The Whisper Garden
Page 17
It only took him a few minutes to walk from the liquor store to the cemetery. He got lucky; there was nobody around the tomb.
He laid the bottle in front of the tomb and said, “Marie, it just occurred to me that when I asked you to keep me and my family safe, that I didn’t really set a time period on that request, so I am here to thank you for keeping us safe for the last week or so. Sure, things haven’t been perfect – just look at my hand – but overall things could have been a whole lot worse. I suppose that is always true, things could always be worse, but that isn’t the point. The point is that we made it safe through the week, and I am here to thank you. I brought you some rum.
“I’d also like to repeat my request. Keep us safe for the next week, and I’ll bring you some more rum. Anyway, thank you.”
Dexter turned to go, but an inspiration hit him. He turned back to the tomb and reached in his pocket. He said, “I don’t know if I am asking you to get rid of these for me, or asking you to keep them safe for me, or offering them to you as a gift, but I feel like I should leave these here. Do with them what you will.” He tucked the deed and the car registration under the bottle of rum.
He turned and left the cemetery. This time he did not feel any hesitation about getting rid of the papers.
A little while later, Charles paid his nightly visit to the tomb. He was as pleased as always to find the rum, though he was a bit disappointed with the forty-seven cents people had left as offerings. Then he noticed the papers that had been under the rum. He picked one up and read it. It was Boaz Pendleton’s deed. At that moment a thought entered his head, a thought that struck him as strange, because it didn’t seem like one of his.
Charles thought, Now, at last, for the first time since I came back from the war, I have some place to be.
Sunday February 16th
2:00 p.m.
Jessica was fairly miserable. Two nights of Hurricanes had taken their toll on her body, and the scenic, quaint, and highly uneven paving stones of the French Quarter had taken a toll of their own when she had stepped into a hole where a stone was missing. She had broken a heel and sprained her ankle.
At one o’clock, Amber had pulled Jess out of bed, insisting that some food would help her hangover. At two o’clock, Jessica was questioning the wisdom of eating. A hamburger had seemed like a good idea, but then again so had the whole trip.
Jessica chewed mechanically and Amber blathered about Samantha. “I can’t believe she still hasn’t called,” she began, then spent most of the next ten minutes expanding on the theme of Sam’s thoughtlessness.
Jessica had just taken a fairly large bite of burger when her phone rang. She chewed frantically for a moment but quickly gave up and pushed the phone across the table to Amber.
Amber flipped the phone open and said, “Jessica’s phone.”
A female voice that Amber recognized but couldn’t quite place responded, “Is Jessica all right?”
Amber answered, “Yes, she just has a mouthful of food.”
“Thank God. We were so worried. Is this Amber? Where are you?”
Amber suddenly placed the voice. It was Jessica’s mother, which led to the question, why was she worried? She said, “We’re fine. We’re in New Orleans, what’s wrong?”
“You don’t know? Oh God.”
Amber suddenly felt sick. “What’s happened?”
“Samantha’s dead.”
Amber’s face went blank. Her hand dropped from her ear and she looked at the phone like she had never seen one before. Tears began pouring down her face.
Jessica snatched the phone out of Amber’s hand and demanded to know what was going on. Her mother told her everything she knew about Samantha’s death, which wasn’t much. She knew that Sam, or at least most of her, had been found in a doctor’s house in New Orleans. Jessica joined Amber in tears.
Sunday February 16th
6:00 p.m.
Dexter got home about six o’clock. The documents were gone. His hand was full of stitches and wrapped in gauze. Overall, it had been a very strange weekend, but Amy and Jenni were due home at any moment, and hopefully they would bring normality back to the house. It would start with them stepping through the door, full of exciting stories about the swim meet. Then they would have dinner. His life would be his own again.
Dexter’s first thought when there was a knock on the door was that Amy had forgotten her keys, but he realized that couldn’t be the case as he walked toward the door. Amy had driven, and if she drove she had the house key as well as the car key.
Pondering the disasters that could have befallen his family that would have left them key-less he walked to the door. Dexter’s thoughts had always possessed a certain degree of inertia. He had been thinking about his family, so his first thought when he saw a police officer and a man in a suit standing there was that they were there about his family. Obviously, they had come to tell him that his family was dead.
Then man in the suit spoke, “Mr. Cornelius?”
“Yes, that would be me.”
“My name is Frank Renault, I’m a detective. May we come in?”
“Of course, may I ask what this is about?” Dexter asked, dreading the inevitable bad news about Jenni and Amy.
Renault said, “It’s about your car.” Dexter’s mind raced. The minivan had been stolen. Amy and Jenni were safe, but stranded. Yes, that was a good explanation, but why would they have sent a detective and a uniformed officer to tell him that? It had to be worse news. They were dead in the van or carjacked and missing.
Dexter motioned the police officers into his house. Renault said, “That looks like it must have hurt.” The statement caught Dexter off guard, what looked like it hurt? Why would a police officer here to tell him that his wife and daughter were dead be making small talk? He looked at Renault and saw Renault looking at his bandaged hand.
Dexter said, “Well, yes, I suppose it did hurt, but there was only a pretty small window between when it happened and I passed out, and then another pretty small window from when I came to till they shot me up with Novocain. Like most injuries, I guess, it hurt my pride, and it hurts that I won’t be able to type for a while. So it is going to take a little longer to finish writing my book. But what does this have to do with the minivan?”
Now it was Renault’s turn to be puzzled. “What minivan?”
“The 1995 Toyota. You know, the one that you came here to tell me was stolen, or wrapped around a tree with my family inside or some other bit of horrendous news like that.”
“Good lord, Mr. Cornelius, I’m sorry to have scared you like that. We are here about your car. The 1969 GTO.”
“The GTO? You found it?”
Renault said, “That would be the good news.”
“Why do I have a feeling that you wouldn’t have phrased it like that if there weren’t bad news to go along with it.”
Renault’s expression became serious, though not grave. “Like my grandmother used to say, ‘if it’s not one thing it’s another.’ Yes, there is some bad news. Your car is probably totaled. As near as we can tell it had to be doing over seventy when it ran into the ditch.”
“Was anybody hurt?”
Renault shook his head. “Not in the wreck.”
Dexter’s eyes narrowed a little. “Something about the way you phrased that makes me think that you are dodging the question, and that someone did get hurt.”
“You are perceptive. Your car was used in the commission of crimes, and so is currently being kept as evidence.”
“That was another dodge, a fairly artful one, but a dodge nonetheless. Should I just give up and assume you aren’t going to tell me what happened?”
Renault laughed and nodded. “Not until the investigation is over.”
“How long will that be?”
“I have no way of knowing. Hopefully not long.”
“That is pretty much the size of it.”
“Thank you for dropping by to tell me.”
“You’re welcome. Would you mind if I asked how you hurt your hand?”
The question puzzled Dexter. Why would the detective care so much about his hand? Dexter couldn’t answer his own question, but he could answer Renault’s. “Friday night I had a couple of beers, and then I had a run-in with a drunk on Bourbon Street. Or I guess it would be better to say he had a run-in with me… or at least that he ran into me, literally. Anyway, we tumbled, and his rum bottle broke, and I fell on it. The net result was that instead of having a fun evening, I got to sit around in an emergency room and get quite a few stitches.” He pointed at his bandaged hand and continued, “three each on these fingers, and a bunch more on the palm.”
Renault thanked Dexter for his time and handed him a business card so Dexter could get in touch with him if he had any questions. Renault and the uniformed officer started to leave, but just as he was stepping through the door, Renault turned and said, “Oh, one more thing.”
Renault’s favorite show when he was a child had been Columbo. Once he had grown up and become a detective himself, he often found himself using Columbo’s parting ‘one more thing’ question. It seemed a little cheesy, but it also seemed effective. Renault felt you could learn a lot by asking questions that weren’t expected.
Renault said, “Boaz Pendleton. Does the name mean anything to you?” Renault was expecting one of several variations on the word no. He was hoping to glean some information from what flavor of no it was. If the no came too quickly it would mean that the name did ring a bell, and Dexter had something to hide. If Dexter took too long to answer, it would mean that he had something to hide and was trying to decide on a lie. If the denial came in the right time window, it would probably be legitimate.
Dexter paused a moment and said, “I think I’ve run across that name in one of my Civil War histories. Are you a Civil War buff?”
“No, no, it was just a thought. Your car had plates on it that were registered to Mr. Pendleton, and I wondered if you might know him. I know classic car collectors tend to run in packs.”
Renault turned and left Dexter’s house. Dexter’s answer hadn’t been on Renault’s script, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Literally on the other hand, however, Dexter’s Friday night adventure was a near perfect alibi for the murder of the doctor and tourist. It didn’t prove that he wasn’t an accomplice in some way, but it did fairly conclusively show that he wasn’t the murderer.
If the interview had gone a little differently, Renault would have asked to take Dexter’s fingerprints, in theory ‘to rule his out from any found in the car,’ but in practice to get a match for the print that had been taken from the knife found at the doctor’s house. Dexter’s wound had precluded that. Not only did the print on the knife not have a slice down its middle, but the nature of the killing blows meant that they had been done with someone’s right hand, and Dexter’s hand was obviously not up to the task.
Besides all that, Renault liked Dexter. He just didn’t feel guilty. So one name out of three was pretty much out of Renault’s suspicion, and one, Aldous, was obviously in it. That only left Boaz as a wild card.
Once Renault was gone, Dexter looked at his card, and it did not surprise him that the card identified Renault as a homicide detective. It had been obvious that there was more going on than a friendly visit to inform him that his missing car had been found. One question surged through his head: What have I gotten into?
Monday February 17th
“You diseased donkey dong, what are you doing?”
“Sleeping.”
“Wake up. You can’t stay here. There is too much to do.”
“No. I’m hurt. I need to sleep.”
“Listen, you putrescent pile of pus, right now to sleep means to die. And I haven’t waited all this time to get into a human body just to have it die on me. So are you gonna move?”
Aldous did not move. At that moment he didn’t care if he died.
“If that’s the way you want it.”
Aldous sat up, and his mind reeled in horror. He had not given his body the command to move. He tried to lay back down. His body moved around the island of the car. He was not in control of his body. Aldous could only watch in horror as his body obeyed directions that were not his own. His body retrieved a large folding knife from the trooper’s belt, and began to skin the alligator’s corpse.
“If this is the way you want it, I don’t need you.”
“No, please, give me my body back.”
“Why? So you can argue every time I tell you to do something? It’s easier this way. Hmmmm, maybe I should just kick you all the way out, so I won’t have to listen to your whining.”
“No, please don’t do that, I’ll do anything, I’ll be your servant; I’ll live to serve you. I’m better at moving my body than you are, I’ve had more practice.” Aldous had never heard himself beg. He was reminding himself of his own prey. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t stop. The worst part was that he knew how little good pleading had ever done his prey. At best, his prey’s pleading had entertained him. Aldous was afraid that was the case now.
“You are offering things I already have. You already live for me. Without me you would be gone already. It won’t take me long to get used to moving in this clunky body of yours, and then I’ll move better than you ever did.”
“What then, what can I give you?” Aldous was certain that the answer would be, “Nothing,” and that the next thing he was going to experience was his own soul being expelled from his own body. But instead there was an answer, one word, which horrified Aldous, even as he agreed to do it. “Worship.”
Things went easier for Aldous once he agreed to worship the alligator’s soul. The gator had directed him to take its skin, as an emblem of his servitude. He wore the skin like a poncho, the head hanging from his groin to his knees. The gator compelled him to search the car for anything that might be useful. In the trunk he found the trooper’s bulletproof vest. He wore the vest and the trooper’s belt, complete with all the useful cop toys – gun, ammo, handcuffs, pepper spray – under the gator skin.
The voice directed him to walk back toward the road, so he did.
When he reached the road he realized the pool of water he had driven the car into wasn’t the one he had carefully measured. He had no idea where he was. He picked a direction and made his feet start walking.
The gator spoke. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where I am, so how could I know where I am going?”
“You are going back the way you came. If you go this way, you know where you’ll wind up.”
“Home.”
“No, you moron, you’ll wind up in jail. You left the kids alive. By now those pathetic piles of insect dung have talked to the cops. By now the police are looking for you. You need to disappear until they lose interest. Walk the other way.”
Aldous turned. Even though the ground was flat, every step felt like it was uphill. The day wasn’t hot, but Aldous was sweltering.
A quarter of a mile or so down the lane, Aldous came to a driveway. The quarter mile had taken him an hour. The driveway wasn’t long, maybe fifty yards. It led to a tiny cabin on eight-foot stilts. Somebody’s fishing camp.
A rough stairway led from the driveway up to a porch that circled the whole cabin. Marks on the stairs showed how often and how high the area flooded. Aldous crawled up the stairs. His arms seemed to weigh as much as his whole body usually did. His legs felt like he was carrying at least two people on each of them – but he made it up the stairs. He didn’t bother to stand; for that matter, he was
n’t sure he could have as he reached for the door. It had no lock and swung easily in.
Aldous crawled in and examined his surroundings. The cabin was a ten-by-twelve-foot box with two doors, one facing the bayou and one facing the drive, and windows covering all the walls. There were no locks on the doors. It reminded Aldous of a fire observation tower, except it was far too low to the ground for such a purpose.
There was a single bed on the wall nearest the driveway, and a counter on the wall facing the swamp. The counter was evidently the cooking area; there was a Coleman stove on top of it and a good supply of canned food under it. There was a water cooler, with a full bottle of water, though no electrical outlet to plug into. There was a five-gallon bucket with a toilet seat attached to it.
Under the counter, with the canned food, was a largish white box with a red cross on it.
The gator rasped in his head, “Good, you need bandages, and to clean your throat.”
Aldous crawled to the first aid kit. It was reasonably well stocked. He pulled out two bottles of peroxide and some bandages. Then he noticed a pill bottle. Amoxicillin. The label said the medication was for Bucky. The prescribing doctor was a DVM. Aldous put the bottle back. The voice in his head said, “What are you doing?”
“That’s dog medicine.”
“And you are a dog. It is meat medicine and you are meat. Take the fucking pills.”
Aldous shook a few pills into his hand and swallowed them. Swallowing hurt. Then he untied the towel from his throat. The towel was stiff with dried blood, and it was stuck to the wound. Aldous made a pitiful “ehhh” sound as he peeled it away from the wound and hated himself for crying out in pain.
There were gobs of greenish white goo on the towel as well as a lot of dried blood, and a little fresh blood. Aldous lay on his back and poured half a bottle of peroxide into the wound. The peroxide hissed as it foamed through his wound, but he couldn’t hear it; he was too busy screaming.