“I’m trying to find out information on a homicide suspect.”
“Okay,” the officer said.
“So…can I come in?”
“Okay,” the officer said. He got up and cleared a pizza box off of the couch, then went back to his computer. He picked up a black headset and put it back on his head, then immediately began typing on the keyboard. “Sorry about that, I had to answer the door.”
Frank sat down on the couch, seeing that the officer was playing a computer game and cursing every time the enormous Orc he was controlling got hit by an effeminate looking wood sprite. Frank tapped his fingers on his case file and waited. Finally, he said, “Hey, is someone around who can help me?”
“Hang on,” the officer said over his shoulder.
Frank stood up, “I’ll just come back.”
“I said to hang on one freaking minute! Christ!” The officer threw off his headset and rolled his chair over to the radio sitting on the countertop. He pressed the microphone and said, “Chief, you there?”
After a moment, the radio crackled, “Go ahead.”
“You got a visitor who say he need information on a homicide suspect.”
“Is that right? Send him around the homestead and I’ll see what I can do for him.”
“All right.” The officer turned around and said, “I’m not even supposed to be working tonight. I told the Chief I had a very important match to play and he said I could just sit here and cover the desk. Now that’s all shot to hell, thank you very much.”
“Well, I appreciate it,” Frank said. “How do I get to the Chief’s house?”
“Keep going that way until you come to the first white picket fence and turn left. It’s four doors down.”
“Thanks again,” Frank said. “Good luck with your fairy, or whatever you were fighting. She looked tough.”
The officer grabbed his headset and slammed the door behind Frank with a thud and a quick turn of the lock.
***
The man sat on his front porch, rocking back and forth in a chair. He had short cropped grey hair and a thin goatee with blue eyes, razor sharp enough to make Frank stop at the edge of the driveway. God knows what they do to intruders around here, he thought. “Are you Chief Clayton?”
“Yes, I am.”
Frank shut his door and showed him his badge and case file, “Is it too late for me to be bothering you like this? I can try and come back tomorrow if you want.”
“Not at all,” the Chief said. He held out his hand, “Name’s Cole. Welcome to my home.”
“I’m Frank.” He showed him the case file and said, “I’m investigating a homicide, and while I was searching the premises, I found a utility bill for a residence out here. I was wondering—”
“How far you drive today?”
“About two hundred miles. I came straight from the scene.”
“You want to use the bathroom?”
“Actually that would be amazingly fantastic. Do you mind?”
“Go ahead in. It’s the second door on the left.”
Frank looked into the door and saw a woman standing in the kitchen, “I won’t scare your wife walking into the house like that?”
“Son, I started carrying a gun when I met that woman because I seen what she can do to with a knife. Go ahead in.”
Frank knocked politely on the door and let himself in. Cole turned around in his seat and yelled, “Honey, fix Frank up some coffee and supper! He come all the way from Philadelphia in one shot.”
“All right,” she said.
Frank nodded politely at Mrs. Clayton, and she said, “You hungry for anything in particular?”
“No, ma’am. Last thing I ate was a Wendy’s hamburger at noon.”
“Go ahead and get washed up then. I’ve got just the thing for you.”
***
Frank picked up one of the ribs and gnawed on it. “This is delicious.”
Cole pointed to the plate in Frank’s lap, “Everything on that plate is from a five mile-radius. Them ribs are from cattle over on the Bower’s farm. The coleslaw and beans are homemade from what my neighbor grows. She put some egg on there too? Those are from my chickens out back. We got so many damn eggs she’s making me eat them morning, noon and night.”
Frank stopped talking to keep eating, making tiny grunting noises when the Chief spoke just to be polite.
“I take it you met Bill. The one who sent you over here?”
Frank nodded.
“Was he an asshole?”
Frank tried not to smile and shrugged slightly, “He was tied up with something. I just think he wasn’t expecting company.”
Cole shook his head, “I’m kind of stuck with the runts of the litter around here. Anybody worth a damn runs off and joins the State Police. I have to make do with what I’m given.”
Frank wiped off his mouth and said, “Honestly, I thought you guys would be covered by the State Police at night. That’s what most of the smaller police departments outside of our county do.”
“We used to be,” Cole said. “Then me and the local barracks had a falling out over an investigation. Some asshole was cooking meth up in the hills and dumping the chemical byproducts in the nearest stream. We caught on when people started getting sick. Turns out the State Police narcotics boys were sitting on this house for over a year, gathering intel, making all sorts of overtime. I raised holy hell and told them what was what. Now I’m always struggling to keep somebody in that damn trailer on the overnights.”
“That sucks,” Frank mumbled. A bit of meat fell out of his mouth, but he caught it and ate it again. “This is the best food I’ve ever eaten in my life.”
Cole patted him on the back and said, “Eat up. There’s plenty more. When you’re done, we’ll go into my office and see what I can dig up on your suspect.”
***
There was a yellow-painted brick mounted on a plaque above Cole’s desk, hanging beside a framed certificate from the FBI National Academy. “You went to the National Academy?”
Cole put on a pair of bifocals and leaned forward to squint at his computer screen, “Yes, indeed. Working on my master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh too. I do online courses mainly, but there’s a satellite campus about an hour away.” Cole turned and looked up at him, “You thought we were a bunch of podunk hicks out here in the boondocks, didn’t you?”
“No,” Frank said. “I bet things really changed for you folks when the invention of flight finally reached you out here last year.”
Cole smiled and said, “Hand me that file of yours so we can track this rascal down.”
The Chief’s fingers flew over his computer as he logged into the town’s financial records, bills of sale, and courthouse records. “I’m running a search for anything related to the name Polonius. Luckily it’s not too common around here.”
“We get all sorts of goofy names around my way,” Frank said. “My chief’s name is Claudius Erinnyes. He was born to be a flaming dickwad.”
“Language, boys,” Mrs. Clayton called out from the next room.
Frank felt his cheeks go hot. “Sorry, ma’am!”
Cole went to the kitchen and came back with two beers. He handed one to Frank, but Frank said, “I shouldn’t in case I gotta go get this guy tonight.”
Cole dropped the beer in his hands and said, “It’s darker than the devil’s hind quarters out there in the mountains this time of night, son. All you’d do is get yourself lost, or hurt, or worse. Let’s triangulate this knucklehead’s position and give ourselves a proper advantage.”
“Know any good motels around here?”
“Nope.”
“Can I sleep in the police department’s parking lot?”
“Nope.”
“Okay.”
“Honey?” Cole called out. “Get Jesse’s room ready for a guest, if you don’t mind?”
“Ok. Can it wait till my show is over?”
“Course it can.” Cole cracked his be
er open and said, “My boy Jesse’s over in Europe.”
“In the military?”
“Nah. I thought he’d go into the Army like his old man, but he’s got brains. He’s in Spain right now, teaching English to young mamacitas. His mom misses him like crazy, though.”
Frank looked down at the beer in his hands and chuckled. Miller Lite. The good stuff.
13. Apparently nobody needed alarm clocks in Potter County because at six o’clock the next morning, everything suddenly woke up. It wasn’t just the roosters. It wasn’t just the horses and cows. It was everything, both living and mechanical. Tractors, trucks, table saws, and more. It was people walking around outside hollering, “Hey, Cole! How you doing?” and Cole hollering back, “Can’t complain, Roy. How’s the crops looking?”
Frank looked for his clothes on the floor and saw that they’d been laundered and folded on the back of a chair near the bed. He got dressed and found Mrs. Clayton in the kitchen, “Thanks for everything again, ma’am. I don’t know what to say.”
“You came up here to get rid of a bad man, isn’t that enough, honey?” she said. “You hungry?”
“I wasn’t until the moment I walked in here. I’m going to send my wife out here for cooking lessons.”
She smiled and said, “Cole’s out on the porch reading the newspaper. Here, take some coffee.”
Frank carried his mug onto the porch and squinted in the early sun. The wheat field across the street swayed in the light breeze, like a gently rippling sea of amber. Cole held up a piece of paper and said, “I found your boy. There’s a small house not too far away that belonged to a Ronald Polonius. Old Ronald P. kicked the bucket in a car accident seven years ago, but somebody’s been paying the taxes in his name ever since.”
“That’s good news.”
“No it ain’t. He’s a mile outside my jurisdiction, in the unincorporated part of the County. That’s State Police’s territory.”
“Shit. Does that mean we need to call them?”
“Supposed to. They’ll be here in about twelve hours with a SWAT team.”
“How far is he from us right now?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
Frank leaned against the porch post and sipped his coffee. “Okay. Just show me the way, and I’ll go get him by myself. You won’t have to worry about it.”
Cole looked up at him, one eye closed in the sun. “That how you boys do it down there in the big city? Stop being lawmen when it’s convenient?”
“Only some of us, Chief. Not all.”
“Good. Follow me around the back.” Cole led him to a small shed behind the house with an electronic lock on the door. He punched in a code and pulled the heavy steel door open. Frank looked in and whistled at the racks of assault rifles, body armor, and night-vision goggles lined up along the walls. “We had trouble with a local militia a while back. I got some grant money out of it and spent it on repurposed military ordnance.”
Frank picked up a black M4 Carbine rifle with a red holographic site display attached to the gun’s frame. Cole handed Frank a bullet proof vest and a stack of rifle magazines and said, “Let’s go catch us a bad guy.”
***
Aprille Macariah knocked on the glass window and held up her badge. “I’m here for the autopsies.”
The secretary nodded and buzzed her in. She followed the secretary through the alley of cubicles toward a secured door at the rear of the office. The secretary swiped her ID card at the sensor, and the lock deactivated. “Just go down that hallway, toward the autopsy room. They’re in there waiting for you.”
There were windows along the walls, but when she knocked on one, both men inside the room waved for her to come in. They were dressed in surgical scrubs with face masks and hair covers. Both of them had on long smocks and booties over their shoes. The floor was polished and lined with drains. “Have you ever done this before?” the coroner said.
“No.”
“Did you bring a camera?”
Aprille pulled it out of her back pocket and showed him.
“Excellent. We’re going to bring the first specimen in. Once we uncover her, take a few overall shots, and then when we begin the external examination, I will nod each time I want you to document my findings.”
“Okay,” Aprille said.
“Make sure you stand back during the cutting phase. It can get messy. How is your sense of smell?”
“Pretty good,” she said.
The coroner smiled thinly.
The assistant wheeled in Mary Polonius’ body and yanked the white sheet off of her. She was nude under the harsh lights, every inch of her body exposed and unprotected, undignified. Her facial features were distorted with most of the bones shifted from the pounding of the brick on her skull. The bruises covering her eyes had not gone down, making her look like a bullfrog or a dazzled prizefighter. Her mouth was open slightly and her tongue stuck out. It was grey. Her lips were purple.
Aprille snapped photographs of the woman’s body from head to toe, taking pictures of Mary’s feet, her ankles, her shins, and thighs. The coroner tugged Mary’s legs apart and opened her labia with his fingers, waving for Aprille to come closer and take a photograph. “No signs of sexual trauma.” He looked at his assistant, “That’s nice to see every once in a while, yeah?”
When they reached the top of her head, Aprille began snapping multiple photographs, trying to get the injuries from every possible angle. “Don’t wear yourself out on that. We’ll get a much better view of the injuries after I remove her scalp,” the coroner said.
Aprille stopped photographing as the coroner picked up a scalpel. “Okay, time to step back.”
He covered up Mary’s face with a blue towel and made three quick incisions along her torso, cutting her in a Y that went from each shoulder to meet in the center of her breastbone and straight down her stomach.
Within seconds, she was opened up. They deconstructed the woman with the precision of auto mechanics. They popped her hood, dug into her engine, and started stripping her parts. They used scalpels and saws. Mary’s innards leaked through their fingers and splattered the floor.
Two hours later, they were spraying down the metal autopsy table, washing the leftover chunks of Mary Polonius down into the drain. The assistant set a bag full of Mary’s organs back inside of her empty chest cavity and rolled her out of the room. The coroner looked at Aprille and said, “How you holding up?”
It smelled like a slaughterhouse. It smelled like spoiled meat and wet, rotting vegetation. It made her eyes sting. “I’m fine,” Aprille said hoarsely. “No big deal. Let’s just keep moving.”
“Bring in the second specimen,” the coroner said.
They uncovered Kayla and straightened out her crooked limbs, making notes about her deformities and underdeveloped genitalia for their medical records. Just a girl, Aprille thought. Just a young, fragile thing who’d never known anything, really. Not even walking.
She thought about the Mickey Mouse nightlight in the bedroom. Innocent. As innocent as the fairy princesses on the pillowcase her father threw over her head right before he bashed her brains in.
Don’t cut her open, she thought. She wanted to grab the cart and run out of the room, to take the body somewhere else, somewhere pleasant and peaceful and not some fucking sterilized laboratory with saws and knives and scales and plastic biohazard bags.
Don’t cut her open.
But they did. They cut into her small body and unzipped her like a winter jacket, and all Aprille could do was watch.
***
Cole stopped his truck a half mile down from the nearest driveway and said, “That’s it up ahead. We’ll go in on foot. Stay low and follow me.”
Frank grabbed his M4 and closed the truck door quietly, letting it catch without fully shutting. Cole ducked into the brush, moving from tree to tree for cover. Frank copied his movements and came up behind him. The house was only fifty yards away. A small one-story shack with a wood stove an
d rotting wood on the porch and windows. Frank tapped Cole on the shoulder and showed him the trash cans sitting at the end of the driveway. “Where’s his car?” Frank whispered.
“Don’t know. From here on in, you cover me while I advance, and I’ll do the same. Keep an eye on those windows. He might try and snipe us.”
Frank lifted his rifle and painted each window on the house with the tiny red hologram in the sight display. Cole made it to the corner of the house closest to them and waved for Frank to hurry up. Frank raced forward, running to get back to Cole’s side. “Okay,” Cole said, taking several deep breaths. “We go to the front door together and stack up. I’ll break right and you break left. As soon as we clear that room, we’ll regroup.”
Both of them walked in low crouches, keeping their weapons ready. Cole ducked under the wide living room window and said, “Watch that!”
Frank turned and lifted his rifle, keeping his finger near the trigger. Cole leaned over the porch and pulled open the screen door, then closed it again and came back to Frank. “His car’s along the side of the house. I just saw it. He’s definitely here.”
Frank felt sweat leaking into his eyes from his hair. He nodded and said, “I’m ready when you are.”
Cole went back to the screen door and pulled it open slowly and quietly. He tried for the door handle, and it was locked. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “We’re gonna have to do this the old fashioned way. Come on.”
“I’ll do it,” Frank said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ll do it. He’s my guy, and this is my mess to clean up. I’ll go in first.”
Frank’s hands were shaking so much the gun was rattling. He chalked it up to adrenaline. He moved around Cole and grabbed the screen door, leaning back on one foot and about to kick when it occurred to him that he hadn’t talked to Dawn since their fight.
He’d tried to call her once he reached Potter County, but there was no cell service.
He hadn’t wished the girls goodnight.
Cole clapped his hand on Frank’s shoulder and said, “Whatever the hell it is you’re thinking about right now, put it out of your mind, boy. Kick that door in and let’s go.”
Superbia (Book 2) Page 9