Johnny Gruesome

by Gregory Lamberson

  “Okay. Call me if you need to talk.”

  She opened the door and jumped out, cold air awakening her senses like smelling salts. She crossed to her front door, bathed in the headlights. The truck didn’t move and she felt Gary’s eyes on her backside. Taking out her keys, she unlocked the door and stepped inside. She flicked the switch to the entry hall light and flinched when the bulb blew out, her heart jumping. She closed the door anyway, leaning against it as she pulled off her gloves. The headlights pierced the curtains and slashed the darkness, angling across the ceiling. Her knees buckled and she slid down the door, sobbing again. She heard Gary drive off, the sound of his truck fading into the night.

  Gary parked outside the double-wide trailer and saw the television flickering in the living room. His mother worked mornings as a cashier at Wal-Mart, so she’d already gone to bed. Her boyfriend, Barry, stayed up late every night, his ass parked on the sofa. Sighing, Gary pressed his forehead against the steering wheel. He reached into his pocket, took out his baggie of cocaine, and took a hit.

  Ready.

  He got out of the truck and staggered through eight inches of snow, passing Barry’s Impala, which rated the driveway. Stepping onto the cinder block that served as a front step, he pulled the storm door’s handle and pushed the front door open nice and wide so the cold air reached Barry.

  Barry jerked upright, the television highlighting his sleepy features in the darkened room. “Close the door, will ya?”

  Gary pulled the storm door shut behind him. “Sorry, Barry. The wind pulled it out of my hand.” He closed the inside door, as well.

  “You’re full of shit. Is it still snowing?”

  “Yeah.” Gary hung his coat in the narrow closet.

  “Why don’t you shovel the driveway so your mother can get out in the morning?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because I get up late.” Barry’s unemployment insurance had run out, which is why he’d moved in with Gary’s mother in the first place.

  “If I do it now, I’ll only have to do it again in the morning.”

  Barry glued his eyes to the television screen. “You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  Asshole. Gary used the bathroom, then entered his tiny bedroom, where he stripped down to his underwear and climbed under the bedcovers. The polyester curtain over his only window failed to block the streetlight outside. Shivering, he rubbed his knees together. His mind raced and he had to remind himself that the night’s events had really occurred. He thought about Karen, alone in her mother’s big house, then pictured Sheila, Terry’s girlfriend, massaging her coke-loaded nose. Slipping his hand inside his underwear, he stroked himself.

  Chapter 7

  The telephone rang in the darkness, waking Carol with a start. The bedside clock revealed a new day had just begun. Clicking on the lamp, she reached for the wireless phone, knowing the call had to be from the station. The Red Hill police officers called often since Matt had stepped into Walt Butler’s shoes, but this was the first time any had called so late. Beside her, Matt’s gentle snoring stopped. She didn’t mind answering the phone; he’d been working ten to twelve hours a day, and she wanted him to get some rest.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Carol. Sorry to bother you so late.”

  Carol frowned. Ben Yerkovich got off work at midnight. For him to call after his shift meant a real emergency. “That’s okay, Ben. Just a minute.” Matt slept with his back to her, and she shook his shoulder. “Matt? Honey, wake up.”

  He rolled over, blinking.

  “It’s Ben.” She held the phone out to him.

  Squinting at the clock, he took the phone. “Yeah, Ben?”

  Carol watched him rub the sleep from his eyes. The expression on his face turned grave.

  “Oh, no.”

  Her stomach tightened. In a small town like Red Hill, the rare tragedy touched many lives.

  “Tell Dan I’ll be right there.” He handed the phone back to her, and as she hung it up, he threw back the blankets and clambered out of bed.

  “What is it?”

  He pulled his uniform slacks over his long johns. “Some idiot drove off the Willow Creek Bridge.”

  “My God, do they know who it is?”

  He reached for his shirt. “Not yet. The car’s still in the water.” Stepping into the bathroom, he closed the door.

  Carol pictured an automobile trapped beneath the frozen creek.

  No survivors, she thought.

  Matt’s stomach twisted into knots as he drove along Willow Road, peering through the Pathfinder’s windshield wipers. The road had been plowed, so he had little difficulty driving. He passed the sign for the bridge, and blinking lights came into view: yellow, red, and blue. He stopped short of the bridge, parking alongside two police cars and an ambulance. On the far side of the bridge, a large snowplow spat gasoline fumes, and Greg Haines sipped from a thermos in the front seat.

  Coffee, or something stronger? Matt got out and Dan Heller approached him. A senior member of the force, Dan had the wide shoulders of a football player and the beer belly of a football fan. He’d made it clear more than once that he felt he was more qualified than Matt to fill in for Chief Butler.

  “Seventeen years in this department, and I never knew anyone to drive off one of our bridges.” He pointed at the railing: the longitudinal barriers came to a sudden stop, their ends splintered, and resumed fifteen feet later. The gaping hole offered an unobstructed view of the woods on the other side of the creek.

  “You want coffee?” Dan said. “We have some in the ambulance.”

  Matt shook his head. “Just bring me up to speed.”

  Dan led Matt to the gap. Two other police officers stretched a measuring tape from various points of the ruptured railing.

  “The vehicle came from town. I bet he was doing at least fifty when it hit the bridge. Maybe the driver was drunk, maybe he fell asleep, maybe both.”

  Matt peered over the bridge’s edge. The streetlight behind him and the work lights set up on the embankment below bathed the creek in unnatural light. A running generator filled the night with a chugging sound. The tail end of a car, as black as the water, jutted up from the shattered ice. The hole measured out twenty feet in diameter, and deep, jagged cracks extended ten feet beyond that in all directions. The dirty, foaming current slammed the vehicle, rocking it. The shale embankment on the far side sloped into brush and trees at a steep angle.

  “Haines drove right past the railing in his plow. Says he almost didn’t notice it.”

  “I bet,” Matt said, thinking of the thermos.

  “That was at twenty-three hundred hours. His last pass was four hours earlier.”

  8:00 p.m. “Any sign of survivors?”

  Dan smiled as if to say, Of course not, you damn fool. Look at that drop! No one crawled out of there. “None that we’ve seen.”

  A tow truck with a winch had backed through the woods as close as possible to the embankment. Two men in wet suits crossed the ice, emergency ropes tied to their waists and extending to the truck’s rear. They wore boots with cleats rather than fins, and each carried a cable with a sturdy hook on its end. A third man with a cigarette dangling from his lips stood in the truck’s bed, aiming a spotlight at the sunken vehicle. Two paramedics stood by clutching medical gear. The men on the ice reached the submerged car and hooked their cables under the rear bumper and wheel wells. They scuttled back over the creek, adjusting their balance as the cracked ice shifted beneath them. The men reached the embankment, and the driver of the truck spoke into his radio microphone.

  “We’re good to go,” his voice squawked over Dan’s hand radio.

  Dan looked at Matt, who nodded. “Go for it,” Dan said.

  The man activated the winch, pulling the cables taut. The car groaned and pressed against the ice, which cracked and split, huge pieces breaking apart. The cables pulled the car level, the roof emerging from the dark water. The ice continu
ed to crack, separating into slabs that rocked against each other. The windshield appeared, a spiderweb of white cracks in the glass. The slabs floated around the car, obscuring its hood.

  “Cutlass Supreme,” Dan said. “Black …”

  Matt searched his memory for the names of people who owned that particular make. The car’s rear wheels touched the embankment, and shale popped and cracked beneath its weight, torrents of water gushing out of the shattered side windows, splashing away the snow. The twisted hood emerged, emblazoned with a hellish skull that leered at the men on the bridge. For a moment, the hood reflected the overhead streetlight back at them, and the airbrushed artwork seemed to crackle with electricity.

  “Ah, shit,” Dan said.

  The cable dragged the remainder of the Death Mobile onto the embankment, and the spotlight flooded the interior, silhouetting a figure slumped against the steering wheel.

  “Yeah,” Matt said, wondering how Carol would handle the news. Johnny Grissom had tested the limits of her patience, but she’d never disliked him. Hadn’t she just mentioned him at dinner? Something about a fight at school. If he and Carol were parents, how would they cope with such a tragedy?

  Matt and Dan stepped over the aluminum guardrail at the far side of the bridge. They sank deep into the snow, careful not to lose their balance as they hopped over depressions in the decline. Beams of light shot through the trees, casting skeletal shadows on the frozen ground. They pushed branches aside with gloved hands, brittle thorns scratching their slacks. When they emerged in the clearing, the tow truck’s headlights blinded them. Deep, muddy tire tracks marked the truck’s path. They moved around the truck, which rocked forward and back, engine roaring as its spinning rear wheels sprayed mud. The truck jumped forward, towing the Death Mobile in front of Matt and Dan, and stopped.

  Circling the car, Matt slipped in the mud and went down on one knee. As he pulled himself up, he glimpsed the paramedics hurrying up the embankment.

  You’re too late, he thought. We all are.

  Dan peered through the cracked driver’s side window, then thumbed the door handle, jerking the door open. Water cascaded out, soaking his slacks beneath the knees, and rushed down the slope. The dome light did not activate, and empty cans made hollow sounds as they knocked against each other. The water stopped pouring as Matt joined Dan, and they stared inside the vehicle together.

  Johnny sat upright in the front seat, his hands locked on the steering wheel. His head had tipped back and turned to one side, his wet hair hanging straight down. One eye stared out from a halfclosed lid, white in the intense light. His soggy flesh had turned blue, and his jaw hung open, his black tongue protruding.

  Dan removed a digital camera from his coat and squeezed off a series of shots, the flashes illuminating Johnny’s discolored corpse.

  Tommy’s Lounge

  Matt parked on Main Street, four blocks from the police station on Central Avenue, after 1:00 a.m. Fresh snow covered the town square, the wind the only sound on the street. A neon beer sign blinked in the front window, and he shivered as he neared the front door, a Paul Anka tune wafting outside. Entering the warm saloon, he surveyed its occupants: a half-dozen men with gray hair, broad shoulders, and worn posture. Unlike the other bars in town, Tommy’s catered to the older segment of Red Hill’s population. A slower pace prevailed, and retired blue-collar workers could enjoy a few drinks away from their wives, maybe flirt with a middle-aged waitress who would flirt back, knowing nothing would happen.

  Matt spotted the man he’d come to see sitting at a back table near the CD jukebox, sharing a pitcher of beer with Don Bulashka, who owned a dairy just outside town. Matt approached them, his attention on the heavyset man facing Don. Glancing in his direction, the man did a double take.

  “Hey, Matt,” Don said. “Sit down and pour yourself a drink.”

  Matt shook his head. “Thanks, I can’t. Will you excuse us for a minute, Don? I need to speak to Charlie alone.”

  Charlie Grissom tried not to react, but Matt saw his body turn rigid.

  “Sure,” Don said, rising. “I’ll just wait over here.” He refilled his mug and relocated to the bar.

  “I think I will have a seat,” Matt said, sitting opposite Charlie.

  Charlie stared at him, waiting. “What’s he done now?”

  Matt hesitated. Your kid is dead. “Why don’t we step outside, Charlie? Or into the back—”

  Charlie drummed thick fingers on the tabletop. “No, we can talk right here. What’s my boy done this time? You have to lock him up for something?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that.” Your kid is dead. “There’s been an accident.”

  Charlie’s face slackened. “What kind of accident?”

  Matt saw no way to get Charlie into a more private setting. “Charlie, Johnny drove his car off the Willow Creek Bridge tonight. We’re not sure how long he was underwater, but there was nothing we could do to save him. I’m sorry.”

  Charlie stopped blinking. He seemed to age before Matt’s eyes, like Christopher Lee at the end of an old Dracula film.

  “Dead? My boy’s dead?”

  Matt nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  Charlie ran one hand over his forehead, pushing pack a tuft of hair that refused to retreat with the rest of his hairline. He stared at his beer mug, his bloodshot eyes filling with tears. “No. Oh, no. Not him, too …”

  Matt squeezed Charlie’s flabby left forearm. “Let’s get out of here, okay? I need you to come to the morgue with me and identify his body.”

  Burying his face in both hands, Charlie wept. “Oh, God, not my son …” His chest heaved and his shoulders trembled.

  Matt felt the eyes in the bar on them. He wanted to comfort Charlie, but what could he say? It didn’t help that in his mind he still saw Johnny sitting in the front seat of his Cutlass Supreme, his eyes upturned and his flesh waterlogged.

  Your kid is dead.

  Chapter 8

  Eric watched gray sunlight stretch across his bedroom walls. His mother’s alarm went off, and a moment later the shower in the master bedroom began to run. He turned on his radio and switched off its alarm. He hadn’t slept all night. His head throbbed and his blood felt like it had been replaced by alcohol. The local radio personalities discussed sports events, television shows, and local politics. They announced birthdays and contests, but made no mention of school closings or Johnny’s death. Perhaps it had all been a nightmare—

  No. It really happened. Johnny’s dead and I was there.

  Rubbing his swollen eyes, he pictured the parking lot and dark hallways at school. He wondered how he would survive the day. He wanted to stay home and hide from the world, but that would only delay the inevitable, and he had given his word to Gary and Karen.

  Gary.

  His jaw tightened. Why had Johnny ever become Gary’s friend? Other kids liked to party and listen to the same music as Johnny, but Gary had wormed his way into Johnny’s confidence. Eric wanted to believe it took more than good weed to earn Johnny’s loyalty. He stood and the room swam around him. Pain shot through his skull and his stomach performed gymnastic feats. He saw the framed photograph of him with Johnny on the wall, taken at a wrestling match two years earlier. Bile rose in his throat and he hurried to the bathroom.

  The smell of sausage and onions assaulted his senses as he entered the kitchen, causing him to taste beer all over again. His mother, Pat, had made an omelet for his father, who sat at the table reviewing his lesson plans. Glancing at the island of skin on the crown of his father’s head, Eric sat beside him. Robert Carter held tenure as a professor of American literature at Red Hill Community College. His expertise on Nathaniel Hawthorne had brought him acclaim in academic circles.

  “Would you like an omelet, Eric?” Pat asked.

  “Just toast, please.”

  Robert looked up, one eyebrow arched. “What kind of breakfast is that?”

  “I have to make weight, Dad.”

  “Are y
ou sure it isn’t something else?”

  “It’s nothing else.”

  “You look a little peaked around the gills.”

  Pat inserted two slices of whole wheat bread into the toaster. “Eric’s assured me there’s no need for us to lecture him about drinking.”

  “You don’t say? What a relief.”

  Eric knew his father was just giving him an opportunity to set himself up, like a spider baiting a fly, so he remained quiet.

  “You got in late last night, didn’t you?”

  Games. “Not really. I was home by ten thirty.” He had an 11:00 p.m. curfew on school nights.

  “What did you do?”

  “Johnny drove me around and then brought me home.”

  “I hope he didn’t let you drive.”

  “No, and I didn’t ask to drive.” His learner’s permit prohibited him from driving after 9:00 p.m.

  “Eric, this is probably a good time for a discussion your mother and I have wanted to have with you for some time now.”

  Great. The toast popped out of the toaster and Eric flinched.

  “Your grades are down this semester.”

  “I have an eighty-nine average—”

  “Down from a ninety-one.”

  “—and I’m still on the honor roll.”

  “That isn’t going to get you into a good college.”

  Pat set a plate with the toast on it before Eric.

  “It will get me into Red Hill Community.”

  Robert traded looks with Pat. “We have higher hopes for you than that. And going away to college is a large part of growing up.”

  Seeing no point in arguing, Eric stared at the toast. “I’ll do better.”

  Pat sat on Eric’s other side. “It’s not that we don’t like Johnny—”

  Yes, it is.

  “It’s just that he’s very … provincial, and we don’t want him holding you back. We know you’re close now, but you’re from different backgrounds, and have different goals. Odds are, you’ll drift apart once you start college anyway.”