by John Curtis
Gary dangled the evidence bag in front of his face like bait on a line. "I have enough to bring him in on suspicion."
The coroner heaved himself up out of his seat. "Well, if you can bring him in and I can get a bite impression, then I think we’ve got him. And not a moment too soon. These early mornings are a bitch." He yawned and covered his mouth with the back of his hand as Gary stood up and leaned across the table to give his other hand a single, firm pump.
"Thanks, doc."
After Franklin had exited the office, Gary picked up the phone handset and pressed a button. The voice of the deputy from the duty room buzzed through the speaker as he rubbed at the bags under his eyes.
"Yeah."
"Jack, I’m heading out. Did the sheriff call in yet?"
"No. I’m not really expecting him to, but did you have a message in case he does?"
"Okay. That’s all right. I’ll find him myself."
After he hung up, Gary leaned back in his chair and surveyed the pile of papers on his desk. He picked up the piece of cloth in its plastic bag next to them and wondered whether the solution had come a bit too easily.
He had always thought that contrary to popular opinion, Gene wasn’t as dumb as he made out. He should have realized the significance of something like the patch left at the scene of the crime. Clues can sometimes fall into an investigator’s lap, but in all his experience, he’d never seen anything like this.
Gary scooped up the papers on his desk and packed them back neatly into the envelope. He shoved, the bag with the piece of cloth into the pocket of his coat as he headed out the door for his meeting with Neame.
CHAPTER 19
When Jay and Meg stepped out of Abe’s shop into the sharp night air, it was late. The traffic lights at the nearby intersection had begun their nightly yellow strobe of "caution caution caution". At this moment, he couldn’t think of a more appropriate sign. Meg shivered and he reflexively took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. She looked up at him and gave him a nod as they headed down the street.
The thought of saying "I told you so" flickered through his mind for a short moment, but he didn’t give in to it. Instead, he pulled her up closer and slipped his arm around her waist.
Janice Hobbs didn’t have any warning lights as she stumbled out the door of the Longbow as Gary drove up. She bumped into Gary right before she rounded the corner and headed down the dark side street. Gary barely noticed her in passing, but he was well acquainted with her record.
She had a face like a ruddy, rutted road. Her specialty was cadging drinks from the regulars in exchange for a little slap and tickle in the men’s restroom. If she struck it lucky, she'd end up spending the night in a dark motel room with someone who would regret it in the morning when he woke up looking into that face of hers with its gap-toothed smile.
Not much success for her tonight. Everyone knew what had happened to Charlie and it had kept them sullen and sober. Her only saving grace was that she’d gotten her disability check, which she proceeded to turn into liquid assets.
Prime time for her had been from five, when the shift changed at the pulp mill, until around eleven. She’d learned long before that once her jaws began to tighten up and she felt a tingling when she took a sip of her drink of choice, Colt 45 malt liquor, it was time to move on.
Now she cursed the darkness. Roots had caused the sidewalk ahead of her to heave, like waves on an angry sea. She would ascend one side, come over the crest, and descend into a deep, inky trough. Her canvas sneakers scooped up snow as she dragged her left leg along behind her.
She cursed the man who’d decided that it was a good idea to plant shade trees so close to the sidewalk. She cursed whoever had killed Charlie for forcing her to spend her own money on booze. She didn’t realize that if she had turned just one-hundred-and-twenty degrees to her right, she’d have had a chance to tell him in person.
Frank’s first swipe hit her square and hard in the back of her head, sending her pitching forward. She hit the icy concrete hard. What was left of her brown, rotting front teeth were forced from their moorings. She could feel them rolling around on her tongue like little pebbles coated with a salty, coppery sauce.
Janice was like a rag doll, her arms flapping out loosely at her sides as Frank rolled her over. As soon as she was face up, he dropped onto her chest, digging his knees into her ribs. His lips parted into a wide, open-mouthed grin as his teeth dug into her neck, crushing her larynx. He clawed into her with his fingers until he could feel her still-beating heart.
She had just enough time to gurgle a final "fuck you" to the world and spit in his face before all went black.
Back at the Longbow, Gary had found Neame. The bar was hot and smelled of sweat and damp wool. He liked to hold court at a table at the rear of the bar when he was drinking. Gary caught a whiff of urine wafting from the rest room. When he reached Neame's side, he was holding forth, telling tales to his select group of sycophants.
The sheriff was his own worst enemy when it came to protecting privileged information, mostly because he enjoyed the fact that the more he talked, the more free drinks he received. He was a cheap bastard. When Gary walked up, he was in the middle of telling them what was known about Charlie’s case and how the girl they’d found and maybe even Jack Hauser were killed by the same person.
All Gary could do was grit his teeth and set his jaw. Working with the sheriff was now physically manifested by the dull ache he had every morning in the muscles on the side of his face. The city had ended up paying hundreds of dollars in dental bills.
Sometimes he thought it would just be cheaper for the taxpayers if someone were to arrange for an accident for his boss. Nothing deadly. Just enough to put him in a permanent vegetative state. It wouldn’t be anything he wasn’t used to already. Few people would notice the difference until election time.
The only good thing about his superior’s habit was that he was a functional drunk. As long as you fed him his lines, he didn’t embarrass you too much and could remember the facts as long as you pounded them into his head by repeating them frequently and using a lot of visual aids. Luckily, tonight, he had both and Neame had gotten started on his binge late in the evening. He was only on his fourth Jack and Coke.
The sheriff was still laughing at some lame joke about a lesbian carpenter when he looked up at Gary and said, "Hey, man, why don’t you pull up a chair and join us?"
Gary held up the envelope and folder with both hands and shook his head. "No, I think that you and I need to have a talk about this alone, sir."
The sheriff pursed his lips tight, then addressed the rest of the table. "How about you boys let us be for a while? Important police business." The barflies’ chairs scraped the well-worn floor tiles, trumpeting their departure as they slunk back to their places at the bar.
The coroner's package landed on the table with a dull thud. The weight of it caused the empty beer bottles to jump and clink together like crystal wind chimes.
"That’s a porker," said Neame. "You looked it over?"
"Enough to know that all the crimes are related, like we suspected. And then there’s this."
Gary pulled the evidence bag containing the piece of cloth from his pocket and pushed it across the table. Neame slapped his hand down on it and dug into his shirt pocket for his cheap pair of reading glasses. He flipped them open with a flourish and made a production number out of sliding them so that they rested on the tip of his nose. He still had to hold the bag at arm’s length, though, to be able to read the patch.
Neame set down the patch and began sliding the papers out of the envelope, a few at a time.
"So I heard you had a little meeting at the mayor’s," said Gary.
Neame looked up at him over the top of his glasses. "Yeah."
Just then, a smelly-drunk, brown-toothed man in plaid walked past on his way to the rest room. "Hi, sheriff," he slurred. Neame shifted his eyes toward the interloper and gave a quick politician's grin and
a wave. "Hi, how you doing?"
"Anyway," said Neame, turning back to Gary, "Sawyer and Maitland were in town this week up at the inn and that little girl we found out there on the county road was the girlfriend of one of their guests. Rich city people."
"Shit," said Gary.
"Yeah. So you can imagine how I had to do some quick dancing around." He tapped his fingers on the evidence bag. "Can we get him? I gotta come up with something to keep them satisfied or it’s my ass."
"Well the doc said that if we can bring him in and get a judge to agree to it, we can do a bite impression. He would probably be able to get a match."
"Probably? I want an ironclad certainty. I want this closed up yesterday."
Gary knew what this conversation was leading up to. He didn’t like it. He heard stories about how things had been done before he had joined the department. He knew that when his boss said something like this, he was really hinting that he wanted a way found that wasn’t exactly above board and legal. He had tried to cover for Neame's baser instincts, but it wasn’t always easy.
It had been years since there had been a murder in Haddonfield. Now, there had been three in quick succession. Gary actually felt sort of sorry for Neame. The sheriff had never had to deal with anything more taxing than kissing some ass over a parking ticket given to one of the wealthy weekenders by a deputy too dumb to know better. But Gary took his oath seriously and wouldn’t lie, cheat, steal, or frame any man for anybody.
"Nothing’s a certainty," he said.
Neame’s face dropped. A shadow fell across his eyes as the lids closed to slits. "Wrong answer" writ large in pudgy pink.
CHAPTER 20
Jay could feel Meg’s hand squeezing back tightly against his as they walked down the deserted street. The leather palm of her glove crushed against his bare skin felt plush and urgent.
He knew the feeling well. When they’d been together in college, he’d developed a penchant for taking her to see thrillers because of it. He liked the feeling that he was the man and in control, the one she clung to for protection. But this was different from taking her to see the latest Hollywood horror show. There was real blood and gore here and an enemy he didn’t know how to fight.
He turned to her and asked, "Are you alright?"
If the pause had been pregnant, it would have been an elephant. It went on for several more blocks until they’d reached the dark zone where the fingers of light from the street lamps dimmed out and the bright sodium lamps from the hotel hadn’t yet taken over. As soon as they’d crossed the line where the last pool of light ended in a fuzzy edge, she turned to him.
"Why do you think he’s doing this?"
He looked into her eyes, but there were none. She’d been turned into a blank by the halo of light at her back, as if someone had taken a cookie cutter and stamped her form, leaving a void. All he could do was look deeply into it and shake his head. They’d reached the well-lit safety of the hotel’s front porch before he realized that he’d quickened their and she’d had to trot to keep up with him.
By the time Janice’s body had been found by a resident taking out his trash the next morning, it had become frozen fast to the sidewalk, embedded in hardened slush the color of a tropical punch Slurpee.
The first officer to reach the scene hadn’t recognized her, so he’d tried to turn over the body at the only spot where he’d been able to get a handhold, the spot where her long dress ended and her exposed ankle began. Unfortunately, all he succeeded in doing was ripping off a strip of flesh and exposing her shinbone.
By the time Gary arrived, Neame had shown up and made an executive decision. A couple of deputies were ferrying pans and bowls of hot water from a nearby house and pouring them on the ice. Gary saw Franklin standing off to the side in the gutter, arms crossed, and walked over to him.
"Hello, doc," he muttered.
"I don’t blame you for being grim. This is actually kind of amusing, though, when you consider the circumstances. I mean, it’s not a joking matter, but the solution was pure brilliance. I’m just appreciating the irony."
Gary looked around. The sun was up and the sky was clear, but it was too cold for any lookie-loos. Only a few disembodied heads peeked out from behind curtains in the immediate vicinity. This time, Neame had done things right and blocked off both ends of the street, inconveniencing a few people going to and from work, but otherwise keeping the crime scene as sanitized as possible. There wasn’t going to be a repeat of the circus that popped up around Charlie Harper.
The sheriff joined them at curbside and said, through a yawn, "Okay. I think we got it now. You wanna take a look?"
"We better, I suppose," said the doctor.
Gary grabbed his elbow and helped steady him over a patch of ice. When they got to the side of the body, it was settled into a four-inch-deep pool of water. The fruit punch had leeched out into the snow surrounding it for almost a foot all around.
Franklin squatted next to the body, checking to make sure his long overcoat didn’t drag in the ruddy muck made where someone had vomited next to the corpse. Then, he settled a gloved hand on the body’s shoulder, took a deep breath, and rolled it over onto its side. He turned to the small group of deputies gathered round in a circle.
"Does anyone recognize this woman?"
One hesitant hand rose from the crowd and a young, pimply-faced man with his hat askew pushed his way through from behind the back of the group.
"I know her. That’s Miz Hobbs. I seen her down at the Longbow. Lots. Sometimes with the sheriff."
Neame turned his head and coughed. Under his breath he said, "Yeah. That looks like Janice, all right."
Franklin let the body settle back down to its original position. He leaned in to take a look at the wounds evident on the back and neck. He slipped and one of the deputies had to jump forward to steady so that he didn’t fall on top of the corpse.
"Dammit," he exclaimed. "When are we gonna get back to people dying in their beds?" He turned and gave the sheriff a cold look before returning to his examination.
CHAPTER 21
Jay sat up on one elbow and looked down at Meg beside him on the bed. Their love-making the night before had been clinging, rushed, as if she were trying to bind him to her. He knew what she was thinking. That there was something coming that would take him from her again. He didn’t intend on that happening. He’d resolved that no matter what, he wouldn’t be leaving her this time. She woke up and he was the first thing she saw.
"You know," he said, "you don’t have anything to worry about. I’m not about to take a runner like the last time."
She laughed and rolled over onto her back. "You’re awfully conceited, mister. How do you know I wasn’t thinking about how what’s going on will affect business?"
He settled on his back with his arms folded across his chest on top of the comforter. "I just know. I let this unfinished business hurt you, us, once and I’m not going to let it happen again. And it’s concern, not conceit."
She rolled over onto her stomach and draped her arm across his body. "I’m not sure that you’re crazy yet, so I’ll go along with this for a while." They had both slept through the early news accounts of Janice Hobbs and her unfortunate demise.
By the early afternoon, reporters had descended on the police station like a swarm of eager cockroaches, clicking and scraping until they’d eaten Neame down to a bare nerve. He’d already received three calls from the mayor and had to put up with smartass remarks from the coroner.
Now Neame had what he needed to get them all off of his back. It took just an hour to get the district attorney and Judge Rheingelder together and obtain an arrest warrant for Gene. Now the sheriff and Gary were sitting warm in a cruiser outside his place.
It was a big, wood-framed Victorian that looked like it could have been vacant. The siding was weathered and covered in chipped and bubbled paint. The screen door on the front hung loose on one hinge and a couple of the windows had plywood covering up w
here the glass should have been. No lights were visible, but when they’d checked the back of the house, they had seen Gene moving around in the kitchen making his dinner.
The sheriff even brought insurance. Roy and Troy Dexter, twins who were reserve deputies and had played as linemen for Haddonfield High were along tonight. They were both six-foot-two and had to turn sideways to fit through a doorway. They had been on Neame’s shit list since they beat up a tourist who gave them some lip over a traffic ticket on the Fourth of July. He hesitated to use them for anything delicate, but this was a special case. Neame growled out his instructions as they leaned in close to the open car window.
"Okay, I don’t want any screwups. We’re going to get this son of a bitch. I want you two to go round back. Gary and I will take the front. We all know what he’s done, so don’t hesitate to shoot if you feel like he’s going to get away."
He had thrown in that last bit knowing that the Dexters were a little dumb and trigger-happy. Maybe they would eliminate the need for a trial. They nodded their understanding and trudged off through the snow for the back of the house. He could almost hear the peas in their skulls rattle.
Neame and Gary took the front of the house. The snow creaked and squeaked beneath their weight as they approached the front porch, Neame’s acrid breath puffing out in front of him like the spew from a refinery making creosote.
Gary pulled his gun from its holster as he reached the door, with the sheriff huffing his way to a vantage point on the other side of the entryway. The sheriff clutched his riot gun tightly, like it was a fire-spitting cobra waiting to wriggle free from his stubby fingers.
The light in the front hall flashed on just as Gary rang the door bell. Then the porch light flickered and buzzed to life. It bathed them in an anemic yellow glimmer dimmed by many years’ accumulation of dead bugs and dust.