into the apartment complex with a screech, one of the rear wheels hopping the curb and crashing back down. As he swerves through the parking lot, racing for his building, he mutters a prayer. Please let Simon be okay. If something happens to the cat, he doubts he can cope.
Finally, he reaches his building and cuts his car into the first parking space he sees. Yanking his keys from the ignition, he doesn’t bother locking the car as he slams the door shut behind him. His steps thunder up the stairs. He races past the second floor to the third, and the climb feels like forever. The final charge down the hallway to his apartment takes just as long, and he pants as he stands in front of his door and looks for the key that will unlock it. Twice, his numb fingers drop the key ring, and he mutters a curse as he snatches them from the ground. When he finally finds the right key, he slams it into the lock.
And then he hears a sneeze on the other side of the door. Suddenly, everything feels cold and distant, and he knows whoever has been leaving the paper sacks is in his apartment right now. Fear makes him shake, but the emotion slowly twists into rage. It’s gone too far. He doesn’t like being afraid, and now he can do something about it. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he wonders if the team meant to keep an eye on him has followed him home, and he wonders if they’ll enter his apartment before whatever will happen takes place. As these thoughts play out, he wraps his fist around his keyring, letting the keys jut from between his fingers. Fuck it.
He throws open the front door.
“Shit.” The voice sounds annoyed, even tired. It comes from an old man in a suit. He stands in the center of the living room, stuffing a handkerchief into his pocket. A paper sack fills his other hand. “Cedar, right? Gets me right in the sinuses. Sorry. You weren’t supposed to see this.”
Ben steps into the apart
ment. “Where’s my cat?”
“Asleep in the corner. I didn’t touch him. I think he might have a skin condition; he’s licking and chewing on his tail too much. Cute cat, though. Simon, right?”
“Uh...yeah.” Against his better judgment, Ben closes the door behind him and throws the deadbolt. Something about the old man’s voice puts him at a strange sort of ease. Maybe it’s how fatigued the man sounds, or maybe it’s the weary expression that fills his face. Even though he knows he should fear this man who’s been leaving him grisly presents, he just can’t bring himself to do it.
The old man sits on the couch, sighing as though the simple act of standing was too much. He rubs his hands over his legs. His suit looks old. “I suppose you have questions,” he says.
“Bet your ass.”
“All right. Go ahead.”
“Sure thing.” He crosses the living room floor until he’s standing over the man, only the coffee table separating them. The key ring bites into his tight fist. “First off, who the fuck are you?”
The old man nods as though he’s always expected this question. “My name is Gregory Thomas. At this point, I usually tell people I work for some state agency. That’s when I want to get into their home, though. You already caught me here, so I might as well tell you the truth.”
“Just like that?”
A shrug. He looks even more exhausted than when Ben first entered.
“So what’s the truth?” Ben asks.
“The truth is I fix things when they go wrong.”
“Really? Is that what you do?”
“Sincerely. Somebody has to do it.”
“So what went wrong that can only be fixed with paper bags full of body parts?”
Gregory Thomas looks at him. One corner of his mouth ticks upward. “I think you know.”
Rose made Jim row, because she was busy hugging herself to keep from shivering in the chilly air that descended over Lake Travis. The gentle sounds of the oar slicing through water was almost relaxing, but the two garbage bags taking up space in the bottom of the canoe counteracted that particular lullaby.
Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again? Page 9