Sorrow's Crown

by Tom Piccirilli

  "Father," she said. The word held such extreme importance for her that she seemed to be saying prayers and making sacrifices upon an altar. "He'd betrayed you. It could not be permitted."

  "You did this?"

  Jocelyn flicked her wrist casually toward me and I knew the black night she had wrapped inside of would all come rushing out in this moment. I dodged toward Harnes hoping she wouldn't fire if I was too close to him. The shot sounded impossibly loud and Anna lurched sideways, rising slightly—it seemed as if she might actually be standing, about to take a step toward me. I reached and she flopped into my arms, and said, "Oh, dear."

  I found my grandmother's blood on my hands and the world grew tight and too painfully well lit. I closed my eyes and opened them again.

  Jocelyn twisted and pointed the gun at me. I wheeled blindly and flung myself aside as she fired. Nick Crummler backpedaled and hurled himself at Li Tai as Jocelyn straightened her arm and aimed at her mother. She fired twice more before I dove onto her. We dropped to the floor heavily and rolled into the darkest corner, where we belonged now. Shadows tore at us. Her facade fell in on itself and her nostrils flared, and I saw all the welts of her strange soul rise to the flesh. I watched her became a hideous caricature of beauty, her face haggard and deeply fissured, nose drawn into a snarl and lips skinned back in a sneer. She tumbled against me, desiccated, more terminal than the dead chauffeur.

  Everything stilled. I knew my face looked the same as hers. She fired again. I felt warmth slithering out of me. I reached down and grabbed Jocelyn's wrist and brutally pulled it backward, wanting and needing to hear the bone snap. She easily squirmed from my grip and brought the heel of her palm up viciously into my jaw. More blood spurted, but I didn't mind the dragon's bite now. It felt too good letting loose my own beast.

  Nick Crummler rose and punched Harnes once in the mouth, and the madman who had poisoned his wives and imprisoned the mother of his own insane child slid to the floor where he stared at me. I pulled my fist back and drove it forward into Jocelyn's stomach, and still she sneered at me. She smashed me in the mouth once more and I slugged her on the chin as hard as I could.

  A soft sound faded in.

  A second later I heard it again, and once more, much sharper, and knew it as my name.

  "Jonathan. I'm all right. I'm all right, dear. Stop it, you'll kill her!"

  I got my hand around Jocelyn's neck and squeezed as tightly as I could, not caring where the next minute took me so long as it took me away from here, but before I got there she was suddenly gone, yanked backward by her long hair into Harnes' lap. He reached for the wine glass, broke it against the edge of the table, and tried to slice her throat open with the shard of the shattered stem. He wasn't angry, not even while he calmly tried to hook her jugular. "You killed my son. My son."

  Nick punched him in the mouth again, took the broken glass out of his hand, and looked around the room.

  For a man who had been a denizen of Panecraft and lived inside a cardboard box, eating garbage in the street, he sounded damn sure of himself.

  He said, "All of you are crazy."

  SIXTEEN

  I knelt beside by grandmother. The bullet had passed through the thick folds and layers of clothing near her neck. The heavy sweater had scorch marks on it, and her hair had been slightly singed. I tore the tiny rip open wider to get a better look, and vaguely wondered why I was using my left hand instead of my right. The ridge of her shoulder had an inch-long crease that had mostly crusted, yet still dribbled a little blood.

  "I'm fine, dear, I'm fine."

  "You're bleeding."

  "No, look," she said. "It has already stopped. Let me attend to you."

  "Me?"

  I stared down at myself and saw my right hand still opened into a claw as though waiting for Jocelyn to press her throat back into it. My arm dangled oddly and was entirely drenched with blood.

  "Jesus," I said. "I don't feel it."

  "Jonathan, you're in shock."

  "That's pretty helpful."

  "We've got to staunch the wound." She stretched like she would hug me or pull me down onto her lap. Instead, she lifted my jacket and untucked my shirt. "You're not wearing a belt."

  "So I put on a little weight. I think you're supposed to tear the hem of your skirt at a time like this."

  "Perhaps if I was your love interest and we were fleeing mafiosi."

  My arm kept leaking. I shook free of my jacket and Anna yanked out the lining, making a tourniquet. It wasn't until she said, "There," that I started feeling woozy.

  Lowell hadn't used his siren. Like Nick Crummler, he simply appeared in the room, his gun drawn but pressed down tightly to the side of his leg.

  I hadn't realized Nick was even still in the house. He looked over his shoulder at Lowell and muttered, "Oh hell."

  Lowell took it all in, stood beside me, and said, "Your phone ain't worth shit."

  "I've begun to realize that."

  "Ambulance is on its way."

  Harnes and Jocelyn lay unconscious on the floor, tangled in the dark corner that reminded me of the tapered lighting effect of Crummler's cell. Li Tai sat in the center of the room, her hands folded in her lap, showing no emotion besides a ruddy glow of vindication lighting her visage. Nick and Lowell eyed each other very carefully.

  "This is Nick, huh?" Lowell asked without really asking. I nodded. "Think you can explain this all to me in less than an hour, Jonny?"

  I thought it would take a month to clear it up, but the short form only took ten minutes.

  "Who killed the guy out in the limo?"

  "Maybe cancer, or maybe Harnes poisoned him.”

  “Why?"

  "He's a psychopath."

  "Christ, we're going to have Wallace exhuming bodies for weeks."

  Nick Crummler scratched at his beard and said, "Well, now that we all know my brother is innocent, I guess I'll be going."

  "You killed a man," Lowell said.

  "Whatever he was, he was less than a man. If you'd seen him in action you'd understand that and would've done it yourself. I saved the kid's life."

  Lowell was actually three months younger than me. He nodded and said, "I know, but you realize I can't just let you leave."

  "I have to admit I was hoping."

  "I'd appreciate it if you didn't give me a bothersome time here."

  Nick cocked his head, considering it. "I understand your situation, Deputy Tully. But if I get taken in there're a lot of reasons a man like me can get put away for good that have nothing to do with what I'm arrested for." He pointed at Harnes, but Lowell didn't turn his head. "It's happened before, and I wound up in that asylum under the care of a bastard who liked to wear steel-toed boots to crack ribs and sap somebody three times a day for the fun of it." He smoothed his beard again. "I'm sorry, I can't go with you."

  "I wasn't actually asking," Lowell said.

  "No, I figured you weren't."

  I'd helped to put an innocent man inside the perverted corridors of Panecraft, and had been forced to watch him slowly dying in sorrow because I hadn't had enough faith in him to help out when I should have.

  Shit.

  Anna knew what was coming and said, "Oh, Lord."

  I spun and caught Lowell in the stomach with my left. It was like smashing my knuckles into a marble statue. He looked more startled than hurt, but dropped back a few steps with his mouth open and raising the gun. Nick had already vanished. Lowell let out a short bark of disgust, his bunched muscles shifted beneath his uniform, and I wondered if I should shut my eyes or take it like a man. I shut my eyes. He hit me only twice, but it hurt worse than when Sparky had kicked the crap out of me all over the place. I went to my knees trying to suck wind and retch at the same time. It was like that for a minute, and then my mind whirled pleasantly for a moment and I felt warm and comfortable. I screamed from the bottom of my nuts when he jerked my wounded right arm, snapped the cuffs on me and dragged me across the yard and threw me into t
he back of his parked police car without a word. I sat staring over at the dead chauffeur's head lolling against his steering wheel until the ambulance and other police arrived. Lowell took me to jail without a word.

  ~ * ~

  Five days later I sat in a hospital bed with my good arm cuffed to the railing, trying to think of something to do besides play with the tiny cups of mashed potatoes and gelatin. Sheriff Broghin came in and took a slow gander at me. He seemed highly pleased with himself that the wheel of our situations had turned again. The last time I'd seen him he'd been vomiting on Alice Conway's floor. Now I was under arrest for obstruction of justice.

  He said, "Lowell had a reason to put you in here, but he wouldn't give me all the details, and now he's changed his story some."

  "When did he do that?" I asked.

  Broghin smiled and his enormous gut shook with the force of the laughter he continued to swallow. He took deep breaths and let out little sniffles of giggles. "Two days ago. So I'm forced to let you go, you pain in the ass." He grinned as he uncuffed me, and leaned so far over the bed I had to pull back or be smothered. "I'll tell you this though, Jonny Kendrick. You pissed off about the only good friend you had, and he's truly a man to be reckoned with. I've got the feeling that the next time you tangle with him he's really going to put the serious hurt on you." He picked up the little cups and headed for the door. "Now you just lie there and reflect on that some."

  I did.

  ~ * ~

  The cops finally got the full story and released Li Tai late the following afternoon after an interpreter flew up from Manhattan and translated the woman's entire twelve-year-long imprisonment, as well as her preceding years as Theodore Harnes' mistress. Since she didn't understand English, and never spoke, Dr. Brennan Brent had allowed her to participate in all activities, despite her constant attempts at escape. The guards called her Rapunzel because of her long hair and flair for pleating together ropes in the recreation room which she had at various times used to attempt climbing from her window, strangling Brent, and hanging herself.

  Anna, Oscar Killion, and I sat at her kitchen table eating breakfast. Even before Broghin stole my hospital food I'd been starving. Oscar had his arm around me and occasionally tugged me to him during his sporadic but generous fits of emotion.

  "She's got a case that will net her millions," Oscar said. "The way these reporters are trolling around the Grove, we're going to be seeing her on talk shows for a long time to come. She'll be the queen of Hong Kong when she gets back!"

  "If she does indeed return," Anna said. I noticed the stiffness in her shoulder was nearly gone already as she speared more sausages and placed them on Oscar's plate. "Apparently Li Tai has always wanted to see America, and despite her awful travails she has never let Theodore Harnes steal that passion from her. Her first stop will be Disneyland."

  "I've never been there, either," I said. "What's going to happen to Harnes?"

  Oscar jabbed loudly at his food, and Anna's lips drew into a pale line. "He's gone, of course. Fled the country during the night. His lawyers were extremely effective, and there truly isn't much concrete evidence against him. Not until the bodies of his victims are exhumed."

  "I was hoping he'd wind up in Panecraft."

  She smiled. "Yes, poetic justice would be so fulfilling.”

  “And Jocelyn?" I asked. I knew the answer but didn't want to know it.

  "He took her with him."

  "Damn it."

  My grandmother put her arm around me even as Oscar did the same, and years spun from the three of us. I thought they might elope one day soon, on a gorgeous morning like this one.

  SEVENTEEN

  Katie and I watched Crummler dance with Anubis among the headstones.

  They were both wild and happy and clung to each other like long-lost friends. Every so often one of them would race past us or flail over an exposed root and take a head dive, and the other would pounce. "I am Crummler!" Crummler would announce giddily. "I am here!" His beard and wiry hair would be back in no time, the stubble already thickening. He snapped his fingers rapidly and jitterbugged along, trembling with his nerve endings burning again. "I have fought brave battles! I am home!"

  "Yes, you are."

  Anubis led him away in a game of tag and Katie asked, "They let him out like that, even in the condition he was in?"

  "The administration isn't going to cause any fuss, not with all the troubles they're in for now."

  "Did his brother say goodbye to him?"

  "I'm not certain, but I tend to think so."

  Not far away Keaton Wallace stood by the grave of Marie Harnes, overseeing the exhumation. He already appeared tired after finishing up the autopsy on the poisoned chauffeur.

  The wind brushed Katie's hair against her jade eyes and I stroked it back into place. "Lowell will forgive you.”

  “No, he won't."

  "In time."

  I shook my head. "Not until he captures Nick Crummler.”

  “In time he will."

  "Will you marry me?" I asked. She stared at me and slowly blinked. "Sorry, I didn't mean for that to sound so non sequitur."

  She smiled, but I could see a faint cast of bitterness edging her lips. She could read my heart, my love, and my fear. "We've got time for that, Jon. We can wait another few months, or longer, maybe even until after the baby is born. If we still want to go through with it."

  "Or we can get married now," I said.

  She pressed her chest to mine and said, "So you actually want to move back to Felicity Grove?"

  "Yes."

  "And buy a house? Take care of a yard with a gigantic, gnarled ancient tree and an old tire swing?"

  "Yes."

  "Did I ever tell you about Ronnie Helmstead, my first boyfriend?"

  "Talk about non sequitur," I said. "Yeah, the guy with acne."

  "Not acne, he broke out in nervous rashes. He liked this cheerleader, used to date her behind my back and tell me that he was working late at his father's VCR repair shop. He'd get hives, turn crimson, and start pouring sweat and scratching himself everywhere." I just looked at her. "Let me tell you, you're a worse liar than him, Jon."

  I'd have to practice my poker face a little more. "You're what's most important to me."

  "And you are to me," she said. "I know you feel pressured."

  "It's not that . . ."

  "I know you do. I love you, but I still think we need some more time to get used to how things are going along."

  I'd first met her when we were seven or eight, and she came out from San Diego to visit with her aunt, Margaret Gallagher, and she'd forced me to eat one of those Easy Bake Oven kiddy cakes. Despite only knowing her a couple of months in our adult lives, I understood I'd love her like this for the rest of our lives. I needed something, but it wasn't time. She needed that.

  I pulled her to me and cradled her, wondering if she'd start crying soon. No matter what the situation, my ex-wife used to whine dreadfully whenever I hugged or held her, which should have clued me in on how things would work out. I waited and watched Katie's shoulders quivering, and I touched her chin and turned her face to me to see her laughing.

  Our lives had become as entwined as anyone and everything in the Grove.

  "Have I mentioned that twins run in my family?" she said.

  "Oh boy."

  Anubis flung himself against my knees. Katie fell back and giggled harder. Crummler danced as if he could see our children dancing with him, and I took my love in my arms and we waltzed along with them.

 

 

 
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