Inheritance

by Joe McKinney

  “You only see that on human hearts. Other mammal species, no fat. But on every human heart, you see this little beard of fat.”

  He turned away from the human heart and looked at the heart on the cutting board at Bobby’s feet.

  After a long silence he said, “What is it?”

  “You mean, what kind of animal did it come from?”

  He nodded.

  “Can’t be sure just looking at it. Only that it came from a mammal, one about the size of a man.”

  “A goat?” he said.

  “Could be,” she said. “That’d be about the right size. Could also be a big dog or a—”

  “It’s a goat,” he said.

  ***

  Out came the white, knotted, sausage skin-looking snake that was the colon. The smell of shit was overpowering, and Anderson had to shake his head to void the smell from his nostrils as the ball of guts was dropped into the sink.

  The hits just keep coming, he thought.

  Xavier had a white, circular saw in his hands, similar in size and shape to what Anderson, who sometimes watched cooking shows on the Food Network with Margie, had heard celebrity chefs refer to as a stick blender. He turned it on and began to cut into the scalp over the top of the head, working from ear to ear across the ash symbols on the forehead. AC/DC was doing “Back in Black” on the radio, and Xavier seemed to be happy again, shuffling his feet and moving his shoulders to the beat while he worked.

  Then he put the saw down and started working the skin back from the skull, over the face, helping it along by slicing it from the bone with a scalpel.

  He turned to Mise as the song faded out and said, “Permission to cut?”

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  Xavier picked up the circular saw again and it started to whine and scream as metal dug into bone. White powdery bits of dust flew from the saw, and Anderson couldn’t believe that the man didn’t use a face shield. Somehow, it seemed even less sanitary than Mise walking around in her Birkenstocks.

  Xavier turned to Anderson while he was sawing away and, smiling, said, “Fuck, this guy’s sure got a hard head.”

  His smile was meant to be breezy but looked obscene to Anderson.

  And then, thankfully, the whine of the saw stopped. Anderson looked away. Mise was at the sink, using a huge knife to slice the liver into thick steaks.

  “He’s got rocks,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” Anderson said.

  “Rocks,” she said again. “Gall stones.”

  Anderson nodded. Ram had never been one to turn down a beer.

  A few minutes later, they bagged all the organs into a black trash bag and stuffed them back down into the body cavity. Xavier wheeled him over to the walk-in coolers on the side wall nearest the door.

  “Well, that’s that,” Mise said. “Just forty-five more to go.”

  Anderson groaned inwardly.

  “Relax,” she said. “I got six more doctors coming in at four. Things’ll speed up pretty fast from here.”

  He nodded, but he was thinking, Goddamn it, I hate my job. I really, really do.

  ***

  It was past midnight when Anderson finally walked back to his car. The night air was hot and close and dry, but at least it didn’t smell like the air inside the morgue. He reached in and turned the ignition over without getting in. Waves of heat were pouring out of the car, and he wanted to give the AC time to do its thing.

  While he waited, he took out his cell phone and dialed Deputy Chief Allen’s home number.

  Allen picked up on the second ring.

  “I didn’t wake you up, did I, sir?”

  “Hell no,” Allen said, and Anderson believed him. The man sounded sharp as ever. “What did you find out?”

  Anderson told him about the autopsy. He told him about the spiral fracture to Bobby Aaronson’s right arm, and about the strange, carbon-like soot that was all over the inside of his chest cavity, and lastly, he told him about the goat’s heart. Then he waited to hear what Allen had to say.

  “I can’t fucking believe that. A fucking goat’s heart. What is that, some kind of devil worshipping stuff?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Maybe.”

  “It’s fucking obscene is what it is.”

  Anderson climbed into his car, held his hand up in front of the AC vents to make sure it was blowing cold air, and closed the door.

  Allen said, “And what about this black shit you told me about? You said the kid from the train yard had it all over him, too?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But we don’t think he was ever at the Iron Works?”

  “No, sir. But the freight yard where he was killed is right next door to the Iron Works. You can see the smokestacks from the tracks.”

  “So what does that prove?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” And he really didn’t. Beyond the obvious, that whoever did the murders at the Iron Works also did the kid in the freight yard, he didn’t have a clue. He felt helpless.

  Anderson waited in silence, and after a moment, Allen said, “I approved your request this afternoon to get a hold of Officer Henninger’s personnel file. I also authorized you to see his psychological file as well.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah,” Allen said. There was another long silence, and Anderson could feel Allen building up to something. He said, “Keith.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Keith, listen, before I put these files in your hands, I need you tell me something.”

  “Okay,” Anderson said, but slowly, like he was mentally gripping the arms of his chair and bracing for bad news.

  “I need you to tell me what...what specifically set you off on this kid? What was it he said that made you link him in here?”

  Anderson had expected that question.

  “It wasn’t anything he said. Not really. I can’t explain it, sir. All I can tell you is what I already told you. When I looked into his eyes that night at the freight yard, I could just tell that he saw more than he was saying. That’s it, really.” Then he said, “Why? Did you already go through his files?”

  But Anderson already knew the answer. Allen, Anderson knew, had been a homicide detective back in the day. He wouldn’t have been able to resist.

  “Yeah, I did,” said Allen. “And the only thing I can tell you, Keith, is that you got good instincts.”

  Anderson shifted the phone to his other ear. “Tell me what you found, sir.”

  “You remember when we went through the application process? Remember how, during the background check, if they found out you’d smoked even so much as a joint you were out?”

  “Sure,” Anderson said. It was a sore subject these days with the old timers, the ones who felt the Department’s scramble to hire new officers was driving the standards way down. The way Anderson understood it, these days, a recruit could admit to doing cocaine and still had a chance to get in—just so long as it wasn’t in the past seven years.

  “Well, you’re not gonna believe what this kid’s got in his file.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a mess. Get this. He killed his dad during his senior year in high school.”

  “What? No. You’re kidding me.”

  “It’s the truth. The Comal County Sheriff’s Office did a full investigation and the thing was written up as a justifiable homicide, self-defense. He was cleared because apparently the dad was a real piece of work, but it’s right there in his folder. You’ll see it before you take off tomorrow.”

  Anderson was still thinking about Paul Henninger killing his dad, wondering how someone manages to become a policeman after doing something like that, even if it was in self-defense—

  I mean, Christ, don’t they at least still have to take a complete psychological exam?

  —and it took him a moment to catch up to what Allen had just told him.

  “Where are you sending me?” he said.

  “Comal County,” Allen said. “Short trip—but I n
eed you to visit with their investigators to follow up on the deal with Henninger’s dad. Even if it turns out to have nothing to do with this case, if the press hears about this and we can’t tell them we’ve followed up on it—shit, we’ll look like fools.”

  “I agree,” Anderson said. He could see that, but then, he would have done that anyway. There was no need for Allen to give him a direct order to do it.

  Allen spoke before he had a chance to say anything, and it was like he had been following Anderson’s interior monologue word for word.

  “I got another reason I want you to go up there,” Allen said.

  “Yes sir?”

  “You know those weird stick things we found all over that inner chamber at the Iron Works?”

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “I looked over some of the crime scene photos from where Henninger killed his dad. Those same stick things, they’re everywhere. They’re all over the barn and in the inside of the house and out in the yard. They’re everywhere.”

  “No,” Anderson said. “Are you sure they’re the same?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Allen said. “Exactly the same.”

  My God, Anderson thought. Oh my God.

  Chapter 10

  Paul was on Rachel’s mind all that morning. All afternoon, too. A day of shopping with a friend hadn’t shaken the image of him coming home and trudging up their back stairs, every inch of him covered in dust and sweat and smelling like he’d been touched by something corrupt. It scared her a little, seeing him like that. He was her man, her rock. He wasn’t supposed to fall apart. But he had. And what was worse, he had lied to her. Hadn’t he?

  She believed him when he said he hadn’t hurt that boy. So no, maybe he hadn’t technically lied to her. Maybe she shouldn’t call it that. But what then? Maybe he hadn’t told her a lie outright, but he certainly hadn’t told her the whole story. That was what upset her, the evasion. She had seen the doubt in his face, the trepidation, and she wondered what would make him hold back like that. Was it fear? Shame? Or something else that was just too big to put a label on?

  Rachel pulled into the carport next to Paul’s truck at a quarter of five that afternoon and went upstairs. She heard the shower running. She put her things down on the couch and walked over to their bed. Paul’s uniform was crumpled up in a black dusty ball in the corner. His boots looked tired, the tongues yawning down across the instep, a ring of cream-colored dirt around them.

  She knocked on the bathroom door and called his name through the crack.

  No answer.

  “Paul?”

  She pushed the door open. A steam mist hung in the air. He was leaning over the sink, completely nude, his hands on either side of the bowl. His skin was wet. His hair was wet, uncombed. He was looking into the mirror. She tried to meet his gaze there, and that was when she realized that he wasn’t looking at himself in the mirror. He was looking beyond the mirror. Into nothing.

  “Paul?”

  His eyes focused and met hers in the mirror. “Hey,” he said. “How was the day?”

  “Good.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “I bought a blouse.”

  He nodded.

  Rachel studied his face. He looked exhausted, even more so now than he had when he first came home.

  “How about you?” she asked. “Did you sleep?”

  “A little,” he said. “Not much, actually. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Thinking? Paul, you didn’t sleep at all while I was gone?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Oh, Paul.”

  “Rachel, I have something kind of big I need to tell you.”

  She swallowed. “Okay Paul,” she said. “What is it? Is it about last night?”

  “In a way, yeah. But it’s more than that. More than just what happened to that kid.” His breath hitched in his chest. He said, “I’m sorry, Rachel. This is in so many pieces. It’s hard to tell it.”

  “Just start at the beginning, Paul. I’ll listen.”

  “Rachel, I’ve been thinking a lot about my father.”

  “Your dad?”

  Rachel went inside the bathroom then and took him by the arm and led him out into the bedroom. She handed him a pair of his boxer shorts and said, “Here, put this on.”

  He looked down and seemed surprised at his own nakedness. He took the boxers from her, stared down at himself, and laughed at some private joke. Only then did he slide on his shorts.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “I was thinking about Mexico,” he said.

  “What?”

  He guided her to the bed. “Here, sit down, would you. This is gonna be hard for me. It may take me a while to get out.”

  “Paul, you’re scaring me. If you’re in trouble...”

  “I’m not in trouble. Not like you mean it anyway. But some things have been happening to me lately. Some things that involve my father. My mom, too. There’s so much I need to tell you about, but I don’t even...” He threw up his hands as if to say, It’s all too much.

  During their four years together he had said very little about his dad. Even less about his mom. Looking at him now, Rachel was struck by how serious he looked, how genuinely confused he was by the enormity of what was going on in his head. It made him look more vulnerable than she had ever seen him look before. She almost reached out then and touched his face, but a part of her held back. He wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t take her hand away, but it might amount to putting a stopper on whatever he was about to say. Instead, she said, “What do you mean, some things have been happening? Paul, are you okay?”

  He looked at her. She met his eyes and hardly recognized the man she saw there. Her Paul was quiet, calm. She had seen him confused before. She thought back to him as a cadet at the police academy, leaning over a book at their apartment’s kitchen table, trying to pull the sense out of a sticky passage or memorize a statute, and realized that wasn’t the same thing as whatever this was at all. He was adrift now in a way she had never seen before. He was shaken.

  “What is it, Paul?”

  “Rachel, I saw my father last night. In that boxcar.”

  He blurted the words out, and for a moment she didn’t know how to respond.

  “Paul, your father’s dead.”

  “I can’t tell it to you all at once. There’s too much.”

  “Paul, I don’t know what to say to that.”

  She said the words and just as quickly wished that she could take them back. But as it turned out it didn’t matter. He had gone this far. He intended to tell it, and once he went that far, his words took on a momentum that wasn’t going to stop.

  ***

  Paul sat there with Rachel on the side of their bed, wondering how he was going to say everything that needed to be said. And then he saw the box that he had gone through earlier that day, the photograph that had opened up so much to him still leaning against one flap of the box lid, and all at once it was clear to him. He knew he had to begin with that Sunday morning back in early September so many years ago.

  He had seen his mother curled up on the sofa in the darkened corner of their living room. He saw the shabby kitchen piled high with dishes, the carcass of last night’s chicken still on the table. He saw his father sitting on a chair in the lawn outside the screen door. He had a cylinder head from their tractor in his hands and he was turning it over and over, studying what was wrong with it.

  Paul was standing next to the screen door, listening to the shrill drone of the cicadas in the tall grass, waiting for the sound of Steve’s dad’s pickup to come up the road and take him away.

  Paul was dressed in his football gear, white pants with red and black striping, a red jersey paid for by Bob White’s Marina. He held his helmet by the face mask in one hand, his shoulder pads on the floor at his feet. He was impatient, full of a twelve-year-old boy’s urge to just go, get gone from this place and get onto the football field.

  The phone rang.

  It ca
ught him by surprise, because the phone almost never rang. A flutter of panic went through him. It’s Steve, he thought, his good mood crashing. They’re not coming.

  He heard his mom say, “Baby, if it’s for me, tell ’em I ain’t feelin’ up to talkin’ on the phone.”

  The phone rang a third time.

  It wasn’t for her, Paul knew that. No one ever called for her, not anymore. Not in a very long time.

  Another ring.

  From outside, his father shouted, “Answer the goddamn phone,” and Paul did.

  “Hello?” he said.

  There was a click and a static-filled silence. And then, a woman’s voice, speaking in rapid Spanish. Paul said, “Ma’am, I didn’t catch a word of that. You’re gonna have to talk to me in English.” More Spanish, but this time he caught his father’s name somewhere in the jumble. He said, “You wanna speak to my dad?”

  “Si. Tu Padre. Martin Henninger.”

  Paul so rarely heard his father addressed by his first name that at first he could only stand there and look dumb. The woman sounded young, but he wasn’t a very good judge of those kinds of things. Not yet anyway. He only knew that he had heard a note of sadness in her voice.

  “Who is it?” his father said from the doorway.

  “I don’t know,” Paul said. “She’s talking Mexican. I can’t understand a word she says. She asked for you though.”

  “Me?” his dad said. He looked at the phone in Paul’s hand. “Here, give me that,” he said.

  “Hello?” he said, and then stood there listening. Paul watched his father’s face. He saw the look of annoyance dissolve and reform itself into first recognition, then shock, then something that must have been sorrow, for his father hung his head and listened silently for nearly a minute, barely breathing at all.

  When he spoke again, it was in Spanish. The words poured out of him, and Paul stood there, gawking at his father. He had no idea. The man had never even hinted that he could speak Spanish.

  He heard his father say, “Que dijo ella?” Then he fell back against the wall and leaned his head all the way back and let out a long sigh. “Si, te oi,” he said. “Yo tengo que guardar un cargo.”