Cold Dead Past

by John Curtis

  He put his brain to work to get his mind off the cold. The last couple of killings had taken place at times when he was awake. He hadn't had the experience that he had gone through the night the drunk was killed in the alley. That told him something; that Frank might only be able to get to him when he was asleep and vulnerable, unable to wall him out of his consciousness. It was too bad that he couldn't stay awake twenty-four hours a day without developing a bad crystal meth habit.

  Meg’s car finally pulled into the driveway. He was unhappy that Abe had hitched a ride with her. That old protective feeling had come over him since they had been back together. He didn't like having her in such a potentially fatal situation. What was worse was that when things got bad, he might not be able to keep her from getting hurt and he knew it.

  When the Mustang pulled up to the curb, Abe was stowed uncomfortably in the back seat. Seeing his obvious discomfort brought a smile to Jay's face and he laughed to himself. The grim old elf was bundled up in one of those big parkas that made the wearer look like the Michelin Man. With the hood up, the fur lining fringed his face so that you couldn’t tell where his beard began. His knees were jammed up into his chin because the front passenger seat was still pushed all the way back from the last time Jay had ridden in the car.

  As he climbed into the car, Jay could also see that Abe had on a set of those black galoshes that every kid’s mother made them wear before there were fancy ski boots, the ones that had the thin, black metal clips that snapped all up the front.

  Abe caught Jay’s gaze and gave out a grunt. "What? You haven’t seen someone dressed for the winter before? I’m a lot better prepared than you are. You’re going to freeze your skinny white ass off." He was right, probably, but here with Meg, with the heater turned up full blast, Jay wasn’t thinking of that.

  Meg turned to Jay and said, "Ignore him. I have. He’s been making snide remarks the whole way here. I don’t think he’s a morning person."

  Abe picked up a thermos from the seat beside him, unscrewed the plastic cup and lid from the top, then held it out across the console between the front seats.

  Meg leaned away from it as if it were a snake.

  "Jesus, no, I have to drive." She turned to Jay once again. "I swear that it’s half brandy. He offered it to me when I picked him up. I took one sip and almost choked."

  Abe settled back into the seat and carefully poured out a measure into the plastic cup. "A tragic waste of good cognac on an unappreciative palate."

  Meg glanced into the rearview mirror. "What’ll be tragic is what’ll happen to you if you spill any of that on my seats. I still have six months to run on the lease and they charge outrageous fees for damage."

  Abe harrumphed and said, "Don't get so excited about petty things." He arched his brows and continued, darkly, "I've had a chance to think about it since we spoke. I’m not so sure we won’t have to make a trip to Gene’s." He punctuated his remark with a loud, slurping sip from his cup.

  "But, it's like you said. The cops will have torn through everything from top to bottom," said Jay. "They’d be sure to find signs of what he’s been doing. And what are you doing bringing her along?" He pointed at Meg.

  "I have no doubt that the police in this town are very efficient when writing speeding tickets, but they have no experience, I think, in dealing with necromancy." He sucked in a deep breath. "You think that someone who is involved with something like this is going to hide what he’s doing in his kitchen cupboard? No. And as far as bringing Meg along, I think that it's only prudent to have as many allies to help us fight this thing as we can."

  Before either of them could continue, Meg interrupted angrily, through gritted teeth, "And what's wrong with my coming along?"

  "Well, nothing. I mean I... I know this town, too, remember. I spent a big part of my life here."

  Meg blasted him, fire in her eyes, "But where have you been for the past fifteen years, Jay?"

  Abe downed the remainder of the coffee with a single gulp as his eyes followed the panorama rolling past his window. They darted to the argument in the front seats and then back to the view out the window.

  "We don't need this now, you two. Meg has a point, Jay. You haven't been back to this town in years. She's going to be much better acquainted with the dynamics of the people here."

  "I wasn't trying to be insulting or anything," replied Jay, sotto voce. "I was just concerned about her getting mixed up in the middle of something that wasn't really her business. It's something to do with me, after all."

  "But it is my business," interjected Meg. "It became my business the first time you climbed back into my bed and I fell in love with you all over again. You idiot!"

  Abe rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, my."

  There was a long, pregnant pause while Jay and Meg stared into each other's eyes. Jay hadn't considered her feelings. Now he was feeling the consequences. The only thing that he could think of was to change the subject. He turned to Abe in the back seat.

  "Okay. So why the early callout?"

  Meg wasn’t about to lose the initiative. She trampled Abe’s reply, "The sheriff’s station. You need to talk to Gary and weasel information out of him."

  Jay shifted uncomfortably in his seat and frowned. "Why me?"

  She shook her head. "Because you’re a man, silly. And a writer. You forget that that counts for a lot, still, in some places. And being a writer, you can get away with asking stupid questions as research for a new book or something."

  Jay didn't much like this switch that she was pulling. One minute she was pissed off about his wanting to protect her because it offended her. The next she was batting her eyelashes like a southern debutante.

  Was this type of manipulation what he would have to deal with for the rest of his life? And when, exactly, had he decided that he had a lifetime commitment? The best thing he could come up with in answer to these important questions was a shrug. He was caught.

  "I guess I could make something up. I sure can’t tell him the real reason that I’m asking. What if they haven’t found what we need? What then?"

  Abe turned away from the window. "Then we go back to Plan A."

  Jay didn't know they had gotten to the point where they had enough plans to begin designating them with letters of the alphabet.

  When they pulled up in front of the station, most of the media had disappeared. A couple of the television reporters were doing stand-ups off to the side of the station entrance for their early morning news segments, but the rest had slunk back under the rocks where they had come from until the next feeding.

  Jay took a deep breath as he opened the car door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He didn’t like lying, really. He knew he was bad at it. He would have thought that as a writer, he could have gotten over that, but writing wasn’t really lying. It was telling someone a story. Lying had so much more psychology invested into it. You knew that a lie was a matter of survival. Your adrenaline shot through your veins like some hot speed. Your mind raced at a mile a minute, constantly checking and evaluating the response of the person you were talking to.

  A lie is unscripted and improvised. There was a reason they used your galvanic skin response on those so-called lie detectors. You didn’t sweat when you were writing a book unless it was a hot, humid day and the air conditioning was out. The worst that a writer could be accused of was theft of a snippet of conversation or a bit of someone else’s life.

  His quick sketching-out of what to do once he was inside was interrupted by Abe, who’d rolled down the window and now had his face framed in the open space. Why was it he knew just the right time to interrupt?

  "Don’t sweat it. Just tell your friend that you’re working on a novel about satanic cults."

  "Right," Jay answered, acidly," and would you like me to maybe get a stool sample from Gene?"

  Abe laughed and replied, "A big, steamy one."

  When Jay stepped through the door, the blast of warm air immediately set his ears, whic
h hadn’t quite warmed up in the car, to tingling and burning. The only person visible was a stout deputy with a turkey neck who was seated at a desk, working on a crossword puzzle. In pen. A reader, he thought to himself. Or an idiot savant.

  Jay pulled off his gloves, stepped up to the counter, and rapped on it with his knuckles. He could see the deputy’s lips purse for a moment before he looked up. Jay thought he saw the pen hand tense up for just a fleeting moment.

  When the deputy looked up, Jay made eye contact and said, "Pretty cold today. Is Gary Nelson in?"

  The deputy’s eyes shifted away to his puzzle and then pulled back to focus on Jay. "Yeah, but he was up all night and he’s trying to get some shut-eye."

  "Hmmm… That’s too bad. I’m a friend of his and I’m working on a new book idea. I wanted to talk to him about these murders. Sort of research, you know?"

  The deputy looked Jay up and down, sort of the way someone would check out the rungs of a ladder before they climbed up to clean out the gutters.

  "Well, you do look kinda familiar. Like somebody I’ve seen on one of those talk shows. But I don’t know."

  "Are you into horror stories? I see you do the crossword. You must read a little bit. I’m a horror writer. ‘Razor Blades’, ‘Dark Wind’. Stuff like that."

  "Naw. My wife likes that kinda stuff. I’m more a Tom Clancy man. I like to think."

  Jay’s mental laugh meter registered an eighty-six. His lips curled up into a smile. He held out his hand to the deputy and said, "Jay Putnam. Hey, I bet your wife has my book at home. Maybe we could work a deal."

  The deputy’s eyes rolled back in his head and shifted from side to side as he thought for a moment. "Come to think of it, I think she did say somethin’ about you. You’re local, aren’t you?"

  "Well, I used to be. Now how about that deal?"

  "I don’t know, Mr. Putnam. I could get into a heap of trouble." He looked over his shoulder as Troy Dexter dropped a trash can at the back of the office with a bang.

  Jay leaned in and with a conspiratorial air said, "Well, no one has to know. I bet your wife would love to have a copy of my new book. Autographed. It would make you a hero. Am I right?"

  The deputy stopped to think and it was at that exact moment that the patch of sweat that had congealed in the hairs at the base of Jay's spine decided to form into a large droplet and roll slowly down the crack of his ass.

  "Mebbe so. What kinds of things were you interested in knowin’?"

  When Jay came out of the station twenty minutes later, Abe was dozing in the back seat. He woke with a start when Jay slammed the door.

  "Jesus, man!"

  "I didn’t talk to Gary."

  Meg checked her watch. "But you were in there for, like, half an hour."

  "I said I didn’t get to talk to Gary. He was asleep, so I greased one of the other cops pretty good." He said, over his shoulder, to Abe, "You owe Mrs. Benita Swanson an autographed copy of my book."

  "I’ll take care of it. I know where to bill you. What did you find out?"

  Jay pulled on his gloves, wiggling his fingers to make sure they were snug. "They’ve got nothing. They tore that house from top to bottom and didn’t find anything like what we’re loooking for."

  Meg hadn’t run the heater in the time he’d been inside and his mission had left him soaked in perspiration. He could feel his clothes, cold and clammy against his skin. He turned to Meg. "Hey, could you turn up the heat in here?" Then he turned to Abe and held out his hand. "Give me a cup of that high test coffee, then."

  Meg started the car and turned the heater up full blast. As Abe poured Jay’s drink, he said, "Well, then, back to Plan A."

  CHAPTER 24

  That evening, Jay was back out in the bitter cold waiting for Meg to pick him up. This time, though, he was better prepared for the weather. He had forsaken the designer shoes for a thirty dollar pair of work boots from Payless and hit the Wal-Mart for some heavy wool socks and a parka.

  Still, though, he paced. "Plan A. Shit."

  He shook his head. This whole thing was a nutty idea concocted by an old crackpot in a bookstore. That’s what Jay wanted to believe. Gene was the one who did it. The dreams were all a coincidence. Frank wasn’t back. And Haddonfield was the same rosy Land of Oz he’d lived in when he was a kid.

  When Meg finally arrived, she threw open the passenger door of the car. "Ready?"

  She looked in her rearview mirror and pulled away from the curb. "You know," Jay said, "I have nothing against the police, but I don’t think that even Gene would be foolish enough to put whatever we’re looking for in his underwear drawer."

  "Abe said he had some more research to do. I think it’s going to be a late night. He pulled out that box of booze bottles he keeps in the back room."

  Jay rolled his eyes. "Well, I guess he isn’t expecting us to have any trouble."

  "He said it’s something to do with Frank’s makeup. He’s always killed at night. Nocturnal. No idea what he does during the rest of the time he’s awake, but apparently he gets hungry on a schedule."

  "Just like a baby."

  "Abe thinks that tonight we should be safe."

  "Since when did you become such a big believer in Abe?"

  "Well, he’s really all we’ve got, isn’t he?"

  They drove the rest of the way to Gene’s in silence. Jay was half-expecting Frank to jump out from the side of the road. The xenon lamps on the car threw out a bright light that caused harsh shadows. It left pitch dark pools in the spaces between and behind the trees which stood like sentinels along the edge of the road. Anything could be in there. Jay shuddered.

  The Jordans had built their house in the middle of nowhere. The only way to reach it was via a crowned county road that snaked through the hills above the town. It was barely two lanes during good weather. If you weren’t careful in the snow, you could easily slide off into a ditch and be stuck until the next county plow came by, which could be hours. Or days. Jay shuddered again.

  "Take it easy, would you?" His foot mashed into where a brake pedal would have been if he were driving. Meg had always had a lead foot and she was going at least ten miles an hour faster than allowed for by the driving conditions. Jay could feel his whole body tense. His fingers dug into the side of his seat cushion.

  "So, did you remember the flashlights?" he asked.

  He cringed when she took one of her hands off the steering wheel and reached back behind his seat. When she pulled it back, it held a heavy plastic sack which she dropped into his lap.

  "Ouch! Jesus, Meg! Watch what the hell you’re doing." She just laughed, which irritated Jay. "You’re really nuts, you know? Slow down a little. Please?"

  The whir of the engine died down to a low drone as she let up on the accelerator. Jay dug into the sack and pulled out two Mag Lites. Big, expensive ones and the batteries to go with them. He struggled with the heat-sealed plastic packages.

  "Whoever invented this fucking packaging should be shot," he grumbled.

  He spent the rest of the trip with one eye on the road while nervously fumbling around with the batteries. She slowed the car to a crawl and then coasted past the drive when they reached the house, shutting off the lights and braking to a stop about twenty feet up the road.

  They looked toward the house. The porch light had been left on, but there weren’t any signs of activity. Just some crime scene tape stretched across the driveway.

  Jay turned to Meg. "Well, it looks clear." She started the car and did a quick three point turnaround, driving right through the crime scene tape as if it were the ribbon at the end of a marathon. They parked at the back of the house in case there were any sheriff’s patrols. The rear of the house was dark except for what looked like an automatic nightlight shining in a corner of the kitchen window.

  The first thing Jay noticed when he stepped out of the car was how quiet it was. Living in the city, he’d forgotten how the snow could deaden the sound and how empty the woods seemed in the
winter. There weren’t even sounds from night birds like the owls, which still would have been around. Godforsaken. The term had a real meaning here. He could just imagine Gene living here, alone, for years. Maybe it was wrong to give him a bad rap over what he’d done.

  Jay shook off that idea. Any sane person knew instinctually that what Gene had done was wrong. Dead is dead. It doesn’t matter how lonely you are or what feelings of guilt you may have. You just don’t fuck with the laws of nature because you miss a member of the family. That’s what memories are for. If there were such a thing as evil, then the process by which Frank was returned to the world of the living was it.

  Suddenly, the two of them were hit by a blinding white light. They hadn’t noticed the police cruiser sitting in the shadows next to the old garage. Gary had sent the Dexters out to "guard" the crime scene as part of their ongoing rehabilitation.

  The twins, hoping to get back to what they considered real police work, called headquarters and hustled their charges into the house to wait. Meg sat with her arms wrapped round herself, her coat laid out on the floor as she sat on the front hall steps.

  Jay leaned against the wall next to the door rubbing his wrist where Roy Dexter had grabbed him and yanked him along through the snow. Now the Dexters stood in front of the door, eyeing him and Meg vacantly, sneers curling their carbon copy lips.

  The hulking twins jumped out of the way as the door opened and Gary's voice boomed out, "What the hell are the two of you doing here?" He hadn't been expecting anything to actually happen at the house once Gene had been taken into custody. When the Dexters had called, he was in the middle of his first deep sleep since Charlie Harper had been killed.

  "We heard that you arrested Gene," said Jay.

  "That doesn’t answer my question." Gary's eyes turned all steely and his jaw was set tight like an overwound watchspring. "Well, it doesn’t matter why you’re here. We’re in the middle of a homicide investigation and you’re going to have to leave. Right now."