by A W Hartoin
“That is the worst funeral home in the world,” I said.
“Mercy!” Tiny grabbed my arm and tried to force me to hide for about the thousandth time. I didn’t want to hide and he couldn’t make me. I kept popping up. Sometimes it wasn’t even of my own accord. It just happened. Instinct, I guess. I had to see where I was going.
“Give it up. We’re here.”
“What’s Tommy going to say?”
“Nothing if you don’t tell him.”
He groaned. “If you get shot because I couldn’t do my job, I’ll never recover. I’ll have to throw my damn self off a bridge.”
I rolled my eyes and plopped over. “Fine, but only so you don’t jump off a bridge.”
“I should’ve said that earlier.”
“You should’ve.”
Phelong told Gerry to turn right in a low, tense voice. I could see their heads over the back of the seat and little beads of sweat were forming at their hairlines. I felt bad for making them go into the bowels of Flincher Funerals. I thought about saying that I should be the one who was worried since someone tried to murder me in a funeral home once, but it probably wouldn’t be helpful.
To distract them from the sense of impending doom, I said, “So how does he stay in business? Who would want a funeral here?”
Phelong glanced back at me. He was all flushed and jittery. “Flincher’s cheap, fast, and he doesn’t ask any questions.”
That has a bad ring to it.
“Like what kind of questions?”
“Last year, Callie Bacon’s husband fell into their cistern and died,” said Gerry.
“So?”
Phelong shifted in his seat as Gerry parked, took a deep breath, and got out.
“It happened two days after he smacked the crap out of their six-year-old in the Quik Mart,”said Phelong.
“Stuff happens. It don’t mean anything,” said Tiny.
“Sheriff Greer was having his annual family camping trip down at Taum Sauk. Harry fell down the cistern early in the morning and Callie had the funeral and cremation before five o’clock. They never even called us.”
“That’s crazy fast,” I said.
“She killed him,” said Tiny.
“Yeah, she did and Flincher just burnt up the evidence. No problem.”
“So everybody knows about Callie and Harry?” I asked.
“And everybody knows about Flincher. Callie sold Harry’s truck for 5000 dollars at noon. We all know who got that money.”
“Callie sounds like a woman who gets things done.”
“She was reading that Stephen King book, Dolores Claiborne, at the time. Her sister told me,” said Phelong.
“What did the sheriff say when he got back?” asked Tiny.
Phelong shrugged. “It was a done deal and everybody hated Harry anyway.”
A grinding noise erupted in front of the squad car and Gerry got back in. “Somebody owes me something.”
“What happened?” asked Phelong.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Gerry pulled the car into a darkened garage and left it idling.
“Ya think he’s gonna turn on the lights?” asked Tiny.
“Probably not,” said Phelong.
I sat up and blinked in the gloom. We were parked next to the old hearse and two more stalls filled with packing crates the shape of coffins. I did not want to get out.
A door at the back opened with a sickly yellow light outlining Flincher’s hump, and everyone sucked in a breath.
“We have to get out,” I said.
“Do we?” asked Tiny.
“Yes, we definitely do.” Somehow I didn’t move. I wasn’t much troubled by my previous funeral incident. It happened and I survived, thanks to Aaron, and I hadn’t relived it since. I’d let it go until seeing Flincher in that doorway. He was so much scarier than my would-be murderer was.
Just when I was about to say, ‘Screw it. Let’s go’, someone came into the light and pushed Flincher aside. The spiky hair said it was Dr. Watts, and we all started breathing again.
She stomped down the stairs into the garage and flung open Gerry’s door. “What are you waiting for? Time’s a wasting.”
“Well, I, um…” muttered Gerry.
She chuckled. “It’s just the bogeyman. Don’t be such a scaredy-cat.”
“Please don’t call him the ‘bogeyman,’” said Phelong.
“Like Flincher’s any better. Come on.” She leaned in. “Mercy, you’re as bad as these nincompoops. A fine thing for my ex-granddaughter to pull.”
“Puhlease.” I scoffed and got out.
Flincher pushed a button and the garage door closed, bathing us in darkness.
“Flincher!” yelled Dr. Watts.
A light flickered on in response.
“Better?” she asked me.
“I’m fine,” I said, coming around the car and heading for Flincher, despite every instinct in my body saying don’t do it, don’t go in there.
“Miss Watts, a pleasure to see you again,” said Flincher.
“Yeah, it’s swell. Where’s the body?” I asked.
“In the basement.”
Of course it is.
“Lead the way.”
I followed Flincher through a warren of small rooms filled with funeral paraphernalia, fake flowers arranged in the shape of hearts, stacks of chairs, and coffin pedestals. Each room had a unique smell, ranging from the rot of narcissus to formaldehyde to wiener schnitzel. At the end of the wiener schnitzel room, Flincher stopped and I nearly ran into him. The smell of possum emanating off him, combined with the wiener schnitzel and decomp, caused me to involuntarily hork. Flincher slowly turned and glanced past my shoulder. The room was empty, except for us, and I stepped back. Distance was a good thing. A weapon would’ve been better.
Flincher looked me up and down. “You appear to be healthy.”
“Er…yeah,” I said. “How much farther?”
“Are you hungry?” he asked and it was totally different than when Aaron asked. Aaron wanted to feed me, make me happy. Flincher was up to something else entirely.
“No. Not at all.”
Disappointment briefly flitted over his features. “Will you be getting your hair cut at the castle?”
“What? No. Take me to the body,” I said.
He raised his craggy eyebrows. “Have you had your blood drawn recently?”
“What the hell? No, I haven’t.”
“I have a little lunch prepared.” Flincher reached for my hand and I recoiled. “Your skin is so lovely.”
“Flincher!” yelled Dr. Watts as she entered the room. “I might’ve known you’d take the long way round.”
“It’s a direct route.”
“Only if you want a few minutes alone with Miss Watts.”
He lifted one shoulder and eyed me like a science experiment. “Shall we?”
“We shall.” Dr. Watts brushed past him and opened the door, revealing a rickety metal staircase with a naked lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling on a frayed cord. “Mercy, let’s go.”
Flincher went to follow and she held up her hand. “Not you. Just Miss Watts and her bodyguard.”
Tiny came into the room. He had one hand on his weapon and the other one in a fist. “You shouldn’t have left me.”
“I didn’t know I had,” I said.
We went down the stairs into the bowels of the funeral home. How anyone could send their loved ones to that place was a mystery to me. I’d have to be desperately broke to do it.
Dr. Watts told me to go all the way down and take the second door to the left. Like every other door in Flincher’s domain, it was unmarked. I opened the door slowly for Tiny’s benefit. His breathing was rapid, more rapid than it should’ve been for a flight of stairs. The funeral home was getting to me and it was definitely getting to him.
I was afraid Cherie’s naked body would be exposed on a slab, but it was covered with a sheet in the only well-lit room in the place.
Dr. Watts’ equipment was shiny and clean and there was no smell, which was a relief. She had very nice equipment and a small but complete lab. It was a sweet setup for a town that hadn’t had a murder to investigate in forever. The Callie and Harry situation didn’t count and the equipment was spanking new.
“How did Lesterville afford this?” I asked. “You don’t even have a Wal-Mart.”
“Grants. I can be very persuasive.”
I imagined by persuasive she meant she bothered people until they gave her money. That’s what my mother would’ve done. It worked for the Widows and Orphans Fund.
Dr. Watts closed the door behind us. “Sorry about Flincher. You shouldn’t be alone with him. Nobody should, including me, I suppose. Before we go any further, never accept anything to eat or drink in this place. Never.”
“No problem,” I said. “Why?”
“There have been incidents.”
“Like…”
“Severe vomiting and hallucinations to name two.”
“He’s poisoning people. Why doesn’t the sheriff do something about him?”
She shrugged. “It’s eater beware around here. Besides, he couldn’t prove it was Flincher and nobody died. Did he ask you for blood?”
“He asked if I’d had blood drawn.”
“Figures. He’ll probably ask if he can buy some off you.”
“He buys people’s blood. What the hell for?” asked Tiny.
She walked over to the lone table in the middle of the room and stood by Cherie’s shoulder. “I don’t think he drinks it.”
“That’s comforting,” I said.
“I think so. He’ll definitely want yours, beautiful, healthy, and smart. You’re everything he likes. There’re a select few townspeople who will sell to him, but new blood is always of interest to the man.”
“You’re kinda freaking me out.”
“Sorry, but you need to know. The man is devious and not as frail as he looks.”
“You think he’d attack her?” asked Tiny.
She shook her head. “No, no. He doesn’t attack humans. He finds other ways to get what he wants.” She picked up the edge of the sheet. “Now on to the reason you’re here.” She pulled back the sheet and exposed Cherie’s head and shoulders. There was a faint squeak behind me and I turned just in time to see Tiny go down. It was like watching a tree fall in the woods, very slow and surprisingly quiet.
“First body?” asked Dr. Watts.
I knelt beside Tiny and I checked his vitals. “I doubt it. He was in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Tiny groaned and we rolled him onto his side, in case he threw up.
“War is different,” she said. “I saw plenty of bodies when I was a nurse in Vietnam, but I barfed in Gross Anatomy.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Real Exorcist barfing. I was also the only girl. The boys took bets on how long I would last. I made it through medical school just to bug them.”
“Sticking it to the man.”
“Many times. Don’t bother poor Tiny. He’s better off down there.”
We went back to the table and I blew out a breath. Twenty-four hours ago this had been a live woman, beloved by her children with a long way to go in life. Now she was here and every plan she had was over.
“Mercy?”
“Go ahead. I’m fine.”
She showed me Cherie’s neck and the finger marks. “They have an odd pattern to them.”
“Gloves?” I asked.
“Yes, but they’re unusual.”
The measurements proved the fingermarks to be from a large person, at least six feet with thick fingers. I hadn’t seen any women tall or beefy enough to make those marks. I’d have to see about the staff, but I thought we could safely say it was a man. Dr. Watts touched a computer keyboard at the desk and an x-ray lit up on the screen. She used a pointer to show me the head wound.
“Do you see it?” Dr. Watts asked.
I wanted to say yes and seem like I knew what I was doing, but her sharp eyes were on me and Dr. Watts wasn’t a woman easily fooled. “I see the bleed, but I don’t know what it means.”
She nodded approvingly. “It’s a slow bleed. It took one to three hours to get to what we’re seeing here.” She waited as the information sank in. I turned and paced back and forth beside Cherie’s body.
“So there was a huge gap between the head injury and the strangling that killed her,” I said finally.
“Yes.”
“Could it have been before midnight?”
“When anyone could’ve left the castle? Yes,” said Dr. Watts.
“Would the head injury alone have killed her?”
“Hard to say. If she’d gotten help, she would’ve lived, in my opinion.”
This change made my head hurt. I’d assumed both injuries happened in rapid succession. Cherie had definitely left the building before the alarms were set, so it sounded like she’d been lying in the rock garden for at least an hour, perhaps longer. This was a fact I hadn’t expected. Would the person who gave her the head injury in the rock garden come back later, using my code, to make sure she was dead? Maybe, but I didn’t think so. If they were so set on killing Cherie, why not just finish her off in the rock garden? And what was she doing for the rest of the time before the head injury? Or did she get clobbered immediately upon leaving the castle?
“This changes everything,” I said. “And it’s much worse.”
“I’m afraid so,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t it be? I’m here after all.”
Dr. Watts made her sneezing noise. “You do have a track record. I particularly liked your stint in New Orleans. How many crimes were there in the end?”
“Depends on how you count.” I went over to Tiny and helped him sit up.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You fainted.”
“Nah. I don’t faint. Men don’t faint.”
I punched him in his beefy shoulder. “But women do?”
“Didn’t mean that.”
“Whatever.”
Dr. Watts gave him a bottled water and called Phelong, asking where the rest of her evidence was. I gathered it was still in the car with them, and they had no intention of moving. She ordered them to bring it in or she would tell Gerry’s mom about the cow tipping he’d been up to.
“They’re coming. Idiots.” She gently pushed Tiny back down from his attempt to stand. “I have more evidence for Mercy to see. I don’t recommend it.”
“I’m better,” he said.
“I know,” she said softly. “I know.”
I stood up, but I didn’t want to. Usually, more evidence was a good thing. This time I wasn’t so sure it would be.
Dr. Watts and I returned to the table and I ran the possibilities through. Maybe Cherie was raped after all or dying of some dreadful disease.
“Your victim was in excellent health, for the most part,” she said.
“For the most part?” I asked.
“Are you familiar with cutting?”
It took me a second because it was so unexpected. “A little. Why?”
She pulled down the sheet to Cherie’s waist and rolled over her right arm. Thin white scars marred her skin from her forearm nearly to her armpit. “It’s the same on the other side.”
I almost reached out and touched the delicate skin she’d slit open. “I wonder why.”
“It’s your job to find out,” said Dr. Watts.
My eyes jerked up to meet hers. “What’s this got to do with her murder? These are old.”
“They are old. I would guess she began cutting in her teens, but these,” she pulled down the sheet farther, “are new, done in the last 24 hours.”
Cherie’s thighs were crisscrossed with angry red slits, fresh with no signs of healing. I forced myself to look closer. Some of them were quite deep, right down into the muscle. So painful. What would cause a person to do that to themselves? I remembered one of my teachers in nursing school talking ab
out cutting. She said something about the pain being a release. Cherie must’ve needed a big release.
“She started cutting again while at the castle. I wonder if it’s common to start up at her age.”
Dr. Watts fingered the edge of the sheet. “In my experience, cutting starts for a specific reason. If the reason isn’t resolved, they can start again when certain triggers occur.”
“Your experience?” I asked. “Since when do pathologists handle cutters?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Tiny, still seated on the floor.
Dr. Watts looked at me in a way that said she wanted to say something that she’d rather Tiny didn’t hear.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just trying to nail down the timeline.”
“Oh. Okay.” He didn’t make a move to stand.
Dr. Watts smoothed the sheet. “Your grandfather doesn’t know.”
“Know what exactly?”
She glanced over at Tiny then lifted the hem of her scrub top. Pale scars like spider webs spoiled her smooth skin. They covered her entire abdomen. I didn’t know what to say and, for once, I stayed silent.
“You see I had nice arms and legs. The stomach was much easier to conceal.”
Now silence was wrong. I knew that, but what do you say to such a revelation. It was so painful, so private, I found it hard to bear. “Why?” I managed to squeak out.
“When I went to Vietnam as a nurse, I had no fear. I thought I knew what I was getting into. I didn’t. I wasn’t prepared. No one was, but it was especially hard on me. I was a pampered only child. Even my nursing school protected me from the harsher side of medicine. I didn’t do an ER rotation. It wasn’t required. Over there, people were dying every day in hideous, unspeakable ways. I made mistakes I couldn’t take back. No place was safe. There were times I thought I wouldn’t make it out alive, but I was never injured. I was lucky. So many weren’t.”