by C. L. Bevill
They checked every room and under the hospital, as well. The crawl space wasn’t really a crawl space at all, but a place where the floors had been finished with concrete, and boxes had been piled up along every free wall.
They didn’t find anything remotely resembling a body or a missing people. There wasn’t even a dissected bloody ear or other dismembered random but creepy digit to give them a case of rampant goose bumps.
They didn’t find a third cupcake. Bubba couldn’t help but notice that there were only two cupcakes in the tree. He didn’t really want to think about how the third one had disappeared, so he dismissed it for the moment and kept searching.
“I don’t get it,” Bubba said as they came back into the main foyer. He perched on the corner of Cybil’s desk and rubbed the bump on his head. It felt like someone had hit him and then he remembered that someone had hit him. “The only one we done found was Dr. Adair. Well, we found Blake Landry but then he up and cut a chuggy. How do eight people, nine if you count Blake, just vanish into thin air?”
“The most logical answer is always the simplest,” David said. He threw himself down into Cybil’s chair with a loud humph. “They’re here somewhere.”
“How is that simplest? Ifin we can’t find them, it ain’t simple,” Bubba said irately. If he was any more irate he’d likely pop like a loose balloon in a pin factory.
“If they’re not here,” David said gently, “then they are somewhere else. Since we know that all these people cannot leave the hospital area because of the avalanche, then they are still here.” He motioned at the entirety of the area with one hand.
“David,” Bubba said, “we don’t have a lot of time. What happens ifin the po-lice show up?”
“Willodean kicks your tuckus, and I get blamed for murder,” David pronounced solemnly. “Possibly you get blamed for co-conspiracy or accessory. We both go to jail. We buff up, or in your case, buff up even more so that you can’t bend over to tie your shoelaces. We spend the rest of our lives in prison. I might get the death penalty since this is Texas, but I have a whole bunch of previous mental health issues, so they would likely offer me a plea bargain where I admit to the crimes and get life. I start a collection of toenails while in prison and make toenail sculptures with homemade glue. The sculptures get a showing at MoMA in Manhattan after I die. It becomes a Lifetime movie of the week. Tandy gets to play herself.” He looked at Bubba expressively as if silently adding, “Duh?”
“No, the person’s got to wrap this up,” Bubba said. He was so tired, and his head hurt so much, he was beginning to doubt his own reasoning. It had started off as a practical plan, and now it was beginning to sound like a parody of a bad mystery movie. “We’ve got to wrap this up.”
“What if the person kills you?” David asked seriously.
“It’s a chance I got to take,” Bubba said. “Ifin we don’t, we might miss our opportunity.”
“What about Precious?” David asked, looking at the canine. Precious woofed softly at the sound of her name. Then she turned her nose away to show her disdain. (Milk-Bones were not raining from the heavens into her mouth, so naturally she was disdainful. Anyone who’s ever owned a pet would understand that.)
Bubba glanced at the dog. “Cain’t be helped now. Ifin we tie her up, she’ll find a way out. It’s best to leave her in the afeteria-cay ith-way ome-say ood-fay. Ome-say ood-gay ood-fay.”
“There’s hot dogs,” David said. Precious’s right ear twitched tellingly. She might have eaten a hot dog before upon occasion.
A few minutes later, Precious was gobbling down hot dogs. She received a bounty of three all-beef wieners. Bubba had calculated that it would take them the time that she would eat two to get out of the cafeteria and block the doors shut. By the time she had the third one down, they would be out of room and hurrying down the hallway.
Once they had accomplished their despicable dogly deed of bait-and-switch, they heard a startled bark, and then Precious began to bay. She had cottoned to their treachery and was responding in kind. The baying sounded distinctly like “YOOOUUU NOOOBS!”
“However do you go anywhere without her?” David asked.
“It’s a knack,” Bubba said. “A fella gets used to it.”
They went outside via the front doors of the hospital, and Bubba looked around. For a very tiny moment he thought he heard music drifting to them. (AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.”) He shook his head, and the sound was gone. Someone was around somewhere. (The killer? Unrelated would-be victims hiding behind a varied array of machetes and chain saws in the old broken-down barn down by the cemetery by the nuclear plant that was haunted by an alien-murdered pedophile? Possibly. That’s how befuddled his brain was acting.)
“Remember,” Bubba whispered, “someone’s got their eyes on us.”
“How do I know it’s not you?” David said loudly.
“You came to me for he’p,” Bubba said back just as loudly. He gestured toward the cliff-side path. They threaded their way through the trees. Bubba glanced back several times. He didn’t think it looked abnormal. After all, they didn’t know where people were or where the murderer was or where the police were. Pretty much they knew a lot of nothing. Looking cautiously over one’s shoulder seemed like the smartest thing anyone could do in the situation.
“It was a heinous strategy of wretched malevolency!” David bellowed.
“I need a dictionary!” Bubba yelled back.
A few minutes later they reached their destination. It was the spot where the Semtex had blown up a huge semi-circle resembling a terrific bite taken out of a granite cookie.
“What are we doing here?” David asked. They stopped at the edge of the cliff.
Bubba resisted looking over his shoulder. “You should just confess, David!”
“I AM NOT SHERLOCK!” David screamed. He winced. “I MEAN, I am not David!”
“I’m not Captain Koala!” Bubba yelled back.
“Captain Koala?”
“Comic book character,” Bubba explained. “Very cool. Brownie likes him.”
“Future reference,” David muttered. He fumbled in his coat pockets and brought out…
The calabash pipe. He inserted the end into his mouth and pretend-puffed. “I wonder why Tandy didn’t want to smoke my pipe. I have tobacco. It’s black bourbon flavored, although the thought of smoking it myself makes me want to blow chunks. I had no idea it was so foul.”
“I don’t know why she didn’t want to smoke your pipe!” Bubba shouted.
David sighed. “I should have gotten the soap bubble pipe! You’re a big…JERKFACE!”
“Is that a British insult?”
“No, no. My ex-wife used to call me that. Also needlenuts and microbrain when she was feeling particularly perky.” David shook his head sadly. “She’s not a very nice person. I think she’s on her fourth divorce now. I wouldn’t know because my daughter won’t talk about her anymore.”
“David?” The question wasn’t just David’s name but rather, “Is it you again, David?”
“Yes, Bubba?”
“You okay?”
“No, I’m worried about Thelda and Jesus. To a lesser degree, Tandy and Peyton. That wedding planner guy really grows on you. He kind of fits right in around here.”
“I know. I’m beginning to think that fingernail polish on a guy isn’t so bad.”
“It’s because you’ve only slept about two hours.”
“Prolly.”
“Should we yell some more?”
“I’m not sure.” Bubba waved his hands up and down angrily and paced back and forth on the edge of the cliff. He bounced to one side when it seemed as though a chunk of the cliff might fall. “Be careful here, David.”
“Are you waving your arms up and down for a particular reason?”
“I figure ifin someone is watching, they cain’t really hear us,” Bubba said.
David casually glanced over his shoulder. He gestured wildly. “I don’t understa
nd all of this!” he yelled.
“I think you did it!” Bubba roared. He pointed at David. “I think you mean to kill me next!”
“I was thinking strangulation,” David remarked, “but you’ve got such a thick neck.”
“Mebe you should use…a weapon at hand,” Bubba suggested. He waved one of his hands meaningfully at David’s coat.
David looked at the pipe. “I suppose I could stab you with the end of the pipe, but it’s not very sharp.”
“Remember what my mother gave you, fully loaded, and it’s something for which I intend to discuss with her at a later, and safer, time and date.”
“Oh, the white clutch purse,” David said. “That’s hardly lethal. Perhaps as a sap?”
Bubba took a deep breath. It didn’t really help. “The gun, David,” he said after a long moment. “The gun?”
“Oh, of course,” David said. He put the pipe into a pocket and withdrew the Smith & Wesson. For such a small revolver it had a very large barrel. Or at least it seemed big when Bubba was on the wrong side of the business end.
“There ya go,” Bubba breathed. “I still think you’re the bad guy, David! It was all them dead bodies before! It was the association with the Christmas killer! It was all them nasty triglycerides the FDA warned us about! There were special chemicals in all them letters you delivered while you was in the Postal Service! Please don’t shoot me!”
“I’ve never eaten a triglyceride,” David protested vehemently. He waved the gun around.
“Don’t point that thing at me!”
“You did it, Bubba! You planned this all! You killed poor Mrs. Ferryjig by making her have a fake heart attack! You made Hurley Tanner commit suicide! You made all those people vanish! Did you throw them over the cliffs, for God’s sake? You stabbed poor Dr. Adair, and all he really wanted to do was psychoanalyze people! You strangled the social worker! Or was that a cheap ploy to get back at the last social worker who tried to kill you and most of your family?” David wildly waved the end of the Smith & Wesson about.
Bubba inched as close as he could get to the edge. His face twisted. He wasn’t really up to this. It churned up his insides something fierce to think badly of people he had come to…should he say it? Should he even think it? Yes. He liked David Beathard. He liked Jesus Christ. He even liked Thelda. He liked her Shakespearean insults, too. They might be crazy, but they weren’t bad people. Unless, of course, one armed them with a lethal weapon.
“You should just give me the gun, David,” Bubba said. “It might go off and shoot someone by mistake, you know.”
David cocked the hammer. It was a particularly deadly sound that Bubba didn’t like even when it was himself doing the motion. Everyone knew that his mother kept a few guns around the house. Bubba had fired in some contests once upon a time. In the military he’d scored relatively well on his Army weapons qualification test. (Thirty-nine out of forty shots had hit the targets. He swore that the missed shot was because the target malfunctioned, but the result had been the same.) He never got used to the noise, however. In recent years he’d begun to actively dislike it on account of all the dead bodies that kept appearing. After all, guns were fine for hunting, but he wouldn’t have wanted to be the person who shot someone by happenstance. Not that shooting someone for the express purpose of murdering them was happenstance.
David swung it around and pointed it at Bubba.
Bubba’s stomach clenched up. Bile rose in his throat, and for a split second in time, he wondered if he had made an abysmal error of judgment. The entire previous twenty-four hours suddenly seemed like one mistake after another. Although he wasn’t responsible for peoples’ murders, there seemed like there was always something that could have been done. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty as they said.
There wasn’t anything else to be done. It was time to pee on the campfire and call the dogs. The problem was that there wasn’t a campfire, and the only dog around was locked up in the cafeteria with the cupcakes, which boded poorly for the remaining two cupcakes.
“We going to do this?” David asked.
“I reckon we ought,” Bubba said. He lunged at David.
David bellowed furiously. “You’ll never persevere, foul beast!”
Bubba enveloped David into a bear hug and swung him around. Bubba could see off the cliff. He could hear the rattle of loose granite being shaken loose by their weight on the brink of the precipice.
They struggled. Bubba could see they were too close to the edge of the cliff. He couldn’t help trying to pull away, but David wouldn’t let go of the weapon. Bubba started to say, “I don’t think we should—” and there was a loud crack.
The sound of the bullet being fired from a Smith & Wesson 642 was loud enough to make anyone freeze up. Bubba stared into David’s eyes, and he could suddenly smell the distinctive aroma of gunpowder. There was a wisp of gray smoke before the wind whipped it away from them.
David’s eyes seemed so large in his face. He didn’t look like Sherlock Holmes anymore. He looked afraid, more like an ex-postman whose mind had slipped a gear once upon a time. Some terrible price had been paid.
Bubba’s mouth opened to say something else, but the words dried up on his tongue.
“Bubba,” David said, “I don’t feel so great.” Then he fell backward, slipping over the edge.
Bubba initially let go because his hands seemed to be unable to do anything else, but as David fell, he reached out. His huge fingers touched the material of the Inverness coat, and he grasped it within a finger and a thumb. David’s fall hesitated in mid-air, his back was over the abyss, his feet balanced on the cliff’s threshold. His heartfelt pain-filled eyes stared into Bubba’s. Was a plea contained there?
Bubba held the strip of material for the longest second imaginable. It was as if time had stopped. The sound of ripping came to him, and he had to wonder if it was his pants splitting before he realized it was David’s coat separating under the tremendous stress placed upon it.
“Bubba,” David said again. His tone was oh so serious, the very epitome of solemnity. “I have to ask you something.”
“Anything,” Bubba breathed, trying to get a better grip. His fingers slid helplessly against fabric, unable to clutch anything.
“Does…if a woodchuck could chuck, would he really chuck wood?”
Then David was gone, and Bubba was left holding a segment of plaid cloth in his fingers.
Bubba was alone.
* * *
Bubba stood on the brink for a long time. He didn’t know how long it was. He simply stared down and held a bit of checkered fabric. Finally, he shook his head when Precious nudged his ankle with a wet nose. She whined softly and he said, “Okay. Okay, then.”
He turned back toward the hospital and stumbled when his feet chose not to cooperate. Precious trotted after him, keeping to his heels, and rumbling quietly in a dogly fashion.
Abruptly, he stopped and the canine bumped into him. “You were locked in the cafeteria,” he said, glancing back at her.
Precious yipped softly.
“Either you opened the door yourself,” he said quietly, “or—” It wasn’t unknown for the dog to be an escape artist. She knew exactly for what a doorknob was used. She knew how to open a refrigerator until Miz Adelia had placed a child safety lock on the door. Precious hadn’t yet figured her way around that one, but it was probably only a matter of time.
Bubba started forward again. All alone. All he could hear was the sound of the wind whipping branches around above his head. Precious started to pant once he hit his full stride. He was all alone, as alone as he had been the day before while he was fishing on the lake.
Not quite alone for there was a man, his dog, and a murderer.
The man had lots of questions to be answered.
Bubba came out of the woods without pause. If a person had been watching him at that moment, they wouldn’t have guessed he was tired and longing for a good meal and a good woman, not necessarily
in that order. He had an urge, no, an imperative need, to put his head to Willodean’s still mostly flat abdomen and worship it.
The door to the hospital was open. It wasn’t merely unlocked. Bubba hadn’t locked it on the way out; he hadn’t even thought about locking it. But now it stood wide open. He stepped inside and heard the clacking of Precious’s nails on the marble behind him.
The receptionist’s area was as it had been before. The desk was the same. The marble the same. The seats were still metal and attached to the floor. What wasn’t the same was the noose hanging from the second floor landing of the staircase to one side of the foyer. Attached securely to the railing was a large thick rope with a hangman’s knot on the end, just the right size for slipping over a man’s head and tightening up.
There was only one thing that Bubba could think to say. “Let’s put some lipstick on this pig.”
Chapter 24
Bubba and the Murderer
Sunday, April 7th
Bubba stood in the foyer looking at the noose. It hadn’t been there before he’d left with David or before David had fallen over the side of the cliff or before Bubba felt like the winning heel in the heel of the universe contest.
This was what every path led to in the crazy world that Bubba was presently residing within. If something new had appeared in the loonaverse, then there was also someone there who hadn’t been there before.
“You’re not goin’ to hurt my dog, are you?” Bubba asked politely. “That would make me madder than a Maine Coon cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” For a single moment that dangled in time, there was only silence as a response.
“Now why would I do that?” came the answer after the suspended pause. The person swung around in Cybil’s chair and looked frankly at Bubba.
Bubba wasn’t exactly surprised at the person’s identity. “I dint think you had walked away,” he said.
“Sure I walked away,” the person answered.
“I reckoned the doc was in on it,” Bubba said. “Left all his financial problems all over the place. He was clever enough to demand money up front.”