Sorrow's Crown

by Tom Piccirilli

  Harms continued to stare straight ahead as we pulled out, his hands still hanging open. Jocelyn smoldered beside me, or at least I hoped she did, though her voice hadn't changed at all, even when insulting me. The two of them looked as in-organic as the portraits at the top of Harnes' grand stairway, like all the dead women from his past.

  The living pressure known as Theodore Harnes kept exerting itself upon me as we drove toward Felicity Grove. I thought about how he'd allowed Anna to run him over, as if he couldn't quite comprehend that the physical laws of the world should ever be impressed upon him.

  Jocelyn glanced over at me, and the dying driver glared into the rearview mirror, but no one said anything. This might have made a good Sergio Leone spaghetti western, lots of close-ups on our squints, each noise magnified on the soundtrack. The chauffeur drove effortlessly, even when abruptly caught up in a coughing fit. I slowly became aware of Harnes' breathing, as though it was only within the last few minutes that he'd learned how to do it, or even needed to do it. I knew we didn't quite share the same reality.

  "I did not appreciate your attendance at my home," he said.

  "No," I said. "I imagined you wouldn't."

  "You sought only to provoke and irritate me."

  "That sounds about right."

  "Why do you pursue in this aggravating manner?"

  A man who enjoys a standoff.

  "Whatever I've been doing it's been getting me a lot of nice rides in this limo."

  The sound of breathing became displaced for a moment, and suddenly I became aware of Jocelyn's chest rising and falling, as though they shared one pair of lungs and couldn't use them at the same time. An undercurrent of tranquillity and calamity ran through the car, each of them feeling different things at different times, in perfect counterpoint to one another. She seemed to be getting angry now even while he calmed. In a way I was reminded of how things worked between me and Anna.

  Harnes flexed his fingers, once. "Let us talk of the untimely death of Freddy Shanks."

  "I thought it was pretty timely myself. Any later and the bastard would have killed me."

  "I do not believe you," he said.

  "I've still got the lumps to prove it."

  He had no people skills. "Tell me what occurred that night."

  "If you already don't believe me then what's the point?" I asked.

  "Be that as it may, I require you answer my questions.”

  “You didn't ask any."

  That tickled him, almost. Something crawled around in his eyes, and his fists opened once more and then shut. "Tell me all that happened."

  I told him.

  "I do not believe you," Harnes said.

  "I sorta figured you'd say that."

  My attention snapped to Jocelyn as though caught on barbs. I watched her frozen visage for a moment, wondering how much hate or love might be hidden there, if any, and if so, for whom. The charge flowed and returned to Harnes.

  He said, "My son is dead and the man who murdered him has been put away. Why do you persist in involving yourself in my affairs?"

  His calm demeanor rattled me. The car seemed to roll and crest with sodium pentathol, all of us unable to lie about anything. The stink of death rising from the driver perhaps lulled us toward our own ends. My heartbeat tripped along. Theodore Harnes had enough wealth and influence to build, buy, or steal whatever he might want, but chose to converse pleasantly about a boy who'd had his face cut off, an innocent man locked in an asylum, and a sadist dead on the floor with his brains spilled. I started to sweat. I imagined how many of his enemies might be cowering in restricted areas D and E of Sector Eight in Panecraft, gazing down at me as I stood looking up.

  And Crummler, locked away, still waiting for my help, too terrified to think of happier things because it was so much easier to survive that kind of sorrow if you accepted hell as your fate.

  "Why did you send Shanks to kill Brian Frost?" I asked.

  "I did no such thing."

  "I don't believe you."

  Only the barest movement from those hands, as they closed slightly to cup his knees. "That does not concern me.”

  “Does anything?"

  "Nothing you could know."

  "You're probably right." It was my turn to breathe as we hit the outskirts of town. "Alice Conway was blackmailing you."

  "Indeed not," he said, so sedate that I looked at his eyes to see if the pupils were dilated. "She performed a poor masque meant to threaten me. It did not. Hence, by definition, there could be no blackmail."

  "Still, she was making the attempt."

  "I found her company pleasant, for a time. As did my son. There is nothing more to say on the matter."

  "She was going to have Teddy's kid. Didn't that matter to you?"

  "No," he said.

  I took a breath. The air had come back around to me. "You're a real piece of shit."

  A brutal growl ripped up the back of Jocelyn's throat and she stirred in her seat and slapped me. The heel of her hand drove into my jaw and my skull flared with that now familiar spatter of color and pain. Even while my mouth filled with blood I felt a genuine sense of hope, and even grinned as I turned with the expectation of seeing a frown or sneer, her lips marred and curled by unsheathed anger. Even just a single misplaced strand of hair, anything, a casual crease around her eyes, or dimples in the chin. I smiled and blood flooded against my teeth.

  Absolutely nothing had changed in her face.

  The driver stopped at a red light on Fairlawn, four blocks from the flower shop. I said, "Let me off here."

  "Enjoy your day, Mr. Kendrick," Harnes said.

  I wiped the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand. "You, too," I said. "Thanks for the ride."

  "You are most welcome."

  "One more thing," I told him. "Stay away from my grandmother."

  "No."

  My face tightened as I grew flush, and my fingers flexed, once, the same moment his did. Jocelyn got out and I followed. I stood on the corner as the stink of the dying driver wafted out on the air conditioning. Jocelyn got back into the Mercedes and I held the door open before she could shut it.

  If Harnes didn't believe that the physical laws of the world were meant for him, then what could he possibly think of moral precepts? We waited like that for a while.

  Finally, at long last, he looked at me.

  "Did you murder your first wife and unborn child?" I asked.

  "Yes," he said.

  Jocelyn slammed the door, and the limo pulled off.

  FOURTEEN

  I walked into the shop and immediately noticed that the window had been repaired. They'd done a fairly sloppy job with the frame, and I'd have to repaint. Dust motes spun in the shafts of sunlight that layered against the unused room. If my desk was in there I'd have to pull the curtains every day at four o'clock to avoid a face-full of glare. I scratched the top of my head thinking that if I needed ten thousand more excuses for not moving the bookstore here, I could no doubt find them. I could probably even hold my breath until I turned blue and wail and pound my fists against the floor while I thrashed all over the place.

  Katie stood in the back shoving various bins of flora aside in the humming refrigerator. She'd had no trouble cleaning up the few strewn flowers, torn plant-growth bags, the broken pottery and glass. Her frozen breath clouded around her throat. She'd been too preoccupied to notice the tinkling bell. I moved to her as she closed the refrigerator door. At the sound of my footsteps she wheeled and flung herself sideways with a startled gasp, barely stepping over the spider plant Anubis had been gnawing on. She grinned and let out an uncomfortable giggle. That usual sense of amazement I got from seeing the dimples flaring at the edges of her lips took such hold that I almost didn't spot her real fear.

  "Oh, you're back already," she said.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "I didn't hear anybody come in."

  "You're trembling."

  "I was just working in the fri
dge."

  My grandmother might be highly accomplished at controlling her demonstrative side, but Katie didn't quite have the knack. I thought I might be able to let the things slide for maybe five minutes, and decided to give it a shot. I rested my elbows on the counter and she leaned over from the other edge facing me, and we kissed for a moment as I touched the nearly invisible blond down under her ears, brushing its softness back across her cheek.

  "Sorry about the mess this morning," I said.

  "It could have been a lot worse. Thanks for cleaning up before I got here."

  "Anything missing?"

  "Just a couple of orchids. They were crushed in the street, where he'd stepped on them." I could see Devington doing something spiteful like that, useless and without meaning. The least he could have done was bring the flowers to his mother and sister instead of dumping them in the gutter. Katie shrugged, still holding back. "Did you find out anything that might help Crummler?"

  "I don't know yet. I need to talk to him."

  "Will they let you in again?"

  "I think so. Lowell probably rattled Dr. Brennan Brent's cage a little more by now. After Freddy Shanks' death, Brent knows there's some focus on the hospital. He'll probably be more careful and want to appear completely candid about his patients."

  "The murder, you mean," she said.

  "What?"

  "You said ‘Freddy Shanks' death' as if it occurred naturally, like he died in his sleep. He was killed by Crummler's brother, who promptly ran off and is still hiding in town someplace."

  "I thought maybe he'd gone back to Manhattan."

  "That doesn't jibe with what you told me about him wanting to help Crummler. Why would he leave?"

  "I don't know."

  "You wanted to see him in the city?"

  "I was hoping he'd stop in again."

  Her lips looked too wet, the crimp between her eyes deeper than it should be. "It was murder, wasn't it? He did kill the man."

  "And saved my life," I said. I'd been able to curb my concern for all of three minutes, which I thought was still pretty damn good considering the kind of day I'd had. I feared for the baby, and wondered if she'd miscarried.

  "Tell me what's wrong, Katie."

  "My tires were slashed this morning."

  I exhaled deeply and it felt like the last stored breath shared by Jocelyn, Harnes, and me had been squeezed out of my chest. "What?"

  "Three of them anyway, and busted a headlight. Wasn't it nice that the son of a bitch didn't go for all four tires, so he could save me a few dollars? It didn't matter, though, what's the point of buying only three new ones? The car's got fifty-two thousand miles on it, so I had to go for a full set anyway. Same with the headlight, I had a new pair put in. I don't think Duke weighted the tires properly though, the right side seems off. I'm going back to have him do it again."

  "I'll get them done right now," I whispered. I sounded very far away from myself.

  "I know how you are when you talk like that." She came into my arms and kissed me hard, and kissed me again, more gently as the icy sweat slid down my back. "Don't do anything crazy."

  "Me?" I said.

  ~ * ~

  It took Duke a half hour to correctly weight the four new tires, and he muttered and grimaced because I stood there watching him work the entire time.

  "You don't have nowhere else better to be?" he asked.

  "Believe it or not," I said. "I do."

  He finished and wanted to charge me extra and instantly saw I wasn't having any. He tried to get me to thank him for putting in so much extra time and effort, instead of owning up to the fact that he'd fouled the job the first time.

  I drove out without another word and pulled up outside McGreary's discount store at about four-thirty, where I waited almost forty-five minutes before seeing Kristin Devington leave for the day. I hoped to seem careless in my approach, but the gravel crunched loudly underfoot and I sounded like a lost water buffalo moving through the parking lot. She heard me coming and wheeled and waited for me to step up.

  "Hi, Jonny."

  "Hi, Kristin."

  "You don't plan on causing any more trouble for Arnie, do you?" she asked. "Not just for his sake, because it took my mother two days to calm down. She's got high blood pressure and diabetes. She's supposed to take a couple of different medications and watch her diet, but she only swallows some of the pills and she eats a half pound of peanut brittle almost every night."

  "No," I said. "I don't want to fight with your brother anymore."

  "That's good to know. What brings you here then?”

  “I thought we might talk for a few minutes."

  "Okay.

  Neither one of us had grown so much as an inch since we were seventeen, and she reached exactly the same place on me as back then, just about my shoulders. I put my hand on her arm, thinking about the night I'd taken her to her junior prom. I remembered how lovely Kristin had looked that evening when I'd pinned the corsage on her, both of us lit by the bug light on her front porch, back when Arnie and I and the rest of the team used to wrestle in the mud of the high school fields and go drink beer in the moonlight behind the gymnasium or the bleachers.

  "What's been happening at your house?" I asked.

  "He's been fighting with my mother something awful the past few months. She'll put her teeth in somebody's throat to defend him most of the time, but when she's alone in the house with him it's a different story, all right. It gets ugly a couple of times a year, and Sheriff Broghin had to put handcuffs on her once just so she'd settle down in her recliner long enough to keep from killing Arnie's dog with the meat cleaver." She tipped her chin aside and I saw her mother there in her face, lurking below. "Stupid dog died anyway a couple of weeks later from eating rat poison over in the tool shed. Arnie got out his shotgun and blew up the roof a little, aiming for the weathervane."

  "Did he ever hit it?"

  "No, but some of the shot nailed a passing crow and brought it down into the blueberry patch. He was pretty happy with himself over that."

  "I'll bet." I could see him plugging at nothing and laughing morosely, creeping around that quarter-acre of crabgrass covered with trash and shards. The mold and ivy was so thick and heavy on the gingerbread trim that he must've felt as if it covered him as well. He'd be wishing his wife was still with him, his father back from the grave. Christ, we weren't so different after all. None of us.

  "Why don't you leave?" I asked.

  She shrugged with the same despondency I'd seen in most of my high school crowd after they found themselves still living with their parents ten years after graduation. "Where am I going to go?"

  I watched the pedestrian traffic go by, thinking that Katie might be right, the bookstore could have a fair flow of business between ten and six. The Barbara Cartland and Danielle Steele shelves would turn over quickly because of sorrowful women who had nothing better to do than scarf down peanut brittle; the Mission M.I.A. and The Executioner series would be selling well due to the NRA enthusiasts flocking over from Oscar's hunting goods store.

  Kristin didn't seem to mind just standing here at the back of the parking lot with me. Her mother's features rose for a moment like a drowned woman's face bobbing to the surface. Maybe Mrs. Devington had been going for a wrench the other day, or maybe Kristin had just wanted to brain me with that broom handle.

  Abruptly she said, almost too softly to be heard, "I'm sorry."

  Arnie Devington wouldn't have slashed tires. That showed plenty of rage, all right, but directed toward Katie. Arnie hadn't broken into Katie's shop or mashed the orchids in the street. "Why'd you do it?"

  "I don't know exactly," Kristin said. "I guess. . . I guess, maybe, because when you showed up at the house the other day, it reminded me of the prom, how handsome you looked, and the way I thought it was going to be, you know, one day. With you, or maybe with just anyone, but it never was. I ironed the corsage between two pieces of wax paper, still have it saved in the bible on m
y nightstand. You never asked me out again."

  She was wrong, we'd had a couple more dates afterwards. Then she'd joined her family in badmouthing me in order to keep what little self-respect they had in the wake of their life-long failures. I thought she might cry, but she didn't appear to be particularly abashed.

  "Sometimes," she told me. "I wish it hadn't been that stupid dog that ate the rat poison. I should've done it myself. You ever feel like that, Jonny?"

  Nothing I could do would change anything. There was nothing left to be said except what I came here to say. "Please, Kristin. Don't go near her again."

  The gentleness in her eyes as she'd watched her brother and I tearing it up on the lawn had fled; she had her own harbored resentments to deal with. Or those she'd failed to deal with. The orchids stepped on in the street, like a flattened corsage kept between pages in a book, might still haunt her years from now.

  Kristin looked at me the same way she had the other day; as if she knew this wasn't over, and might never be.

  ~ * ~

  Panecraft continued to rise into the reddening sky, silhouetted in the rotund face of the full moon breaching the sunset. Rest-less clouds curled, parted and twisted in argument, then thinned and drifted away. The air grew heavy and began to still, and the temperature dropped significantly in only a few minutes.

  I drove up to the black-and-white striped semaphore arm at the front gate checkpoint, and the same guard performed another extravaganza of looking for my name on the pages of his clipboard.

  I said, "Just call ahead to Dr. Brent."

  He didn't pick up the red phone in his little booth, and wouldn't do so until he'd gone through the rest of his paperwork. I leaned out of the car window and scanned the tiny cubicle again. He actually had a bookmark placed in the men's magazine so he wouldn't lose his place. If he was really reading the articles in a magazine called Gozangas then no wonder he had to entertain himself with his clipboard. He must've desperately wanted to pull his firearm just to fend off the tedium.