The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  This is mission creep. It is generally a bad idea.

  Ignoring my better instincts, I hosed down the sides of the water heater with Zep and tried to swipe my paper towel over the surface. The paper towel stuck in the goo. I resisted the urge to vomit. I squirted it down again and went to get the vacuum cleaner.

  Since I am obsessively tidy—I prefer the term obsessive compulsive “inclination” to obsessive compulsive “disorder” (much less damning)—I have a state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner. It has hoses. It has attachments. It has brushes and nozzles and a tiny little needle-nose device for use in corners. I can practically do surgery with my vacuum cleaner. Or pick up a bowling ball. Whichever the situation calls for.

  I wrestled the python tubing, assembled my weapon, and plugged it in, peering under the water heater and plotting the demise of the filthy little archaeological site under there. And then I saw something even more alarming.

  A hole in my wall. Behind the water heater. Leading into the poorly insulated space behind the closet.

  And pellets. Little brown pellets. Lots of little brown pellets.

  Nowhere in the Bible, that I’m aware of, are rodents mentioned as minions of spiritual scourge. But I am convinced that had there been an eleventh plague in Egypt, if the flies, frogs, and boils had failed to convince, God would have sent mice. Hoards of nasty little crawling filthy gnawing mice. And rats. To chew into grain sacks and nest there, leaving their foul little droppings behind as presents. That would have been the fatal blow.

  Maybe Pharaoh knew the mice were next. Maybe that’s why he caved after the whole Passover-death thing.

  I dropped my vacuum hose with a clatter and yanked open the pantry door. Labels stood at attention on my shelves, spices alphabetized, soup cans grouped into categories by ingredients and use (broth or cream-based, for meals or for cooking).

  My pantry was immaculate.

  And it had mice. There was the evidence, right down there in the corner. Mouse droppings.

  At this point, my obsessive inclinations may have bordered on a disorder. I admit that. I should probably have dropped the entire matter and gone to a Twelve-Step group.

  Instead, I started flinging things out of my pantry, letting out little shrieks of indignation each time I spied evidence of the beasts. A chewed hole in my brand new box of Premium Saltines. A rip in the cellophane around my spaghetti. Little brown pellets behind my carton of Hefty Handle-Tie garbage bags. Gnaw marks in my neatly folded environmentally correct, brown, recycled-paper grocery bags.

  I broke off periodically to scour the water heater and squirt more Zep Degreaser on it.

  In the midst of this madness, I lost all track of time. When the phone rang, I was on my knees, with my can of Comet and my antibacterial cellulose sponge with the green scrubby thingy on it, disinfecting the pantry floor.

  I whipped my head around and stared at the phone, then peeled off my rubber gloves and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Where are you?”

  I looked at my watch. It was one fifteen.

  “I sort of lost track of time, Dad,” I said.

  “Well that’s just rich, Dylan. Here Kellee and I fly all the way up here to honor you on your birthday, taking time out of our very busy schedules. On our one day in the week to be together. Kellee is sitting here with this beautiful gift that she wrapped herself…”

  What is she, a five-year-old? She wants a parade for wrapping a gift?

  “What do you want to do, Dad? Reschedule? Or I can be there in twenty minutes.”

  “We flew up from Houston, Dylan. We’re here. We have a table. We’re waiting for you.”

  My dad is a heart surgeon. Possibly in need of his own services. He sounded like he was about to blow a valve or something.

  “So you want me to go ahead and come?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I hung up without saying good-bye and looked around the kitchen. It was as if an explosive device had gone off in the pantry. Cans, boxes, and bags lay in piles where they’d landed. A package of spaghetti had broken when I tossed it, scattering pasta pick-up sticks on the kitchen floor.

  And over there, on the other side of the kitchen, the water heater was gleaming white and spotless, the closet completely devoid of even microscopic traces of dust. The mouse droppings were gone, the hole covered with a plastic Cool Whip lid and duct tape.

  The water heater still didn’t work, mind you, but it was clean.

  This is the problem with mission creep. All that work and still no hot water.

  I stepped over the pantry debris and went to the bedroom and picked out an outfit. Frayed bellbottom jeans, an orange turtleneck, and my purple Doc Martens, which I know my father hates. That’s how mature I am. On my thirty-fifth birthday.

  Could be time to go back to therapy.

  6

  I was backing out of my garage when Detective Jackson pulled his navy blue Impala into the driveway behind me.

  He got out of his car and walked over to the truck. I cranked my window down.

  “Morning, Dr. Foster,” he said, in the same deadpan voice he might have used to say, “Stand against that wall over there and place this hood over your head.”

  “Good morning, Detective Jackson.” I faked a smile. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “On your way out?”

  No. I like to sit in my driveway with my truck running and my reverse lights on.

  I put a crowbar in my personality and tried to be cordial. “I’m meeting my father for lunch,” I said sweetly.

  “I need a minute of your time.”

  “I’m forty-five minutes late already.”

  “I need a minute of your time.” He wasn’t asking.

  I turned off the ignition, and my truck engine sputtered to a stop.

  He followed me to the house and stepped into the foyer with me. I hadn’t realized until that moment that the blood was still there. In my zest to eradicate the mouse plague and sterilize the outside of my water heater, I’d forgotten to scrub the streaked traces of murder off my walls.

  Mission creep strikes again.

  I stepped past the stains without acknowledging them and led him into the living room.

  “I really only have a minute,” I said.

  “Have a seat.” He motioned to the couch and set a three-ring notebook on the coffee table in front of me.

  “We found a body last night,” he said. Still no emotion at all from the man. He might as well have been reciting his grocery list.

  “I know.”

  He waited for me to explain.

  “It was in the paper this morning. Drew Sturdivant.”

  “I have some photographs for you to look at,” he said.

  Surely he wasn’t going to show me pictures of the murder scene. I started to protest as he opened the notebook, but was surprised to see six mug shots instead.

  “I’d like you to tell me if you recognize any of these men,” he said. “Take your time.”

  A row of faces stared up at me from my coffee table. Pale, angry faces, with stubble beards, greasy unkempt hair, and hate in their eyes.

  I studied them, peering at their dead expressions, wondering what their stories were. How had these men, these human beings, one by one, made their way from the promise of fresh-born, bright-eyed infancy to the pages of a mug-shot book? At what point on their journeys did they lose their way?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Detective Jackson watching me. I closed the cover and looked up at him.

  “Not a one,” I said. “I’ve never seen any of them before. Why?”

  He ignored my question and opened the book again.

  “No one on this page?”

  I looked again. “Nope.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “I told you. I don’t recognize any of them.”

  He closed the book. “We’ve accounted for your acti
vities at the time of the murder.”

  “I was home. I told you that.”

  “We verified your activities.”

  “How?”

  “Cell phone records.”

  “So I’m not a suspect?”

  “That is correct.”

  I tried to feel relieved instead of invaded. “You have a suspect, then? Is that what the pictures are for?”

  “I’d rather not say at this time.”

  “I found the ax on my front porch, Detective. I think I have a right to know what’s going on. This guy could be coming after me.”

  His face softened, almost imperceptibly. Just a tiny bit around the corners of his mouth.

  “We are following some promising leads. And, yes, that is what the pictures are for. I believe we’ll make an arrest by the end of the day.”

  My expression must have changed, because he worked quickly to douse any relief I might have felt.

  “I’d like to know how that ax ended up on your front porch, Dr. Foster,” he said, the softness gone from his expression, his voice hard. “I’ll encourage you once again to come forward with any information you may have.”

  I stood up, the universal therapist signal that the session is over. “I’ve told you everything I know, Detective. I have nothing to hide and no reason to hide it.”

  He picked up his notebook and stood, an enormous oak of a man sprouting from my living room floor. He folded his arms over the notebook and stared at me without budging.

  “Will there be anything else?” I asked.

  “No. This is just a friendly visit.”

  In a friendly manner, I said, “Then please get out of my house. I’m late meeting my father.”

  He turned to leave, and I followed him to the door, closing it behind him and quickly cramming my face against the peephole as he knelt to examine the porch and the front door. He knew I was watching him. After a few minutes, he straightened and walked slowly to his car, finally driving away at dogtrot speed. A stray with mange could have overtaken that car. The man was letting me know he wouldn’t be pushed around.

  I didn’t see his car as I left, but I figured he was parked down the street watching me.

  Dad and Kellee were waiting for me at the Landmark Restaurant in the Melrose Hotel. It’s about four minutes from my house. I got there at 1:39. An hour and nine minutes late.

  Neither of them stood to greet me. My dad looked me up and down, his distaste for my outfit plainly registered on his face, and said, “Glad you could make it.”

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  I leaned down and fake-kissed Kellee, who lifted her perfect self-tanned cheek to accept the gesture.

  I pulled out my own chair and seated myself, settling my napkin in my lap. “What are we ordering?”

  They both opened their menus. A third menu sat unopened on the table between them, out of my reach. I waited for someone to hand it to me.

  Our waiter’s arrival cracked the silence. “Another drink for you, sir?” he asked my father.

  My dad examined his glass, shook the ice around, and threw back the last sip. “Tanqueray martini. On the rocks. With a twist.”

  “Certainly, sir. And you, ma’am?” He turned to Kellee.

  “Another club soda, please,” she said, tilting her head and smiling at him with cosmetically altered, blazing white teeth. A new feature in the perpetual evolution of Kellee.

  The waiter didn’t even glance in my direction.

  “Pardon me,” I asked, as he turned to leave. “I’d like to order. Hot tea. Please?”

  “Certainly, ma’am.”

  “English breakfast?” I continued. “Cream and sugar?” I pointed across the table. “And could you hand me that menu, please?”

  He picked up the menu and served it up to me, along with a healthy dose of contempt. I couldn’t blame him for his attitude, really. The Landmark was packed on Sundays. If I hadn’t been so late, he would have turned this table over by now. I made a mental note to leave him an extra tip. I have a soft spot for grumpy, overworked people.

  We all studied our menus, waiting to see who would elbow through the tension and speak up first.

  I finally caved, looking up and smiling brightly. “I think I’ll go with the French dip sandwich. It’s supposed to be really good here.”

  “Eggs Benedict,” my father said, slapping his menu shut.

  My heart sank. I pictured runny egg yolk clinging to gelatinous half-cooked egg white, all smeared together onto a soggy English muffin. My father knows I loathe eggs. Just the smell of them makes me nauseous. It was a spite order.

  Kellee looked at him as though he’d just announced he was planning on ingesting a live frog.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, throwing his hands up in the air.

  “Do you have to get eggs?” she said.

  For a lightning fraction of a second, I thought maybe Kellee was taking my side. My hatred of eggs is lifelong and well documented. Even Kellee, new to our family, knew better than to cook or eat eggs in my presence. I realized instantly that this was a wildly misguided flash of optimism. But I never thought to anticipate what was coming next.

  “I won’t subject myself to it, knowing I have to get back on a plane this afternoon,” she said prissily. “I won’t. I just won’t.”

  “When did that start? I thought we were on tuna still,” my father said.

  “Eggs and tuna. And cantaloupe.”

  What sort of diet would prohibit cantaloupe?

  “And shrimp,” she was saying. “In fact, please don’t order any seafood of any kind.” She turned to me. “A French dip is fine.”

  “Thank you,” I said, before I could help it.

  My father rolled his eyes and studied his menu again. “How about an omelet? I want a ham and cheese omelet.”

  “Absolutely not,” she said.

  My father lobbed one food selection after another in her direction, only to have Kellee shake her head and swat it right back at him. I watched several rounds of this game before I realized with horror what was unfolding before me. It was the smoked salmon that elicited the crucial clue.

  “I can’t tolerate the smell,” she said. “You always want pungent food. Pick something…ordinary. Something that smells…nice.”

  “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?” I was already dreading the answer.

  Kellee stopped swinging at my father’s menu choices and beamed at him. My dad turned to me and delivered the bad news. “You’re going to be an aunt,” he said, thrusting his chin up and his chest out.

  “Guthrie and Cleo are expecting?” I asked. My brother and his wife had been married for over six years and so far had parented only cats.

  “Not Guthrie,” my father said, exasperated. “Me. And Kellee.” He reached across the table and grasped one of her perfectly manicured hands. “We’re pregnant.”

  I turned to Kellee, who continued to beam, but had turned the glaring, white-happy spotlight on me now.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?” my father asked.

  I looked back at him. Lord save me, he didn’t.

  I tried to allow the disastrous news to sink in. “That would make me a sister,” I said. “Not an aunt.”

  Kellee handed me the present she had wrapped herself, thrusting it joyfully in my direction. “Open it,” she commanded.

  I ripped the paper, opened the box, and revealed a pink T-shirt with the words “World’s Greatest Aunt” silk-screened on the front in pale blue ink.

  I looked at both of them helplessly “But I’ll be a sister, not an aunt.” I don’t know why I was jabbing at this point. What could it possibly matter?

  My father should never have reproduced in the first place. Guthrie and I agreed on this when we were very small. We both held childhood fantasies that we’d been adopted, though our mother’s features were watermarked on our own. We both had her green eyes, her auburn hair. And now, of cours
e, I’d inherited her thighs.

  If not adoption, then perhaps there was a mystery in our past, we fantasized. Perhaps our father, so indifferent to us, was not our father at all. Maybe we were royalty! Maybe our mother had a dalliance with a passing prince while she and our “imposter” father were in Italy!

  Childhood imaginings had long been abandoned. My father, for better or worse, was my father. My brother and I both shared his best and his worst qualities: his quick mind, his ambition, his fanatical attention to detail, and most horribly, his stunning capacity for selfishness. It was this last trait that had kept me from marrying and Guthrie from parenting. Neither of us had much optimism about purging this bit of sewage from our DNA.

  And now here was my father with a thirty-year-old, silicone-enhanced wife, the two of them with the combined maturity of a thirteen-year-old—not that I was in any position to talk, I suppose—and they had decided to procreate. I could not imagine what they were thinking. Why they felt it necessary to do so would remain, for me probably, one of life’s stubborn mysteries.

  I had endured my father’s affair with his scrub nurse Kellee, an affair that began long before he and my mother divorced, with barely concealed hostility. I had skipped their wedding—a Disneyesque affair complete with matching white horses—without bothering to make up an excuse.

  Unbelievably, the possibility that they would have children had never occurred to me. But Kellee was only thirty. And my father was handsome, successful, and wealthy Of course she would want to have his babies.

  I was too horrified to speak.

  “Well?” my father asked.

  “Well what?” I said.