Cold Dead Past

by John Curtis

  The room was painted a powdery rose color. Perfectly appropriate to the house, which was a Victorian workmen’s cottage. It had been decorated with period antiques and a comfortable leather sofa, which stood in front of a blazing fireplace.

  Jay took a seat on the sofa, which had been grouped with a couple of club chairs and a heavy wooden coffee table. The arrangement had been angled so that a person sitting on the sofa or chairs could enjoy the fireplace as well as the big screen television and stereo that were set up in a corner of the room. As he picked the remote up from the coffee table, he noticed his face looking up at him from the jacket of a copy of his book.

  Out of curiosity, he picked it up and flipped through the pages until he found a receipt marking page twenty.

  He called out to her, "I see you bought my book. Did you like it?"

  There was the sound of things being shuffled around in the kitchen as she replied, "Oh, yes, very much. Not usually my thing, but I thought it was great."

  He fingered the receipt and checked it for a date. She’d just purchased it that morning. He closed the book and set it back on the table as he switched on the television with the remote control. He flipped through the channels until he found some news.

  Meg entered, carrying a steaming mug, and handed it to Jay.

  "Watch out, it’s hot."

  "Hot chocolate," he said as he took a whiff. "With cinnamon. You remembered."

  "Always."

  Jay took a sip and said, "This house. Very nice."

  "Thanks, but I really can’t take the credit for that. My mother was in charge of the decorating. She was always buying copies of some magazine or other about home decorating. It was a lot cheaper than hiring a professional decorator. I paid for it because it was a way to keep her busy and not going on and on about my divorce. By the time you’re done with that hot chocolate, I should have dinner ready."

  She headed back to the kitchen. Jay’s attention turned to the news. A picture of the alley where Charlie Harper was found appeared on the screen. Jay stopped short in the middle of sipping his hot chocolate. He’d seen it before. The reporter was doing a stand-up in front of a small crowd that had gathered.

  "Early this morning, the body of Charles Harper, 72, of Haddonfield, was found by two sanitation workers as they made their rounds."

  Video cut in showing earlier activity around the alley following the arrival of the police.

  "Patrons of a nearby bar say that Harper was there until one-thirty this morning. According to information released by Sheriff Neame, that was the last time he was seen alive."

  The crowd in the video clip parted as ambulance attendants wheeled a gurney carrying a body bag out of the alley. The picture seamlessly returned to a live shot of the reporter, now alone and lit by television lights at the mouth of the alley.

  "Sheriff Neame refuses to speculate on the cause of death pending an autopsy, but informed sources say that the body showed unspecified signs of mutilation."

  Jay leaned back, deep in thought about what it could all mean. He had been there. Seen it all. But it was impossible. Just then Meg’s voice called out from the dining room.

  "Ready to eat?"

  He switched off the television and headed off toward the sound of her voice.

  Meg had fixed all his favorites. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas, gravy. They made small-talk about friends they’d known from college, inconsequential events from childhood. It turned out that Meg was doing very well running her father’s real estate business since he’d retired. There were a lot of well-to-do newcomers who’d begun building up on the heights above the valley.

  Jay was distracted, though, thinking about what he’d seen on the news, and fell into long, pensive silences. Meg had been hoping he’d take some notice of her efforts with the meal. It was during one of his silences that Meg nodded toward his plate and asked, "Is there something wrong?"

  "No, no," he replied with a smile. "It’s just that I was thinking about this man who was killed downtown today. It was just on the news. It’s hard for me to imagine something like that happening here."

  "Well, a lot of things have changed since you left."

  "And some haven’t."

  He looked into Meg’s eyes. Then, after an uncomfortable moment, back down to his empty plate and wineglass.

  "That was great. How about some more wine?"

  Meg’s smile turned to a slight frown that passed across her face like the shadow from a passing cloud. "I’ll be right back with dessert."

  After she left the room, he slapped himself in the face and muttered, "Idiot."

  She returned to the room with two large slices of pie topped with whipped cream. She unceremoniously dropped one of them in front of him, then sat down and began to eat her pie in silence. Jay picked up his fork and looked down at the plate, wondering how to save the situation.

  "Pecan?" he asked, smiling, and hoping that he could get this derailed evening back onto the tracks. Meg didn’t bother to look up at him, just picked at her plate.

  "Yeah. From White’s."

  Well, at least she was still speaking to him.

  "I used to love their stuff when I was a kid. I haven’t been able to find anything this good since I moved away."

  He cut off a big forkful covered with the whipped cream and chewed it slowly, hoping she’d speak. She just continued sitting, sullen, shoveling the pie into her mouth. Jay decided to take another tack. When he took his next bite of the pie, he made sure he lost a bit of the whipped cream on the tip of his nose as it headed for his mouth.

  "This is great, really. The whole meal, Meg."

  She looked up and began to laugh. "You’ve got something on your nose," she said as she leaned across the table to wipe off the dab of whipped cream with her napkin.

  When she was in close, Jay grabbed her wrist gently and guided her hand to his nose.

  "I loved the meal," he said with a smile, "I guess I was just thinking about work and what happened in town today. I’m sorry."

  He looked into her eyes and pulled her closer, bringing his lips to hers. They separated for a moment and then came back together in a deep snog. He was forgiven.

  CHAPTER 11

  Across town, Doctor George Franklin was having his dinner, too. Crumbs from his corned beef on rye fell onto the gray battleship linoleum floor as he worked on Charlie Harper’s autopsy report. The preparation room of Biederman's Mortuary was a stark, sterile place. It had tile running halfway up the walls and smelled of disinfectant.

  Franklin sat on a stool, filling out the report at a long counter set under glass-doored cabinets. They were filled with the tools of the embalmer’s trade. Long, pointy things, things with hoses. The things they didn’t tell people about. It might queer the sale of that ten-thousand-dollar funeral with the mahogany casket if one gave the suckers too much information about what they were doing to granddad in the backroom.

  He still wore the full-body apron he’d put on a few hours earlier when he’d begun the autopsy. His thick bifocals and bushy eyebrows gave him a sort of owlish look. In the center of the room, beneath a high-intensity lamp laid Charlie, covered with a white sheet.

  A chill blew into the room as one of the double service doors to the rear parking lot opened. Gary Nelson entered, stamping his feet on the rubber mat just inside. The door behind him didn’t close completely and it’s that, more than his arrival, which diverted Franklin’s attention from his work.

  "Shut the door, will you? You have to slam it when the weather’s like this. Bad enough I have to be here this late. I’m not going to freeze my ass off, too!"

  Nelson rubbed his hands together.

  "Gosh, I’m sorry, doc, but the boss wants this one bound up and closed as soon as possible."

  "Right. We don’t want to have any of those jackasses with skis from up on the mountain getting the wrong idea about our sweet little community," came the terse reply. Franklin took another bite of his sandwich.

&nb
sp; "Mind if I smoke?"

  The doctor picked his pen back up and shook his head.

  "No, but you might want to ask Mr. Harper what he thinks."

  Gary pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket, slipped one of them between his lips, and lit up.

  "So what have we got?"

  Franklin stuffed the last crust into his mouth and slipped down from his stool. He took a fresh pair of rubber gloves from a box on the counter.

  "It’s not very pretty."

  He pulled on the gloves with a crisp snap and walked over to the slab, motioning for Gary to follow.

  "Not exactly the sort of thing I’d have expected here and certainly nothing like anything else I’ve seen in the ten years I’ve been doing this job," he said, as he pulled the sheet down from Charlie’s face and torso. This exposed gaping, ragged wounds to his throat and chest.

  "Maybe in New York or Los Angeles, but not here."

  At the sight of the body, Gary’s jaw dropped and his cigarette fell from his lips.

  "Please, deputy, a little decorum."

  "I’m sorry, doc," Gary said, "I just hadn’t gotten such a good look at the body before now. No wonder Neame didn’t want to handle this himself. You know, usually he’d be all over something as high profile as this, but he’s kinda squeamish when it comes to this part of it."

  Nelson ground the butt into the linoleum and pulled another one from the pack. His hands had a slight tremor as he lit the cigarette.

  "You know, if you keep that up, I may be seeing you here," said the doctor.

  Gary crossed over to a corner of the embalming table. His face screwed up into the kind of look someone might give if they’d just found out their dog had died while taking a gulp from a carton of sour milk.

  "Jesus. What a mess." He took a step back and turned to Franklin. "So tell me a story."

  The doctor circled around to the other side of the table and began his litany.

  "From a gross observation of the wounds appearing on the body, I’d say the subject died from severe trauma and loss of blood."

  "No shit, doc," said the deputy.

  Franklin’s face turned red and he gave Gary a deadly look.

  "Listen! There are certain procedures that have to be followed in these things. Either we do this by the numbers or you can dig through my report on your own. You or your lazyass boss. I can guarantee you that it’ll be ten times worse than spending a few minutes with me now."

  Gary put up his hands as if to fend off a blow.

  "Alright, alright."

  Franklin continued, "A close inspection of the internal organs revealed an incipient case of…"

  "What?" asked Gary.

  "Early. An incipient case of duodenal ulcers. Also an advanced case of cirrhosis of the liver. Other than that, he had no major evidence of disease. Now wasn’t that better than wading through four pages of my handwriting?"

  "So what do you think caused his injuries? An animal?"

  Franklin walked back over to the side counter.

  "Ah, now this is where it gets really interesting."

  He came back to the table with a hinged model of human teeth, opened the jaws, and held them up to the wound on the cadaver’s throat.

  "Get a good look."

  Gary leaned in for a closer look as he held the teeth up to the tear.

  "Can you see how closely the pattern matches?"

  "But look at the size difference. I admit they look similar, but-"

  Franklin snapped the jaws shut in Gary’s face, causing him to jump back.

  "I’m not saying the person had to be this size, just that it could have been done by a human mouth."

  He set the model down on the table, then moved down the body to the gaping, ragged hole in Charlie’s chest. A sort of fire came into his eyes that one might see from a child opening a Christmas present.

  "Now. Take a look at this. I opened up the chest and guess what I found?"

  Gary shook his head.

  With an excited pitch up in his voice Franklin said, "The only organ missing was the heart. It looks like it was ripped out of the body."

  "Just like an animal," said Nelson.

  "No. Not like an animal. It couldn’t have been," Franklin retorted. He put his gloved hand into the hole in Charlie’s chest up to his wrist. "The wound is right below the sternum. An animal would have just torn into the body and gutted it. Whoever did this knew what they were looking for. The only damage to other organs inside the body cavity was incidental to this."

  Franklin slipped his hand back out of the body and then walked over to a trash can in the corner to throw his gloves away. The snap they made as he pulled them off was like an exclamation point.

  "I would say that the wound to his throat came first, though."

  "Why?"

  "Because tearing out someone’s voice box is a damned good way to keep them quiet. His heart was ripped out of him while he was still alive. I don’t know about you, but me, I’d scream like a banshee. And there’s something else."

  Gary crushed out his smoke and said, "I don’t like the sound of this."

  "Some of Jack Hauser’s wounds were similar to these. It’s possible that the same person got to him. Some animals could have come along later and gnawed on him. He laid there for what, a couple of days? I sent the autopsy photos to the state pathology lab for comparison."

  "That’s just great, doc. Wonderful. You know that the sheriff is gonna go off his nut." Gary held up his hands to frame the scene. "Cannibal Stalks Haddonfield."

  Franklin leaned back against the counter. "Well, I could be wrong."

  "I hope you are, but why do I get the feeling in my gut that it’s even worse than we think?" Gary walked over to the exit. As he opened it, he turned back and said, "Bring the report on over when you’re finished. He’s gonna want to see this for himself. Oh, and take plenty of pictures, too. He deserves a little payback for sending me to do this. That gutless bastard."

  CHAPTER 12

  The first thing Jay noticed the next morning was that he had had his first good night’s sleep in weeks. No dreams. No Frank staring up at him with those fear-filled eyes and clawing at the ice. The second was Meg, her arm draped across his chest, soft and warm, and her cheek snuggled up against his shoulder.

  He smiled as he ran his hand down her back and along the soft curves of her hip, the skin dappled by the morning light and shadows. He wasn’t sure whether he had made a mistake staying over. Maybe it wasn't wrong since he still had feelings for her after all this time. She had made it equally as obvious to him that she felt something for him.

  He would have liked to just stay there in bed with his arms around her, feeling her warmth against his skin, listening to her breathe, and thinking about the possibilities. The news that he saw the previous night precluded that, though. A quick check of the clock on the nightstand said it was eleven-fifteen. Half the day in bed and he needed to get downtown to see Gary about the man that they had pulled out of the alley.

  He untangled himself from her and sat up on the edge of the bed. A short scan of the scatter of clothes on the floor and he found his briefs. As he was pulling them on, Meg woke up and, moving over beside him, slipped her arms around him.

  She kissed his shoulder and asked, "How are you feeling?"

  "I’m great. It was great. I just… It’s late and there’s something I have to do."

  "Not even time for breakfast?"

  She kissed him on the shoulders and the nape of his neck, but he pulled himself away. He sorted through the mix of their clothes on the floor until he found his pants and shirt. As he zipped up his pants, he turned to her.

  "You don’t know how much I wish I could stay," he said, "but there’s someone that I have to meet. Some business."

  Meg lay back in the bed, a disappointed look on her face. Jay buttoned up his shirt and slipped on his shoes. He knew that look. Then she tried her pouty look, but this wouldn’t wait.

  "It’s really i
mportant," he said. "Please believe me when I say that I would love nothing better than to stay here with you, but this won’t wait."

  Jay leaned down to kiss her and she pulled him back onto the bed, not content to take no for an answer. He slipped loose and smiled down at her.

  "I promise I’ll call. It’s just that I have to get this out of the way."

  Meg rolled over with her back to him.

  "Okay," she pouted. "Fine."

  But as he went out the door and on his way, when she knew he wouldn’t see, she looked back over her shoulder. There was a twinkle in her pale blue eyes as a broad smile crossed her lips.

  When he stopped by the sheriff’s office looking for Gary, a deputy at the front counter had told him he could find him at Riley’s 50s Cafe. Jay looked up at the sign across the front with its girls in poodle skirts and wondered just what had become of his old hometown.

  When he stepped through the door, though, he found himself perfectly at home. Mike Riley had opened the place in the fifties. The decor had already been dated when Jay and the others used to stop in on the odd Saturday afternoon for burgers and fries.

  The long counter with the stools bolted to the floor was still there, as were the red leatherette booths with stainless steel tables covered in green Formica. They’d just been refurbished and the old linoleum tiles on the floor had been replaced with a new black and white checkerboard. The jukebox at the back of the cafe had been replaced with one that played compact disks. It was loudly blaring Chubby Checker’s "Twist".

  Gary was sitting by himself in one of the booths near the door eating a club sandwich and reading a newspaper. He folded the paper up and put it aside when Jay took a seat across from him.

  "Afternoon," said Jay. "I stopped over at the station and they told me you were over here."

  Gary’s face looked drawn. He had dark circles under his eyes and rubbed them as he spoke.

  "I was just about ready to head home. It was a rough night.

  You want anything?"

  "Just a cup of coffee, thanks."