by A W Hartoin
“You were punishing yourself for living?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what I was doing.”
“How’d you hide it from my grandpa?” I asked.
“We got married on leave in Hawaii in a whirlwind. It didn’t last long and we hardly saw each other what with the war. I convinced him I was shy and always kept a top on. When we were together, it was better anyway. Ace had a way of making me forget all the bad things. I stopped when I got back to the States and began med school,” she said.
“Did you ever start again?”
“No, but I’m sure I would have if I’d ever been in a war zone again. Mayhem was my trigger. That’s why I ended up out here after years of practicing in Kansas City. It’s very quiet.”
“I can see that, but why in the world did you become a pathologist. Every day is death.”
“The patients are already dead and they certainly can’t suffer if they’re already gone.”
“Oh.” I counted the scars on Cherie’s arms. There were a lot, crisscrossing and some on top of each other. “This went on for a long time.”
“Looks like it.” She pointed to the fresh cuts on Cherie’s leg. “No hesitation marks. She went headlong back into it. She needed the release. What went on over there at the castle?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
“Exactly.”
Tiny tried to get up. “What did you decide?”
I helped him as Dr. Watts covered the body. “Nothing yet.”
“Are we getting closer?”
“Not really. It just got a whole lot more complicated.”
Tiny glanced at Cherie’s shrouded body and swallowed hard. “How?”
“Cherie was attacked twice. Once possibly before the lockdown and once after.
“You mean the guy attacked once and came back to strangle her. Why? She looked like an ordinary mom to me.”
“I don’t think he did,” I said.
“She’s definitely dead,” said Dr. Watts with a wane smile. “I notice these things.”
Tiny clutched his stomach. “Yeah, she is.”
“I mean, I don’t think he came back. It was two people. Two separate attacks.”
“I like it,” said Dr. Watts.
“But why two? The guy who cracked her on the head probably just came back to get rid of the body and discovered she was still alive,” said Tiny.
“That makes sense, except he didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Get rid of the body. We found her in the love garden.”
“Oh yeah. Well…maybe he just wanted to finish her off.”
Dr. Watts crossed her arms. “Maybe, but if he wanted to kill her, the rock garden was the time to do it. She would’ve been unconscious for a period of time. Easy as pie then. Why wait so long to do the deed? She could’ve gotten up and alerted the staff.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense. This was a crime of passion complete with regret.”
“Because of her clothes?” asked Tiny.
“Exactly. If you planned to go back and kill her, you wouldn’t regret it and cover her up. You dump her in the river and hope for the best.”
“So it is two,” said Dr. Watts. “This isn’t so hard. The Castle has a code system. Who left after the lockdown?”
“Me,” I said.
“You?” asked Tiny, his eyes going wide.
“My code anyway.”
“Did you give someone your code?” asked Dr. Watts.
“Of course not. I don’t even know it. I flushed it like John said. I wasn’t planning on going out or letting anyone in.”
“So who would know it?”
“John and Leslie, I presume, but they know my dad. There’s no way they’d involve me if they wanted to kill someone.”
Dr. Watts made her sneezing noise. “Those two. They wouldn’t make such a mistake. Certainly not.”
“What do you know about them?” I asked.
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I’m a pathologist. I don’t do comfort.”
“You might be interested to know that there was a shooting out at Cairngorms last night,” I said, nice and casual.
Her brow wrinkled and her eyes went back to Cherie’s body. I could see her having a moment of doubt about the cause of death and then shaking it off. “Why wasn’t I called?”
“Because there’s no victim.” I told her what happened and Tiny looked longingly at the door.
“Where are those idiots?” she exploded and called the deputies.
There was a faint ringing outside the room. Dr. Watts stalked over and flung open the door. “What are you doing?”
Gerry dropped his phone that they had both been looking at. “Nothing.”
“What are you waiting for? Get in here.”
Phelong picked up the phone and they shuffled their feet, glancing at Cherie’s shrouded body.
Dr. Watts pointed at them. “Let me remind you that she’s dead and can’t hurt you. Flincher’s alive and there’s a good chance that he would.”
They were in the room in two seconds flat. Flincher was definitely scarier than a body in pretty much everyone’s opinion. Dr. Watts took the evidence box and sorted through the various bags. Some she’d send off to bigger labs and others she’d handle herself.
“So,” she said to Phelong and Gerry, “you mucked up the other murder.”
“There’s no body,” said Gerry.
“And you think you’re off the hook.”
“What are we supposed to do without a body?” asked Phelong.
“What are we supposed to do without the blood?”
Phelong had the good sense to blush and stutter. Dr. Watts whacked him on the shoulder. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is what I call a blessing in disguise.”
“What?” I gasped. “There was a crime. I know there was.”
“I don’t doubt it. But no one from around here has been reported missing. Your victim was from out of town.”
“That makes it okay?”
“Think about it, Mercy.”
I thought about it and came up empty. Murders went unsolved. It happened.
“My dad would never let this go,” I said.
“You’re wrong about that. Tommy Watts knows what’s what. You weren’t sent to John and Leslie by accident.”
“You suspect them.”
“I didn’t say that.” She clapped her hands together and gave them a furious rub. “Alright now. Who wants to help with organ weighing?”
Phelong and Gerry didn’t hesitate. They ran out and slammed the door. Dr. Watts burst into laughter and slapped her knee. “Gets them every time.”
It looked to me like the autopsy was done, but I was still nervous. “Is there any other evidence I should know about?”
“Sadly, no,” she said. “Cherie’s nails were clean and the only blood was hers. She wasn’t raped. Good call on that. I’d say you’re looking for a man six feet or over.”
“Nothing else?” I asked.
“Afraid not. I swabbed her neck and face, but, unless he spit on her, we’re going to get bupkiss.” She smiled at Tiny, who wasn’t looking so good since the mention of organ weighing. “You can go. I just wanted to impress upon you Cherie’s mental condition at the time of her death.”
“I get it,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “What do you get?”
“That she had a history with someone at the castle and they killed her.”
She nodded. “I’ve got to sort out this evidence. What there is of it.”
“What’s next?” asked Tiny as he edged toward the door.
“I’m going to visit Uncle Morty in his lair and then talk to Lane,” I said.
“Lane, the daughter,” said Dr. Watts, tapping her chin. “The hands aren’t big enough.”
“I don’t think she did it. But Cherie might’ve been able to hide those scars fro
m her son, but not her daughter. They were close and it’s hard to hide something like that for sixteen years. Plus, they shared the same room, the same bathroom this weekend. And while we’re on the subject, Lane claims to have been in their room all night. How is it that she didn’t know her mother got up in the middle of the night? They slept five feet apart and Lane’s bed was the closest to the door. Cherie got up and got dressed, all without her knowing? And why did Cherie go out at all. Clearly she wasn’t well liked by more than one person and by the state of her leg she knew it.”
“She must’ve been scared,” said Tiny softly.
“I think she was and there’s only one thing that would make my mother go out in the middle of the night if she was scared,” I said.
“What?” asked Dr. Watts.
“Me. Cherie was looking for Lane.”
Dr. Watts gave us detailed directions on how to get out of Flincher’s domain and I was determined to follow them, but then I didn’t. Tiny led the way. He actually remembered the directions. I had to put them in my phone. We went up the stairs, took a right and a left, went through more storage rooms, all with questionable smells and found the exit. It didn’t lead into the garage but outside into the continuing downpour.
Tiny grabbed the door knob and I snagged his sleeve. “Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“That racket?”
We both stopped and listened. There was definitely a racket coming from a room behind us, a metallic banging and grinding.
“What do you suppose that is?” I asked.
Tiny shook his head. “I really don’t want to know. We got to follow orders and go through this door now.”
“They weren’t orders,” I said. “They were directions. It’s not the same thing.”
“In this case, it is. We got to get out of here.”
“Puhlease.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure you can take Flincher.”
“Flincher, yeah, but who knows whatall that old ghoul has hidden in this place.”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” I asked.
“Are you kidding me, girl?”
I slipped past his bulk so fast he wasn’t able to catch hold of me. “Come on. Just a peek.”
The noise was easy to follow, even over Tiny’s muttering about ghouls and tempting fate. Normally, I would say I was tempting fate but that time, no. I had a feeling that noise was important. It was a Tommy Watts kind of feeling, the first one I’d had since getting to the castle. Something wasn’t right. I had to find out what was making that noise.
I followed the trail to a set of double doors, once painted a sickly lime green but now half the paint had chipped off leaving bare metal. The noise was coming from inside and it was louder, not loud but just louder.
“Ladies first,” I said, turning the grimy knob.
Tiny grabbed my arm, but I opened the door anyway. A rush of hot air flooded out with the faint smell of something burning. Tiny needn’t have bothered. Flincher wasn’t in there. The room was a large open area with a concrete floor and various types of equipment. In the center of the room was a metal box about seven feet tall and six feet wide. It had a door in the center and a control panel on the side. It reminded me of a pizza oven, except it wasn’t pizza that Flincher was cooking in there.
The noise came from another piece of equipment off to the side, a weird stainless steel contraption. I had no clue what it was so I took pictures of the room. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Thank god,” said Tiny and we hoofed it back to the exit.
I ran out into the rain and around the building to the garage. Phelong and Gerry were in the squad car with the motor running. I hesitated when I touched the rear door handle.
“What?” asked Tiny, flinging open his door.
“We’re leaving Dr. Watts here alone with him.”
“She does it all the time.” He got in and so did I but not without feeling bad about it.
Phelong peeled out of the garage and I caught a glimpse of Flincher in the doorway watching and a shiver went down my back as I laid down.
“What’s wrong?” asked Gerry, turning in his seat.
I bit my lip. “This is a small town so you’d know if anyone died recently, right?”
“Sure.”
“Did anyone? Die, I mean.”
“No. Why?”
I looked at the pictures on my phone with my hands shaking a bit. “Because Flincher cremated someone today.”
Chapter Seventeen
I CALLED DR. Watts to tell her about Flincher and the cremation. I wanted her to get out of the funeral home. She didn’t. I knew she wouldn’t. My ex-grandmother wasn’t a woman to abandon her work for anything less than a tsunami.
We drove back to the castle in silence. Phelong and Gerry were visibly shaken. When we stopped in front of the great hall, Phelong asked softly over his shoulder, “What should we do now?”
“Go home and sleep,” I said. “I’ll need you tomorrow.”
Both sets of the cops’ shoulders relaxed.
“Okay,” said Gerry. “We’ll call you if we hear anything about that body of Flincher’s.”
I said that would be a good idea although we all knew they wouldn’t hear anything. That body was the body from the woods and we all knew it.
My phone vibrated. It was Dr. Watts texting me that she’d confronted Flincher. My stomach flipped over while I waited for the next text.
Confront Flincher? No! Terrible idea! Run away!
She finally texted again, “Claimed dog found dead in the woods. Testing equipment. Liar.”
“No kidding,” I said and sent her the equipment picture, asking what it was.
“What is it?” asked Tiny.
“Hold on.”
Dr. Watts sent another text. “Processor. Crushes bones.”
Sorry I asked.
Dr. Watts texted again. “F made call. Don’t know to who.”
I texted back that she should get out of there. She sent me an emoticon of tongue sticking out so I guess not.
Tiny poked me. “What?”
The arched black walnut doors opened and John walked out, his eyes on me and I knew. I knew like I knew my name. He did it.
“Mercy?”
“It’s fine.” I got out and went to John before Tiny could follow.
“I assume you have the cause of death,” said John.
“Who was it?” I hissed.
“Your investigation is going slower than I’d hoped. Your victim is Cherie Marin, mother of two, mid-forties.”
“Not her. The person Flincher cremated this morning.”
His eyes fluttered in mock surprise. “Someone else died. I wasn’t aware.”
“Yes you were because you killed them.”
“Why would you ever say such a thing? I’m just a spa owner, a friend of your father.”
Tiny came up behind me and I stomped by John, saying under my breath, “Like hell.”
I charged through the door, hung a right and was lost in three minutes flat, a new record.
“Mercy!” Tiny jogged up behind me, huffing and puffing. “What did John say?”
“Nothing,” I said, spinning around. It’s amazing how a place so unique could be without landmarks. All the armor looked alike to me, not to mention the paintings of aristocrats looking down their long noses. “Which way?”
“To where.” He bent over, putting his hands on his knees, and I felt instantly guilty.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run.” I rubbed his broad back.
“It’s…okay.”
“I need to see Uncle Morty about a phone call.”
Tiny groaned as he straightened up. “What phone call?”
I told him what Dr. Watts said and he reflexively grabbed my arm. “I’m fine,” I said.
“Now Flincher knows that you know what he did. I got to call your dad.”
“Flincher won’t do anything. The evidence is gone. You can’t g
et a cause of death or DNA after a cremation. I don’t think you can even tell if the remains are human. It’s over.” The words hurt my throat to say them.
“It ain’t over,” said Tiny.
“How do you figure that? We’ve got no body and we’re never going to.”
“Somebody’s gonna notice their loved one is missing.”
“Do you know how many people are reported missing each year?” I asked.
Tiny shrugged. “Nah. Do you?”
“No, but I bet Uncle Morty does. He’s weird that way.”
“He’s weird in many ways.”
“Agreed but he’s useful. First, we need to know for sure who Flincher called. If it’s John, that cinches it.”
Tiny directed me down a hall filled with still lifes of fruit and dead birds. I knew I’d never been down it before. How many ways were there to get to the Tudor Tower?
We went through a maze of halls and ended up at the foot of the Tudor stairs right where we should be. I put a foot on the bottom step and touched the oversized newel post. The top sported a carved globe with the world as Henry VIII would’ve seen it, including all the little details. There were borders and dots with the capitals like London and Paris. The details were amazing. They told you what time period you were looking at if you took the time to notice.
“You know,” I said, “we can still figure it out.”
“What?” asked Tiny.
“Who was cremated?”
“By looking at missing reports?”
“No. By looking at us,” I said.
“Us? What did we do?” he asked.
“Nothing, but we’re here. John and Leslie are here. The teams are here. “Whoever it was was trying to get in. They were shot through the fence and disposed of. It’s not someone local, like some kid pulling a prank, so they were from away. Who would be trying to get in here and why would John kill them? This joint is pretty secure. Why bother?”
“It wasn’t secure that night,” said Tiny. “All those cameras were broken.”
I smiled and crossed my arms. “Do you really think they’d let multiple cameras be down? I don’t think so. John saw them on camera, trying to shimmy up a tree. Then he went out and shot them. It’s almost like they were set up with those tree branches left hanging over. That’s like an invitation to try and breach the fence.”