by Jim Brown
Piper had moved past him, past the next door and the one after that. A thunderstorm was raging beneath her skin. Her blood had been replaced with Freon, chilling her body as it rushed through her system. No, no, she silently said at each door. Then stopped.
“Here. They’re in here,” she screamed, then began hammering on the door.
“How do you know?” The clerk raced to join her, pass key held in front of him like a protective sword.
“I just do. Open up.” She beat the door with rapid fire. “Open up.”
The clerk pushed her aside. His breathing was labored; a fine mist of sweat had already formed on his oval face. He put the key in the lock. It clicked. The knob turned freely. He pushed. The door shook, moved a fraction of an inch then stopped.
“What?” The clerk was momentarily baffled, then realized what had happened. “The slide lock. Someone must have engaged the slide bolt from the inside.”
Piper Blackmoore shook her arms and flexed her fingers, like a gunfighter getting ready for a showdown. In that room, in that room, whatever it is, it’s in that room.
“He’s dying,” she whispered.
“Stand back,” the clerk retreated to the opposite wall, then, running, slammed into the door with the full force of his body. Wood splintered. The door swung open. Unable to stop his momentum, the clerk tumbled forward, landing hard on the industrial green carpet.
The room was open before her. A bed, nightstand, bathroom (door open), a shelf with a bar for clothing, complete with hangers dangling beneath it. A TV mounted on the wall.
The bed. Bare feet. Someone was lying on his back on the other side of the bed. Driven by some internal scream of urgency, Piper stepped over the fallen desk clerk and rushed into the room.
On the floor lay a naked man, hair still wet from the shower, face the color of typing paper, mouth agape, eyes wide, tongue swollen. Choking.
And around his bruised-purple neck, clutching the skin in a pincer grip, a hand and nothing else.
7
Nathan Perkins stopped him in the hall outside of the intensive care unit. “He’s alive, Dean, barely, but alive.”
Dean Truman nodded, his pulse surging, his breathing shallow. “We were at the school – the brick, John wanted to see it – when we got the call. What happened? The desk nurse said he choked.”
Nathan Perkins shifted nervously. He wiped the edges of his mouth with his hand, then said, “He was strangled.”
“Strangled? What do you mean? Strangled? How? Who?”
“I don’t know. They called me at the office. I don’t know anything else. It doesn’t make any sense.”
A page summoned Dr. Pompaous to the third floor. An orderly pushed a medical wagon with a wobbly left wheel down the green-and-beige-tiled hallway. The errant wheel squeaked like a rusted shutter hinge in a windstorm. Squeak, squeal, squeak, squeal.
“And there’s something else going on,” Nathan said. “I don’t know what, but there is definitely something else. John’s talking to Piper now.”
“Piper? Piper Blackmoore? What’s she doing here?”
“She’s the one who found Clyde. They say she saved his life. Gave him CPR right there in the hotel room.”
An old woman in a flannel nightgown inched her way down the hall with the aid of a chrome walker.
“What were Clyde and Piper doing in a hotel?” Dean asked. The answer flashed across his mind. Clyde had always been a ladies’ man and Piper Blackmoore was certainly attractive. Clyde and Piper? No.
“She wasn’t with him. At least, I don’t think she was. Sounds like she saw him through a window or something.” Nathan shook his head and studied his faint reflection in the polished floor. “I don’t understand any of this. I’m waiting on Clyde’s wife to get here. And the baby, my God, she’s just eighteen months old.”
John Evans came out of a room two doors down. A disheveled Piper Blackmoore was two steps behind. Guilt for his earlier thought squeezed Dean’s heart. Next to the sheriff, she looked like a small, frightened child. She pushed her black hair behind her ears, then hugged herself.
Dean wanted to go to her, to comfort her, to hold her. But he didn’t. “You okay?” was all he could muster.
Her brown eyes were moist and red. A feeble smile, like a static charge, flicked across her soft, gentle face. “Been better.”
John took off his flat-brimmed hat. “Doctors say Clyde’s in a coma. By all rights he should be dead. He’s in critical but stable condition.”
Dean could hear the labored breathing of the ancient heating system trying to hold winter at arm’s length. Somewhere a monitor beeped. The orderly stopped the cart he was pushing, pulled out a tray, and entered a room four doors down.
“He was strangled? How? I mean, was it an accident?”
A look passed between the sheriff and the young history professor – a look that chilled Dean.
“It wasn’t an accident,” John said. Dean noticed his friend for the first time. Sleepless nights left black troughs under his red eyes. His face was tense. Eyes squinted. Preoccupied.
“There’s something else,” Dean stated. “What aren’t you telling me?”
The sheriff looked down the hall. The old woman had reached the nurses’ station. Their whispered conversation indecipherable, rustling like leaves in a rain gutter.
The orderly returned to the cart, pushing it. Squeak, squeal, squeak, squeal.
“Come with me,” John said.
She ran with the wind at her back, pushing, shoving, encouraging her up Hawkins Hill. Arms pumping in sync with her legs, heart pumping in sync with her arms, condensed air puffing in controlled bursts like a steam locomotive from a time long past, climbing, climbing. The sun was already perched on the western horizon. A low ceiling of clouds made the night seem impatient.
But she would finish her run. Whether it was working on the city council, running her own business, or raising a family, Meredith Gamble never did anything halfway. And one of the things she did was run. Every day, seven days a week. In the morning if she could; in the evening if she had to. After joining the city council, jogging had been a way of releasing pent-up frustration. That it helped her drop twenty pounds and develop an athlete’s frame was a pleasant bonus. Now it was as much a part of her life as her husband or her children.
Hawkins Hill rose before her. She followed the trail up, up, up.
Keep running.
Her route changed from time to time; when winter finally established its frigid grip on Black Valley, she would confine her jogs to the valley floor, doubling the length to compensate for the lesser grade. Usually, it was well into December before she made the change. But this year, with clouds as dark and ominous as a gun barrel and taking a marksman’s aim on the earth, this year she knew she couldn’t wait that long. In fact, if the weather continued to deteriorate, this would be her last chance to circle the base of Hawkins Hill.
Something stung her face. A sharp pain. She shook her head. A bee? Too cold. She slipped the glove off her right hand and touched her cheek. A shard of glass no larger than a dime was imbedded in her skin. She pulled it out, the point red with blood. She touched her face. Her fingertips came away crimson.
Damn.
She pulled a tissue from her fanny pack – her utility belt, her husband called it – and applied it to her cheek.
She kept running.
Glass?
She must have stepped on something in the near gloom, flinging the chip into her face. Too dark, too cold. Below, in the valley, where the houses huddled like kittens around a mother’s belly, streetlights stood sentry over the sidewalks, looking warm and inviting. This was definitely her last run around the hill.
Something struck her chest. One, two, three . . .
What the –
Glass? Three more shards. They struck her jo
gging suit but didn’t penetrate the thick layer of clothing she wore. She plucked them out. Two like the first, one the size of a fifty-cent piece. Big enough to hurt. This was getting dangerous.
She thought of stopping, of searching for the source. No. She never stopped. Not unless it was completely unavoidable. Someone had been here before her and shattered a bottle on the trail, that was all. Surely she was out of the field of glass by now?
Nevertheless, she scanned the ground ahead of her as best she could. The trail appeared free of debris.
Something bit her leg. Two more fragments hit her right arm and shoulder. She bent to pull the glass from the top of her leg. Tiny shards struck her scalp, like sharp, hard pellets. She stumbled as a larger fragment of glass struck her in the right side. Hard. Fast. She felt the impact before she felt the jabbing pain.
Stabbed.
She had been stabbed. The glass cut through her clothing and deep into her flesh. A dark, burgundy bloom spread across her jogging suit. Feeling light-headed, she stumbled again, yet somehow, miraculously, she stayed on her feet. Her steps, however, were short and faltered.
White pinwheels materialized in the corners of her vision. She suddenly felt flush. What was happening? Where was the glass coming from?
She raised her head, looking down the long, narrow trail. And then she saw it. At first it looked like a curtain of rain, only it wasn’t. Crimson fingers of light from a decaying sun reached out, refracted and reflecting. Not rain.
Glass.
A shower, a storm of glass, hurtling straight for her - straight for her.
Meredith Gamble opened her mouth to scream. Then hundreds, thousands, of vulgar shards hurtling at impossible speeds hit her body with an unyielding force. One shard pierced her leg to the bone. A sheet of glass the size of a shingle hit her neck, severing the jugular. Hot blood spewed into the air, a liquid imitation of the setting sun. Glass struck her again and again and again.
Her body jerked like a doll on a string in the hands of a clumsy puppeteer, held upright by a continous, endless storm of rending glass.
Dean Truman jerked backward. They were standing by a tall table with a small chrome tray in the center. A white cloth had been pulled back, revealing a human hand. “What the hell? Is that for real?”
John nodded. “Miss Blackmoore and the clerk say, when they found Clyde, this was around his throat, strangling him.”
They were in the morgue, where their conversation was underscored by the constant drone of the refrigeration units. At the back of the room one of the fluorescent lights flickered but stayed on.
“Strangling him. That’s impossible.”
The hand was pinkish gray, like meat left out too long. Lying palm up, the hand’s fingers were slightly curled. Dean’s initial alarm faded. Panic ebbed, replaced by the tide of a new emotion: curiosity. “Do we know who it belongs to?”
John pressed his left fist into his right hand, cracking the knuckles, a frequent gesture when he was frustrated. “No missing hands have been reported at lost and found.”
Strangling him?
Dean exhaled. “Let’s take a step back. Any idea what Clyde was doing at a hotel?”
“A woman, most likely. You know Clyde. So far, we haven’t found her. You were one of the last to see him. Anything unusual happen? Did he seem distracted? Impatient?”
“He was in a hurry, like always, but nothing unusual.” Dean thought of the stranger, the man with the long, dark coat and tattered hat, the man watching but not watching -- there, then gone. It was an errant thought. No connection, the scientist decided. Besides, the stranger had had two hands.
“So, what do you think? You’re the county coroner.”
“Don’t remind me.” When all three doctors at the small city hospital had turned down the job, John and Nathan had turned to Dean, double-teaming him until he took the position. They argued that, as a scientist, his analytical mind would allow him to detach himself from the more grisly aspects of the job.
To his disappointment, they were right. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Have you checked for splatters and blood droplets – outside as well as inside the room, in the hallway, and in the stairwell?”
“My best deputy, Jerry Niles, is down there right now, but so far nothing.” John swiped a hand through his bristlelike hair. “No weapon, nothing. If someone was choking Clyde, and Clyde cut his attacker’s hand off in self-defense, then the attacker took the weapon with him and left his hand. Another thing: the blood – there isn’t enough of it.”
John laid his hat on a countertop, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his forehead. “Any thoughts?”
“I usually have a little more to work with than this,” Dean replied.
A smile actually crossed John’s face. Dean imagined the sound of plaster cracking. “Give it your best shot.”
Dean bent down, his face only inches from the appendage. A small pool of blood had collected on the tray just below the wrist. “It’s a recent cut, very recent. Based on the slight degradation.” He took a pen from his pocket and pushed the pad of the index finger. “And by the degree of rigor mortis, I would say it was cut off less than an hour ago.”
He stood, walked to the end of the table, and bent again, studying the hand from a different angle. “It was definitely cut off. There is no sign of tearing or rending. Whatever was used was one hell of a sharp instrument.”
He strode back to where he started, picked up the tray, and turned into the light to see the wound better. “The bone is sliced. I’m not sure, but it appears to have been done with one stroke. There’s no sign of sawing or repeated cutting.”
“One stroke?”John asked incredulously. “What the hell could do that? An axe?”
“No, an axe cuts at an angle, this is completely straight.” Dean used the pen to lift a flap of flesh. “See, it’s severed cleanly. Amazingly so. There’s no serration. Bone is porous but thick; you can’t slice through it like cutting through a birthday cake.”
Dean set the tray down and returned his pen to his pocket. “And I can also tell you, this is not the hand that choked Clyde Watkins. If he was strangled by a hand at all.”
“I’ve seen the bruising. It’s consistent with someone using his hands.”
“Well, it wasn’t this hand.”
“How do you know?”
“For one thing, it takes a hell of a lot of strength to strangle someone – almost impossible to do with one hand.” He nodded toward the tray. “Again, I’m no medical doctor, but the ligaments here don’t look particularly well defined. This is not someone who does physical work for a living. Besides, it’s an impossible scenario.”
John put the handkerchief back in his pocket, but the pensive look remained. “The whole damn thing is an impossible scenario. Miss Blackmoore says she saw two men through the hotel window, one choking the other. When she and the desk clerk arrived, they found the door locked from the inside. They had to break it down. Clyde was the only one inside. They didn’t leave the room until the paramedics arrived, about the same time Jerry and I got there. It’s a single room with a bath. There’s not even a closet, just a pole under a shelf to hang your clothes on. So, if there was no one else in that room, who locked the door?”
“Someone who went out the window?”
“Nailed shut. The owner put in air-conditioning about three years ago and didn’t want guests leaving them open. Believe me, no one went out the window.”
The fluorescent light at the back of the room flickered again. The strobing effect of light and shadows made the fingers of the severed hand appear to move. The high-pitched hiss of the faltering light now competed with the refrigeration drone.
Dean clutched his hands and steepled his index fingers, then gently tapped his lips. “Locked from the inside; what kind of lock?”
�
�Slide and catch. Simple design. The main component is mounted on the door. You then lift the lever and slide the small pin into the metal receptacle mounted to the door frame.”
The light flickered again, then returned to normal. The hissing stopped.
John put on his hat, moved it once to secure its placement, then ran his thumb and forefinger across the brim. “Like I said, the whole damn thing is impossible.”
8
“They were stunned,” Nathan Perkins said, slipping the green Japanese silk pajama bottoms over his dead-fish-white legs.
“So they really liked it?” Ava asked, her bat-wing size eyelashes fluttering with excitement.
“They really liked it.” He hated lying but hated hurting Ava even more.
She squealed with delight, hugging him against her sizable, and almost-paid-for, chest. “What did that old stuffed shirt Jenkins Jones say - exactly?”
The most butt-ugly painting ever produced in the entire butt-ugly world.
“I don’t remember,” he lied again, part of him amazed by how quick and easy the words came.
She frowned. “But you said they liked it?”
“They did, baby, they did. They were bowled over. Even that old fart, Jenkins Jones. It’s just there were so many wonderful comments that I can’t really remember who said what. That’s all.”
Ava giggled and clapped her hands. Like a child, Nathan thought. It was a frequent observation. She was fifteen years his junior. Not a child in any chronological sense, yet she maintained a youthful zest and temperament. So what if she was moody and flashy, with taste than ran toward the extreme?
They had met in Portland. She was a clerk at the Hertz car rental booth, but she handled herself as if she were a queen. That was her way. “You are as you act,” she was fond of saying. And Ava acted as if the world was her plaything. Six months after meeting, they were married and Nathan had become her favorite toy.
It was the most impulsive thing he had ever done, and eyebrows in Black Valley were raised high. But most of the criticism could be dismissed as envy. Nathan had never before been the subject of envy, and it was an experience he liked.