The Impaler

by Gregory Funaro

  Fuck it, he heard Andy Schaap say in his mind. Yes, he’d figure it all out when he got back to Raleigh. He shut down his computer and turned off his bedside lamp—stared up at the fully charged stars on his ceiling and wondered how after all these years they could still glow so brightly.

  And soon, despite his having slept nearly the entire day, Sam Markham was again dead to the world.

  The General smiled and plugged in his cell phone charger next to the one he’d taken from the TrailBlazer. He hardly ever used his own cell phone anymore, but for what he was planning next, the General would need it just as much as he still needed Andrew J. Schaap’s BlackBerry.

  Chapter 67

  Cindy heard the ding of the text message just as she was drifting off to sleep. She didn’t recognize the number, but read the message anyway.

  Cindy: Sorry I didn’t get back 2 u sooner and I’m sorry I didn’t c u @ the show. My uncle came by unexpectedly and I have been very busy.

  “That’s it?” Cindy said, the anger beginning to boil again in her stomach. She’d been furious when she returned home to find Edmund still hadn’t answered her e-mails; had toyed with the idea of sending him another note (a nasty one, at that) but thought it better to wait until morning when her head had cleared.

  But now? What the fuck was this all about?

  Cindy was about to reply when the ding of another message stopped her.

  Everything is fine, tho. I’ll call you tomorrow (I got your cell # off the contact sheet for Macbeth).

  “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” she heard Macbeth say—and then, out of nowhere she thought of Gone with the Wind; saw herself as Scarlett in the final scene, tears in her eyes, alone on the stairs, violins and swelling music and—

  “After all … tomorrow is another day!”

  What the fuck?

  Then another message.

  Hope the show went well n sleep tight. I missed u 2day. E

  Cindy realized her heart was beating a mile a minute, and she chastised herself for her silly, sappy relief at ever doubting Edmund Lambert in the first place.

  He’ll call me tomorrow.

  She felt herself melt down into her mattress—texted back, Sounds good. Miss u 2 ?—and fought off the urge to just call him right then and there. He’d probably understand, but that would not look cool. Beyond stalkerish, she thought. Besides, if he wanted to talk to her, he would’ve called, right? Plus, she needed to sleep; there was no way she could spend the whole night talking to Edmund with a pissed-off George Kiernan and a matinee waiting for her tomorrow.

  “Fuck it,” she said, and was about to call him anyway, when another text popped in her inbox.

  U need to rest. Go to sleep and c u after the show tomorrow.

  Cindy started to text back, After all, tomorrow is another day!—but settled on Sounds good? instead.

  She waited for a reply, but when it didn’t come, she saved Edmund Lambert’s number and closed her phone—closed her eyes, too, and drifted off to sleep feeling more like Scarlett O’Hara than ever. It felt wonderful.

  Chapter 68

  An hour after Edmund Lambert’s good night text to Cindy, the General saw the light go off in Bradley Cox’s apartment. He didn’t know if the young man was alone; didn’t know if the redheaded female with whom he sometimes copulated was staying with him. But the General didn’t care. He would take them both if he had to.

  The timing of things demanded it.

  Of course, the General would’ve much rather had the luxury to plan as he’d done with the other soldiers. At the same time, however, he was worried because of the uncertainty of what was to come. The time line of things most certainly would have to change. Of that, the General was sure. And he would need to leave the farmhouse and the doorway behind very soon—it was too risky to stay there to balance the equation, to complete the nine—but where would he go?

  The doorway would tell him. Once it was finished draining, and once he had taken care of Cox, he would know what to do next.

  The General had driven the FBI agent’s TrailBlazer and parked it in a lot across from the young actor’s apartment building—a two-level, student shithouse with a half-dozen single-bedroom units on each floor. The General had gotten his address and telephone number from the contact sheet. Cox lived in the corner unit on the first floor. His silver Mustang with the tinted windows was parked in front. The General had seen him pull up to theater in that car many times.

  The General waited patiently in the TrailBlazer, his eyes never leaving Cox’s front door as groups of drunken students stumbled in and out of the shadows on their way home from the bars downtown. The General had a number of ideas as to how he would get into Cox’s apartment, but the timing of his arrival in Greenville was bad: early Sunday morning, the bars closing, a very good chance of him being seen.

  And so the General would have to wait. But that was all right. The General was used to waiting.

  Chapter 69

  Bradley Cox was in bed staring up at the ceiling when the ring of his cell phone startled him. He reached for it immediately, but the line was already dead when he answered it. He looked at his alarm clock—3:12 a.m.—then looked at the missed-call list. He didn’t recognize the number—704 area code, Charlotte, he thought—and was about to dial it back and tell the owner to go fuck himself for calling so late, when he heard the ding of a text message.

  If this is Amy again, he thought, I’ll tell her straight up to fuck off for good. He was in no mood for a booty call—especially not after tonight’s horror show at the theater. She had called earlier that evening to ask him if he wanted some company, but he told her in no uncertain terms that he wanted to be left alone. And then the young actor did something he hadn’t done since elementary school: he cried himself to sleep. He woke up around 1:45 a.m. and turned off his light. But a face hovering there in the darkness just beyond his busted nose had kept him wide awake until now.

  Edmund Lambert.

  Yeah, that son of a bitch had fucked things up royally for him. And the motherfucker was going to pay. Cox had it all planned. He would get a couple of guys from his father’s construction firm—big redneck-types who just loved this sort of thing—and they would pay a courtesy call to Edmund Lambert when the time was right. Might even deliver their candy-gram straight to the motherfucker’s front door. Oh yeah, the three of them would tune old soldier boy’s ass good ’n tight.

  He’d played the scenario over and over again in his mind, and the image of Edmund Lambert’s face beaten to a bloody pulp actually made him smile. Sure, he knew he was going to catch holy hell from Kiernan, but his little plan made an ass chewing from the old man all worth it. Indeed, he had just begun to feel better when the ring of his cell phone pulled him from his fantasy.

  Cox scrolled out of the missed-call list and checked the incoming text message.

  It’s Cindy Smith, the message read. R u up?

  Cox shot upright—his heart beating fast, his “player instinct” kicking in at once.

  No matter who a chick is, he said to himself, when she texts you at three in the morning that means only one thing.

  Booty call.

  But Cindy Smith?

  In an instant, Cox forgot all about Edmund Lambert—his mind racing now with how to play the situation properly. As much as he hated to admit it, he’d had it bad for Cindy Smith—still did, as a matter of fact—but never told a single soul. What bothered him the most was that he didn’t know what he’d done to fuck it all up with her. Yeah, he’d been a rude dick to her a couple of times, but that was only after she turned him down. And he’d been genuine and gentlemanly in his desire to take her out—had already known that he was gonna have to put in his time if he wanted to bang her and made up his mind that she was definitely worth it.

  But now?

  The show. He’d seen the look in her eyes when he fucked up tonight: the compassion, the way she bailed him out without thinking, without contempt as his cast mates snic
kered in the wings behind him.

  Maybe everything happens for a reason, he thought. Maybe that’s what was needed to finally bring us together.

  “All right,” he said, thinking quickly. “If we talk on the phone, I won’t even ask her to come over. If she comes over, I won’t even touch her. Even if she wants to. That’s the way to play it.”

  He took a deep breath and texted back, Yeah. What’s up?

  A moment later, Can we talk? I’m in my car outside.

  “Holy shit,” he said—his fingers moving before he could think twice about what to say. Just come in, he wrote. B right back.

  His mind was on fire—but he needed to do three things: take a piss, put on some clothes, and brush his teeth. He leaped out of bed, turned on the lights, unlocked the front door, and headed straight for the bathroom—took a leak in the sink as he brushed his teeth, and then put on a pair of dirty workout shorts he found on the bathroom floor. He had just finished rinsing out his mouth when he heard the front door open and close.

  “Just take a seat,” he called. “I’ll be right out.” He splashed some water on his face, dried himself off, and fixed his hair in the mirror.

  Oh yeah—Bradley Cox was ready.

  “Sorry,” he said, coming out of the bathroom. “I was still pretty gross from the—”

  Cox froze when saw the man in the ski mask coming for him—was about to scream, but the foul-smelling rag in his face silenced him immediately.

  Chapter 70

  Markham sat down beside his wife’s grave and began to cry. The emotion came upon him without warning, frightening him with its rapidity, but soon he gave in, weeping openly until it passed.

  He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and breathed deeply—gazed around at his surroundings and tried to imagine Michelle sitting there with him. The Elm Grove Cemetery had been one of their favorite places—an impeccably landscaped park set on the Mystic River less than a half-mile from the Aquarium. They often strolled here on Sunday mornings; actually had a picnic once by the water on a sunny-cool Sunday like today—a bit morbid, they agreed, but comforted themselves with the knowledge they were imitating their Victorian ancestors, whose Sunday outings often included a stroll through the local cemetery, too.

  “Did I really used to talk like that?” Markham asked. “Words like stroll and outing?”

  A breeze whispered its consent in the trees. Markham smiled.

  “I don’t know who that guy is anymore,” he said. “Buried here with you, I guess. Weird thing is, I look back and I don’t like him; don’t pine away or long for him—don’t even see him anymore, really. There’s only you back there now—still whole, yes, but with these other pieces, like parts of a shadow that I assume is me. I think that’s what’s so hard now. More and more lately it seems like the shadow-pieces are trying to make you into shadow-pieces, too.”

  You think too much, he heard his wife say. You’ll always miss me, but the missing will change as you change. It’s the cliché of not moving on that bothers you.

  “Yes,” Markham said. “I think I thought my self-awareness of the cliché, the whole I’m-going-to-join-the-FBI-to-avenge-my-wife’s-death syndrome would keep something alive—you, me maybe. Christ, I don’t know anymore. It’s all the same now in the shadows; something’s lost in there—in the work, everything I’m doing. Gates called me out on it, you know—back at my town house in Quantico. Was one hackneyed phrase away from calling me a shell of a man. He settled for something subtler about my work defining who I am.”

  It’s the cliché, Michelle repeated, combined with the futility of knowing none of it will bring us closer together. Let it go. Clichés are clichés because they’re true. Stop being so smart about it all.

  “I don’t think you’d like the new digs,” Markham said, smiling. “Hardwood floors, yes, but the rest is pretty standard contractor grade. No wainscoting or built-ins—none of the character of the old place. Nice pond in back, though. Lots of ducks. You’d like them.”

  Let it go.

  Markham sat for a moment listening to the breeze, then asked, “Would you care for a stroll down by the river, madame?”

  I ’d be delighted, Michelle replied.

  He rose to his feet and started off toward the water, when suddenly he felt his BlackBerry buzzing in his pocket. He stopped and checked it. An e-mail from Schaap.

  Think this has anything to do with our boy?

  was all it said, but a link had been inserted into the body of the message above the words Sent from my Verizon BlackBerry. Markham clicked it—an article from the Raleigh Sun dated Tuesday, November 1, 2005.

  Halloween Theft at Taxidermy Studio

  By Jonathan Vaughn—Staff Writer

  DURHAM—Somebody might have had their heart set on being a lion this year for Halloween, say Durham Police, who are currently investigating a break-in at Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium.

  According to Detective Charles Gray, chief investigator on the case, the robbery took place just after 3 a.m. this morning. “The thieves knew exactly what they were going for,” said Gray. “They entered at the rear of the establishment and used their vehicle to break down the door and tripped the silent alarm. Unfortunately, they made off with the lion’s head before we could get there.” Gray went on to say that no other items were reported missing, and that the owner’s safe, which was empty at the time of the robbery, remained untouched.

  “That’s the worst part,” said Tom Rowley, owner of Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium. “Of all the things in the store, what they could hope to gain by taking old Leo is beyond me.”

  A family business owned and operated in the same location for over 50 years, Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium is part taxidermy studio, part museum, and the animals inside have become old friends to both locals and curious tourists alike. Leo, a monstrous African lion’s head, had been a fixture on the wall behind Rowley’s counter since the early 1980s.

  “It was one of my father’s most prized possessions,” Rowley said. “[Leo] had been in our house for years and was a gift from a friend who he served with in World War Two. It was shot on a safari back in the 1930s. These kinds of things are getting harder and harder to find, and to this day a lot of the kids used to come in here just to look at him.”

  Durham Police Department spokeswoman Sh-eryl Parks said she does not believe the burglary to be related to the break-in at nearby Lynn’s Craft Store in mid-October, in which thieves made off with over $1,000 in cash. Parks, however, did advise business owners in the area to install loud alarms. “It is our experience that an audible alarm is a better deterrent than a silent alarm.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” said Tom Rowley. “It’s just sad that we live in a world where we have to worry about stuff like this.”

  Markham was about to read the e-mail again when Michelle interrupted him.

  No shadow-pieces in there now, she said. Everything so clear when you’re working; everything so alive. So what if your work defines who you are? You might be a shell of a man, Sam Markham, but I ’d still do you in a heartbeat.

  Markham laughed, swallowed the tears that threatened to follow, and powered off his BlackBerry.

  Then he took his wife’s hand and strolled with her down by the river.

  Chapter 71

  “Where the hell could he be?” George Kiernan muttered, glancing at his watch.

  1:51 p.m.

  At first he’d been furious and started his note session chewing ass as planned. But soon his fury turned to panic when the minutes ticked by and Bradley Cox still didn’t show. The rest of his cast, including Cindy Smith, had gotten off light. He had bigger fish to fry now, and that son of a bitch Cox was going to get it. Kiernan would have him thrown out of the department unless he was dead, he told the rest of the cast, and sent a pair of assistant stage managers out looking for him.

  But now, almost an hour later, the director was sorry he’d said that. Yeah, now George Kiernan was really worried about the kid. He took a
deep breath and closed his eyes; he was sweating badly and could hardly keep the script in his hand from shaking as the costumer finished letting out the waistband on Bradley Cox’s pants.

  At 1:40 he’d resigned himself that it was going to happen, but only at 1:50 did he actually begin to believe it. The show must go on, he said to himself over and over—but that he should have to go on in the title role of Macbeth? That was something George Kiernan would never have dreamed of in a million years. It wasn’t department policy to employ under-studies—not enough time for rehearsals, and the pool of actors was simply too small to cover even just the big roles adequately. And who wanted to get involved with parents bitching that their kid was entitled to go onstage “at least once” for all his hard work? Besides, George Kiernan couldn’t remember a student in a major role ever missing a performance while he was chair. Sure, things come up once in a while during tech week—but after a show had already opened? After it was too late to adapt and switch people around? Well, that kind of thing just didn’t happen in the Harriot University Department of Theatre and Dance.

  But it had happened. And as George Kiernan caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he decided then and there that the department’s understudy policy would have to change.

  “There’s no one at his apartment,” the stage manager said, rushing into the dressing room out of breath. “The landlord got us in. There were some clothes on the bed, but his cell phone was gone and the dead bolt locks from the outside. His car is gone, too—looks like he just took off.”

  “Christ almighty,” Kiernan muttered, his mind spinning. Sure, he thought, Cox was a bit of a snake—a bit of a pussy, too—but just bailing on them after a shaky performance? That didn’t seem right.