Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery

by Dallas Murphy

  “So we can isolate the strangers. That’s what’s good about being here as opposed to NYC, where most everybody on the street’s a stranger. Here strangers stand right out, you don’t confuse them with the locals, and that’s good.” He dialed Shelly on his own cellular phone, which he took from his beat-up leather briefcase. I saw inside as he did so. There was a black handgun in there. “Shel, it’s me. Yeah, how’s it going? I’m here. Yeah. Shelly, you recognize my voice, don’t you? Security, that’s why. Tell Mr. Deemer—”

  I liked this guy Sid. I was glad he’d come. If we couldn’t have Calabash by our side, Sid would do. He handed me the phone.

  “Hello, Shelly. Anything up?”

  “Did Sid tell you?”

  “Tell me what? Did you get another bowling sheet?”

  “No. Hype. The stalker story, Artie, it’s out. Nobody knows who got it first or how, but now it’s common knowledge. The tabloid-TV idiots, they’re hysterical. It’s not just that smarmy figure skater. I don’t know how it got out, but it’s out. I got networks calling about movies of the week, already!”

  That’s the part that had always frightened me most. Maybe there never was a real stalker; maybe the asshole that sent the bowling sheets was a harmless crank. But now there would have to be a stalker. In America publicity is powerful incentive to kill.

  “Celebrity Sleuth called me,” Shelly said. “They offered ten grand for the stalker’s phone number. They said we could keep the ten grand even if they didn’t get the stalker at that number.”

  That caused spider-foot chills to run up my spine. “Shelly, what do you know about Dick Desmond?”

  “Who? Dick Desmond? Dick Des—Oh yeah, it’s coming back to me. He was a tiny talent, a mediocrity, tall, blond hair, had a series—Aw, shit, Artie, the series was about bowling!”

  “Ten Pins.”

  “Yes! Bowling! Is it him? Is he the stalker?”

  “He’s here. At least he might be here.” I told him about my encounters with Dick Desmond.

  Shelly waited for more.

  “That’s it, Shelly.”

  “Tell me again.”

  I did. I told him about the encounter out by the Disappointments, in the marine supply store, and in the Crack when Lois Lane had insisted the boatman was Dick Desmond.

  “Wait a minute, this isn’t Lois Lane, the weirdo?”

  “She’s not a weirdo. She’s a brilliant performer.” But it was no use arguing with Shelly about taste.

  “She may be a brilliant performer, but she’s still a weirdo. The part I don’t like about Dick Desmond, besides the bowling connection, is the kid taking video of you and Jellyroll.”

  I didn’t like that part, either. What good does it do if you kill the cutest dog in the world if nobody knows you do it? There has to be video. “Shelly, do they know where we are, the media?”

  “I don’t think so, Artie. I think they’d be there if they did. How’s Crystal?”

  “Fine.”

  “Give her a hug for me. Look, I’m telling everybody, What the fuck is the fuss? There is no stalker, you’re in New Zealand to help with kangaroo conversation. I’ll call in an hour.”

  “Shelly, there are no kangaroos in New Zealand.”

  “They don’t know that, the ignorant geeks.”

  I returned the phone to Sid, who said, “Okay, tell me all about this Dick Desmond character,” and I repeated what I’d just said. “That’s it?” he said.

  “Artie,” said Crystal, “what about the timing?”

  “What timing?”

  “You saw them out in the water the day after you arrived, right? That was yesterday, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they couldn’t have followed you here,” Crystal pointed out. “If Desmond and the kid with the video camera are the stalkers, they had to know you were coming here before you got here.”

  I thought about that.

  But Sid wasn’t ready to jump to conclusions yet. He opened his briefcase and removed an Oglevie flight schedule. “What time did you arrive at the airport?”

  “About nine,” I said.

  He ran a stubby finger down a column. “There were no incoming flights after that…This Desmond is a stranger to you? Your paths have never crossed in show business? Who knew about the threatening bowling sheets besides the three of us and Shelly?”

  “Clayton Kempshall. He owns this place.”

  “Who else?”

  “Nobody else,” I said.

  He looked to Crystal, and she shook her head. “Have you spoken to Clayton Kempshall since you’ve been here?”

  “No. He said he was going to Los Angeles. I’ve left messages for him.”

  “Where?”

  “In New York and L.A.”

  He nodded as he jotted something in his notebook. “Is Clayton Kempshall a special friend?”

  “No, in fact, we don’t know him very well.”

  He glanced at me, then jotted some more. “The point about strangers is still true. They’re gonna stand out, and that’s good. The problem is the Jesus people. They’re all strangers, and what with the murder, there’s a press presence, but that seems limited to the mainland. The islands seem to be another world altogether.” He consulted his notebook. “You mentioned that Dick Desmond and his son were on a boat. Did you happen to notice the name of this boat?”

  “Seastar. From Boston.”

  He wrote that down. “How old would you say Desmond’s son is?”

  I told him I really couldn’t tell because of the camcorder in front of his face.

  Dwight’s boat came around the point.

  “Here comes my ride. I like this guy. You told him about the stalker, and he’s looking out for you. This is a straight-ahead guy. You can depend on guys like him. Oh, coincidence. Turns out I know the local law. He retired from the force about the same time I did. This is all good. Don’t you worry. The stalker always has the element of surprise on his side, but he’s going to be fish out of water up here. He’ll stand out like shit in the shower. Well, excuse me, but you know what I mean. This is all good.”

  As we went downstairs, Crystal asked Sid what he was going to do now. Sid said he wanted to talk to Sheriff Kelso in person, and he might try to trace Seastar, because then “at least we’d know if this guy really was Dick Desmond. Oh, I almost forgot. Step around here, please.” He led us behind the house near Jellyroll’s woodpile.

  Sid pulled the black handgun from his briefcase. But it wasn’t a handgun. My dog danced with joy as if to share his chipmunk game with us. It was a shotgun sawed off short enough to fit in a briefcase. Heartless and black, it had a pistol grip and a single purpose. “I don’t think you’ll need it or anything, but I want you to have this. Just cock it, point, and shoot. Accuracy is not an issue. Thirteen-year-old pulled this on the IRT. And here’s a box of shells.”

  I didn’t believe that Sid had forgotten about the gun. I think he meant to size us up before he gave it to us. What did that say about Crystal and me? That we were responsible adults capable of bloody slaughter at short range?

  “Are you being well paid, Sid?”

  “Shelly’s taking good care of me.”

  I put the gun inside the back door, and we went to say hello to Dwight.

  “Well,” he said, “we got the sub drained out and back on its stand. And we got the Commander out of there.”

  “How’s Edith?” Crystal asked.

  “I don’t exactly know. She went off with Roxanne Self. Frankly, it wasn’t a thing she should’ve seen, getting him out of there.”

  “Crystal,” I said after we’d eaten dinner and drunk a glass of the wine Crystal had brought, “what would you think if I murdered them? In cold blood. Say it was Dick Desmond, or say it was anybody. Say we knew they meant to harm Jellyroll, but they hadn’t done anything yet. Those are the circumstances.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then say I killed them both.”

  “Before they actually did a
nything you killed them?”

  “Right. Not in a passion of dog defense, but in a calculated, premeditative way, covering my tracks so I wouldn’t get caught.”

  “You’d have to dispose of their bodies.”

  “That’s right, I would. I could put the bodies in the boat, tie rocks around their necks, and drop them in a hundred feet of water. Bodies never come up around here.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “The water’s too cold for gasses to form?”

  “What gasses?”

  “The gasses of decomposition.”

  “Oh…so are you planning to kill them, or is this hypothetical?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking about what murder would do to our relationship.”

  SIXTEEN

  There were no strangers to shoot at next morning, so I left the cannon under the bed and joined Crystal on the porch. She was sitting on the railing still in her nightgown.

  “Look at the colors,” she said about Dog Cove. “They’re so bright they sting my eyes. I like it here, Artie, but then I’m trying to run away, too.”

  “From what?”

  “I dreamed last night that I was playing Gracie Cobb on ESPN. Gracie was wearing a tux, but I was naked except for a pair of tennis shoes. When I leaned down to shoot, people made remarks about my ass.”

  “Aww.” I sat beside her, put my arm around her shoulders. “That’s awful.”

  “Would you mind if I lived off Jellyroll for a while, I mean if it came to that?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Do you mean you’re quitting?”

  “Thinking about it. I’ve been playing bad for six months. But I wouldn’t really live off Jellyroll.”

  “No, that would be immoral. I could probably exploit some connections and get you a job loading concrete blocks over in Jersey. Come on, it’s just a bad time. You’ve got the talent. You’ll come back.” But I knew what she was fearing. Her mind wasn’t right just now, and maybe it never would be. If so, I hoped it wouldn’t be because she lived with me.

  “Look!” She pointed over my head toward the coastal hill at Jellyroll.

  He was sprinting full tilt up the trail on the heels of the pack. We didn’t exactly see whole dogs, just parts, a swish of tail, rustling ferns and bushes, a flash of fur. They must have skulked silently down here to pick him up—

  “Jellyroll, you stop! Bad!”

  But he didn’t. He chose the pack, the wild. They sprinted together up the trail, barking and baying, taking themselves very seriously, like predators on the tundra with survival at stake. I’ll admit that hurt my feelings a little.

  “Wow,” said Crystal. “Has he ever done that before?”

  “Never.”

  “I’ll go get some clothes on, we can go after him.”

  “We’ll never catch him if he doesn’t want to be caught.”

  “I know.”

  Nevertheless, we hustled up the trail. In places it grew too steep to walk upright without a handhold, in others it turned rocky and precarious, threatened to dump us over the edge. We didn’t have the shoes for this kind of going, but the view was exquisite. We looked back on the boathouse nestled so sweetly in the crotch of the cove. We saw two ospreys circling at eye level. Looking the other way, we could see the Dogs. Out on the ocean, a brisk wind seemed to be kicking up whitecaps. The air was as clear as any air I’d ever breathed. My eyes, like Crystal’s, stung with the unaccustomed transparency of it.

  All during the hike, we heard the dogs whooping and laughing in the distance. Maybe he was now a feral thing. An island dog. Maybe Jellyroll’d never mind me again. We’d eye each other nervously across the gulf of natural selection. Then the sound stopped abruptly.

  We hurried on. We got close enough to see the underbrush moving, but we couldn’t see any actual dogs until we climbed a steep, rocky stretch, rounded a bend, and came upon a swirling mass of them, undifferentiated, tails flashing, nails skittering on a bald dome of granite rock in a little clearing. Jellyroll was in the thick of it, eyes wide with pack energy. When they saw us, the other dogs bolted, and Jellyroll made to go with them—

  “You stay!”

  He did, and I was relieved. I wasn’t sure he would. But he wouldn’t look around at me.

  “Hi, Jellyroll,” said Crystal, but he still didn’t turn around.

  His back was hunched, his head and tail lowered. That posture meant only one thing. He had something in his mouth. Jellyroll is an eater. I’ve taken hideous things out of his craw in the park, on the street, at the beach, things I wouldn’t even want to mention. Chicken bones, petrified pizza crusts, things like that are typical fare. Without constant vigilance, he’ll ingest anything that isn’t a mineral. And since he has that weak stomach, his scavenging results in unspeakable expulsions.

  “What’s he got?” Crystal wondered.

  He still didn’t turn around. I approached him. “You better stay,” I said in my serious dog handler voice. “Crystal, watch the look I get: Drop.” He dropped, the thing clattered, and then slowly he looked back at me with a smoldering stink eye.

  “Oh, nasty,” she giggled.

  Clattered? What had clattered? He stood over the thing motionlessly, guarding it like a hyena. A deer femur, I decided. That would clatter when dropped. Jellyroll doesn’t find many dead deer in Riverside Park. He would love a good femur. Or it could be that other part of the mammalian leg bone? What was that part called? But wait a minute, hadn’t Dwight told me that there were no deer on Kempshall Island?

  Crystal saw it first. She gasped urgently. Crystal had one hand slapped across her mouth, the other pointed at the thing. “A hand,” she said in a tense, even voice.

  We bent from the waist, heads together, watching it. That’s what it was, all right. A hand. The hand was barely attached by dried, black gristle to an arm bone. We stood over it timidly, as if it would leap at our throats like the hand of the Mummy. Okay, what were the rational possibilities here, if we dismissed the Mummy? That this was an ancient Indian burial ground, and the dogs, or something, had disturbed it. This region was probably alive with Native American burial sites—

  Birch tree trunks creaked together overhead, but no cooling breeze made it down to us on the granite dome. I knelt beside the arm. Crystal squatted on her haunches. We peered at the bones. They did not look like those on a stand in my chiropractor’s office. These bones were not white and they were not clean. They were brown like roots or things of the earth. Dust-to-dust things. They looked like the bones you see exhumed on ITN reports about death-squad massacres. The flesh was not entirely gone, but the desiccated leathery patches clinging to the bone had nothing to do with living flesh. On some spots, as between the first and second knuckles, hair still clung to the flesh.

  “Do you want to look for the rest of him? Or do you not want to look for the rest of him?” Crystal asked.

  “I guess it’s that simple.”

  “I don’t see how we can not look, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  The arm lay at the outer slope of the shallow dome, which was about half the size of a tennis court. Crystal went one way around, I went the other. I didn’t want to find him. Why was I searching?

  Cracks and fissures ran through the rock. Probably about four hundred million years ago it was molten matter pressing upward at the cooler crust of the earth. This is where it came to rest, at least as far as human time is concerned. Trees blotted out our view of all but the sky directly above. While I circled, Jellyroll guarded his find, still hoping I’d change my mind. There were dog tracks around the edges of the dome where boulders and pine needles gave way to brown dirt, the same color brown as the arm and hand bones.

  I had done half a lap when I saw the next piece of him. A foot and shinbone, including knee, stuck up from a crack between two big boulders. There was a sickly comic quality about the way it stuck up like that, as if its owner, sensing mortality, had tried to hide b
y ostriching himself down the hole. Part of a sock was still visible around the ankle. Had the dogs done this, spread him out like this?

  “Artie,” called Crystal in a fading voice, “over here.” She was ninety degrees away from me. “I found some more of him. Christ.”

  I went to her.

  The pelvis lay flat in the dirt. His thighbones spread out from it at obscene angles. His spine lay visible, curled like a snake under a delicate fern leaf. The cushioning material between the vertebrae had turned black.

  “I think I’ve seen enough. How about you?”

  “Me too—” Then she gave out with a high whine of a sound that ran down my spine like icy rain, the kind of sound one might make as a sharp, thin blade penetrated one’s belly. She pointed at the guy’s skull.

  He was staring at the sky, and we were looking up into his braincase from under his chin, through the arch of his lower jaw, which wasn’t there. I was soaked with sweat. I touched Crystal’s back as we moved three steps toward the thing. Her shirt was plastered to her spine. Sweat was a sign of life here in the leafy charnel house. Her shoulders were hunched, and she grasped her cheeks with both hands.

  The skull was lying on brown earth at the edge of a small cave. It was the same kind of cave I’d seen on the other hill, where the granite was wildcat, as Dwight had called it. Five vertebrae trailed the skull, but they were nearly buried in the dirt.

  “You don’t think this is some kind of practical joke on the city slickers, do you?” asked Crystal quietly.

  “No.”

  “I don’t either.”

  We stepped closer…

  “Aw, Jesus, Artie, he’s been murdered!”

  “Yeah,” I mouthed dryly.

  You didn’t need to be a pathologist to know that this guy didn’t die of old age. His skull was split from the top of the crown to the bridge of the nose. Earth nearly filled the brain cavity. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the ragged edge. Had he seen the blow coming and screamed in terror? Had it hurt? There were dog tracks all around in the soft brown dirt of the forest floor. Crystal and I leaned over and peered down at his hollow eye sockets as though he had something to impart to us, but he was eloquently silent.