Peaceable Kingdom (mobi)

by Jack Ketchum

Morgan’s use of the word “shit” was enough surprise for Dugas so that he choked on his single-malt whiskey.

  “Sorry,” Morgan said. And then went on.

  “Then look at the end. Isn’t death always something of a surprise? Doesn’t it always come as something of a shock? Maybe not the how—but certainly the when? Heart patients, cancer patients, even patients in daily, agonizing pain who pray for death, must finally be somewhat surprised when it actually comes. Even if it comes . . . as relief.

  “And who is to say that even a three-and-a-half-year-old cannot realize his own mortality, his growing frailty, his own approaching death?”

  He settled back slowly and finished his wine.

  “Your mirror may have been a very good one, then,” said Dugas.

  “Yes,” said Morgan, smiling. “I think we’ve all been doing our jobs quite adequately. Even on that one.”

  My God. You are a smug sonovabitch, thought Dugas.

  “Even on you,” said Morgan. He stood up, straightening his dinner jacket.

  Dugas saw that it was a signal. The two burly workmen approached from the corner of the room and stood close by. Woolbourne appeared in the mahogany paneled doorway, blocking his exit.

  “Emil Dugas,” said Morgan. “You stand accused, tried, and convicted by this Court of the murder of Lynette Janice Hoffman, aged 23 years old, your one-time lover and onetime secretary, on January 23rd of the year 2021, one year, one month and three days previous. Your sentence to be carried out immediately, and your punishment to suit the crime.”

  Dugas’ brain reeled. It was impossible. Literally impossible. All this talk. All this hypocrisy. All this crap about punishment to “suit the crime,” this tedious prefatory lecture, when in fact they were going to kill him in some fucking phony novel way and that was all they could possibly do. Because the rest was impossible.

  He almost laughed. Instead he exploded.

  “You’re a fool, Morgan! A buffoon! Or a goddamn lying hypocrite. Or all three. How are you going to make this punishment ‘suit the crime?’ You know damn well you can’t begin to. If you know what I did to that girl, then you must know how I did it. It is not something you can mirror. So what am I going to get here? Some approximation?”

  He spat the word out in disgust.

  Morgan smiled. Dugas still didn’t understand. Well, he expected that he wouldn’t.

  He nodded to the workmen. They took Dugas’ arms and led him to the plastic dropcloth. Dugas struggled, but it was like struggling with someone three times as strong as he was and three times his size. Which, he guessed, these two were. Exactly as he’d been three times as strong and nearly three times as heavy as Lynette when he’d. . . .

  And now he was laughing, hysterically, as they stripped off his clothes. Laughter mixed with fury.

  “You can’t do it!” he screamed. “You can’t fucking do it because I’ve got no hole there! You see? No fucking orifice you dumb goddamn asshole! She saw me when I did it to her, do you understand that? You know what that means? You see the goddamn difference? To see the face of your murderer? To see his pleasure? What are you going to do, stick it up my ass, you goddamn hypocrite? You fucking loser! You can’t even begin to know what I made that little bitch suffer! Right up to the moment I decided to wring her fucking neck! That entire goddamn time she was looking right at me, right into my face!”

  “We understand that,” said Morgan. “Perfectly.”

  He nodded again and one of the workmen dew an object out of his clean white overalls. To Dugas it looked like a combination garden trowel and apple-corer. Made of surgical steel. With a two-inch diameter. And a sharp serrated edge.

  When the man applied it to his groin, sunk it deep and twisted, and then withdrew, Dugas screamed and screamed.

  “Will my face do?” Woolbourne asked politely.

  Through blinding pain, Dugas watched the waiter’s trousers fall down around his ankles.

  Almost as Dugas’ own had been, Woolbourne’s was quite an erection.

  Lines: or Like Franco, Elvis Is Still Dead

  It was the greatest opening line I’d heard in years. I was on my way back from the juke and the first song I’d played, “Suspicious Minds,” was already on when I passed her at the bar. Elvis singing and this good-looking woman sitting all alone.

  She turned and gave me a glance and said, “so, seen him lately?”

  I laughed and walked on past her to where my scotch was and got it and then came back to her and said, “I think I saw him on the beach today. It could have been a whale though. Hard to say.”

  Not nearly as good as hers but enough to get us talking. She had a low husky voice which I always like in a woman and big brown eyes and long curly hair. She was slim and pretty. Wore jeans and workshirt. Nothing fancy.

  I found out right away she was not all that crazy about Cape May. Personally I thought it was a welcome change from New York. But she was a local while I was only in for the weekend. What did I know. It was possible to see where after a while maybe the quiet would get to you. Where all the painted gabled corniced bay windowed turn-of-the-century Victoriana might get to you. Where you could get pretty tired of the tourists and their beach-gear and the quaint little shops.

  I could see my friends Liam and Kate were amused with me down at the other end of the bar. Liam and Kate were married and always seemed to be amused when I picked up a woman. Or, as in this case, when a woman picked up me. I think they thought I got a whole lot more action than I did and they liked the notion of having this lounge lizard as a drinking buddy. Plus it was Sunday, the last night of my stay here with them and they knew that Tess—that was her name—had the potential to make my weekend.

  Which in a weird way, she did.

  The talk was nothing unusual. She seemed to like the fact that I was a writer who had once actually spoken on the phone to Stephen King and that Liam was a painter and cover artist and that Kate was a teacher at the Professional Children’s School back in New York. I avoided talking about my ex-wife and the two kids. It wasn’t hard. It was clear to me that she was a little bored with herself, with her own life here, and it was easy to sympathize. Here she was, thirty—she looked a lot younger, mid-twenties I thought—back home living with her parents and helping to manage their Bed-and-Breakfast and that was about it.

  “A glorified maid,” she said. “Sometimes not even a fucking glorified maid.”

  She was kind of vague about how it got that way. She said she’d been living in Boston for a while. Going for a Masters in business at B.U. and waitressing to make ends meet. It was obvious she’d much rather still be doing that. What wasn’t obvious was why she quit. She volunteered the fact that there was a guy in the picture. Somebody she was no longer with but who was somehow involved in the retreat back home to Cape May.

  What she didn’t say was who or how or why.

  I figured she’d give it up when she wanted to. I wasn’t going to pry.

  Meanwhile I liked the scent of her. I liked the crinkle around the soft brown eyes when she smiled. I liked the boyish body and the long tangle of hair.

  I wanted to get her out of there.

  It was late. The bar was going to close soon anyway. People had begun to drift away. I could see Liam and Kate showing signs of wear.

  “Let’s take the drinks outside,” I said. “I’d like to get some air. That okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We were barely out the door when the bartender, name of Phil, appeared in the doorway.

  “Can’t do that,” he said. “The drinks. It’s against New Jersey law.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.” It was just as against the law in New York City but I suppose I figured this being a vacation town they might be looser here. I wondered why Tess hadn’t stopped me. She was local. I guessed she didn’t mind breaking a law or two once in a while.

  Neither did I. My child-support was two months behind.

  The bartender was okay about the drink
s though.

  “No problem,” he said, “Just give ’em here and I’ll take them back to the bar for you.”

  We handed them over. My scotch and her Stoli cranberry juice. Phil went back inside.

  There was nothing to do then except what I’d been wanting to do all along.

  “Mind if we try something?” I said.

  That was a line too. I’d used it before. But it usually worked to get this part of it out of the way one way or another.

  I leaned over and kissed her.

  She hesitated and then she kissed me back and then she pulled away.

  “Hell. You don’t even remember my name,” she said.

  “Sure I do. Tess.”

  “After tonight I’ll probably never see you again.”

  “I’m coming back here the end of next month, in July. Maybe for a week this time.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  It was true. Or half true. Liam and Kate and I had already talked about my returning. They were here for the entire summer and I was welcome pretty much whenever I wanted. But it depended on the work, how much time I’d have.

  I kissed her again. This time she didn’t pull away.

  And the kiss was just what you always want a kiss to be.

  And usually isn’t.

  “Let’s walk,” I said.

  I slipped my arm around her waist. I didn’t know where we were exactly or where we were going. But it was hard to get lost in a town as small as Cape May. I’d find my way home or else if I was lucky Tess would find it for me.

  It was well after two in the morning and the streets were quiet. Nobody walking but Tess and me. No cars at all.

  We talked some more and every so often I’d turn and kiss her, hugging her tight, still walking, hardly even slowing down. I felt that intense sense of well-being that you get when the woman on your arm is the woman you want on your arm and she’s new and you’ve both had just enough to drink but not too much and you have no idea where all this is leading but so far it’s fine and dandy.

  “How about the beach?” I said.

  She laughed. Like I’d said something really funny.

  “The beach!” she said.

  I thought it was a good idea. It wasn’t too cold. In fact the night was warmer than the day had been.

  Probably I was showing her what a tourist I was, I thought. To her the beach was probably a cliche.

  I still liked it. I thought about lying on the sand. Nobody around but the two of us. Moon on the water. Booming surf and big sky. It was a cliche but I liked it anyway. It’s not something you get to do in Manhattan, lying on the beach and necking with a pretty woman.

  I smiled. Like I was in on the joke but so what. “Why not?” I said.

  She kissed me and then her voice went low again.

  “Sure. Why not,” she said.

  I don’t think we were there ten minutes before we heard the gunshot.

  I’d thought we were alone. But then I’d been concentrating on her, on the soft warmth of her mouth on mine and the warmer breasts beneath the denim shirt and the way the nipples rose silky smooth under my fingers.

  I looked up and I could see this dark heavy figure the equivalent of maybe three city blocks away running up the beach toward Atlantic Avenue. There was a rifle or maybe a shotgun in his left hand and judging from the loudness of the echo still hanging in the air I was thinking shotgun.

  I expected sirens, police pulling up, people rushing out from inside the hotels across the street. But we sat there while the man ran the last few steps up the ramp off the beach onto the high concrete walkway and then started strolling down the opposite ramp toward a car parked just off the walkway—we could only see the top of the car—and then got in and drove away.

  Not another soul in sight. Just Tess and me kneeling in the sand. Staring down the beach at another dark figure lying still as driftwood far above the tideline.

  Tess got to her feet.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “You sure?” I said. “Maybe we should just find a phone. Call the police.”

  She stopped and turned and seemed to consider this and somehow I thought she was studying me too. Both at the same time.

  “He could be hurt or something,” she said. “You can’t just leave him. We have to see.”

  I knew I didn’t want to see.

  But she had a point. I went along.

  The man was lying flat on his back and one of his legs was curled under him, the opposite arm flung high. Like he was running, waving to somebody except he was lying in the sand and he wasn’t going to be doing any running or waving any more. It had been a shotgun, all right. Beneath the outflung arm there was a chunk of him missing as big as a baseball. The chunk was nowhere around that I could see. But the sand was dark all down under his chest and his chest was glistening bright in the moonlight.

  Mid-thirties, I thought. Slim and dark and well-muscled. Wearing jeans and a Dallas teeshirt. One eye open wide, the other half shut. Jaw dropped and mouth open. The sand-crabs would love him.

  Crawl in, crawl out.

  I felt my stomach roll and tasted acid.

  “Well, it’s not Elvis,” she said, her voice soft and low. It took me a second to realize she was remembering that dumb-ass line of mine in the bar. “This guy couldn’t even carry a tune.”

  And that took a second to sink in too.

  “Jesus, Tess. You know this guy?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I do.”

  I waited for her to explain. She didn’t explain.

  But I saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  “I think we’d better find a phone,” she said and turned and started walking.

  “Wait a minute. Who is the guy?”

  “Look, right now we need a phone. Later, okay?”

  She was trudging across the sand, headed for a ramp. Not the ramp the man had used but one further on down the beach.

  We hit the broad concrete walkway and I could see a lighted phone booth a few blocks away in front of a closed dark arcade. I was aware of the sea-smell of the beach and the lonely sound of our shoes against the concrete.

  She got in the booth. Dialed 911.

  “There’s a man on the beach. He’s dead,” she said. “Across from Franklin Street. We found him. My boyfriend and I. We saw a man with a shotgun. He was running away and then he got into a car. We didn’t see the car. You’ll find one set of footprints leading up to one of the ramps and two sets leading up to another.” There was a pause. “No, of course not. Why would you need our names. That’s all we saw. Goodbye.”

  I thought, boyfriend. I’d arrived there fast. I wasn’t sure to be pleased or worried about it. I was leaving around noon today, about nine hours away. I wouldn’t be back for over a month. If at all. I hardly knew her and I wasn’t sure what it was she expecting.

  She stepped out of the phone booth and took me by the arm and pushed me back into the shadows of the arcade and kissed me. I wasn’t prepared for the kiss and certainly not for its ferocity. I returned it, though. Willingly.

  “I’m scared,” she said. “What if he comes back? Could you take me home? To your friends’ house, maybe?”

  Her eyes glittered, reflecting back the moon. The only light in that dark place.

  “Sure,” I told her.

  On the way back to Queen Street I didn’t push her about the guy. I figured, let her open up to me in her own good time.

  The walk didn’t take long. We met no one along the way.

  When we were nearly there she said, “his name was Tommy Brookwalter. He was a year behind me in high school. I knew him a little then but you know, a year’s forever when you’re in high school. Then he moved to Boston while I was working on my Masters. He looked me up and we had a thing for a while. It didn’t work out.”

  I put my arm around her. She sounded sad and I knew she’d cared for him. And then we were home.

  We poured some drinks downstairs and
crept quietly up to my room so as not to wake Liam and Kate—and that was the second pair of drinks we never got round to drinking that night because as soon as we sat down on the bed we were both all mouths and hands, we were suddenly nothing but flesh, trying against flesh to stifle the moans, the hisses and gasps of pain that came of the sheer steady violence of it, her fingernails gouging my back urging me to violence of my own, sex like the pounding weight of surf strong enough to break the shell and polish the stone, the two of us like a pair of sin-eaters devouring the crimes and guilts of the dead and of our own.

  We had all that. And then we rested.

  And then we had it all once again.

  In the morning she was gone. Of course she was.

  It was the cops who awakened me, talking downstairs to Liam and Kate.

  Two ordinary-looking men in shirtsleeves and ties. She had given them this address and she had given them my name.

  They wanted to establish that I was with her. All night. I said I was. I told them it was the two of us who had heard the shot and seen the body and that of course it was Tess who called it in. But I was curious. How had they arrived at Tess as being the woman on the phone? They said they hadn’t. That Tess had just admitted it to them an hour ago when they questioned her.

  I didn’t understand.

  The cop I was talking to sighed and told me that Tommy Brookwalter was pretty much the reason Tess was back in town in the first place. That they’d been all set to open up a business together, a restaurant and raw bar coupled with a fish store that would contract directly to local fishermen and wind up selling the best damn seafood in town. They knew Cape May and they knew there was room for a place like that. Meanwhile they’d been engaged to marry. Until Brookwalter took up with another woman. And not long after that Tess got the boot. The woman was now his wife and the restaurant belonged to them and Tess was out of the picture completely and working for her parents at their little Bed & Breakfast.

  It was common knowledge that Tess had taken all this badly. She drank. And when she drank she talked.

  Not to me, though.

  She hadn’t talked to me.

  I was trying to take this in. I asked them if that meant she was a suspect, if they were saying they thought she’d arranged it somehow.