Dead Body Language

by Penny Warner

  I almost felt sorry for him, he looked so vulnerable. But the scalpel in his raised hand reminded me constantly that this was no victim I was dealing with, and it scared the shit out of me. I hadn’t made much progress with the door. Mickey stood only a few inches away. I noticed, with more than a little trepidation, that he was referring to me in the past tense. He definitely had something on his mind.

  I knew there was no reasoning with him. He had already killed two people—maybe more. It was all part of his plan: Mickey Arnold wanted to be Super Cop.

  Mickey moved in slowly, his face twisted into a look of barely controlled benevolence, as if I were a runaway rabbit he was cautiously trying to recapture, then have for dinner. With the door opened slightly, I turned to run, but he grabbed my wrist and yanked me back abruptly.

  “Easy, Connor. You’re with me now. We’ll go to Celeste’s office together. I want to show you something.” His grip tightened with every word. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him caress the back edge of the scalpel with his thumb. There was a hint of mint.

  I screamed, hoping someone might hear me.

  Mickey just smiled. He must have known there was nobody at the mortuary but the two of us—among a couple of embalmed bodies. Holding the back of my hair, he pushed open the door and forced me down the hall to Celeste’s office. There’s something about a death grip on your hair that keeps you from doing much struggling.

  Once inside the office, he closed the door and pressed me to the floor, next to Celeste’s desk. The small lamp on the desk cast the room in a ghostly glow.

  I sat up carefully as Mickey dropped into a chair opposite me. I looked at him while scanning the room with my peripheral vision. The lamp cord was only a few inches from my hand.

  “You know that Smith guy, Connor?”

  I inched my hand toward the cord, distracting him with my other hand by brushing my hair out of my face.

  “He wasn’t your type,” he said with a chilling smile that set my skin tingling.

  A few more inches. I desperately fluffed my hair.

  “I found out some things about him and I had to—”

  With a swift swing of my arm, I yanked the plug from the socket. The room went dark. I reached for the lamp, made contact, and threw it across the room to where I hoped Mickey would still be sitting.

  I didn’t know if I’d struck him or not. The room was pitch black and neither of us could see a thing. But he still had the advantage; he could hear.

  I scooted under the desk, feeling my way, trying to figure out how to get out of the room without traveling by casket. I had to distract him if I wanted to get to the door, I thought, then bumped my head on the underside of the desk. Shit! I felt my hearing aid dangle out of my ear and fall.

  My hearing aid! I searched the area around me, running my hand across the floor, and found it under my left thigh. I felt for the tiny volume control dial and turned it up full blast. Counting on the ear-piercing squeal that so irritated my hearing friends, I set it down on the floor and backed out quickly from beneath the desk. I hoped the screech would lead him to believe I was still there. If he didn’t buy it, I was in more trouble than I counted on.

  I scooted away in the darkness, not knowing where Mickey was or what condition he was in. Crawling around the edge of the room, I felt my way, terrified I’d bump into him.

  If the lamp hadn’t hit him, the hearing aid would probably only distract him for a few moments. Once he found I wasn’t where he thought I was, he’d waste no time going for the door. And once opened, it would fill the room with light. If I didn’t make it to the door by then, I wouldn’t have a chance.

  I kept inching along the wall, hoping I was quiet. It was an eternity before I reached the door frame. Moving in slow motion, I felt for the knob. A few more seconds and I’d be out of there. I turned the knob slowly—

  Something stung my right ear. I touched it—it felt wet and sticky—and numb. Mickey had thrown something at me and narrowly missed. I didn’t want to think what it might have been. I felt a drop of sweat run down my back. How did he know where I was?

  My right foot was abruptly pulled from beneath me. I grabbed for the doorknob to keep from being swallowed up by Mickey’s strength but I lost my balance and fell. Bracing my back against the door, I tried to kick him with my other foot, flailing blindly in the dark. Good old five-pound Doc Martens. The shoes carry quite a punch when they make contact. I managed to get off one good kick before I grabbed once again.

  As Mickey tried to wrestle me to the floor, I reached out for the doorknob again and gave it a twist. The door opened slightly; light from the hallway filtered into the room.

  Mickey had my foot in one hand and seemed to be scrambling on the floor with his other hand, likely searching for what he had thrown. I kicked and screamed, heaving the full impact of my Doc Martens into his contorted face. Suddenly he let go. In stunned pain, he covered his face, then wiped the increasing flow of blood from his nose.

  He pulled his hands down and I could read his lips easily; they were outlined in red. “You ungrateful bitch!”

  I scrambled for the door but he lunged, grabbed my arm and slammed me against the metal cabinet, knocking the wind out. I couldn’t breathe for several seconds—enough time for Mickey to reach into his pocket for something: his keys. Quickly he fumbled for the one he wanted. As blood dripped down his face and onto his hand, he opened the metal closet.

  Out tumbled Celeste, unconscious.

  “And now for the big finale. Let’s see, Connor. How about this for a mystery puzzle? Celeste stabs you with the scalpel. And then she slits her wrists. I discover the bodies, realize who the murderer is … then I call the sheriff and wait for the TV cameras to arrive. Guess we’ll have to forget about the local coverage. You won’t be in any position to write a good story. But that’s all right. I expect to make the Sacramento Bee this time.”

  Mickey raised Celeste’s arm, about to drag the scalpel over her wrist, when I kicked the office door shut, dousing the lights once again. I felt for Celeste’s guest chair where I’d seen it last, picked it up, and flung it in the general direction of where Mickey had stood. I had no idea if I’d made contact.

  I scooted away from the door so Mickey wouldn’t know my location, and groped for the phone on the desk. Fully aware I had very little time I removed the receiver. By feel, I punched what I hoped were the numbers 911, hoping the buttons made no sound, then left it off the hook. No need to say anything. If I had dialed correctly, they would hear the disturbance through the receiver and read the automatic location on the screen.

  Except, I remembered, the dispatcher was at the café having dinner. Would the sheriff be there to take the call?

  I couldn’t wait around. Mickey would be finished with his plan long before the sheriff arrived. And ready to take the credit.

  Scrambling on my hands and knees, I reached the door, which was now blocked. Celeste’s body. I gave her a shove and rolled her over, then grabbed for the doorknob and opened the door as far as I could. It would only budge a couple of inches.

  I looked behind me. Mickey’s bloody, distorted face glowed in the eerie light. I gave Celeste another shove with my foot and squeezed through the door as Mickey leapt up in an adrenaline rage. I snatched the door handle and pulled the door shut behind me. It closed hard on Mickey’s hand.

  The scalpel he’d retrieved from the wall dropped to the floor at my feet. Quickly I scooped it up. As he reached out to grab me, I plunged the scalpel forward, ramming it through Mickey’s already bloody hand.

  I didn’t wait to see his reaction. I took off down the hall, through the front door of the mortuary, down the driveway, to the dark street, and smack into what felt like a brick wall. Reeling back from the impact, I bent over to catch my breath, then straightened.

  “Dan!”

  I may be deaf but I ain’t dumb.

  I hate those women in movies who suspect there’s something down in the dark basement an
d go investigate when they know there’s a serial killer loose in the neighborhood.

  I refuse to be that stupid.

  I don’t go places where I think murderers might be lurking—at least not without telling someone first. And I try to make sure backup is right behind me.

  Only this time, there must have been a slip-up.

  “Where the hell have you been?!” I flung the words out between gasps. “I was about to end up on display at the next funeral party!” Puff, puff. “I thought you were right behind me!” Wheeze.

  “I lost you!” Dan said, throwing his arms in the air. “When you and Mickey—”

  In the corner of my eye I caught Sheriff Mercer’s car approaching up the road. I turned to flag him down, losing the rest of Dan’s explanation. Breathlessly I explained to the sheriff what happened and told him to send for an ambulance for Celeste—and Mickey. I watched him pull out the car radio as he sped up the driveway. Dan and I followed him on foot.

  “So, where in God’s name were you?” I said, remembering my irritation as we approached the sheriff’s car. “I was all alone up there! He was going to kill me and make it look like Celeste did it, then do her in a fake suicide. You were supposed to be right there!”

  Dan looked helpless and a little frantic. “I don’t know! You two must have left the café right after I placed that call to the deputy. I waited outside for a while but you never came out. When I finally looked inside, you were gone, and nobody could tell me where you went. So I went looking for you—not an easy task.”

  When I had stopped by earlier in the evening, just before going to the café with Mickey, I had told Dan about my plan; for several reasons, I was fairly certain the deputy was the one who killed Lacy, as well as the guy at the bed-and-breakfast inn. Dan had helped me make a copy of Lacy’s voice taken from her telephone answering machine. Miah had spliced it together with his recording equipment—he’s got all the latest stuff that young guys have to have these days just to get by: CD player, boom box, double cassette recorders, digital sound, speakers the size of small apartment buildings. We had him doctor the tape to say: “This is Lacy Penzance. I’d like to talk with you. It’s important.”

  Apparently the quality wasn’t bad. When Dan called the café and played the tape over the phone for Mickey, the result was just what I’d hoped for: panic. Of course, Mickey’s no dummy, either. I don’t imagine he thought for one moment that Lacy had risen from the grave. But he knew that someone was onto him. He just didn’t know who.

  “You didn’t hear me screaming?”

  “Not until you got to the street. I’d already been to the sheriff’s office, your office, Mickey’s place, and back to the café. I didn’t know where to go next.”

  Outside the mortuary we found the sheriff’s abandoned car, lights flashing, door open, exhaust spewing from the tailpipe. Dan stopped a few feet from the mortuary door and turned to face me.

  “Are you all right?” Dan took my still shaking hands into his own. “Your hands are trembling,” he said, caressing them lightly. If he didn’t stop, my hands might never stop shaking.

  Still wired from the excitement, I pulled my hands from his and searched the visible parts of my body for new bruises, peering through torn and disheveled clothing. I counted four major injuries: One on each shin where I’d bumped into Celeste’s desk on my way out the door. One on my arm where Mickey had held me a little too tightly. And I felt one on my temple where he’d slammed me to the floor. I also had a skin burn, some fingernail scratches on my ankle, a bloody ear, and a lump on the top of my head where I’d hit the desk. I was actually kind of proud of all my injuries. They beat that wimpy old poison oak.

  “I’m fine, really. Just a little shaky. A few nicks here and there. I guess things didn’t go exactly as I planned.”

  “No kidding,” Dan agreed, taking my hands again and massaging them gently.

  “God, when you called Mickey at the café and played that tape of Lacy’s voice, he completely freaked.”

  Dan grinned. “So the phone call worked?”

  “I guess hearing her voice disoriented him enough to make him scramble for the journal he’d hidden at home. He had it with him when he arrived here at the mortuary.”

  “Did you see anything at his house?” Dan asked.

  “Only what I could see from the window: a bunch of police fanatic stuff. But he had this massive brass ring, loaded with all kinds of keys.” My forehead ached. The rest of my bruises began to throb in support.

  An ambulance drove up and parked next to the sheriff’s car. The two paramedics I’d seen hoisting Sluice out of the open grave ran past us with medical bags and a stretcher.

  “There’s a woman in there. I don’t know if she’s—”

  “We better keep out of the way,” Dan said, pulling me aside as I started to follow them in. He was right.

  “God, Celeste—”

  “You said you thought Mickey probably got Lacy’s keys when her purse fell open, that day they crashed into each other at the Nugget. Do you think he planned that little encounter?” Dan asked, distracting me from my frustration at not being able to do anything more.

  “It’s possible. It’s also possible he already had copies of her keys. Making copies of everyone’s keys was part of his master plan to clean up the neighborhood.”

  “What about your keys? How did he get hold of them? He was the one creeping around your house, wasn’t he?”

  “He could have taken them from my purse any time he visited my office. Maybe when I was next door with you, even. He probably had them copied at the hardware store and returned them before I knew they were missing.”

  Mickey came stumbling out of the mortuary doors, shackled in handcuffs, his wounded bloody hand bandaged by the paramedics. The sheriff was right behind him, rubbing his head in disbelief as his deputy resolutely entered the patrol car, this time as a backseat passenger. I went over to the car window and bent down to talk to him.

  “Why, Mickey?” I asked. “All this, just to be Super Cop?”

  He gave a small laugh, as if I would never understand him. He was right.

  The sheriff got into the driver’s side and closed the door. He leaned over toward the front passenger window to make sure I could read his lips.

  “Don’t touch anything, Connor! Don’t even go in there! I’m going to run him to lockup, then I’ll be back to check the place out. The EMT’s are taking care of Celeste, so stay out of their way, Connor. Goddammit, I mean it! You hear me?”

  Nope, I thought, and waved him off as he drove out of sight. Then I turned toward the mortuary and practically ran inside. The emergency medical technicians in the hallway were wheeling Celeste out on a stretcher. She was hooked up to oxygen, an IV, and a monitor.

  “Is she—”

  The paramedic cut me off. “Please clear the way. She’ll be at Pioneer Hospital over in Whiskey Slide.”

  “Nice place,” Dan said, following me into Mickey’s front room. “If you’re a cop fanatic.”

  After a thorough but unobtrusive search of the mortuary, Dan and I had decided to check out Mickey’s place, to see if we could find a link to Boone. We stopped by the hotel building and picked up the Bronco.

  Ironic, I thought. In his hurry, Mickey hadn’t bothered to lock up his own home. We had come by for a quick look around but I still had to promise Dan, ever the ex-cop, that I wouldn’t touch anything. Ha.

  We found the bedroom in chaos. Clothes were strewn about, a chair had been upturned, and most of the contents of Mickey’s closet had been tossed out on the floor.

  Peeking inside the closet, I found a key-making machine and a sheet of plywood covered with small hooks. Dozens of keys hung from the board, each labeled with a name. Celeste. French. Jilda. Beau’s keys were there. Lacy’s, of course. And mine.

  I bent down to check out the cache in Mickey’s closet. Lying on the floor was the pink journal I had given him at the office. The lavender one, the volume that had been
missing from Lacy’s collection in her bedroom, was now in Dan’s car. I had picked it up at the mortuary after the EMT’s rushed out. A page had been torn out from the blank ones at the end. I felt sure it was the sheet Mickey had used for the fake suicide note.

  Why had Mickey tried to make Lacy’s death look like a suicide? He must have known her body would be examined and the trocar wound discovered.

  “Look at this.” Dan came up beside me. He had been searching Mickey’s drawers. In his palm he held a tiny gold earring. The one missing from Lacy Penzance at the crime scene?

  “I thought you said not to touch anything.”

  He ignored me. “Check out this scrapbook,” he said, holding up a leather-bound album. “Guess who’s the star?”

  I took it from him and lifted the cover. Taped to the front page was the first edition of the Eureka! My name had been highlighted in yellow felt-tip pen.

  I turned the page and found a letter from my ex-boyfriend. I opened the envelope and read the contents, a bunch of ramblings about how sorry he was and would I please call. It had once been tucked away in my top drawer—right next to my underwear.

  The next page held a Polaroid picture of me sitting at the Miwok Reservoir eating lunch. The next, one of me riding my bike down Main Street. And another taken from behind as I walked toward my office building. I frowned at that one.

  “I should never wear stripes,” I said.

  “I think you look great,” Dan replied.

  The next page featured the cover of one of my comic books, a Heckle and Jeckle that had been missing for a couple of months. Then came a ticket stub from the night Mickey took me to the pasta festival in Rough & Ready, a photocopy of my driver’s license, a computer printout of my driving record—two parking tickets and an unfair violation for driving fifty in a thirty-five zone.

  Bits of my first six months in Flat Skunk were spread out before me via the scrapbook; every third or fourth page featured one of my mystery puzzles from the Eureka! The last filled page contained the missing napkin with the unfinished puzzle.