Here Comes the Corpse

by Mark Richard Zubro

  “Ethan insisted he had to come to the wedding to talk to you,” Mr. Gahain said. “What did he say?”

  “In the receiving line, he said we needed to talk, but we never did.”

  My mother said, “Rachel called me yesterday morning. I told her it was okay to bring Ethan along even though he wasn’t on the guest list. I told the security guards to admit him. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  Mrs. Gahain said, “Thank you, Dolores, I know you were always close to Ethan. He didn’t say anything to anyone?”

  Everyone shook their heads no. I said, “Not to me. I’m sorry.”

  Mr. Gahain said, “Ethan arrived late Friday night. We knew something was wrong, but he wouldn’t talk to us. If there was anyone he could always talk to, it was you, Tom. He always trusted you.”

  At this moment I was not about to say their kid and I hadn’t exchanged more than a few words in years and hadn’t confided in each other in far longer. Quite obviously they assumed their son and I were still close. Whether this misperception was due to Ethan’s lies or their lack of insight, I couldn’t be sure.

  Mrs. Gahain said, “We weren’t as close as we should have been. Many people don’t confide in their own families, certainly not after they’re grown and out of the house.”

  “That’s very true,” my mother said. “That happens in all families.”

  Mr. Gahain said, “We want to know who killed him. We want the son of a bitch who did this caught, tried, and executed.”

  Mrs. Gahain said, “What’s important is that we want to know what was wrong. We want to know what was in his mind. We can’t ask his ex-wives. We were never close to any of them. Some we met only a few times. We never got more than a week’s notice of when the ceremonies would be. It was almost as if he wasn’t really serious about them. We didn’t usually find out about the divorces until after they were finalized. Tom, you’d be the one, of all the people we can think of, who would know or be able to find out what was going on. You were best friends.”

  I wasn’t so sure their knowing what was wrong was a good thing. A lot of the time I think it’s better for parents not to know what their kids are doing. Certainly I’d done things as a kid I’m not prepared to confess to my parents. What’s the point? Total honesty is a myth.

  “I don’t think I can help you there,” I said. “We haven’t really talked in the last couple years.” I was not about to say I’d been rejected twice in particularly odious ways. How could I say that kind of thing to a parent who had just lost a child?

  She continued, “He told us he was planning to move up here, but first he had to talk to you. He said it was important.”

  My mother said, “If Tom knew, he’d tell you.” This was accompanied by the look I remembered from childhood that always meant I want the truth and I want it now. I’d long since built up immunity to blabbing under that fearsome glare. My mother was good. Even though I had nothing to tell, I was not immune to the tendrils of accompanying guilt that followed when I was the recipient of that storied gaze.

  I confirmed her statement. “If I knew, I would tell.”

  Big sigh from both Gahains.

  “We can’t go down to St. Louis to talk to people,” Mrs. Gahain said. “We’ve got to arrange the wake, the funeral. They’re going to be here, where he grew up.” Trembling pause. “Get used to him being gone.” She began to weep. We were all silent. My mother patted her hand. Mr. Gahain put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. Tears coursed down his cheeks. I didn’t have the comfort of tears.

  Some minutes later when they were more composed, Mrs. Gahain said, “We’re wondering if there isn’t some clue, some reason. We knew almost nothing about his current life.” She gulped. “I’m almost afraid what we’d find if we went down there.”

  Mr. Gahain said, “We want to know why this happened.”

  I asked, “Ethan was being secretive about what he wanted to say. Do you have any reason to believe his reluctance might have been because he was involved in something criminal?” I was certainly not going to ask his parents if they knew their son was into making and distributing pornography.

  “No,” Mr. Gahain said, “but he was always so distant. We rarely talked.”

  Mrs. Gahain began to cry again. “We tried to be good parents.”

  My mother said, “You were and are good parents.”

  “He loved you,” I said. “That I do know for sure. He told me so.” And he had. Years ago we were sitting in a bar with a crowd of friends the night after he had come back from college graduation. The same night he had also said his parents drove him nuts even faster than his wife did. At the time he was married to wife number one.

  Mrs. Gahain turned her teary eyes on me. “We want to find out what happened. Would you go to St. Louis and look in his house? We’re the executors of his estate. We’ll pack it up at some point in the future, but maybe there’ll be a clue there, a hint, a reason.”

  And sometimes there weren’t reasons or rational explanations. Sometimes, many times, I found that which is irrational ruled the world. (Think the Taliban, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson.) I wasn’t about to mention that either. This was no time to be less than comforting.

  My mother said, “You’ll go, Tom, won’t you?” Her best friends were in pain. I knew she was, too. She’d watched Ethan grow up and genuinely liked him. I wanted to know what happened. I wanted to know who this Michael was that Ethan used his last breath to mention.

  I asked, “Had he given out even the smallest hint about what was bothering him?”

  Mr. Gahain said, “No. We’ve gone over and over everything we can remember that he said to us since he came home. We can’t think of one thing.” He shrugged.

  “He didn’t reveal anything specific, but you suspected?”

  “Something was wrong,” Mrs. Gahain said. “We had no idea what or how serious it was. I think he was frightened of something. He should have known he could talk to us. He always could.”

  I was glad they believed that.

  I asked, “Did he have any enemies that you know of?”

  “No,” Mrs. Gahain said, “although we didn’t know a lot of his friends either.”

  Mr. Gahain added, “At least one of his ex-wives hated him.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I think there were some alimony and custody issues,” Mr. Gahain said. “We never knew precisely what the problem was.”

  Ernie and my sister had sat silently through all this. I turned to them. “Do either of you have a notion about what was bothering him?”

  Caroline said, “No,” quickly and emphatically. My sister was always good at being definitive.

  Ernie said, “We haven’t been close in a long time. Our age difference was somewhat of a factor, but it was more him than me who put distance between us as we got older.”

  “Ernie, please!” Mrs. Gahain said.

  I knew Ethan worshiped his older brother when they were kids. According to Caroline, as adults Ernie and Ethan had fought often and loudly, causing no amount of grief at family gatherings. Caroline had informed me that she thought it was both their fault. Ernie refused to give her details about the background to the fights. He never pointed to one specific incident in the past. When she had first told me, I had suggested that maybe it wasn’t one specific thing that had caused the break. Maybe it was just the result of being brothers who rubbed each other the wrong way. Then again, maybe Ethan had done something recently that had made Ernie angry enough to commit fratricide.

  Ernie said, “We can’t hide things if we expect the truth to come out. I need to lead a quiet life. Ethan always had to be going and moving and doing, just being more intensely than anyone else. I’m afraid it finally caught up with him. I should be the one to go to St. Louis. I just can’t handle it physically. I figured something was bothering him, but, no, I don’t know what it was.”

  I asked, “Have any of you remembered any connection he had with someone named Michael?” I had told
them about his last words.

  All of them gave various forms of the same puzzled frown. Mrs. Gahain said, “Since you told us that earlier, we’ve tried to figure out who he may have been referring to. We haven’t a clue. I assume he must have known people named Michael, but we aren’t aware of anyone he knew well enough to say he loved him.”

  “He wasn’t gay,” Mr. Gahain said. “Why would he say he loved Michael?”

  This was delicate. I was not about to discuss their son’s sexuality with them. Not at this point. Not if Ethan hadn’t. “None of his kids were named Mike, were they?” I asked. “Or maybe a nickname for one of his wives like the movie with Pat and Mike that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn made?”

  Mrs. Gahain said, “No. That can’t have been what his last words meant.”

  My dad corrected me, “Hepburn was Pat so that comparison doesn’t work.” Then he added, “It sure was an odd thing for him to say.”

  I said, “I’ll keep asking about that name especially while we’re down in St. Louis.”

  We agreed to go that day. My mother pulled me aside in the hallway. “I know the Gahains think you and Ethan were still close. I know you haven’t been since you broke up when you were kids.”

  “You knew about that?”

  “That silly grin you had on your face for over a year when you were in high school could only mean one thing. You weren’t dating any girls. You would have told us. Then you went into that heavily morose period that one winter. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

  “Oh. All that agony I went through to come out to you guys …”

  “Probably wasn’t necessary. Perhaps you’re a stronger person for it.”

  “I’d rather be a stronger person without it. Pain hurts.”

  “I understand, dear. It’s over. The Gahains are good friends. I’m glad you agreed to go.”

  “They were like a second set of parents to me when I was a kid. Do the Gahains know Ethan and I were lovers as kids?”

  “They’ve never mentioned it. I never brought it up. It’s not my secret to tell.” She hugged me and gave me a little kiss on the cheek.

  As the rest of the crowd drifted toward the elevator, my sister fell in step beside me. She put a hand on my elbow to slow me down. She gazed carefully at me. “I know you, Thomas. You’re suspicious by nature. Ernie did not kill his brother. We both know they didn’t get along. Ernie is in a wheelchair, for Christ’s sake. He can’t even maneuver that freely.” I knew there were logistical problems to Ernie having been the killer, but the stall in the washroom had been wheelchair accessible. When I didn’t immediately respond, she said, “Ethan was not to be trusted. Look at all those divorces. Ever ask yourself why?”

  “I’m not sure I cared enough to think about it much at all.”

  “Then think about it now. Every single marriage failed in less than two years. You and he didn’t get along. Ethan and Ernie were estranged. It is not Ernie’s fault that Ethan didn’t get along with people.”

  I said, “I don’t think Ernie did it.”

  “Good,” she said. We rejoined the others.

  After they had left, Scott went to begin preparations for breakfast, and I went to take a shower. He slid back the door as I began to shampoo my hair. I smiled at him. “Did you want to join me?”

  He asked, “Why is there a stack of video equipment in the middle of the electronics room?”

  “Your nephew was making a pile. I don’t think he came all the way from Georgia to help us rearrange the furniture.” I told Scott what had happened when I’d awakened earlier.

  “He was going to rip us off,” Scott said.

  “I believe that would be the medical diagnosis.”

  “The little shit. You were right about him.”

  When I finished my shower, I joined Scott in the kitchen. The recently referred to piece of excrement walked into the room. He glared at me, smiled at Scott. Donny was wearing faded jeans, white socks, and a wrinkled T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of the rock group Metallica. His hair was mussed. Bags under his eyes indicated insufficient amounts of sleep.

  “You were ripping us off,” Scott said.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  It was the blatant lie that did him in. Scott’s got a big heart, especially for kids, but he hates being lied to.

  Scott said, “What the hell did you think you were going to be able to do with that stuff? You couldn’t possibly walk out the door with it.”

  “I was just looking at them.”

  I loved the thought of Donny confessing the truth and pleading for forgiveness. The stubborn pout on the kid’s face didn’t lend itself to the possibility of that fantasy being fulfilled. The ensuing moments of extended silence added nothing to the situation. As he had earlier this morning, the kid simply shut down. Finally, Scott said, “Donny, you look like you could use a shower. Under the sink in the bathroom connected to your room, you’ll find clean towels and washcloths.” The teenager looked from one to the other of us, shrugged, turned, and left.

  I said, “Direct confrontations aren’t working.”

  “We could try to borrow a tank and run him over repeatedly.”

  “Much too tempting.”

  “We could look through his backpack while he’s taking a shower. Maybe we’ll find some clue to what he’s really up to. Although maybe that would violate his rights. I’m not sure I care about his rights. The little creep lied.”

  I said, “I like it when you do both sides of an argument.”

  “Come on.”

  We trooped down the hallway. Through the bedroom door we could hear the shower running. Scott tapped softly. There was no answer. We walked in. The jeans, socks, and T-shirt Donny had been wearing along with a red-and-graystriped pair of boxer shorts lay on the floor. I checked the pants pockets while Scott rummaged in the backpack. I found two quarters and a penny in one front pocket. I extracted a wallet from the left rear. I found three five-dollar bills and two ones, a learner’s permit from the state of Georgia, a picture of a pleasant-faced girl, a picture ID from General Gwinnet High School, and a condom.

  Scott whispered, “I found something.” The shower water continued to run. I hurried over. Scott had scattered the contents of Donny’s backpack onto the bed. I saw a comb, a toothbrush but no toothpaste, deodorant, three more pairs of boxer shorts in muted reds and grays, two more T-shirts with rock-group logos, and two more pairs of white socks. Scott held out a pencil pouch, the kind they used to have when I was a kid, ten inches by three inches of vinyl that zipped on one side. In it Donny had stuffed a thick roll of bills including some hundreds and fifties, a credit card with his dad’s name on it, and the remnants of a plane ticket, one-way from Atlanta to Chicago.

  “Why did he come here?” Scott asked. “What wild and romantic dreams were in his head?”

  “Lot of money.”

  The shower stopped. I scooped up everything except one pair of boxer shorts and stuffed it all into the backpack. We dropped his possessions in a hall closet. We sat in the kitchen to wait. The explosion wasn’t long in coming. He marched into the room, hair still wet, boxer shorts on, a towel in his left hand. He had small tufts of hair around each nipple. He was skinny to the point of emaciation, belying the amount of food he’d devoured last night. He had a tattoo of a scorpion around his navel.

  “What the hell is going on!” he demanded.

  “Precisely.” Scott’s quite cryptic when he’s pissed.

  “Where’s my stuff?”

  “Safe,” Scott said.

  “You took my money.”

  “Yes.”

  “You guys are perverts. I’ll accuse you of trying to molest me.”

  I remained impassive. Scott scowled. While the kid glared from one to the other of us, Scott let the silence build several more beats, then said, “Of all the places on the planet to choose from, you came here. Why?”

  “Can I at least have my pants?”

  “Why here?” Scott asked.<
br />
  “I told you last night.”

  “Why?” Scott reiterated.

  “I want my pants.”

  “Where’d you get all that money?”

  “Savings. I want my pants.”

  I got up, left the room, made sure I wasn’t followed, retrieved his pants, and brought them back. The kid was standing at the window looking out at the lake. I handed him his pants and sat back down next to Scott. The kid yanked his pants on and then glared at us.

  “Silence is not going to work,” Scott said.

  “You can’t keep me here,” Donny said.

  “That presumes we want you to stay,” Scott said.

  Donny looked a trifle disconcerted at that.

  The intercom phone buzzed. I picked it up, listened, and hung up. I turned to Donny. “The police are here,” I announced.

  “You can’t make me talk to them,” Donny said.

  “What’s the big deal about giving them a statement?” Scott asked. “There was a murder at our wedding, and if they have a few questions, why would that cause you such anxiety? Unless you lied to us last night.”

  “I didn’t lie.” Donny had added a bit of a snap to his usual snarl.

  “Then I don’t see the problem,” Scott said.

  “You can’t let them question me. You can’t tell them I was there.”

  I left the room to let the cops in.

  8

  When I got back to them, I introduced Detectives Rohter and Hoge from the night before.

  Hoge said, “We stopped by to check a few things.” The detectives sat three feet apart on our white couch. Scott and I sat opposite them with our knees touching. Donny sat to our left, their right.

  Rohter said, “We’ve got thirty-seven people at the wedding who knew Mr. Gahain.”

  I said, “That sounds right. There were a lot of folks there from the old neighborhood. My parents, old friends, people from high school.”

  “And you guys,” Rohter said.

  I said, “Scott had never met him until last night.”

  Rohter added, “Except for his relatives and you, none claimed to have talked to him in the past five years.”