They stayed like that for longer than you’d think, and when they finally let go of each other, they both looked kind of embarrassed. After they talked for a few more minutes, Trish gestured toward the three of us; then her father sized me up just like I’ve seen Cody do with a potential perp. He leaned in as if to ask her something, and her reply consisted of several shrugs of her bony little shoulders.
He took a step toward us, then stopped and reached into his coat pocket to produce another big yellow roll—thus deflating what I’d mistaken for a moderate beer belly. He whistled to one of his underlings and tossed the roll to him underhanded; voilà, some genuine crime-scene tape.
“You’re from the newspaper,” he said, once he’d crossed the space between us in three strides.
“That’s right. The Gabriel Monitor.”
“I didn’t think you were from the Jaspersburg Shopper.” His delivery was so deadpan I wasn’t sure whether or not I was supposed to laugh, so I didn’t. “Let’s go over here.”
He commuted a few yards away from the teenagers, and I scampered to keep up with him. “I’m Alex Bernier. I’ve been covering the festival for the paper.”
We shook hands, and when we were through, I was worried I might have to go to the emergency room and get fitted for a cast.
“Chief Stilwell. Only one L after the I. First name Steve.”
“Steve spelled the normal way?”
He fixed me with another Cody-like look. “Are you being smart with me, young lady?”
“Definitely not.”
He cracked the suggestion of a smile, which went a long way toward making him something less than terrifying. “Let’s keep it that way.”
“Absolutely.”
“I take it you’re the one who did the front-page story on my daughter and her friends.”
“That’s right.”
“I see.” His tone said he wasn’t thrilled with the coverage, but he didn’t elaborate. “And I assume you’re doing a story on”—he looked back toward the tent, now being reencircled—“this.”
“Yeah.”
“I also assume you know who the victim is.”
I told him I did, and he gave me the standard speech about not ID’ing the kid until they’d notified his next of kin. I said I knew the drill, though in terms considerably less snarky than that.
“Any idea when you’ll have a cause of death?”
“As you can see, the coroner hasn’t even arrived yet. And as I’m sure you know, that’s the kind of question you’ll have to ask him.”
“Any idea what it was he took?”
“Are you being willfully obtuse?”
“Um…no.”
“Then I’d think you’d be aware that if we don’t know the cause of death, then we damn well don’t know what he took.”
“I was just asking.”
“You’re not the regular police reporter, are you?”
“I usually cover government—common council, county board—”
“And the Melting Rock Music Festival?”
“I was sort of a last-minute substitute.”
“I see.”
“So… what’s going to happen next?”
“Meaning?”
“Is the festival going to stay open?”
“Of course the festival’s going to stay open,” somebody chirped, and it definitely wasn’t Chief Stilwell.
No, the voice belonged to a lady who looked like she’d leaped off a box of cake mix—a portly, Midwestern-mom type in a flowered jumper and a straw hat. “Of course it’ll stay open,” she said again. “What would make you think otherwise?”
The woman in question was somewhere on the near side of middle age. Her lipstick was coral pink and not very accurately applied to her kisser; her hat, perched atop a bottle-blond mane, was big and floppy and had a blue grosgrain bow.
Stilwell eyed her, and I saw his jaw tighten. The woman, meanwhile, stood there looking from the chief to me and back again. She was clearly salivating for an introduction, while he was just as clearly savoring the act of not giving it to her. Eventually, he gave in.
“Mrs. Rosemary Hamill, this is Alex Bernier from the Gabriel Monitor. Mrs. Hamill is the president of our town council and head of the Melting Rock Community—”
“I’m just so pleased to meet you,” she said, aiming a doughy paw my way. “So you’re the one who’s been doing all those lovely stories. I have to say, the council was just pleased as punch to hear that the paper was doing a special section on the festival.…”
I gaped at her, wondering what Emily Post would think of uttering “pleased as punch” within spitting distance of a corpse.
“I hope you’re having a good time so far,” she was saying. “Are you? Hmm?”
Who was this crazy person? And was she, by any chance, high as a kite herself?”
“Er…” I fumbled for something resembling a response. “It’s definitely been… interesting.”
“Of course it is,” she said. “Melting Rock is always interesting; that’s what we say around here. Melting Rock weekend is the most interesting weekend of the year. Don’t you think so, Chief?”
I wouldn’t have thought his jaw muscles could get any tighter without snapping, but they did.
“Alex here was just asking if we’re planning on shutting down the festival,” he said, and I could tell he was taking a fair amount of pleasure in it. “Do you have any comment on that you could give her?”
She pursed her hot-pink lips. “I believe I already have.” She turned to me. “But in case Alex didn’t get my meaning, I’ll say it again. There’s no reason this unfortunate incident should ruin a very important occasion for everyone.” She waved a matching fingernail toward my notebook. “You may write that down if you wish.”
It was pretty much what Shaun’s friends had told me, albeit crafted like a goddamn press release. I was starting to think there was something funny in the Jaspersburg water supply. “You see, Mrs. Hamill, the reason I’m asking is that the conventional wisdom around here is saying Shaun Kirtz died of a drug overdose, and—”
“Your point being?”
“Well, aren’t you worried that whatever killed him could kill somebody else?”
She looked at me like I’d just run over her poodle. “Are you trying to stir up trouble?”
“It’s just a question.”
“A very irresponsible question, if you ask me.”
“Why is that?”
“There’s no need to get everyone all upset over nothing.”
Stilwell finally had enough. “Rosemary, for chrissake, it’s not nothing. A boy died. A friend of Trish’s, as a matter of fact.”
Now those neon lips made a vaguely conciliatory smooching sound. “And it’s a terrible tragedy. But these things do happen.”
I was wondering how she’d feel if she wound up reading her own idiotic comments in the next morning’s paper: “These things do happen,” town council president Rosemary Hamill said of the rapidly stiffening corpse off to her left.…
“And besides,” she was saying, “who’s to say that the poor boy didn’t die of natural causes? Perhaps he had some sort of heart defect, poor thing.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I said. “But in case it was drugs, aren’t you worried that other people might be at risk?”
I could tell I was starting to bore her, but she tried to hide it by making her tone even more icky-friendly. “That’s a very important issue,” she said. “And I’m sure I speak for the entire council when I say that I’d hope that after what happened this morning, people would have the good sense not to… not to partake of any dangerous substances.”
I wrote that down, partly out of spite.
“Are you going to try to spread some kind of safety message around or something?”
I’d addressed the question to Mrs. Hamill. She immediately turned to the chief with a look that said that’s your problem.
“We’re already running some flyer
s,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Flyers?” Somehow, she made it sound like a dirty word.
“Reminding people that if they get caught with controlled substances they’re going to get arrested.”
Hamill looked downright horrified. “Really,” she said, “there’s no need to be so”—she cast about for the right word—“… adversarial, now is there?”
“Rosemary, drugs are against the law.”
“I realize that,” she said. “But it’s not as if it’s any sort of widespread problem.”
“Are you kidding me? For chrissake, Rosemary, wake up and face reality for once in your life.”
Apparently, the two of them had managed to forget there was a reporter roughly two feet away. Then they remembered.
“The flyers will educate people about the potential dangers of drug consumption,” she said, suddenly sounding like she was giving a speech to the Revolutionary Daughters of Jaspersburg. “That should more than suffice, don’t you think?”
She didn’t stick around to hear his answer, just favored us both with her “ladies’ club” smile and walked away. That left me and the chief, a Mutt and Jeff pair if there ever was one—him topping six feet of hirsute machismo, me at five feet three and all of 120 pounds.
“Chief,” I said, “can I ask you something else?”
“From what I know of reporters, that’s what I’d call a rhetorical question.”
“Is that a yes?”
He looked like he was getting a headache. “If you make it quick.”
“What’s your policy on drugs at Melting Rock?”
He glanced over at the spot where what was left of Shaun Kirtz lay on the encircled grass. “My policy is if you take them, you’re an idiot.” He shook his head. “And you’re welcome to quote me. But I guess you probably meant the department’s official policy.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you heard me before. Drugs are illegal.”
“Look, Chief, I don’t mean to be disrespectful or anything, but I’ve been here for the past two days, and, well…A lot of this stuff seems to be going on pretty much out in the open, but hardly anybody ever gets busted for it.”
“We arrested three people last year for possession with intent to sell.”
“Right, but three out of how many?” He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Again, no disrespect, but it definitely seems like it’s not in the town’s best interest to bust people. Would you say that’s true?”
“Now you’re putting words in my mouth,” he said, though he didn’t seem particularly annoyed.
“I’m just trying to understand the situation.”
“That makes two of us,” he said. “And that’s off the record.”
The coroner showed up then, and Stilwell looked plenty relieved to see him. He excused himself and went back to the crime scene, and I stood there for a while wondering why he’d spent so much time talking to me in the first place.
It was pretty obvious that any efforts he made to police Melting Rock were going to be hamstrung by the town, which (as I mentioned) is deeply in love with all the cash the festival generates. And though I didn’t know a damn thing about the guy, he struck me as one of those men-of-action types who didn’t take kindly to that sort of thing. Admittedly, my perceptions might have been colored by the vast hours I spend inside a movie theater. Stilwell, in fact, reminded me of a middle-aged Burt Reynolds, mustache and all.
Once he left, I realized I was, well, starving. I was headed toward the coffee tent when I passed a pale young woman in a flowing purple gown, doing some sort of interpretive dance all by her lonesome. I probably should’ve kept walking, but she seemed vaguely familiar. I stood there and stared in a way that my mother would have told me was impolite. She had her eyes closed, but after a minute she opened them and stared back at me.
“Wow,” she said. “It’s you.”
Her voice had an oddly deadpan, distinctive singsong inflection, and I definitely recognized it—though from where, I still had no idea.
“Um…Do I know you?”
She smiled a sad sort of smile.
“You know everybody, man. We all know everybody.”
It was the “man” that jogged my memory. The first (and last) time I’d seen her was a year or so ago, when she and a bunch of other local psychics had tried to convince the Gabriel police to let them help in the search for a serial killer. The cops, as you can imagine, had been less than inviting.
“Guinevere, right?” She nodded and kept dancing. I realized she was wearing exactly the same outfit as when we’d met before, a medieval robe that put her bosom front and center. “You come to Melting Rock a lot?”
“Every year, man. Every year.”
Shocking. “You like it a lot, huh?”
“I just live for the Rock, man. Just live for it.”
“Um… Can I ask you something?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Knowledge is power.”
“How come you’re dancing when the music hasn’t even started up again yet?”
“I’m reading.” The word’s first syllable came out in a long note: reeee-ding.
“Er… Reading what?”
“The air,” she said, arms waving like snakes above her head. “The wind, the sky, the elements. It’s all there.”
“What’s all there?”
“Everything. You just need to know how to listen.”
“Oh. And, uh, what’re you listening for?”
She stopped undulating all of a sudden, dropping her arms and looking at me. The expression on her face was dead serious. “How many?”
“Huh?”
“That’s what I’m asking. How many?”
“How many what?”
“How many boys. How many will there be?”
“You mean—”
“We’ve lost enough already,” she said. “How many more will there be?”
“Look, I know what happened to Shaun Kirtz is terrible. It’s a total tragedy. But what makes you so sure there’d be any others?”
She closed her eyes and recommenced the dance. “I asked the air,” she said, “and it told me there already are.”
AFTER BEING THOROUGHLY FREAKED OUT, I went in search of an overpriced bagel from the coffee tent, then did a few more color interviews and checked in with Bill. Predictably, my story budget had been totally overhauled; he and Marilyn had decided that my coverage was now going to be All-Shaun-All-the-Time. And although this was considerably more interesting than being on the handmade-sandal beat, it was also a lot more work.
For starters, they wanted pieces on how Shaun’s friends were coping with his death; on the mood of the festivalgoers in general; on how the event’s organizers were dealing with the safety issue. And although the print deadline was hours away, they wanted all this for the Web site ASAP, with continual on-line updates and fleshed-out versions for the paper edition.
Meanwhile, Mad’s duties as a weekend reporter now included pulling together a sidebar on past Melting Rock deaths, of which I could recall two off the top of my head—one drowning and a heart attack that had felled a fried-dough vendor a few years back. And yes, dragging Mad into it did feel rather good from a revenge standpoint.
As I raced around the Jaspersburg Fairgrounds trying to cover all this stuff, it definitely seemed to me that the mood of the place had changed. Maybe it was my imagination, but the music seemed quieter, the dancers shaking their collective booty with a lot less enthusiasm. Many of the people who’d been running around laughing like hepped-up fools were now engaged in earnest conversation, and every time I got close enough to eavesdrop, I found they were talking about the same thing. Although, in the Melting Rock version of telephone, the facts were starting to get wildly distorted.
…And then he, like, had this huge seizure right in the middle of the drum circle, and this one dude just totally fainted.…
… This chick he was with, she’s in the hospital, and
they’re pretty sure she’s not gonna make it.…
…I heard he got bit by a spider, like a tarantula or a black widow or something, but now the powers that be are trying to cover it up so everybody doesn’t get all freaked out.…
…Truth is, he was doing this, like, primitive ceremony, man, but he didn’t know what he was messing with.…
I filed my stories by six, after seeking out Chief Stilwell for another interview and getting the brush-off from one of his officers on the grounds that he was too busy. Shortly afterward, when I was consoling myself with a potato pancake topped with sour cream and to hell with the fat, I ran into Dorrie, Billy, and Trish. They’d bought matching ears of roasted corn on the cob, and though it looked quite tasty, none of them were eating. The ears just sat in the grass in their little paper boats, a bright yellow flotilla bound for nowhere.
“You guys doing okay?” I asked. They shrugged en masse. “Have you heard anything about Cindy?”
“My dad says she’s not bad,” Trish said. “I guess they took her to the hospital in Gabriel and gave her some tranquilizers or something. Alan’s with her.”
“That’s good,” I said.
Dorrie rolled her corn with her index finger, then licked the butter off. “They told Shaun’s mom,” she said. “She’s pretty upset and all.”
I tried to think of something comforting and came up short.
“Hey,” Dorrie said, “can we ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“You mean, do I think you should go home?”
“No, I mean… with Shaun’s mom. What do you think we should do?”
“Oh. I guess…I’m not really sure.”
“But you, like …You’ve done stuff like this before. I mean, my mom says you’re pretty famous in Gabriel.”
“What?”
“I…Uh, I talked to her a little while ago, to say I was okay and everything, and she saw your name on that story you did about us. She told me, um, about how you’ve had some friends die and all, so we thought maybe…”
She was starting to blush, the redness all the more obvious due to her extreme lack of hair.
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