Smile No More

by James A. Moore

  She did not answer him. There was nothing but flesh here. No spirit, no life, just rotted meat, and a husk that was as useless as the canvas that had surrounded the body.

  “Well, let’s finish this, shall we?” His voice was more cheerful again, but it was a false cheer. “Let’s get this done once and for all. So we can put paid to the Phelps name.”

  He wrapped her back in her canvas and then pulled plastic from the closest pallet of supplies. The thick plastic sheet worked beautifully to wrap canvas and corpse alike. When he was done, Rufo carried the bundle over his shoulder like a sack full of toys made just for old Saint Nick.

  He chuckled at that thought. He hadn’t even considered Christmas in years.

  But, oh, he would be thinking about it when he finished his tasks. There were a few more things that had to be done, a few more accounts to be settled and then he could move on with his new life.

  Sometimes accounts have to be paid. Sometimes they have to be paid in blood and pain.

  And sometimes they have to be paid with a great deal of interest. Rufo the clown knew all about that sort of thing. He’d been paying for years.

  ***

  Tia unpacked her meager belongings and then started sorting through the rest of the packages that comprised her costumes for the show. There were enough bundles to be unsettling.

  Her stomach was a knot of frayed nerves, but she didn’t much mind. The trip up had been uneventful and even though neither of them had spoken about the situation she knew that Leslie was as unsettled as she was.

  She’d never even looked at girls that way before.

  Tia pushed the thought aside. She couldn’t be a lesbian; her dad would have a coronary.

  It wasn’t something she could handle, so she settled for thinking about other things.

  The show was still two days away. That night there would be more interviews, more cameras and another party to attend. They would work better than most things to distract her from her thoughts of Leslie.

  A quick sigh. The memory of Leslie’s touch left her feeling flustered and wanting to feel that soft, beautiful caress again. She’d been raised with the firm understanding that her parents wanted lots of grandkids. The two were not supposed to work together.

  Justin Burton, one of the assistant choreographers, knocked on her door and called out, “Staff meeting in fifteen minutes, Tia. Make sure you aren’t late!”

  “Okay, Jus…. Thanks!”

  Justin’s feet were already in motion, scrambling off toward Leslie’s dressing room.

  Thinking of Leslie brought her back to the same thoughts again, where her mind stayed until she heard the sounds of everyone leaving for the main stage and the meeting.

  She left her room at the same time that Leslie did. It was a coincidence, but one that left her with the same edgy excitement twisting through her stomach.

  Leslie looked at her with an expression that Tia had seen in her own mirror a thousand times since they’d kissed. Then Tia made herself smile and was rewarded by Leslie’s beautiful smile cast back at her.

  Leslie moved to her and before she could leave her dressing room’s threshold the girl urged her back into the room and closed the door.

  “I—we’re gonna be late to the meeting.” Tia was at a loss for what to say. Feeling Leslie’s body heat so close to her was already making her flustery all over again.

  “Hush.” Leslie’s finger pressed against Tia’s lips, urging her to silence. “Listen, I didn’t expect it and you didn’t. I know that. I just…I wanted you to know, I don’t regret it. Okay? We can talk later. We need to talk later, but I wanted you to know, I’m glad it happened, no matter what.”

  Tia felt her eyes mist and her body relax. She’d been so afraid that Leslie would blame her, maybe even hate her.

  Before she could do more than nod her head, Leslie was kissing her. Not a deep, passionate affair, but a quick peck on the lips before she pulled back. “Let’s go listen to the bosses talk.”

  Tia nodded her head, made breathless by the words, the actions of the girl she stood with.

  Did she know what was going to happen in the future? No. But maybe now she could get through the day without wanting to cry and that was something. That was a big something.

  They walked toward the meeting and Tia felt like she was floating. She was barely even aware of moving at all, but she felt the fingers wrapped into hers and loved the way those fingers felt.

  The auditorium was huge, bigger by far than the one where they’d been performing, and most of the sets were not fully assembled, but were getting there. She looked at the ice palace again, as she did almost every time she walked along the stage, and smiled. It was a beautiful prop and she loved the way it made her feel.

  Almost everyone was already there, and most of the performers had chosen to sit Indian style on the floor of the stage. Leslie and Tia did the same, relaxing among the people who were almost like a second family. There were several new people in place as well, most of them looking a little nervous. She recognized one of them as the Alexandria cop who had interviewed her after the first bodies were found. Carter, or something like that. He was a good looking man and sort of scary with how intense he could be, but she was glad to see him, because from what she’d watched before he was determined to stop anyone else getting hurt.

  Justin was the one who spoke. Most of the big wigs weren’t there to be seen and she figured that meant they were dealing with the regular problems of handling the press and everything else.

  “Okay, people. Let’s keep this short and sweet because I know we all want to get unpacked and get back to having lives.” Justin’s hands waved like hummingbirds as he spoke. “Some of you might remember Detective Carver, he’s with the police. He’s come along to work with the local police and to make sure that everyone stays nice and safe. I better not hear about anyone giving him any shit, because first, he’s cute and I want to seduce him….” Justin rolled his eyes playfully as he spoke. The detective turned a deep shade of red that had most everyone chuckling. “And second, he’s here to protect us. So don’t disappoint me here, make him want to stay around for as long as he has to.”

  If anyone expected Carver to say anything, they were disappointed. He waved politely and then went back to crossing his arms and looking at everyone like a potential suspect.

  Justin kept talking and introduced a dozen new people. Most of them were new hires to take care of everything behind the scenes. Four of them were dancers and performers. Not surprisingly, a few people had decided not to keep on with the show.

  None of it mattered. Tia wanted to get unpacked and then she wanted to act like a high school girl and crush all over Leslie for a while. It was nice to be young and to have someone who liked her back. The rest of it could wait for now.

  The new dancers looked around with a puzzled expression and Leslie nudged her. “Let’s meet the new kids.” Tia nodded and smiled. Leslie could have suggested that they go shopping for chainsaws and barbed wire to wear as their new outfits and she would have nodded and smiled.

  ***

  The hotel room was nothing spectacular. It was, in fact, a dive. The bed had a cover that had probably last been washed a few months earlier and he would have doubted the sanitary condition of the sheets if he hadn’t been setting a rotted body on top of them.

  Meaghan’s corpse seemed smaller in the room, which was saying a lot as she wasn’t very large to begin with. He sat next to the corpse and moved the bones delicately, positioning them so that she looked more at peace, at least to his eyes.

  One long finger ran along the face, touching the moldering flesh. He didn’t need to be a forensic specialist to know that the skin over the bones had once been lovely. He had memories of her, fleeting though they were and diluted by technology that had let him see her in the first place.

  “Were you ever happy, Meaghan?” The question was conversational, but he wasn’t expecting an answer.

  He opened the ce
ll phone he’d stolen an hour earlier and dialed the number he’d memorized a long time ago. The voice at the other end was comforting, familiar and a little scary.

  “This is Albert, how can I help you?”

  “Albert, it’s Rufo.”

  “How are you, my boy? I was wondering when you would get back to me.” His tone was confident and assured. He knew the score. The clown needed his help for almost anything he wanted to do at this point.

  “I’ve found her body, Albert. I have Meaghan.”

  “Well, come along then. Do you want her brought back or not?” That tone of almost boredom was a barb aimed at him and he knew it. He was also wise enough not to let the man’s attitude get in the way of accomplishing what he wanted.

  “Ask her, Albert. Ask her. I’ll be at your house in Salem soon and I’ll bring the body with me.”

  Miles disconnected the call and Rufo carefully set about rewrapping the remains of his last flesh and blood kin.

  “We’re going to get this all taken care of, Meaghan. Just you wait and see.”

  ***

  News gets around. It was inevitable that most people would find out about the murders involving the Carnivale. They did their best to suppress the information and they did a good job, but by the day after the murders had occurred the media was examining every possible angle for the connections between the board of directors and the bodies left behind by the man who called himself John Booker.

  To make matters worse, there were people who wanted to know exactly how it was that he had survived being shot repeatedly by police at the scene of his showdown.

  The speculations were epic and completely wrong. A bit actor from two seasons earlier had attempted to sue the Carnivale and failed. That would have been the end of the situation, but he bore a passing resemblance to the killer and for the next two days his life was examined by the best investigators the media could afford. Instead of focusing on where he had been during the crimes, they focused on what he had done in the past and Andy Nuell, a dancer who had tried to sue for sexual harassment and had all but been laughed out of court—became the center of several farfetched speculations. He was accused of nearly every crime by some of the more zealous reporters and denounced by most as the worst sort of sleaze.

  The lawsuits are still pending in most of the cases. His chances are slightly better this time around. In the meantime, the celebrity has increased his marketability and led to several offers of bit parts on soap operas and even a walk on role in a forthcoming movie.

  Despite the negative press, or maybe because of it, tickets for the Philadelphia shows became extremely prized among scalpers. A few sold for as much as a thousand dollars over the original asking price.

  The demand was so much, in fact, that four additional shows were added. They’d have probably added more, but New York was after Philadelphia and they had already committed to Radio City Music Hall.

  In the city of Philadelphia, the people were ready to go to the circus, to celebrate the mystery of how the Alexander Halston Carnival of the Fantastic had vanished from the face of the earth. The papers held interviews with the performers and carried bios of the more famous members of the troupe. One reporter from the Examiner actually took the time to track down a few documented sightings of the carnival and discovered that it had come through Philadelphia no less than four times before it disappeared.

  That reporter, Lacey Champlain, managed something that no one else had managed to date: she found and posted a picture of the troupe, a grainy black and white thing that had been taken over fifty years earlier.

  The clown that stood in the background looked quite a bit different from the man who’d terrorized Virginia. The markings on his face were similar, but beyond that they had almost nothing in common. The clown in the picture was wearing a tuxedo and had a top hat in his hand. The killer in Virginia had been wearing less flashy attire. The man in the picture had eyes that could be said to know of kindness and hope. A certain detective who was visiting Philadelphia—and who had seen the photograph and slipped it into his wallet more on a whim than anything else—would have been the first to say there was nothing remotely like compassion in the eyes of the madman who killed a family of three and then fired on the police as well. He knew, because for the last five nights he’s dreamed of that psychotic bastard and shivered in his sleep.

  Philadelphia was ready for the show. They were excited by the notion.

  So was Rufo the Clown, but he had one last matter to attend to before the time came for him to visit the circus.

  That matter he attended to in Massachusetts.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Albert Miles held the door open for him as he carried in the remains of his grandniece. The old man did not smile, but neither did he frown. He simply moved into the room and quickly pulled the rug away from the hardwood floor in his living room. He had already moved the furniture aside in preparation for the tasks ahead of him.

  “Cecil, my boy, you are not the easiest person I’ve ever dealt with. You know that, don’t you?” His voice was conversational.

  The clown looked at him without speaking for several moments. The patterns of color on his face made all but the most blatant expressions impossible to read.

  Miles chuckled.

  “Fair enough. You’re not in the mood for jests. Let’s see what we can do for you then, shall we?”

  He waved the clown aside and unrolled the canvas package himself, brushing dirt and flecks of rotted flesh aside with his hands.

  “She must have been lovely in life.”

  “She was. I’ve seen pictures.” Rufo’s voice was a low hiss.

  “Calm down, my boy. In the long run, nothing that has been done is permanent unless you and she decide it is.”

  “Albert, do you think I’m a bad person?”

  The old man stared at him for a long, long while, a smile playing at his lips but never quite surfacing. “My boy, I am absolutely the last person in the world to ask about good and evil, or right and wrong.”

  The clown nodded his head and allowed himself a genuine chuckle. “Good point.”

  “Now is not the time for philosophical debates in any event. I have things to do and so do you. Let’s get on with this.”

  Rufo nodded and then squatted next to the corpse.

  The man on the other side of the body placed a hand on the forehead of the skull and another over the place where her heart should have been.

  “This will not be pleasant for her. It will cause her pain. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”

  The clown nodded his head and pressed his lips together tightly. “Do it, but make it fast.”

  The scream that came from the dead body sent shivers through Rufo’s body. Until that moment he thought he was beyond chills.

  ***

  Michael Carver smiled at the pizza in front of him like it was a long lost friend. He’d spent the last two days with the troupe, getting to know them and asking questions until his head felt thick with answers and trivial responses. He made sure that everyone saw him and made it clear that he was accessible if they needed anything, because officially that was why he was along for the ride, as extra security.

  Unfortunately, that meant he’d managed to miss a few meals, like all of them, and the pizza that the cute waitress placed in front of him looked large enough to make amends to his stomach, which growled in delight the moment he walked into the pizza place two blocks from the show, close enough that he could get back in a hurry if he needed to. The place was busy, crowded with college kids and a few families despite the fact that it was rather late for dinner.

  He smiled at the waitress. She was a pretty little thing, short with curly brown hair and a zillion freckles hidden under too much makeup, but pretty despite that.

  “Can I get you anything else?” her accent was pure Philly and so was her attitude. He liked it. “Yeah, can I get another Coke?”

  “You got it.” She was off in a flash and
detoured to another table to take their order before getting his refill.

  His cell phone rang and Carver sighed. The number was local, maybe from the hotel, so he answered it. “Carver.”

  “You shot me, Detective. I ask you, was that really the best way to handle the situation?” His skin tried to crawl off his body and hide away. He recognized Booker’s voice instantly.

  “How the fuck are you alive?”

  “Who said I am?”

  Carver looked around, trying to spot anyone who might be watching him, who might want to pull a prank on him because, despite everything, he was still sure the clown was dead and someone else had come along to play games. Now, hearing the voice of the man again, he had doubts.

  “Listen, whatever you think you’re playing at, this isn’t funny. You need to turn yourself in.”

  The man laughed. “Seriously? That’s the best you can come up with as motivation? Why would I turn myself in when this is just starting to get fun?”

  He made himself stay calm. There were people around him, families, and they didn’t need to hear this conversation or what he wanted to say. “Booker, if that’s you, people have died—”

  “Boy, howdy, don’t I know it! Killed most of them myself.”

  Carver’s teeth clenched down hard enough to make his jaw creak. “You listen to me. This stops now.”

  “Nope. I’m not finished, Detective Carver, but I will be soon.”

  “Turn yourself in, or I’ll make you regret it.”

  The door to the pizzeria opened and Michael turned toward it as the bell above it jangled shrilly. Three girls were coming in, each of them with a backpack instead of a purse and dressed in jeans, sweaters and enough bling to blind anyone if the sun should catch them. One of the girls was nearly braying laughter, her face filled with the simple joy of being alive and hearing a good joke.