The Fever Kill

by Tom Piccirilli

  Chapter Three

  He went to visit his father's grave.

  The 'Stang wanted to cut loose beneath him, and he found it difficult to keep it under control. Driving through Manhattan was hellish with a light on every corner. Back here, you had hundreds of miles of back road without even a stop sign. The 'Stang was tuned fine, he'd burn past any of the local cruisers. It might be fun, running Edwards and the others around the county for a few hours, just for the hell of it. Do some of the idiot things he hadn't been able to do as a kid.

  He took it slow across town and passed by the police station, keeping an eye out. He didn't see anyone he recognized, and at the next light he pulled a hard left and tromped the gas pedal.

  The area grew lush with wild maple and the seething, fiery colors of the dying leaves. The tourist traffic would be heavy for another couple of weeks. Families on road trips through New England, kids hunting through the pumpkin patches. The last of the maple syrup for the season would be going out in buckets before it got too cold.

  The high arching gate-work narrowed his attention as Crease slowed, turned off the road, and drove past the spear-point fencing and brick pillars into the cemetery.

  He parked and threaded his way to his father's grave, each step somehow calming him instead of bringing the fever forward. He felt like he was doing something wrong, that he might not care enough to actually accomplish what he'd set out to do. His resolve seemed to be waning. Strange that should happen here, where he'd buried his own father and been run out of town.

  The old man's grave had sunken in about a foot. Crease hadn't packed enough of the frozen earth back into the hole that night. The yellow grass on it grew in scruffy patches. There was no tombstone, but Dirtwater, or someone, had put a few large rounded rocks where the headstone should be. The spring rains had dragged mud up against them to form a kind of knobby crest.

  Dirtwater was busy fifty yards off trimming some brush, his back to Crease. A boy of about eight years old held onto a rake with a wooden handle taller than he was, smoothly drawing leaves and sticks into a pile.

  Crease leaned up against a tree, lit a cigarette, and wondered what it was that had driven him all this way, nonstop, from New York. Some kind of mild need for revenge that, at the moment, he didn't quite feel anymore. His father's apathy was still affecting him through all the years, even from his own death. Crease had fallen into the same rut he'd been in when carrying the man on his back through the streets, when nothing could anger or harm him.

  "Hey!"

  Crease turned and saw the boy was rushing toward him. He had a nice fluid way of moving, trained not to step on the graves. He nimbly maneuvered through the aisles and skimmed past the clutches of angels and virgin mothers with outstretched arms.

  "Who are you?" the kid asked. "If you don't mind me asking."

  "I don't. I'm Crease. How about yourself?"

  "I'm Hale. You're not supposed to smoke here."

  "Why?" Crease said, genuinely curious.

  "We had a dry summer and the fall's no better. There's been some bad brush fires. There's a ban on smoking in wooded areas."

  Crease wouldn't exactly call the graveyard a wooded area, but he decided not to argue with the boy. He put his cigarette out on the heel of his shoe and, not wanting to throw the butt on the ground, replaced it in his pack.

  "Are you Dirtwater's son?"

  "Yep."

  "You look just like him."

  The boy smiled. "He tells me I look like Mom. He says that's a good thing, since he's ugly. But I know he's not. He's not really handsome, even Mom knows that, but he's not ugly, not too ugly anyway, so I'll take what you said to me as a compliment."

  The kid liked to talk and showed a real maturity, just like Stevie. "Good, because that's how I meant it, Hale."

  "So thank you."

  "You're welcome."

  Dirtwater didn't know how to do sign language, but through expression and gestures, he could hold a pretty damn good conversation. It was a nice balance that he should have a boy who enjoyed talking so much, and was so good at it.

  "I'd like to talk to him," Crease said.

  "Do you know my Dad?"

  "I did a long time ago."

  He was worried that Dirtwater wouldn't remember him. Crease couldn't even show him any identification, since all of it was in his cover name. All he could do was flash his father's badge at him, which wouldn't mean anything. Maybe point at the old man's grave.

  But when he looked over again Dirtwater was already staring at him. Those dark expressive eyes showing recognition. Dirtwater smiled and opened his arms, waving both hands. Despite himself, Crease let out a laugh.

  They shook hands and Crease was surprised at Dirtwater's strength. He'd run up against guys a lot tougher but none of them contained the same kind of immense inner power that Dirtwater exuded. Crease imagined it must have been very hard for him to have taken that punch from Edwards ten years ago and not broken the deputy's neck.

  Crease didn't know what to say or how to say it. Dirtwater could read lips perfectly, but Crease couldn't find any words. All this way and now here he was face to face with another person from his past, but anything he might ask or tell him seemed moot. There was too much significance in the moment and also not enough.

  He cocked his head and Dirtwater grinned and nodded, patted him on the shoulder and gave him a brief hug. Dirtwater gestured, his hands fluttering, his eyes and features shifting expression. Crease looked back over his shoulder at his father's sunken plot.

  Hale told him, "He says he knew you'd show up again one day. He's been waiting for you."

  "He knew more than me then."

  Dirtwater's lips were moving, but since he'd never heard speech and couldn't actually talk, Crease didn't grasp how these could be actual sentences. But Hale watched him carefully and obviously understood. "He says he can see your sadness. You waited too long."

  "I originally planned on six months. Time got away from me."

  "He says you're not who you're supposed to be."

  That straightened Crease's back. Hard enough hearing such things inside your own head without some deaf mute saying them to you, by way of his chatty son. Crease wanted another cigarette. "That's probably true of any of us."

  "More so for you, he says."

  Crease stared into Dirtwater's eyes. You could witness a lot in Dirtwater's face. His silence allowed for a great deal of sudden contemplation, and the hush of the cemetery only added to it. He tried to read the man's face but only saw something of himself there, a cloudy reflection. Maybe Dirtwater was doing it on purpose or maybe it was just his natural skill at communicating without a voice.

  Crease let out a little grin, the one that Tucco's people knew to beware of, and Dirtwater's face closed up like a fist.

  Hale said, "He's not saying anything."

  "Good. I want to see where Mary Burke is buried."

  Dirtwater and the boy wafted between headstones like ghosts. Crease followed, tripping over roots and chuckholes, catching his jacket on fat little angels' wings.

  Hale was in the lead and Crease wondered why the kid should know where Mary's grave should be. Crease got that feeling again that his past was rushing forward to encompass and color and affect the present. That every move he made was the completion of some small action started ten years ago.

  "Here," Hale said.

  The stone was plain. It simply said: Mary Burke, Beloved Daughter, Taken From Us Too Soon.

  "She mean something to you?" the kid asked.

  "I don't know."

  "How could you not know if a dead girl means something to you?"

  Dirtwater drew the boy back by his arm and pressed a finger over the kid's lips. The three of them stood there like that for a while, Crease enjoying the breeze blowing against the back of his neck.

  He knew he would never know who kidnapped her. He'd never be sure of where the money went or even if his father had truly shot the girl. Some mysteries yo
u're not meant to answer. Some of them are supposed to continue on and on, tainting your life.

  There would never be an end to this for him, and it didn't really matter, he was just killing time. But he decided he would visit with her family, ask questions, nose around a decade and a half too late.

  It wasn't to make amends for the old man. He could never do that and wouldn't bother trying. But he'd come back here for some reason and he figured this might be a part of it, and anyway, he had a day or two until Tucco showed up.

  Hale brushed against Crease's arm. "He wants to know if your father picked her up.. . no, took her ... like everybody thought."

  Crease looked over at Dirtwater. "No, but he planned to grab the money, only somebody beat him to it. Edwards was there, in the woods, but my father didn't think he got his hands on it either. It vanished from the mill that night. Either the real kidnappers got it or somebody else did."

  Dirtwater furrowed his brow, moved his hands and fingers, made sharp gestures in the air. "He says you should forgive your dad."

  "I have, a long time ago."

  "If you want, I can put some flowers on her grave. On his too, if you want."

  "That would be nice, Hale." Crease got out his wallet and held out a twenty, but the boy didn't take it.

  "Don't cost anything to pick flowers."

  Crease stood there for a while longer, and then he turned and watched the kid staring at his father with such obvious love and he thought of himself at that age staring up at his own father. Then he thought of Stevie and how much his son already despised him, and he knew the hate would only gain greater purchase and continue to build within him through the years. Even if Joan found another man—a good man this time—and got remarried, the guy would never be able to reach beyond Stevie's rage. Crease would have to do something to save his son, but he didn't know what it might be.

  ~ * ~

  Crease was driving slowly through town again, riding past the station with his foot itching to floor the pedal, when a cruiser wheeled out of a parking slot in front, screeched in reverse over the double yellow line, and gunned up beside the 'Stang.

  "You," the cop said through his open driver's window. "You've been roaming around town all day today, haven't you." It wasn't really a question.

  "Yes sir, I have," Crease said. He let it roll easily off his tongue, the way he did when he was in uniform.

  "Alone. Most folks who come through here are with their families. Who are you?"

  Crease gave him the other name. Until he said it he wasn't even sure that he remembered it, although he'd been using it for more than two years. The cop would already have his tags and the name would match up to them.

  "Who are you?" Crease asked.

  "I'm Sheriff Edwards."

  Crease kept his face blank but it startled the hell out of him. He couldn't believe it. Edwards appeared to have aged twenty years over the last ten. The broken nose had never been set right, and it had been broken a couple more times since Crease had tagged him. He'd gone to seed, had gone so soft that Crease couldn't do much besides study him, noting all the disagreeable details. The wet, alcoholic puffiness in his face distended his features like a balloon stretched too thin. He looked more than a little like Crease's father at the end.

  God damn.

  "So let me ask you, son," Edwards said. "What, are you doing in my county?"

  "Visiting a friend."

  "And just who might that be?"

  You had to give it to him, the man could smell intent, his senses as sharp as an animal's. "Rebecca Fortlow."

  "I know most of Reb's friends. She doesn't have many of them."

  "Regardless, I am one."

  "Then you're definitely up to no good. That girl is nothing but a mess of trouble."

  Crease kept silent.

  "Why don't you get on out of here now, son? Reb's had enough problems without all you boys chasing her farther off the narrow path."

  Crease kept silent.

  "You hear me, son?"

  "Yes, sir," Crease said.

  Edwards sat back in his seat and sucked his teeth, eyeing Crease closely. This was the moment when it could go either way. Edwards seemed about to make a move and then decided against it. He was going to play it smart and wait and see just what kind of trouble Crease brought to town.

  "Now you drive careful in this county."

  "I will, sir."

  "Oh, I know you will."

  Crease drove slowly away and watched Edwards in the rearview wheeling across the double yellow again and backing into his spot. Crease wondered what the man would've done if he'd told him his true name.

  Chapter Four

  When he got back to Reb's house he saw that she'd spruced the place up. She'd spent some time on herself, used better-applied makeup to cover the worst of the bruises. The swelling was almost completely gone. He knew she was already trying to tempt and bait him for whatever she might be able to get, and he liked the fact that their relationship had such clearly marked parameters. You were safe so long as you knew where you stood.

  She moved to him with an easy grace today, sweeping along like she was dancing. It was the way she used to move, how he remembered her coming into his arms when they were teenagers and spent most of their time talking in whispers against each other's necks.

  "What did you do today?" she asked.

  She didn't say it the way Joan used to say it, like he might actually be able to tell his wife what he'd done on the job. She'd be standing there in the kitchen stirring batter in a bowl, expecting him to discuss a strangled baby in a bassinet or some crack whore who'd been selling her children out of the back room. Joan just smiling so beautifully and vapidly at him, the bleached white apron trailing across the bottom of her sun dress. The batter whipping around and around and around. It would make Crease so nauseous he'd have to back away into the bathroom.

  Reb asked with a real understanding, aware that he was on the hunt, that he had to chase something down. He told her about the cemetery, Dirtwater and the boy, running into the sheriff.

  "Why didn't you kill him?" she asked. "That's what you wanted, right?"

  He looked at her. "You're having fun, trying to get into my head, aren't you? I can tell you're enjoying yourself."

  "You're a break from the usual, I'll say that much."

  "I never said I wanted to kill him."

  "You never said you didn't either. If you don't want him dead, what's the point of coming back?"

  "I don't know."

  "You are a very confused soul."

  His course seemed very clear, he just didn't know to what purpose, what he might get out of it in the end. "I want to know who kidnapped Mary Burke and what happened to the money."

  "And if your father really shot her."

  "He said he did. I believe him."

  "My god, killing a child."

  "Yeah."

  The man was already on the downturn, but that night finished him. Maybe because of shooting Mary Burke, maybe just because he'd missed his chance at the fifteen grand score. Crease had tried to give the memory of his father the benefit of the doubt, but the more he thought about it, the longer he was a cop, the less he figured icing the kid had anything to do with it. His father had wanted that fucking money.

  He sat on the couch and Reb drew up alongside him, slinky and soft enough to get his head turning to other thoughts. Like he didn't have enough on his mind, all he needed was another woman, maybe another kid.

  "Did you rob him?" she asked.

  "Now who we talking about?"

  "The dealer you were pals with. Did you steal any of his cash or his drugs?"

  "No," Crease said.

  That stopped her. She drew her chin back, giving him a quick once-over like she had to reassess. Then she grinned. "I don't believe you. I bet he's after you right now because you stole a briefcase that belonged to him. Stuffed with cash. How much? A hundred grand? Two hundred?"

  "He used to offer me that
much to go kill competitors, guys using the harbor a little too freely, but I always turned him down."

  It was the truth, but not all of it. Crease used to walk side by side with Tucco and Cruez into apartments where they knew the competition had closets full of uncut coke, maybe a thousand vials of crack. In the bathroom a do-it-yourself meth lab. He never took money for it, but he did it anyway. One day he helped Tucco take down a five-man Colombian crew that was edging into his turf. They got the name of a major connection. Crease wouldn't take any cash for it, but he did spend the night with three of Tucco's ladies, thinking of Morena the whole time. It was a bad night. Three days later, the commissioner decorated him in a private ceremony, shook his hand, patted his back, gazed on him fondly. Cameramen took photos that could never be printed. Crease thought that if his father was only half as confused as he was himself, it was no wonder the old man had gone over the big edge.

  "Then why do you think he'll be coming after you? If you didn't take anything from him?"

  "You wouldn't understand."

  "Explain it to me."

  Crease wouldn't be able to, but he gave it a shot. "It's part of the whole situation. He can't let me walk out."

  "Why not?"

  "It's not in his nature."

  "Sounds like you boys don't play a much different game than folks around here. Than guys like Jimmy. Nobody likes to lose. It's hard enough looking in the mirror."

  It was true. The game was faster and nastier but essentially the same.

  "You want to go to bed?" she asked. She started to unbutton his shirt, working her fingers in his chest hair, the way she used to do, and then over his flat, muscular belly. His stomach rumbled and she drew her hands back as if she'd been stung.

  He said, "How about a steak?"

  ~ * ~

  She had nothing in the fridge so Crease went into town again, to buy some food. The supermarket had a couple of nice sirloins.