Moving through the thick carpet like a drunk through sand, I shuffled down the hallway and found a bathroom with a Victorian tub large enough to swim laps in. Standing in front of the medicine cabinet was a bad idea. Gapping back at me from the gilt edged mirror was the gray, swollen face of a sick stranger. I jerked open the cabinet, fumbled around, found a bottle of aspirin, and with eyes closed, pushed the cabinet door shut with one finger.
I gulped down three aspirin and drifted out of the bathroom to the staircase. Holding on to the polished oak banister with both hands, I stumbled downstairs and collapsed in one of the big leather chairs in the front room. I put my head in my palms and tried to will the pain and throbbing to go away. When that failed, I stood up, went to a front window and peeked through the curtain.
I scanned the neighborhood, looking for anything strange or unusual. But the only thing strange and unusual was in the house peering out the window, so I eased the curtain shut and wandered around.
I didn’t remember much about the basement before she shot me, but Priscilla seemed to have put it back as it was. After checking that my high-tops were clean and the soles dry, I put them on and stood in the middle of the basement and wondered why I was still alive. I looked from the ramp to the table and tried to picture Priscilla running at Dorthea, and Dorthea standing firm, firing twice.
I snuffled a bit, wiped my eyes and walked up the ramp and out of the basement.
Off a short hallway I found an office. It was immaculate, with everything just so, and the wood surfaces polished and giving off a faint lemon scent. The deep pile carpet was fluffy and spotless and the green and white striped wallpaper looked like it had been put on yesterday. A new looking copier stood pristine on a metal table. The top of the oak desk was clean, not even a blotter. Tucked in a corner was a small safe.
I sat in the desk chair and pulled open drawers. I found an old fashioned ledger, laid it on the desktop and flipped through the pages. It was a record of funerals, with each entry handwritten in small precise print. According to the ledger, the Chapman’s hadn’t conducted a funeral in well over a year. I also found stationary, stamps, and a white marbled fountain pen that cost at least a hundred dollars. After dry swallowing another aspirin I sat in front of the safe and fumbled with the handle. Locked. Applying pressure on the handle with my left hand I slowly turned the dial with my right. No go.
Pain arced through my head in quick, choppy waves. I spent several minutes with my head down, hands pressed against the bandage. I was getting used to not being dead and the wound was bothering me. After all, I’d been shot and the pain was fierce. Ten or twelve glasses of wine would have been nice, well, actually wonderful, but the Dark Ride in The Great Forest loomed ahead and I’d need every sober cell I possessed for the journey. I pulled my head off the desk and peeked into the sling. Cat, her bad paw curled close to her body, the other covering her nose, was asleep.
I peered under the desk, took out drawers and checked the backs and bottoms. I looked under the desk chair, crawled under the table holding the copier and looked up. Nothing.
Everyone hides the combination to their safe somewhere close to it. I pulled out the ledger and scanned every page. Then I did it again.
I took another aspirin, I was taking too many, my ears were going to start ringing. Hell, my ears were already ringing. I took out the stationary and looked at each page and checked every envelope. The last envelope contained a small pink card, and written in the middle of the card in the same precise print as the ledger, were the numbers 2212346.
With a gritty smile on my ravaged face I slapped the handle and yanked open the safe, which gave me a view of sheet metal lined with drawers. I started with the top left drawer and found bundles of tightly bound stacks of canceled checks. A quick flip through a few of the bundles told me the Chapman’s spent an amazing amount of money. Another drawer yielded a current checkbook with eight thousand and change in the account. I found several pieces of jewelry heavy with diamonds and gold and stuff I didn’t recognize.
I didn’t find any rings.
Another drawer contained a key ring with eight or ten keys on it and a drawer on the bottom contained four thick packs of money wrapped with blue ribbon.
After gently rubbing my head for a minute or so I counted the money. My fingers trembled and my skull throbbed and I had to count it twice but it was two thousand two hundred and twenty dollars in fifties, twenties, and tens. I held the money in my hands and stared at it for several minutes then struggled to my feet and left the office. I found the bikes leaning against the last pew in the chapel and put the money and key ring in one of the zippered pockets in the trailer and shuffled back to the office.
In the last bottom drawer I found four deeds. Each deed was several pages thick and filled with the complicated crap They like to use to keep Us confused and humble and liable for a high number of billable hours. One was for the funeral home. The others I didn’t read. Accompanied by my own groans and a sigh or two, I lurched to my feet once more, fired up the copier and made copies of the three unknown deeds. Then I put everything back, locked the safe, put the copies with the money and went looking for Priscilla.
I found her in the kitchen upstairs, standing at a butcher’s block making sandwiches. The kitchen, a U shaped nook tucked in a back corner of the living quarters, was crammed with every kitchen gadget cunning minds could design. Priscilla smiled and pushed a glass of white wine and a thick ham sandwich at me. “Here, ham with mustard, stroke food. The Chapman’s weren’t into healthy eating, that refrigerator has enough fat in it to stroke half the town. It’s a wonder Dorthea didn’t croak years ago.”
Sandwich in hand, I walked to the living room, stared at Dorthea for a minute or so and walked back to the kitchen. Priscilla ripped out a chunk of her sandwich with her front teeth, grinned at me and mumbled, “What Harry? Think maybe she rose to strike again?”
I gulped half the wine. It was liquid gold, the finest that had ever flowed down my throat. “I just wanted to look. She’s different
“She’s stiffening up. When you’re back in the boat, having nightmares, she’ll be in that chair, stiff as an old man’s mind, and when T. William and that Timothy finds her she’ll be as limp as an old man’s dick.”
“Not this old man’s dick,” I blurted out, and immediately felt my face grow warm and knew I was blushing.
Priscilla smiled, stood on tiptoe and kissed my forehead.
I felt movement in the sling and looked down. Cat’s head and good paw appeared. She yawned, climbed up my chest, sniffed my lips, then put a paw against my cheek and meowed. I tore off several bits of ham and put them in the sling. She slithered down and turned around. With her tail and butt hanging out of the sling she started in on the ham. I poured another glass of wine, gulped it down, filled the glass a third time and drank that, rationalizing that it would dull the pain, and thus make me more clear headed. Priscilla cleaned up the kitchen, double checked her work, and methodically went over the entire upstairs. When she was satisfied we went downstairs and set up camp in the chapel.
It was getting dark, and a black gloom settled in the chapel like a malevolent fog. Priscilla paced back and forth, frequently sweeping her hand through her ratty flattop. “If someone besides Dorthea’s bridge club comes, it’ll probably be by the back door. We’ll hear them and have enough time to get to the basement and either nail them or get the hell out. But my bet is on Dorthea, I bet that she was telling you the truth, T. William and the Timothy dude won’t be back until Turkey, so I think we’re good. If we leave at nine we should make the boat around two.”
Nail someone. If nailing was to be done, Priscilla would be the hammer, this old man had little doubt about that.
The pews had thin brown pads for cushioning. I took off the sling and laid it on the floor and put my jacket back on. The dried blood made stiff patches on the chest but it was warm. With some minor groaning and lip biting I eased down, picked up the sling and put it
beside me. Cat crawled halfway out and went, “Errrr?” I put my arm around her frail body and snuggled her close to me. “You better get some rest, Priscilla. What with saving my life, hauling bodies around and making ham sandwiches, you’re probably tired.”
I felt her hand on my cheek. “I’m gonna check this joint over one more time. We’ve got to be sure we don’t miss anything, then I’ll rest.”
“What about the pistol?”
“In a little table in the hall, by the office door, I found the box, wiped the pistol off, and put it back. Relax, Harry, the only thing left to worry about is whether Dorthea was expecting her bridge club tonight.”
Youth. Whoever said it was wasted on the young didn’t know Priscilla Matson. And from my perspective, thirty-four is still young. I sighed, closed my eyes and tried to drift away from the pain. I wondered what my forehead would look like once it healed. Perhaps I’ll sport a dramatic scar that would give me a mysterious aura. Harry Neal, man of mystery. Who is that old man drinking in the park? Reaching up, I pressed against the pain and wished for another glass of wine.
… . .
PRISCILLA PULLED ON MY SHOULDER AND said softly, “Time to face the night, Harry.” I sat up and stared into utter darkness. After a time, shadows and black outlines slowly asserted themselves and I stood up, stretched, and said, “You get any rest?”
“Listen, it’s not a problem, I slept good last night. It’s not as if I’ve been awake for forty hours or taken a bullet in the head. Now pack up Hairball and let’s get out of here.”
When Cat was settled in the sling, Priscilla took my hand and led me out of the chapel to the basement. “I put the bikes in the trees out back,” she whispered, “And I’d just like to say that Hairball’s trailer is a first class pain in the ass, why don’t you just haul her around in the sling?”
“Because she deserves a little comfort and a space of her own,” I whispered back. I felt her staring at me. After a time she sighed and muttered something I didn’t catch, which was probably just as well.
Light from a half moon broke through the clouds, giving the steel table a black sheen. We stood in the door and listened to the night for several minutes, then Priscilla closed the door, checked the lock, and pulled me through wet grass to the bikes. I put Cat in her trailer and wrapped her in the quilt. Then slowly, quietly, we pushed the bikes through back yards littered with toys, barbecues, and odd shaped gardens. In several windows I saw the flickering glow of television screens and imagined unmoving heads obediently focused on that fearful device.
At the end of the block we put on our helmets and pedaled to the street. My helmet was pushed far back on my head to avoid the bandage and undoubtedly looked odd. I had little doubt we were going to be arrested any moment, and my battered face would appear in the local gazette and Barbara, my ex wife, would come to the jail and call me names and tell me repeatedly that she told me so.
We pedaled deserted back streets until we were out of town and headed toward the farm. It was tempting to stay on the road, it would make the trip so much easier, but considering what was at stake it would also be stupid, so a half mile out of town I steered us off road onto a rock strewn trail that led into the woods. Trying to follow the bouncing beam of the headlight with the pain ricocheting around in my head was a jarring horror, so I stopped and slid off the bike, kneeled, and carefully pulled my helmet off. With my hands pressed against my forehead, I bent over until my head touched the cold ground and waited for the pain to subside. I could feel Priscilla standing next to me. After I straightened and took a couple of deep breaths she touched my shoulder and said, “Listen, it’s a nice night for a walk”
I’ve never spent much time in the woods at night, just walks between the barn and the boat, or a stroll around the grove before retiring. It’s never been more than a few minutes, never in pain, and always with a light to push back the dark. Now, I was treading through an alien landscape where imagination and instinct ruled. The bushes and other stuff brushing my legs and arms were things felt, not seen, and in the feeble glow of our small lights the trail was little more than a hoped for reality.
Most of the time Priscilla and I walked side by side, usually not talking, just pushing the bikes and putting one foot in front of the other. At fairly regular intervals, one of the trailer’s tires would get tangled in the brush or jam up against a rock. Priscilla would lay down her bike, free the trailer, and mutter soothing nonsense to Cat, who wasn’t taking our nighttime journey at all well, and let her feelings be known by occasionally letting out a mournful yowl.
Deep in the night and the woods, I stopped and looked at Priscilla. In the dim light from our bikes her pale face was calm, expectant. “What?” She said.
“I was thinking about you having to do everything.”
“Harry, your imagination is sailing into a cave. Hell, you got shot and thought you were dying, saw your killer stroke out, and had to spend hours in a death house not knowing if anyone would show up. It’s skills. I’ve spent years doing crap. It was living, but also training. I’ve got skills you don’t and vice versa and we help each other, so get your mind out of the cave and let’s get going, it’s starting to fucking rain again.”
We struggled into our rain gear and pushed on into the night. A little later I edged closer to her and said, “She shot at you, what about the bullet holes?”
“They hit the wall and chipped the cement, but I swept up the chips and the bullets. The chipped cement doesn’t look like bullet strikes. Remember Harry, its long odds that anyone, even the cops, will think anything is wrong. They’ll find Dorthea dead in that chair… dead of a stroke, her second one, and they won’t be looking for clues to any crime.”
Our lights were getting dimmer. I led, pushing the bike and trailer along trails I imagined more than knew. And the wound was bothering me. A tight, hot pain would raise like a bubble and explode across my head, then subside, only to raise again. As we stumbled along with our lights getting progressively dimmer, I began to believe we were hopelessly lost, but not knowing what else to do, I kept walking.
Then the hot bubbles of pain didn’t subside. I let the bike drop, sank to the ground and pressed my head against the wet ground. The frigid rain made hollow tapping sounds on the hood of my rain jacket and rivulets of ice water wandered down my neck and back. Whispering things I couldn’t hear, Priscilla pulled me up and guided me to a tree. I sat in the wet earth, my back against rough bark, my head hanging and the pain slashing through my head like blows from a scythe. Priscilla draped her rain jacket over us, and with my penlight in her teeth, took off the bandage. She fiddled with the wound and put a fresh one on. After giving me two more aspirin she said, “This bandage is kinda thin, but it’ll have to do, I didn’t dare take any more stuff from their supply closet.”
I nodded, took a deep breath and tried to stand, but Priscilla pushed me back down, put an arm around me and gently nudged my head onto her shoulder. “Let’s give it a few minutes,” she whispered.
We huddled together in total darkness. The rain pelted us and a deep cold began to seep into my core. But the pain gradually subsided and sometime later I pushed away from Priscilla. She helped me to my feet and picked up my bike. After shining a feeble light on me she said, “We okay?”
I forced out a smile. “How about Cat? Is she okay?”
Priscilla went to the trailer and I heard the door zipper. Faint murmurings and cooing floated to me on the black air. She came back, touched my cheek and said, “She says not to worry, she’s fine.” I nodded, touched her shoulder, and we started walking again.
An eternity later we stumbled out of the trees and into a large clearing. We circled a series of boulders and rocks I thought I recognized, even in the dark. We slipped and cursed up a small slick hill and stopped. I wiped my face and squinted into the night and the rain. In the distance I saw a dim orange glow. The big night light on top of the barn? God, let it be.
We slid and cursed down the other sid
e of the hill, walked about a football field and pushed into the backside of the grove. About fifty feet from the boat I stumbled and fell into a puddle. Priscilla refrained from comment as she pulled me to my feet, picked up my bike, and helped me stagger to the boat.
… . .
A SOMEWHAT DAMP CAT WAS HUNKERED down by the stove cleaning herself after a hearty meal of some nasty smelling stuff I scooped out of a can. Candles produced giddy shadows that frolicked on the walls and the rain made a soothing patter on the cabin roof. The stove door was open, showboating a fire that crackled and popped, filling the cabin with the aroma of burning birch logs. I was dressed in clean dry sweats, I was warm, and had a full mug of wine in my hand.
Life was almost good again.
I pressed the soggy lump above my head and regretted it, for Priscilla looked at it and said, “Time to change that thing again, Harry, it looks like someone slapped you with a dirty diaper.” The bandage was a gooey, wet mess. Priscilla peeled it off, and eyes wide, pale face slack, examined my wound. “It looks pretty good, swollen and running fluids, but not too bad considering. I’ll clean it out again, but I don’t think infection is going to be an issue.”
I went hmmmm and said, “Get that mirror out of the bath please. I want to see it.”
“Listen, wait a couple days.”
“I want to see it.”
“Harry, you’ll freak, you’ll think it… ”
I was close to whining, but managed to say calmly, “It is my bullet hole and I want to see it.”
I angled the mirror and stared. The right side of my forehead was a swollen, oozing mass of smashed, exposed tissue. I dropped the mirror in shock and tilted my head back. Priscilla gave me an ‘I told you so,’ look and went back to cleaning the wound and murmuring to herself. She doused the wound several times with various stuff from my first aid kit, and doing something with tweezers produced a lot of pain which I withstood by thinking of another glass of wine. Finally she put a fresh bandage on and rewarded me with a kiss on the cheek.
Bentley Dadmun - Harry Neal and Cat 09 - Dead Dead Dead, the Little Girl Said Page 17