Grave Situation

by Alex MacLean

  “Police,” he yelled. “Open up.”

  He waited. No response.

  He knocked again and pressed his ear to the door. He could hear no movement inside the apartment.

  “Okay, open it,” he told the landlord.

  The man produced a key and unlocked the door.

  “Thanks for your help,” Allan said. “We’ll handle it from here.”

  When the landlord left, the three men put on their masks. Jim hit the light switch on the inside wall and then he and Harvey entered first. Allan stayed in the doorway a moment, looking around. The apartment was an epitome of bachelor living—empty beer bottles and an open jar of peanut butter on the kitchen table; dishes piled in the sink with food crusted on them; clothes tossed over the backs of chairs.

  The layout was simple—a kitchen with a living room to one side, and next to that, a door that must be the bedroom.

  Jim began taking pictures to document how everything appeared upon arrival. Allan stepped in and closed the door behind him. He felt himself becoming warm, though he didn’t know if it was the coveralls or the flare-up of nerves.

  He walked toward the refrigerator, as it seemed the most promising place to start the search. Anticipation quickened his pulse and his skin crawled at the thought of what might lay inside. He reached for the handle with a cautious hand and paused, lowering his head. A bead of sweat rolled down his face. Grisly images burst in his mind—a set of hands, a pair of eyes, a severed head.

  Is that what I’ll find?

  He braced himself and opened the door.

  There were bottles of pop and beer. Chinese food boxes. An unwrapped plate of spaghetti. Packages of deli meat and cheese.

  Allan frowned.

  Beside him, Jim snapped pictures of the contents. Harvey removed a plastic trashcan from under the sink. Piece by piece, he set a mixture of soda bottles, crumpled paper towels, and the skeletal remains of a rotisserie chicken onto a sheet of polythene he had lain out on the floor.

  “Nothing here,” he observed, poking through the items.

  Allan moved to the stove. On a burner sat a cast-iron frying pan with hardened bacon fat inside it. When Allan pulled open the oven door, it grated in protest.

  Nothing.

  Harvey carefully took out pots and pans from beneath the counter, while Jim checked the cupboards. Allan noted the cell phone charger on the counter by the toaster and an empty phone jack in the wall by the table, but otherwise couldn’t find anything else of importance.

  The men moved the search to the living room. There was a futon with socks lying on the floor in front of it. A big screen TV that seemed too large for the room. A multimedia cabinet filled with action movies and porn.

  Allan picked up a Halifax phone directory from the coffee table and thumbed through the pages, looking for names or numbers that Eagles might have written in the margins.

  Again, nothing.

  No phone either. Perhaps the bedroom.

  The men headed there next.

  Clothes were strewn on the floor, sheets kicked off the bed. Jim hefted the mattress, checking between it and the box spring. He then looked under the bed itself. Harvey went into the adjacent bathroom.

  Allan checked a black camera on top of the dresser and found a half-used film in it. He had Jim photograph it and then bag it for processing. From the top one down, Allan began to look through the dresser drawers. When he became satisfied that each one held no evidence, he’d pull it out to check the underneath and the back.

  As he reached the bottom drawer, he found two pistols hidden under a pile of T-shirts. Jim shot pictures of the guns in situ—a .45 Glock, the other a .40 Beretta. When he finished, Allan brought them out and inspected the chambers and magazines. Both guns were fully loaded.

  After he rendered the pistols safe for transport, Allan gave them to Jim who strapped each one into an individual firearm evidence box. He packaged the bullets separately.

  Harvey came out of the bathroom.

  “It’s all clear in there,” he said. “I found some pants and shirts in the hamper, but the pockets were clean.”

  Allan sighed. He felt uncomfortable in the coveralls. His clothes under them were damp and stuck to his skin. Breathing through the mask was becoming increasingly difficult.

  He made a final look around the room. No phone in here either, he realized. No laptop or desktop computer. How’d Eagles keep in touch with people?

  One cell phone?

  Allan stared at the closed bi-fold door of the closet, the only place left to search. Moving toward it, he hoped he’d find something of importance.

  The closet was small in size. Pants, shirts and jackets hung on hangers. Compact discs and a boom box were stowed on an overhead shelf. Boots and shoes lined the floor.

  And in the corner a large corrugated box.

  He knelt down, shoving footwear out of the way. He pulled the box out. Jim and Harvey gathered around.

  Allan opened the flaps and peered inside the box. He shook his head and pulled off the mask in frustration. That’s when the spicy aroma of one of the boxed contents hit him.

  He looked up at the two men behind him.

  “Not quite what we’re looking for,” he said in a voice that sagged with disappointment. “Better call in the drug unit.”

  One by one, Allan began pulling out the items from the box—a grinder, a scale, a block of hashish wrapped in tin foil, numerous vials of hash oil and fifteen small rocks of crack packaged in corner ties.

  So what’d he do with the other body parts?

  Allan wondered if Eagles even had them in the first place. Doubt, fatigue and frustration seeped through him like poison. He pulled the hood back from his head and ran a hand through his wet hair.

  “I need to get out of these coveralls,” he told Jim and Harvey. “Process everything we found. Maybe dust some items in the sink and anywhere else you might think of.”

  “What are you going to do, Lieutenant?” Jim asked.

  Allan sighed. “I’m going to canvass the building. See what I can come up with.”

  He walked outside to the corridor where he peeled off the gloves and coveralls. He piled them by the doorway.

  For the next hour, he went up and down stairs, banging on doors, hoping for a little civil cooperation. From those who answered, he learned that Eagles had frequent visits by people of varying ages. Allan chalked it up to the drugs. No one knew Eagles personally or the names of anyone who had visited him.

  Allan returned to the second floor and gathered up the stuff he had left by the doorway. Jim and Harvey were finishing up.

  “I’m heading out,” Allan told them. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He returned to his car. Behind the wheel, he sank back in the seat and shut his eyes. He was tired, he realized, his concentration wandering. He needed sleep, but the thought of going back to his empty home only renewed his grief and foreboding.

  He glanced at his watch and saw it was 11:23. He took out his cell and called David.

  “How are you managing?” he asked.

  “We got a lot done.” David sounded tired. “I just got home about half an hour ago. It’s been a long day.”

  For you and me both, Allan wanted to say.

  “What’d you find out about Stephen Eagles?”

  “He was the guy I remembered,” David said. “Grew up here in Acresville. Moved away when he was nineteen. His list of priors is quite extensive.” There was the rustle of paper. “Goes back twenty-two years. Mostly drug related in the last ten—trafficking, possession, laundering proceeds. He was released from Springhill in August of last year. Served half of a two-year sentence.”

  “What for?”

  “Possession.”

  Allan sighed. “Old habits die hard. We found drugs and drug paraphernalia at his residence.”

  A note of surprise entered David’s voice. “Shit. The man’s been on probation since he was let out.”

  “Unreal.” Allan fe
lt a surge of disgust. “Seems someone wasn’t doing their job.”

  “Did you find anything else?” David asked.

  “Nothing related to our cases.” Allan leaned his head back and thought a moment. “Were there any violent acts associated with Eagles? Assaults or anything like that?”

  “No.”

  Given the picture forming in Allan’s mind, he wondered if Eagles was even capable of murder.

  David went on, “I did find out that he had an account with Sprint. I’ll have the warrant for the call records tomorrow, but it might take a couple of days for those to get to me.”

  Allan sat up. “That’s another thing we didn’t find—his cell phone. You can always try calling his number, see if someone answers.”

  “Way ahead of you, son. Nobody answered.”

  “Triangulate it.”

  “I’ll get on that in the morning.”

  “Did you track down his family yet?”

  “Yes,” David answered. “They live here in Acresville. I dealt the notification and they took it pretty hard.”

  “Do they know anything?”

  “They never knew what their son was involved in. Even after he got arrested at various times in his life, it always came as a surprise to them.” David breathed in. “They did give me the name of his best friend, Herb Matteau. His only friend, according to the parents. He lives here in Acresville too.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “I have,” David said. “I don’t know if it’s the years I spent as a cop, but something about this guy seemed…well, off.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know. It was his demeanor. But like I said, it could be the years I spent as a cop.”

  A trace of a smile moved the corner of Allan’s mouth. “I know what you mean. After a while you start suspecting everyone.”

  “Matteau told me that he got a call from Eagles earlier in the day.”

  Allan straightened. “Yeah?”

  “He told Matteau that he had some business to take care of and might drop over during the day, but he never showed up.”

  “And we know why that was,” Allan said. “What do you know about Herb Matteau?”

  “There’s nothing to know. He’s squeaky clean. No priors of any kind. Not even a parking ticket.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “He’s a dairy farmer.”

  Allan considered this. “An honorable profession.”

  “Yes,” David agreed. “He made the news here last month. Had an environmental issue that ended up killing a bunch of fish in Elm River. Court came down quite hard on him.”

  “Did he give you the names of anyone else that Eagles might know?”

  “No. But I think most of his associates are going to be in your territory, Lieutenant. That’s where he spent the last sixteen years when he wasn’t in prison.”

  Allan blew out a puff of air. “I think you’re right.”

  “Doctor Fitzgerald scheduled the autopsy on Eagles in the morning,” David told him. “Maybe something will come from it.”

  Allan suddenly froze.

  Autopsy?

  His heart started beating faster.

  Is that it?

  “I need to go, Chief,” he said abruptly. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  The two men hung up and Allan gripped the steering wheel in front of him. His thoughts flipped from Cathy Ambré to Hector Walsh and back again. All at once, he became aware of another connection between them. They weren’t linked to Eagles at all. Allan cursed himself for not noticing it before. Perhaps because it seemed so unlikely. Even now he couldn’t get his mind around it.

  Cecil Drake would be exhumed in the morning. Allan needed to see the body—the piece to this whole puzzle could lay with it. Guesswork or instincts, it didn’t matter now.

  If he were right the ramifications were huge.

  47

  Acresville, May 24

  7:47 a.m.

  The empty whiskey bottle fell from Herb’s hand and clinked on the ground by his feet. Through a drunken fog, he looked at it for a second and then moved his gaze to the spot a few feet away where he had buried his father, eighteen years before.

  “So here we are again,” he whispered. “You and me.”

  He stood there under the twisted branches of the crab apple tree, the warmth of the early morning sun on his shoulders, the susurrus of wind through the grass around him.

  However difficult, he had been able to leave his father here. Move on from that tragic autumn day and run the farm himself in relative peace. Only in recent weeks the memory and pain of his terrible past had reawakened in him like some dead fiend suddenly brought back to life. Even worse, there seemed to be no way to kill it.

  Herb didn’t know why he had come up here now. Maybe it was the courage brought on by the whiskey. Or maybe he just needed to finally put his matters to rest. Resolve those lasting issues that ate away at him.

  Still he found it hard to do.

  In his haunted mind, he relived the day he had killed his father.

  * * *

  It began as it had many times before—his father, drunk and on the prowl for someone to take his anger out on.

  In the weeks since his wife’s passing, his state of mind seemed to deteriorate; his drinking worsened. Nightly binges at Gary’s Tavern became custom. Often he would come home in the early morning hours with the slam of the door.

  When it happened, Herb would lie still in his bed, as he had so many times as a young child, a sense of panic creeping over him because at any moment, he expected his door to burst open. But it rarely did. Seldom did his father come upstairs anymore.

  Maybe he was too intoxicated to climb the steps. Maybe he didn’t want to face the empty bedroom he had once shared with his wife. He would stay downstairs, sometimes ranting to himself, sometimes breaking things.

  In the morning Herb would find pieces of those things scattered across the kitchen floor—a broken glass, a shattered whiskey bottle, a cracked picture frame that had once held a family photo. His father, broken like everything else, would be passed out on the chesterfield in the living room.

  Whenever possible, Herb avoided him. He would leave early for school, hang out with Slick afterwards, and go home as late as he could. Only his chores on the farm brought him together with his father. Even then, they barely spoke.

  Years had passed since the man last put a hand on his son.

  But on this early Saturday morning, all that would change.

  Alone in the milking parlor, Herb prepped cow udders. Milking was done twice a day, spaced at twelve-hour intervals. As he had been taught, Herb forestripped, predipped and dried each teat before attaching the milking cups. He worked quickly and diligently. Three cows hooked up. Then four.

  Over the noise of the vacuum pump, he didn’t hear the staggering gait of his father’s footsteps coming up behind him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he snapped. “You worthless piece of shit.”

  Herb swung around, dropping the cluster assembly from his hands. Swinging from hoses, it struck the wall of the operator pit with a smack.

  His father’s face was flushed with a mix of whiskey and anger. Herb just stood there, petrified, unable to answer.

  Incensed by this, the man yelled, “Tell me.”

  “Try…trying to get the milking started.”

  “I can see that,” his father snarled. “Did I ever say you could start without me?”

  Reflexively, Herb shook his head. “It was past six a.m.” He swallowed. “And you were asleep.”

  A scowl deepened the seams in the man’s face. “Do you check for mastitis?”

  “Yes. They’re all fine.”

  The man’s molten stare moved up and down his son with something akin to contempt. Then, without warning, he struck Herb across the face with a savage backhand slap. Herb fell sideways, landing hard on the cement floor. His eyes began to water. His nos
e felt swollen, perhaps broken; blood trickled from it.

  Slowly, he lifted his gaze up at his father. The man stood over him, glaring down.

  “You’re just like your mother,” he growled. “You never fucking listen.”

  Herb got to his feet. Backing away, he ran from the building to the house. He rushed upstairs to the bathroom where he spat blood into the sink. Then he tore off a strip of toilet tissue and wadded it against his nose. His hands were shaking.

  The face he saw in the mirror belonged to that of the small child he had once been. Frightened. Helpless. Alone. He suppressed the urge to cry. Found it difficult.

  Tears filled his eyes. He tossed the bloodied tissue into the toilet and flushed it. As he watched it spiraling around the bowl, a painful memory came flooding back to him.

  In the backyard the man pushed his son to the grass by the flagstone walk. Afraid to move, the boy laid there, face down, breathing in harsh gasps. At any moment he expected to feel the jab of the cold rifle barrel.

  Seconds passed.

  A minute.

  Nothing happened.

  Curious, the boy brought up his head. His father stood a few feet away with the 30.06 cradled in his arms, barrel pointing toward the ground. The man seemed fixated on something off to his right.

  The boy looked. Thirty feet away Jessie watched them from the side of the poultry coop. Inside it came the light clucking of hens.

  Nervously, the boy’s eyes jumped from the dog back to his father. Was the man going to shoot Jessie?

  Like an automaton, his father started toward the spaniel.

  “No, Dad,” the boy cried after him. “No.”

  Halfway between the dog and his son, the man stopped and raised the rifle.

  The boy leapt to his feet and bolted to his father. As he reached him, he began to strike the man with his little fists. With a scowl, his father spun around and struck his son across the face. Arms flailing, the boy staggered back and fell.

  He became hysterical now. He screamed for his dog to run. But Jessie didn’t run. Tail tucked between its hind legs, the spaniel sheepishly lowered its head.