The Impaler

by Gregory Funaro

  Edmund exited his truck and climbed the three rickety steps that led up to Rally’s screen door. The inside door was open a crack, and Edmund could see a light on in the living area. He knocked. No answer.

  A pair of cats began meowing and rubbing against his legs.

  Edmund knocked again. “Rally?” he called. “Hey, Rally, it’s Edmund.”

  No answer.

  Edmund kicked the cats away, opened the door, and stepped inside.

  He took in everything in less than a second. Nothing much had changed in the years since he last visited Rally’s trailer with his grandfather—the mess, the odor of mildew and burnt frozen dinners and motor oil, the junky sixties-style furniture, the racing pictures on the walls and the model automobiles on the mantel above the propane fireplace.

  No, the only thing that was different was Rally himself.

  The old man sat slumped in his La-Z-Boy—the shotgun still propped between his legs, his brains blown out all over the wall behind him.

  Time suddenly slowed down for Edmund Lambert—his heart pounding, a faint ringing in his ears as the room grew brighter, the colors and outlines of the objects around him more vivid. He felt numb—just stood in the doorway, staring at the grisly tableau for what seemed to him both an eternity and only a matter of seconds.

  Then Edmund heard what sounded like a clicking, and felt his legs carrying him forward as if controlled by someone else. He stopped at Rally’s feet.

  The blood was still trickling from the old man’s nose, but Edmund knew that trickle would have looked quite different a few minutes ago. He had witnessed a similar suicide in Iraq; an insurgent who, rather than be taken alive, stuck the muzzle of a .45 in his mouth and blew out the back of his skull. The blood from his nostrils had gushed like a pair of fire hoses, his body deflating like a balloon. It had been the same for Rally, Edmund could tell: the lower part of the old man’s face and neck, his chest and the right side of his coveralls all soaked with blood.

  But where was that clicking coming from?

  Edmund peered around the side of the chair and discovered two large cats lapping up the blood that had run down between the cushions and out from underneath the recliner. The cats didn’t even bother acknowledging him, and Edmund stood there watching them for some time.

  Edmund turned back to Rally and caught something out of the corner of his eye—on the end table, under the lamp, on the opposite side of the recliner.

  It was his grandfather’s old medicine bottle. He recognized it immediately—M-E-D-I-C-I-N-E the label read, yellowed and peeling up at the corners. The cap was still on, but Edmund could tell by the way the lamplight filtered through the glass that the bottle was empty. It stood atop a stack of old-fashioned, composition-style notebooks. Edmund recognized those as his grandfather’s, too.

  Edmund picked up the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed.

  Licorice and Pine-Sol. Absinthe?

  But the other batch of that stuff, Rally said in his mind, well, let’s just say you could use it for more important reasons other than just drinking it for fun. We’d been close to getting the formula right for a long time.

  The formula. E + N-E-R-G-A-L = G-E-N-E-R-A-L

  And then Edmund saw it.

  The name patch on Rally’s coveralls—on his left pocket, the silver stitching against the dark blue background.

  The silver stitching that spelled out Gene Ralston.

  G-E-N-E-R-A-L-S-T-O-N

  The first seven letters. G-E-N-E-R-A-L

  But how could that be? Rally was not the General!

  C’est mieux d’oublier.

  His mind suddenly racing, Edmund backed away from the bloody corpse, bumped into a chair, and stood staring at the patch in a daze, his breath coming in little puffs.

  Gene Ralston = G-E-N-E-R-A-L? he asked himself over and over. No, that couldn’t be it! Rally was not included in the formula! Rally was not part of the equation!

  Edmund dropped the notebooks and the bottle on the floor and fell back into a chair—closed his eyes and tried to focus on the image of the silver stitching in his mind.

  Gene Ralston.

  He could see it hovering there in the darkness, against the blue background, but still he only saw the word General—from an angle, out of the corner of his eye, as if it were sneaking up on him from behind. There were the French voices mixed in there, too. And there was something else—no, someone else. Someone terrifying.

  Nergal, Edmund thought. Nergal was there, too!

  E + N-E-R-G-A-L = G-E-N-E-R-A-L!

  It was Nergal. There could be no doubt about that. Nergal was terrifying. So was Edmund now. And with him Edmund was the General. Together they would—but—

  Edmund pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, scrunched his forehead, and tried to remember. He thought he could feel the old gooiness creeping back in, but the image of the silver stitching would not expand, would not stretch out into Gene Ralston or anything else that he could recognize. And then all trace of the gooiness disappeared.

  C’est mieux d’oublier.

  Edmund opened his eyes and scooped up one of the notebooks from the floor—snatched a pen from amid the mess on the kitchen table and opened the notebook to the first page. His grandfather’s writing, symbols and words that Edmund didn’t understand. Everything appeared to be written in French, but Edmund couldn’t be sure—felt like he couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.

  There had to be a message in here somewhere. Nergal was speaking to him. Edmund could feel it, could see it in his mind—

  E + N-E-R-G-A-L = G-E-N-E-R-A-L!

  That was the formula!

  Edmund scribbled the letters G-E-N-E-R-A-L-S-T-O-N on the inside cover of the notebook—quickly took out the word NERGAL, and was left with E-S-T-O-N.

  The answer came to him immediately.

  “Of course!” Edmund said—his mind, his body relaxing at once into the bliss of total understanding. “Move the letter E the end, and you get the word stone.”

  Edmund wrote it down next to Nergal.

  NERGAL STONE, or STONE NERGAL, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

  “The Nergal Stone,” Edmund said, smiling. “The stone seal depicting the sacrifice to the god Nergal. Gene Ralston equals the Nergal Stone! Just like the god who visited me all those years ago, the formula, the message pointing me toward the seal had been there all along! Right on Rally’s coveralls!”

  One of the cats poked its head out from around the re-cliner—licked its chops and gazed up at Edmund quizzically.

  “I understand,” Edmund said with tears of joy.

  He drove back to the farmhouse and hid the medicine bottle and the notebooks under the floorboards in his mother’s old bedroom. That was the proper place for secrets, he thought.

  Then he drove back to Rally’s and called the police. That was the sensible thing to do, he figured; it was best to just tell the truth about how he found Rally dead in his La-Z-Boy. Surely, if they investigated further, they would have a record of his phone call an hour earlier. Surely, if they investigated further, they would be able to establish Rally’s time of death shortly afterwards.

  Edmund told the sheriff that the old man had sounded depressed when he talked to him on the phone—was babbling nonsense, he said, and what a shame he hadn’t gotten there sooner. He gave this as his official statement and then left—not before, of course, offering once again to be of whatever assistance he could. No, Edmund thought, it didn’t take a fat Adolf Hitler lookalike to tell the scene was a suicide; but telling the truth (well, almost the truth) was smart just to be on the safe side.

  But why was Edmund even worried about all that? After all, he had nothing to do with Rally’s death.

  Or did he?

  What was it Rally had said on the phone? “I reckon it was only a matter of time.” Yes, Edmund thought, Rally had understood c’est mieux d’oublier; had obviously heard those words before and seemed almost resigned when he spoke again aft
erwards.

  And hadn’t Rally seemed afraid of Edmund since his return from Iraq? Afraid of something that went beyond the old man’s connection to the illegal absinthe production?

  Edmund thought about this on the ride home—scoured his memory banks, searching for an answer—but saw only the General there; the silver stitching of the formula, and the signs and messages that had been there from the God of War since the day he was born.

  And when he arrived back at the farmhouse, Edmund concluded that perhaps Rally had sensed the change in him; sensed that the time had come, and that Nergal had returned to claim what was rightfully his.

  Indeed, Edmund thought, perhaps because Rally had worn the Nergal message in his name—the Nergal Stone in the Gene Ralston that had been like a tattoo on his chest for all those years—perhaps Eugene “Rally” Ralston recognized deep down the terror that had returned with him from Iraq.

  “I have returned,” Edmund said to himself as he pulled up to the farmhouse. He sensed Nergal speaking in him, too, and looked down at his chest, to the left pocket of his shirt and half expected to see a patch there. There wasn’t one, of course, but Edmund saw the potential for his own Nergal Stone underneath. Something more lasting. Something that could not be destroyed or torn away like Rally’s silver stitched name patch; something as durable as the carved Nergal Stone itself.

  A tattoo. Yes. But of what?

  The answer would come to him eventually, he thought. And once he was certain the business with Rally and the illegal absinthe was finally over, he would need to start readying the farmhouse. He knew what needed to be done, but he wasn’t exactly sure how. That would all be revealed eventually, too, he thought.

  In Nergal’s messages.

  But would Edmund Lambert be smart enough to decode all the messages? Would he be worthy enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with Nergal in the end?

  Edmund took a deep breath and told himself not worry about all that; for when he looked down past his chest to his stomach; when he thought about the searching and looked for it deep inside his belly, a breeze whispered back at him through a window in his mind.

  “Finally, Edmund. Finally.”

  Yes, after all these years, the searching was over.

  After all these years, the answer finally had come.

  PART IV

  EXITING

  Chapter 54

  Names, names, and more names—thousands of them scattered before him—but Andy Schaap held out hope.

  The cemetery.

  Yes, he thought as he bounced his ring on his desk. The cemetery was the beginning for the Impaler. The first star in his personal logo. The star off of which the rest of his constellation would be built.

  But why the cemetery? Because the Impaler had a connection there that went beyond the name of Lyons. Schaap was sure of it. Someone important to him was buried there; someone who was connected to the identity on earth that needed to be remapped in the eyes of the lion in the sky. Planting Rodriguez and Guerrera outside the wall directly east of the Lyons plot was only part of the equation, as was the cemetery’s connection to the other murder sites that made up the Starlight Theater logo.

  All theory, of course, and nothing really on which to base his assumptions other than a gut reading of the evidence so far. But Andy Schaap was sure he was on to something; and this little side investigation was going to be his baby. He’d gotten hold of the cemetery records soon after Markham left. That was good. That meant he could follow his leads alone; might even get a little credit for all the hard work he’d done.

  Sure, he knew he was becoming a little jealous of Sam Markham. But didn’t Markham also keep things to himself when he was on a case? Isn’t that how he caught Jackson Briggs? Hell, he still never told anyone how he really did it.

  Besides, there was nothing Markham could offer from Connecticut anyway. At least not until the medical records were obtained and the lists of servicemen and their units checked against them.

  There were over two-thousand residents buried beneath the soil in Clayton’s Willow Brook Cemetery, and Schaap’s first order of business was to begin testing those records against a list of men who fit Underhill’s unit profile. And once those lists were complete, once he got all the names of servicemen living in the Raleigh area, his computer program would rank them in order of probability.

  It was complicated stuff, Schaap thought; and without each list to test against the other, just using the cemetery records alone would be like shooting blind from the white pages. No, the cemetery records would only narrow down the unit lists. But even then, it would be slow going. Schaap had seen those names already—Davis, White, Brown, Anderson, Jones—common names that seemed to taunt him with the futility of his plan.

  But fuck it. He would spend the whole night there if he had to, checking his lists against each other and developing a preliminary cross-section of candidates. Then, once he ran that list through a computer program that would rank them according to location—that is, remote areas in and around Raleigh that theoretically would provide the Impaler with good “working conditions”—Schaap would have a better idea where to begin. But he didn’t have much time before Markham returned Sunday afternoon; not much time to keep his little side investigation secret.

  But Schaap would keep it secret. As long as humanly possible, he decided.

  After all, isn’t that what Sam Markham would do?

  Chapter 55

  Edmund and Cindy arrived at the cast party at exactly 11:30 p.m. They could’ve gotten there sooner, but Cindy insisted on showering at the theater after the show. She even came right out and admitted to Edmund that she wanted to look nice for him. He was dressed in a button-down shirt and jeans that made his butt look beyond sexy, Cindy thought. All she said, however, was, “You look very handsome.” Edmund smiled and said he would wait for her in the green room. He ended up waiting almost half an hour. But Edmund said he didn’t mind. He was used to waiting.

  The party was at Amy Pratt’s—a rundown, student-district rancher that had been passed down among the theatre majors for as long as anyone could remember. It was designated “the party house” every year because of its large, fenced yard and L-shaped deck out back.

  The party house was already packed when Cindy and Edmund snaked their way into the kitchen amid a sea of second glances and whispers. Cindy had expected that; had even warned Edmund to be ready for a scandal on Monday. Edmund said that they’d have to come up with something really juicy to get the rumors going.

  Cindy had laughed at that, and so did Edmund. Cindy had never seen Edmund smile and laugh so much, and it made her feel beyond ecstatic to know that he was already opening up to her; made the ass-chewing she got from her director about her being unfocused during the show all the more worth it.

  Kiernan was right: her mind had been on Edmund Lambert all day.

  “Holy shit,” said Amy Pratt when she saw Cindy and her date. “Edmund Lambert? Edmund Laaam-bert? What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Amy,” he said. “I hope I was invited.”

  “Of course!” she said as she reached down into her bag of plastic cups. “I’m gonna give you and your date here a cup for free cuz I’m already wasted and you look fucking hot and you never come see me, how’s that?”

  “Thank you,” Edmund said.

  “Buuuut,” Amy said, snatching the cups back at the last second, “you’re gonna have to promise to ditch this ho and dance with me after Brown Bags, okay?”

  Edmund smiled and nodded and Amy gave him the cups.

  “How much longer until they start?” asked Cindy.

  “Bradley-boy and the other seniors are still in my bedroom writing them out,” Amy said, rolling her eyes. “I peeked in and he told me to get out of there—my own fucking bedroom, can you believe it? Someone—and I’m not saying who—but someone told me that Bradley and some of the other guys started doing shots in the dressing room after the show. Bet ol’ Georgie Porgie would love to
hear that one. Bradley telling me to get out of my own fucking bedroom!”

  Cindy shrugged and led Edmund outside onto the deck. Edmund quickly negotiated the mob around the keg, filled up their cups, and retreated alone with Cindy to a corner of the yard—drinking and laughing and making conversation just as Cindy had hoped they would.

  Cindy discovered that Edmund was a Cancer. She was a Gemini, she told him.

  “I don’t really believe in astrology,” she added, “but, if I remember correctly, I think Cancer and Gemini are like the two most incompatible signs possible. What do you think of that?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Edmund said. “I should have been born a Leo, but I came out two weeks early because my mother wasn’t taking care of herself. At least, that’s what my grandfather used to tell me.”

  Cindy didn’t know if Gemini and Leo were compatible signs, but Edmund assured her they were, and Cindy asked him to fill her cup again. Edmund obliged.

  She could not remember if she was on her third or fourth beer (it felt like her fourth) by the time Bradley Cox and the rest of the seniors stumbled out onto the deck. She and Edmund had been deep in conversation about his mother, about how she committed suicide when he was a child. Cindy was on the verge of tears, but Edmund told her not to feel sorry for him and that everything happened for a reason. She wanted to hug him—wanted to kiss him, too—but even though she had good buzz going she held back until Edmund said: “Please, don’t take it as a downer, Cindy. It’s just something that happened. Besides, tonight is about new beginnings, isn’t it?”

  Oh yes, Cindy thought. Now I’m going to kiss him. She could see in Edmund’s eyes that he wanted to kiss her, too. But then—

  “Okay, motherfuckers,” shouted Bradley Cox. “Gather round, gather round. It’s that time.”

  Cindy sighed and gulped down the last of her beer as the rest of the students began crowding onto the deck. Cox and his cohorts—six seniors total, all men—stood on chairs at the far end opposite the keg. Cindy declined when Edmund motioned to get her another beer.