by James Newman
David had to admit Becca’s complaints were valid. He hated dressing up himself, even when doing so was a necessary evil for attending important meetings and the like. David’s idea of comfort was a New York State T-shirt and sweatpants (both stained with a rainbow of paint splatters as he tooled about the house, working on various projects for the publishing companies with whom he had contracts). For Simms’ funeral, however, he opted for his best navy blue suit. On the drive across town he kept pulling at his collar, cursing beneath his breath about how the damn thing was chafing the hell out of his neck (“Language!” Kate scolded him several times, and even Becca chided in once). Still, it had been his decision to take the family to the services, as Kate was quick to point out, so he kept his bitching to a minimum.
Kate wore a long black dress she had picked up just a few weeks before for church, once she’d found a suitable place of worship in Morganville. It was the only outfit she owned for such occasions that fit her in this latter stage of pregnancy. David had to admit that, even with her swollen belly, the dress looked very nice on her. Even, yes, sexy. It was cut low in front, and as he drove he raised his eyebrows more than once Kate’s way, becoming aroused from those occasional glances at her sun-dappled cleavage. God, did she ever smell good, too. Her scent kept wafting over his way, the Liz Claiborne perfume he had purchased for her birthday last February further exciting him at the most inopportune time.
“Mmm,” he said, “I didn’t realize till now just how big those things are getting.”
The corners of Kate’s mouth turned up in a sly grin. “What?”
“Your boobs,” David said, licking his lips with exaggerated lust.
Kate’s reply was a playful slap at his leg. She shot a glance at Becca in the back of the 4Runner, whispered, “Stop it, you. We’re going to a funeral.”
David composed himself. Kate was right. Respect for the dead and all that.
By the time the Littles arrived at the church, they could already tell this event was going to be big. Very big. Every emergency vehicle in Morgan County’s arsenal, it seemed, was parked in the church’s vast parking lot, awaiting the beginning of the procession to come. Fire engines of every size and shape glistened beneath the morning sun, as well as an ambulance or two, and more than a few Sheriff’s Department patrol cars straddled the bright green grass bordering the church property.
Morganville First Presbyterian was the town’s largest church. The sign out front, beneath the church’s name, declared in bold black letters: EXPERIENCE THE POWER OF PRAYER—COME WORSHIP WITH US. Beneath that, in smaller letters: DARRYL RHODES/PASTOR.
“Uncle Joel!” Becca squealed from the back seat, as David steered into one of the few parking spaces still available amidst the chaos.
David and Kate turned to see Joel walking toward them from the next row of cars. He wore a black suit with a speckled yellow tie—a tie that seemed a bit loud for this occasion, David thought, but kept it to himself—and his hair was pulled back into a tight little ponytail.
David brought the 4Runner to a stop between a white Suburban and a blue Volvo with a crumpled rear end. It was a tight squeeze. “Becca, I want you to behave yourself in there. Okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.” Eyes wide, she stared out the window at a massive fire truck parked about fifty feet away. Like some sleeping beast, it was silent, though the lights atop its roof rotated in a swirl of crimson, reflecting off the dozens of smaller cars around it.
David said, “Look at me.”
Becca looked at him.
“We’re going to a funeral, sweetie. To pay our respect for the dead. This isn’t fun-time.”
“I know.”
“She knows,” Kate said. “She’s been to church before.”
“Right,” said David, as he exited the 4Runner.
Kate and Becca followed, Becca jumping into her uncle’s arms the second she was out of the vehicle.
“Hey, sweetie,” said Joel, nodding a silent hello Kate and David’s way. He ruffled Becca’s hair playfully, but then, realizing it had been meticulously prepared for the services at hand, fixed it back the best he could. “Oops.”
David headed for the church. Kate and Joel followed a few feet behind him, Becca’s hand now in her uncle’s, and Kate felt overwhelmed by the crowd already gathered beyond the church’s open doors. David straightened his tie, replaced his expression of discomfort with his professional glad-to-meet-you face. It always came forth in large numbers such as this, Kate knew. Meanwhile, she felt awkward surrounded by so many strangers.
“Daddy, wait for us,” Becca said as they ascended the steps of the church. David did not hear her, however. He was already shaking hands with a very tall, older gentleman who had turned to greet them.
David introduced them. The man’s name was George Heatherly, he explained to his family, and he was their next-door neighbor.
Kate caught a glimpse of a dark tattoo beneath the old man’s sleeve as he reached for her hand. She hid her slight distaste when the old man’s eyes flicked over her cleavage as he bent to offer the back of her hand an old-fashioned how-do-you-do-ma’am kiss. Oh well. The old fellow looked harmless enough. He was rather charming. Still, Kate was perturbed when David abruptly followed George Heatherly into the throng of their fellow citizens without waiting for his family, forcing her and Becca to fend for themselves.
Kate felt her cheeks grow hot beneath the eyes of strangers as she stepped into the church, as she ventured deeper into the cloying fog of other folks’ perfume and too-strong cologne, and began searching for an empty seat among the pews. Her neck reddened with nervousness beneath that trademark look men tend to give pregnant women, a look of admiration married with a bizarre sort of near-contempt for what has already been conquered by another.
Feeling like an antelope surrounded by a pride of hungry lions, Kate clung to Joel’s arm, her other hand in Becca’s. She hoped that her brother, at least, would not leave them behind to drown in this sea of nameless mourners.
Brookside Hills, twelve sprawling acres in the center of Morganville, was the final resting place of nearly every citizen who had died within the town since the beginning of the twentieth century (the others were laid to rest in the older, weed-choked graveyard behind Trinity Baptist Church on Spruce Road, provided the deceased had been a member of that church, as it was the county’s only place of worship with its own boneyard out back). Its name was derived from the fact that the cemetery was bordered by a flowing brook. Social stature meant nothing in Brookside Hills, as those who were interred in the grounds of this cemetery rested beneath fancy marble sculptures and modest tombstones decorated only by time-worn names, wilted flowers, and carpets of dark green moss. Everyone had a place in Brookside Hills, eventually, assuming he or she had planned ahead and purchased a plot.
After the initial services honoring Randall Simms, the Little family followed the hearse-led procession across town to Brookside Hills. Becca’s eyes seemed wider than humanly possible as she watched everything going on around her, her tiny blonde head peering over the front seat or out her window. The fire department’s largest truck, Engine Number Five, followed behind the hearse like a loyal dog at the feet of its fallen master, and it seemed everywhere the Littles looked as they traveled down Brookside Boulevard a swirling cacophony of emergency lights painted the town red, white, and blue. Sheriff Guice and his two deputies escorted the convoy in twin patrol cars, their sirens belching out harsh whoops every time someone neglected to get out of the way.
A soft drizzle began to fall over the cemetery several minutes after Reverend Darryl Rhodes—a middle-aged gent with the largest, bushiest eyebrows David had ever seen—began the eulogy above the open grave. This lent the proceedings an even more morose bent, the day suddenly turning gray and gloomy to mirror the proceedings at hand.
David wished he had stayed home and worked on his latest project, a dust jacket for a nerdy sci-fi novel called Black Star of Tyrinnak, instead of coming here. He be
nt his head, rubbed at his temples to sway the pain of a dawning headache, and Kate—perhaps mistaking his discomfort for genuine sympathy for Randall Simms’ widow—placed one arm around her husband. Little Becca looked at him, whispered, “You okay, Daddy?” and grabbed his hand.
David offered his daughter a weak smile and a nod.
The cold drizzle had upgraded to a soft rain by the time Sheriff Sam Guice’s radio interrupted through the somber proceedings. Reverend Rhodes paused his monotone eulogy as Guice muttered, “Sorry,” turned his radio down and held it to his ear.
“Yeah?” Guice said into it, as softly as possible. He walked away from the grave and the crowd surrounding it as he spoke, paced toward a mass of marble tombstones several yards away. When the radio’s only reply was a belch of static, he said, “Guice here. Come in. What is it, Mavis?”
“Sheriff,” said the radio, “we got a Code Twenty-Seven on Pellham Road.” Another bird-like squawk of static, then: “It’s bad, sir. Possible Fifty-Five from last night. Over.”
“Ten-Four,” Sheriff Guice said. “I’m on my way. Get Keenan for me, would you? And Ten-Three, Mavis.”
“Ten-Nine, sir? Please repeat?”
Sheriff Guice shot a glance over his shoulder, toward the curious civilian faces watching his every move.
“Ten-Three, Mavis. Cease transmit.”
With that last bit he looked back again at those gathered around the grave, found Kate’s brother in the front row. When they made eye contact, Guice offered Joel a barely perceptible nod. Joel nodded back.
“Roger,” squawked the radio. “Sorry, Sheriff.”
“It’s okay, Mavis. Ten-Three. Over and out.”
With that, Sheriff Guice returned his radio to its place upon his shiny black belt and jogged to his patrol car beneath the watchful eyes of Morganville’s mourning citizens.
All the while, Reverend Rhodes droned on like the distant thunder mumbling in the dark sky.
“Code Twenty-Seven means they found a dead body,” came a whisper from the crowd, but it was a whisper loud enough to be heard over the falling rain and Reverend Rhodes’s solemn monotone. Kate Little turned toward the direction of that voice, but could not tell who had said it. She thought it sounded familiar, however, and the closest person whose voice she could have heard so clearly was that Heatherly gentleman to whom David had introduced her earlier. George Heatherly’s attention was captive to Sheriff Guice and his men as they sped off toward town, lights flashing.
Joel leaned over toward Kate and David and whispered, “I’d better go. I’ll catch up with you guys later, okay?”
Kate and David nodded. Joel patted little Becca on the head before making his way through the crowd, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. But after Sheriff Guice’s sudden departure, it was too late for that.
In the crowd, Kate leaned into David. He looked back at her with raised eyebrows.
“I wonder what’s going on,” she whispered.
“Shh.”
Reverend Rhodes continued his bored eulogy even as those gathered to pay their respects no longer gave him their full attention. Murmurs of murder and whispers of gory gossip passed through the crowd like a bad flu as the rain left tiny puddles atop Randall Simms’ sleek gray casket.
Only the cold rain and the fire chief’s widow seemed to remember the dead man now.
CHAPTER 11
“Jesus H. Christ,” Sheriff Guice said as he stood above the corpse. Goosebumps stippled his forearms, and he felt cold all over. Not because of the rain, though.
“What do you think happened to him, Sam?” asked Deputy Hank Keenan. Wet sprigs of his fiery red hair stuck up beneath his Smokey-bear hat, and crescents of sweat darkened his uniform beneath the deputy’s muscular arms. He looked as if he might lose his dinner at any moment.
“I don’t know.” Guice pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his khaki uniform, covered his mouth and nose with it, and Keenan followed suit. “My God.”
The child had been dead for a couple days, the sheriff estimated from the look of the corpse, though he would not know for sure until Joel Rohrig arrived. Guice shook his head as he stood above the boy’s body, sniffled once. Never in his life had he seen anything like this.
“Is it him, Sam?” Keenan asked. “Is it the Dawson kid?”
“I think so,” the sheriff replied, looking off toward the woods at the far end of the meadows. The metallic staccato of a cicada’s song began somewhere in the distance, and the sound startled the sheriff, jerking him back into the real world and away from whatever dark thoughts swam through his mind. He sighed. “Hell, we know it is, Hank. Donna said he was wearing a red windbreaker, blue jeans. Look at him. Whether we want to believe it or not, it’s the Dawson boy.” Another sigh. “Shit.”
“You want I should tell his parents?” Hank asked. “I’ll do that if you need me to, Sam.”
“No. Let’s wait. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Keenan nodded.
“Fucking-A, Hank, how the hell do you tell a mother her son is dead two weeks before Christmas?”
Keenan did not have an answer for that. He hung his head, said nothing.
Saturday evening, the department had received a call from Donna Evanson, who explained that her ten-year-old son, Billy, had not returned home after walking just several blocks to a friend’s house to play Nintendo. Mavis, the Department dispatcher, had taken the call at approximately eight p.m.; Mrs. Evanson told Mavis she had spoken with the other boy’s parents, but her son had never arrived. For that matter, they knew nothing of Billy’s alleged visit. Sheriff Guice then spoke to Evanson himself, explaining that her fears were probably unfounded—Morganville was a decent place, he assured her, stuff like this happened all the time and it always turned out okay—but he would look into it. However, he did tell her that, while this would not yet be an official search, he would gladly patrol Morganville in hopes that Billy might turn up. Evanson, an old high-school girlfriend of the sheriff’s own brother, agreed to place her faith in Guice and his men. They would find her son.
By Sunday night, however, the search had escalated into the real thing. Guice and his entire crew combed Morganville with the help of several volunteers.
Guice’s attention returned to the child’s body once again, and Deputy Keenan was quite sure he saw tears in his friend’s eyes. The sheriff made an animal-like grunting sound—perhaps just clearing his throat, perhaps something more—as he looked off toward the woods, not wishing to stare at that little corpse any longer.
God, it was awful.
Thick red blisters, comparable to bee stings or maybe mosquito bites, stippled nearly every inch of the dead boy’s flesh. Even now those fat welts seeped a greenish, bile-like fluid long after the child’s final breath; it trickled down onto the ground with the falling rain, collecting in miniature puddles beneath the corpse.
The boy’s eyes were open, cloudy and distant.
“Who found him?” Deputy Keenan asked his superior.
“Rudy Reznor. Claims he spotted the kid from the road while picking up aluminum cans. But I wasn’t born yesterday. He was out here scavenging for shit to sell in his junkyard.”
“I’m sure,” Keenan said softly.
“I told him I’d throw his ass in the drunk-tank for a month, I caught him messing around out here again.”
“Good.”
“Nobody’s got any business here.”
“Right.”
Sheriff Guice and his deputy turned then, flinching slightly at the sound of a short, sharp honk. Joel Rohrig, the county’s acting medical examiner, had just pulled up in a van the color of fresh vomit. He had apparently driven from Simms’ funeral to the lab to trade his loud black Mustang for the trusty old meat-wagon (along with his suit and too-loud tie for a pair of blue jeans, a light green smock, and a navy-blue windbreaker with MORGAN COUNTY printed on the back in yellow).
Sheriff Guice welcomed the young medical examiner
with a nod of his head, a curt “Afternoon.” Today was not a day for pleasantries. Even the normally friendly Rohrig said nothing as he went to work. The young man squatted beside Billy Dawson’s corpse, his expression pained as he saw the dead boy for the first time. But Rohrig did nothing to betray his air of strict professionalism. He took a long, precursory look at the corpse before pulling on a pair of latex gloves and removing from his bag some sort of thermometer that reminded Guice of the kind his wife, Darlene, stuck in the turkey every Thanksgiving.
Sheriff Guice turned away as Joel raised the boy’s shirt and pressed down upon his stomach. The skin blanched, dark crimson turning to pale greenish-white, before Rohrig stuck the thermometer in just below the corpse’s ribcage. Sheriff Guice allowed the medical examiner to work for several minutes before interrupting with his questions. That was the way things had always been done with Dr. Bonansinga, Rohrig’s late mentor, and so he respected the tradition. Finally, though...
“How long do you think he’s been dead?” Guice asked, kneeling in the weeds beside the young M.E. His middle-aged joints cracked and popped as he did so.
Rohrig scratched at his forehead, thinking, and Sheriff Guice couldn’t help but notice the speck of bloody matter that the young man’s latex-covered fingers left stuck in one blond eyebrow.
“Notice the reddish-green tint to his flesh?”
“I couldn’t help it,” Guice replied.
“Rigor mortis has resolved.” Joel grasped one of the boy’s swollen arms, raised it several feet from the ground. It went slack in his grip. “Note the flaccidity.”
The sheriff nodded, though Joel seemed to be pointing out these details more to himself than anyone else now. Thinking out loud.
“Body temperature’s equivalent to that of the environment,” Joel said, removing the thermometer at last from the corpse’s stomach. It slid out with a grotesque slurping sound that reminded Sheriff Guice of someone sucking on an ice cube. “A little under forty-eight hours would be my guess. Estimated T.O.D.”