Mortal Remains

by Peter Clement

  She grabbed his hand again, her grip even stronger than before. “Fine. Of course you’re angry. Now tell me your nightmare.”

  Jesus, is there no stopping her? “You really want to hear this? Fine!” Let her have the story with both barrels, he thought, then watch her run for the hills. “I was riding my bike around town one evening, when there was a big explosion. I raced toward the sound, and saw smoke and flames from his office-”

  She silenced him with a finger again. “Lose the anger, Mark.” Her pupils pulsed wide, filling her gaze with a soft darkness that sucked the fight right out of him.

  He took a breath and continued. “I skidded to a stop, jumped off, and ran toward a crowd standing in a circle. They were looking at something. No one saw me or barred the way, and I managed to push between somebody’s legs. At first I didn’t even realize the black thing in front of me was a body. But then his eyes opened, and they looked right at me. At that instant someone grabbed me, tried to put their arms around me so I couldn’t see, and kept saying it would be all right. I think they started to take me away, and I don’t know what else I actually saw or only thought I did. But I could still hear. The sounds coming out his throat were the same high-pitched squeaks we heard tonight, except they went on and on, and no one did anything about it. I kept looking around for my dad, expecting him to run up and help. It was only when he didn’t come that I realized who…” He felt his throat constrict.

  “Go on.”

  Her voice came from somewhere outside what he was seeing. He could never tell if he’d actually witnessed this part, or he’d built it up over the years in his imagination, his mind, his nightmares. In front of him lay his father, straining to breathe. Enough of his clothing had burned off that the underlying skin of his chest, already laid raw with the heat, rippled, then split open to the muscle with the effort. The man arched forward and reached toward him, the whites of his eyes bulging out of his carbon face, imploring him for help.

  “Go on,” he heard her say again.

  “… I started to scream, broke free, and ran. They found me hiding in the basement of this house. I’ve been trying to erase that sound, that smell, those eyes ever since. Tonight just…” He couldn’t talk anymore. The tears he’d fought back while working on Nell met no resistance this time, and a sob, raw and loud as an animal’s bellow, broke free from deep within his chest.

  Her arms were around him in a flash.

  “No one helped,” he gasped when he got his breath. “They just stood around and watched him die.” He tried to wipe his eyes and stifle his crying, but she kept telling him that it was okay, and her cool fingers stroked the side of his face. She cradled his head so closely that her hair fell around him in a sheltering bower, and the soothing sound of her heartbeat filled his ears.

  He looked up and gently cupped his palm over her cheek. She turned her head slightly, brought her lips to his fingertips, and softly kissed them, keeping her eyes locked on his, not allowing him to evade the truth of these seconds. They remained huddled side by side, cocooned in each other’s embrace, straddling a distance far greater than the reach of their arms.

  He lay back and drew her on top of him, and kissed her, and was kissed by her, a fearless gentle kiss.

  A mile down the road a red car stood parked under a grove of poplar trees, its windows well frosted by the breathing of the three men who waited inside.

  A fourth carrying night goggles walked up to the passenger side and got in the front seat. The driver finished talking on his cellular and snapped it shut. “No phone calls, neither on the land line nor his cellular. They may have figured out we’re listening,” he said to the newcomer.

  “It doesn’t matter. Roper loaded up the Jeep with shovels. Looks like they’re going digging.”

  “He’s coming now?” the man behind him asked, sounding surprised.

  “All I can tell you is he’s ready to break ground. That means we need to get there and wait for him to show up.”

  The other man in the backseat muttered, “Well, god damn. I didn’t think he’d take the bait to that extent.”

  The driver started the motor and turned the defroster on full blast. “I guess this time we played him just about perfectly.”

  Chapter 18

  Saturday, November 24, 2:30 A.M.

  Hampton Junction

  The beam from Lucy’s headlamp sliced through snowflakes big as polka dots as she followed the road in through the woods. Barely a foot had accumulated on the ground, but the stickiness of it made the trek hard going and transformed the branches overhead into a giant corridor of curved white ribs. It was her first time on the grounds, but Mark had pointed out the entrance several times.

  She had awakened about an hour ago, languidly stretched, and left Mark sleeping in their bed – she paused. Their bed. She liked the sound of that, and savored the memory of his naked body against hers.

  Her feelings for Mark confused her. She’d had lovers before. It had been a way to keep sane at the front of a war zone, losing herself in the embrace of a man she liked and respected, with no illusions about the future. Before that, in medical school, she’d had little time for sweethearts, though sex with the right friend on occasion had been comforting during that ordeal as well. Yet with every man she’d shared her bed, she always knew how ephemeral their affair would be even as they first began to make love.

  She’d hadn’t felt that with Mark. Nor did his evident experience as a lover remind her of the other women he’d had. Rather the way he gave himself to her so wantonly let her respond in kind and made their lovemaking all the more special, as if it erased all the times before.

  She even liked the edginess she felt in him as he wavered between wanting to bolt from Hampton Junction or staying to practice in his father’s footsteps. It excited her, because as he stood torn by those two extremes, he still exuded the aura of a man with a spine of steel in him, and a moral compass that would point true north no matter what.

  And when he was ready, they would talk more about his father’s death. She’d already decided not to raise the possibility Cam Roper had been murdered until Mark could bring it up himself.

  But she had also sensed something else. Afterward, as she lay in his arms, she felt a wariness in him that saddened her, a watchfulness as part of him sealed itself off. He still didn’t entirely trust her.

  Back in his kitchen she’d made herself a thermos of tea, then, having dressed warmly, grabbed one of the headlamps along with a few other items, switched all the garden tools Mark had selected from his Jeep to her station wagon, and fishtailed out his driveway onto the road.

  And here she trudged, having decided to prove herself to him once and for all.

  Her frosty breath rose straight up, weaving among the tumbling flakes in the windless night, and the squeaky crunch of her boots on the frozen snow carried in the frosty air. The sound was audible for a long way, which meant she would just as easily hear anyone sneaking around the woods. It reminded her of similar nights in Bosnia, when her medical team had to go out on emergencies, and they knew for sure men with guns were everywhere. Now that had been scary. This felt like a walk in the park. The last thing Braden would expect was for anyone to show up at this hour.

  She walked into the clearing and saw the hulking, gray building looming at its center as if waiting for her. It looked exactly the way Mark had described. At least she didn’t have to go inside.

  She picked her way through the shrub growth until she reached where it bordered spindly stalks of dormant grass. The perimeter of the lawn he’d talked about, she figured. Walking a few dozen yards farther in, she proceeded to tramp down a twelve-foot square. She then selected a half-moon garden edger from the tools she’d carried with her and sliced the area into six-foot lengths of sod. As she’d expected this time of year, the ground hadn’t frozen yet. Using the blade to pry up the end of one piece, she gave herself a handhold and pulled. It took some additional cutting and slicing, along with a lot o
f heavy tugging, but she ripped it out more or less intact. Rolling it up and laying it aside, she got to work on the rest. Within half an hour she’d lifted two dozen rolls of turf, exposing moist black earth underneath. Luckily the flakes dissolved on contact with the wet surface.

  She fished a rolled-up newspaper from an inside pocket of her jacket and spread it out where she’d first be working, anchoring the corners with clumps of sod. Using the shovel she turned over a strip of soil, then took a garden variety trowel, got down on her knees, and sifted through the dirt, picking up a small trowelful at time, then feeling through it with her fingers over the paper. She figured she wouldn’t have to dig too deep, a couple of feet at most. But it was slow going, and the sweat she’d worked up earlier congealed to her skin, making her all the colder.

  She didn’t count on finding anything right away. That would be pressing the laws of chance. But if there were anywhere near 180 tiny corpses buried here, odds were she’d eventually come across at least one set of bones. Not that she needed to find even that these days. In Bosnia they’d been able to detect traces of human DNA in soil samples. And if she wasn’t successful this time, she and Mark could do a little each night, covering up their work with snow so Braden need never know.

  Her world narrowed down to the circle of light in which she worked, the tiny sound of her trowel biting into the dirt, and the patter of soil bits falling onto the newspaper as she filtered them through her fingers. She kept her back to the building, preferring to face the forest and the dark opening where the road led off toward the highway. That’d be where anyone following her tracks would appear. She raised her head and sent the beam of her headlamp sweeping through the gloom along the forest’s edge, breathing through her mouth to achieve total silence. Nothing caught her eye in the quiet swirl of the storm, and not a sound reached her ears.

  Every fifteen minutes she got up, stamped her feet, and swung her arms in an effort to warm up. The tea helped as well. The first hour passed, and she covered a third of the area she had set out for herself. Not bad, she thought, having no illusions about how long and tedious this kind of work could be.

  Then the cold and damp seeped into her marrow, and she took more frequent breaks. By four-thirty she’d covered only half the exposed area. Finishing the last of the tea, she imagined Mark back in bed, cozy and warm. “Bugger,” she muttered, smiling to herself, half-hoping he’d wake up, realize where she’d gone, and come join her. He seemed to be a light sleeper, like herself – the legacy of taking night calls.

  She went back down on her knees, but her hands shivered so much she couldn’t grip the trowel properly. As much as she wanted to keep going, she’d have to return to her station wagon and warm up.

  She rose to her feet and started to walk briskly away from the building.

  After no more than a dozen steps, she heard boots crunching on snow behind her. She spun around and saw four men in gaily colored ski outfits charging toward her. They must have come out of the building. “Hold it right there, asshole!” yelled the one closest to her.

  Lucy turned and ran, figuring she had a twenty-yard start. More than enough.

  “I said stop!”

  She accelerated, high-stepping along the trail she’d made coming in.

  A stuttering, dry, coughing noise ripped through the air from behind her, and spurts of snow flew into the air farther up the trail.

  Oh, shit!

  She pulled up, turned, and raised her arms.

  “One shout out of you, and I’ll blow your head off,” said the man in the lead, striding up to her and pointing a gun with the stubby cylinder of a silencer right at her forehead. “You’ve been ambushed, sister!”

  The others closed in around her, and she could feel their breath on the back of her neck. She recognized one of them from Braden’s party, where he’d served drinks. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, as if a show of outrage would stop the attack.

  A punch from behind hit her right in the kidney. She bellowed and arched backward, only to have someone grab her by the hair. She managed to stay on her feet, watching for an opening to karate kick the one with the gun.

  “We told you to keep quiet,” repeated a voice in her ear.

  “Search her; find her keys,” said the armed man, stepping back out of reach but keeping the muzzle pointed for a shot between her eyes.

  The one holding her hair threw her forward to the ground, shoving her face into the snow. He then knelt on her legs and held her arms as the other two roughly groped in her pockets.

  “You’ve been played like a violin, sister,” he said. “All so you and Roper would show up here, looking for baby bones that don’t exist. People will just think you two were off on a wild-goose chase and had a horrible accident!”

  What the hell! thought Lucy, looking up to see the muzzle still directed at her head.

  “I found her keys,” one of the searchers called out, standing up and dangling them in front of the others. “Remember, when you haul her up to remove the chains, cut off every trace of the tape before you dump her back in, and don’t leave any pieces on the ground.”

  He sounded as nonchalant as if he were organizing the cleanup after a picnic. What the hell did he mean?

  “Where are you going?” the man with the gun asked. “I thought we were still waiting for Roper.”

  “You and I might as well take her car and go get him. He must be asleep back at his house. No way he’d have knowingly let her come here on her own.” They started to walk off together, and he gestured at the other two. “Don’t forget to break the board so it looks as if they went through by accident.”

  Oh, God, what did they plan to do?

  One of the men holding her produced a gun from inside his coat and grinned as he pointed it at her. “You’re going to get cold, real cold now.” With his free hand he pulled a roll of duct tape out of his pocket and handed it to his partner, who still had her pinned from behind with his knees. She heard him rip off a piece, and he slapped it over her mouth. Night before last he’d handed her a glass of champagne.

  The pair of them pulled her to her feet and twisted her arms behind her back as the one with the tape wrapped a strip of it around her wrists. They then frog-marched her back where she’d been working, the man holding the gun prodding her every few steps with the barrel. Once there, the former waiter who’d taped her up threw her to the ground and sat on her legs as he cinched them together at the calves and ankles. The muzzle held at her head by his friend made her hold off any attempt to kick him where it would hurt. Then he got up and continued on to the building, disappearing around the corner. Seconds later he reappeared, carrying something about four feet long, and Lucy heard the clank of a chain.

  Oh, my God!

  The shape of an anchor became clearer as he brought it closer.

  “No!” Lucy screamed into her gag, and started to buck and kick against her restraints.

  For her trouble the armed man shoved the barrel of his gun into her ribs. “Behave!”

  Still she writhed and tried to scream.

  The man with the anchor dropped it at her feet and wrapped the chains tightly around her ankles over top of the tape. Reaching into his jacket he took out a padlock, secured it through the links, and snapped it closed. He walked back to the building and returned with a coil of rope, which he tied to the anchor. “She’s ready,” he said.

  They left her lying there and tramped off a few yards, shuffling their boots through the snow as if trying to find something.

  Lucy increased her struggle to at least free her arms and tried harder than ever to scream,

  “Found it,” said one, leaning over and lifting a plywood sheet out of the snow. The black mouth of a well yawned beneath it.

  Her terror rocketed.

  Jesus Christ, stop!

  She started to hyperventilate. The tape made it hard to breathe. Her fine-toned muscles quivered the length of her body as she strained to break free.r />
  They returned, picked her up, anchor and all, and carried her with monstrous deliberateness toward the opening.

  No! Oh, God in heaven, please, no!

  Without so much as a second’s pause for a last thought, word, or prayer, they threw her in, feetfirst.

  Chapter 19

  Mark woke and felt for Lucy in the darkness. His hand patted nothing but a wrinkled sheet.

  He sat up. “Lucy?”

  The house was silent.

  What the hell?

  He threw on his robe and ran downstairs. “Lucy-” Through the front door window he saw that her car was gone. So was the warm clothing she’d laid out earlier on the coatrack, and where he’d hung two caving headlamps there remained only one.

  His insides turned to ice. In less than a minute he dressed and headed out the door. The headlamp, he remembered, and grabbed it. He also took his bat, just in case. His watch read 4:36.

  Sure enough, all the tools were gone from his Jeep.

  He turned the ignition, hit the wiper switch for front and rear to clear away the snow, and accelerated down his driveway. Christ it felt slippery. He braked for the turn onto the road, but too late. He started to skid across it, right into a two-foot bank the graders had left from previous plowings. “Shit, shit, shit!” he muttered as he jockeyed the vehicle back and forth, delicately working the accelerator so as not to spin his wheels.

  She’s probably perfectly okay, he had to keep telling himself.

  By the time he got free, the dash clock read 4:42.