Sorrow's crown afgm-2

by Tom Piccirilli

  Anna took my hand. "You're not interested in moving your shop here, are you?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “I didn't think so. Then why allow this facade to continue?”

  “Certainly you know the answer to that," I said.

  "Because you don't want to lose her. But prolonging the inevitable will only hurt her more in the end.”

  “I don't know what the inevitable is."

  Since I hadn't eaten, I didn't need to digest before my run, and I knew of a surefire way to get out of this conversation. "Hey, since we're already speaking about matters of the heart . . ."

  She disliked redirection as much as I did, and grimaced. "Oh, please, Jonathan, now really . . ."

  "Come on. How serious is it between you and Oscar? And is he going to make you take up skeet shooting?"

  "We are friends, as you well know."

  "I know he acts like a teenager, and I think I even caught you tittering once or twice."

  "I do not," she said emphatically, "titter."

  "Yes, you do. I heard it while you were acting giddy."

  Her eyes widened. "And I most positively do not, under any conceivable circumstances, act giddy."

  "Anyway, I'm going to see just how much pedestrian traffic there really is downtown."

  "The two of you will work this out."

  "Things have to break one way or the other."

  I snapped the leash to Anubis' collar and we had a tug-of-war for about five minutes before I finally wore him down. "Not the park," I told him. "Just a little jog downtown. I promise, not the park."

  He didn't look like he believed me.

  I stood in front of the flower shop. Weather could shift radically in Felicity Grove, and yesterday's storm had collapsed into a warm, sun-packed day. Katie wouldn't get here before eleven; morning sickness had hit her hard, and the daily ritual of anguish left her so drained she usually went back to bed for a while. In those early hours, holding her in the bathroom and watching her suffer, she looked frail and weak and completely incapable of chasing ketchup-covered kids around a restaurant. With her hair sticking to her sweat-stained face, she still tried to smile for my benefit, and I always wanted to make love to her right then.

  I tried not to think that Anubis was the reason why people weren't walking by me. He gave frowns of consternation, fully understanding that nobody in this town would buy Emerson's MayDay for twenty-four hundred dollars. We walked a little farther down to Fredrickson Street, and I watched the parking lot of Kinion's Hunting amp; Tackle fill and empty for twenty minutes. At only ten in the morning, a dozen men had already bustled into the store needing to purchase their Springfield M-6 Scouts, improved and updated from the original U.S. Air Force M-6 Survival Rifles, stainless steel construction with optional lockable marine flotation devices. I wondered if the ducks they shot would know the difference.

  I knew that if I ever did move back to Felicity Grove I'd actually have to go to work for Oscar, or someone like him, and get involved with an occupation I didn't want to become involved in, most likely dealing with chickens or weapons.

  "Come on," I said, and Anubis trotted beside me.

  We headed back to the flower shop. I had a key and let myself in, but I always felt vaguely unsettled being in here without Katie. The floral arrangements had a real style to them, aesthetic with a flair for color and design. The refrigeration units thrummed dully, leaving cold patches and drafts. A slight vibration worked through the floor. The empty space at the side of the store appeared to be too confining for a possible bookstore. I shut my eyes and saw the place the way she always talked about it, then looked around and tried to see the same picture. Nothing came together.

  I leaned against a wall and pretended to pull a book from a shelf and read, moving to peruse stacks of Harlequin romances, bird-watcher guidebooks, and football trivia, while coyly giggling at erotica written by "Anonymous" or "M" or "J." The sweetly cloying scent of flowers started to overcome me, that irksome vibration making my feet twitch. I could see myself becoming extremely whiny here.

  "What do you think?" I asked.

  Anubis remained the perfect partner for such discussions because he always grumbled like an older, more prudent investor. He sniffed around some plant-growth and discovered a patch of irresistibly lickable matter in a spider plant unfurled all over the floor. I had an image of the soil erupting with alien life, tendrils drawing him inside while mutant fauna jaws scarfed him down. I thought my mind would wander a lot like that while customers asked me if I carried back issues of Playboy or Soldier of Fortune magazines.

  Anubis approached, sat, and stared at me as if he also saw my superiority complex showing. His tail thumped twice, expectantly. He grumbled some more.

  "Okay."

  I went to the refrigerator and took out some tulips, my mother's favorite. He started to growl, understanding their significance.

  He didn't like the cemetery. It seemed like I was the only one who did.

  ~ * ~

  At the cemetery, called Felicity Grave, an indistinct odor caught on the stiff breeze.

  Leaves whirled. Rocky, root-strewn areas looked equally as well-kept as the flawlessly mowed grass jutting between the rows of markers. Bushes were impeccably pruned, dead branches and stumps cleared and toted away. Lawns remained lush, sweeping trimmed carpets that wound among the knolls and embankments, flowing down into the ravines of potter's field. Even the rubble of ancient angels, martyred saints, and scarred Madonnas wasn't neglected, the stone scrubbed clean.

  I left the tulips on my parents' graves, brushing my fingers over their tombstones as I usually did. Certain formalities would stay with me forever. Wildflowers blossomed in erratic strips across the hollows, never hindered by unseasonable temperatures or heavy waves of sleet. The green had returned to some spindly tress growing among the more ornate and statuesque memorials. The old family mausoleums stood like granite condos. Anubis' mouth opened as I let him off the leash. The wind picked up a little.

  Shifting breeze brought a wafting pungency.

  "I am here, Jon!"

  Anubis never growled at children or Crummler, but now he hunkered in the dirt, his head weaving as though trying to shake off dizziness, unable to draw a bead on Crummler. He followed me down the hillock, and the stink hit us at the same time. Crummler waved and pranced, bearing something.

  An ugly sound worked free from the back of Anubis' throat, deep and lethal in its animosity. Hard ridges of his outlined muscles rose in the black fur, his hackles stiff; he held his snout low, tongue jutting, showing a lot of fang. The scent worked on him, his nostrils flaring, those black eyes beginning to roll as if he remembered the taste of the guy's throat in the park, and wanted a lot more.

  "Jesus, no," I said. "No, Anubis, settle."

  Crummler kept cavorting, still doing the dance Broghin and the kids had joined him in. I tried it out too, hoping it would calm him. I bounced around while he capered toward me. The edges of his beard stuck out, highlighted with red where his hair had draped onto his long, stained coat.

  When he was ten yards from me I realized he was covered in blood and carrying a broken shovel, his hands filthy, and the coat still very wet.

  I jogged down the knoll to him. "Are you hurt?”

  “No!"

  "Then . . ."

  That acrid, burning stench. Nothing else like it in the world. I moved around one of the broad, groomed bushes and nearly stepped into the dead kid's mouth.

  Parts of his teeth and features lay nearby. Someone had repeatedly used the shovel on him, making sure they took off every inch of his face. I couldn't tell much about him except that his clothes seemed to be the kind a teenager would wear: faded jeans, sneakers, black T-shirt, and an oversized leather jacket. Anubis stared at the corpse warily but with a strange calmness that unnerved me, as if this were nothing new. Crummler kept pirouetting. His wild, fevered energy and happiness had drained and been replaced by a maddening look of … san
ity.

  He smiled. "I am here, Jon."

  "Oh shit," I said.

  "I have been in battle . . ." His face fell, and he suddenly began moaning.

  His mania meant something different now, with dark streaks of crusted blood on his hands and clothes. The same smile took on new connotations.

  “… with myself."

  He brought the shovel up, like offering a gift, hefting it too quickly so that the blade angled sharply toward my face.

  A part of me wanted to shout, but for a man too impractical to practice safe sex in the age of AIDS, I wasn't foolish enough to let Crummler get another step closer with his wild grin and bloody shovel. .

  This time I didn't slap like a nine-year-old girl. I punched him directly on the point of his hairy chin and he went flying backward to roll next to the body of the dead, faceless boy on the ground. He started sobbing, and I didn't know what the hell to do next.

  THREE

  Lowell Tully arrived first, with the wig-wag lights on but no siren, so that a strange red sheen from the cherry top spun against my legs and the array of whitewashed angels behind me. He stared at the scene for a minute, squinting as his hair tousled into his eyes, taking in every detail before silently returning to his car.

  He made a few murmured calls on his police radio, the wind snapping at his brown deputy's shirt across his broad, muscular back. Crummler had fallen into a deep but fitful sleep not far from the corpse, his arms wrapped around his knees as though he couldn't quite fit into the fetal position. His fingers scratched at the dirt on occasion, like a dog chasing rabbits in his dreams. Anubis gazed about serenely, seated on a grave, comforted by the fact that he hadn't done anything this time. I was sweaty from chasing birds away from the dead kid.

  Lowell handled the situation-macabre as it was-the way he handled everything: with the relaxed, easy assurance of a man with four percent body fat and a working knowledge of the body's nerve clusters and major arteries. He still had a football hero's swagger, back from when he'd fractured his pelvis in our last homecoming game. He went to one knee beside the corpse, carefully inspecting the faceless kid without touching him.

  He stood and put his fists on his hips, and I decided if there was anything in this world that could rattle him I didn't want to know what it was.

  "How are you holding up?" he asked.

  "Oh," I said. "Fine."

  Lowell took firm hold of my shoulder with one of his massive hands and led me a few yards off. Crummler, Anubis, and I had already done a proper job of fouling the crime scene, and he tried to save whatever investigative integrity remained. There wasn't much. We looked down at the sleeping man-child coated in dried blood, whose fingers kept flashing out.

  "Did you touch him?" he asked.

  "Only when I hit him."

  "Did you handle the shovel?"

  "No."

  "Or the body?"

  "No."

  "Are you certain?"

  "Hell, yes," I said. "You think I'd forget?"

  "Just answer my questions directly and stow the remarks for the time being, all right? Can you work with that?”

  “Yes."

  "What did you see here?"

  I told him, and I made sure I was precise. He listened without a word, without even movement. I was going to repeat myself, and once again felt the odd sense that my fate, and even my love, had become entwined with Crummler's life. "Despite the facts on hand, do you really think he could have done this?"

  Lowell had never hesitated on anything in his life, and didn't hesitate now. "He's no different from any of us. Why else would you have knocked him down?"

  "I was taken aback."

  "You were scared shitless."

  "That's what took me aback."

  He nodded. "I can see as it might. Tell me everything that happened. Go through it again."

  I told him once more, beginning with last night, and the ice-rimed wraith from out of the darkness who had leaped into the restaurant. I expected him to smile when I got to the part of Crummler dancing with the children, but instead he only sucked air through his teeth in a low, unpleasant whistle.

  Events had forced a new reality on us. What I'd hoped would paint the caretaker as harmless only led to uglier thoughts: what if he'd snapped last night in a dining room full of children?

  "What did you do after you hit him?"

  "Called you."

  "From where?"

  "Duke Edelman's gas station."

  Lowell looked over his shoulder at the graveyard path that led up to the road heading back into town. "That's how far? A mile? You left him there like that the whole time?"

  It sounded extremely stupid when he put it like that-leaving a murder suspect passed out beside the mangled victim, along with my dog. "He was crying, and fell asleep by the time I got back. I didn't exactly have much choice in the matter. What did you expect, for me to carry him over my shoulder or drop him hog-tied to a tree?"

  "You still running them six-minute miles, Johnny? You might consider carrying a cell phone, what with all the shit you get into. You should've borrowed one of Duke's trucks to come back."

  "It's less than a mile, and by the time I pulled Duke out from under one of his junkers and found the keys and answered questions I could've run back here anyway. I figured we'd get a lot of unwanted attention soon enough. A cell phone, huh?"

  Three more police cars pulled up, followed by Keaton Wallace, the Medical Examiner, in his coroner's wagon. A dull morning for everyone, and the News van crews would be coming soon. Sheriff Broghin sauntered down the hill trying desperately to keep his stomach from getting too far out in front of him, the gun belt riding way too low. He hadn't been able to resist using the siren, and now Crummler slowly roused himself from the mud.

  For a moment, Zebediah Crummler looked like any man I'd ever known awakening from a two-night drunk, opening his eyes wide to whatever hell had driven him to it. I could see Lowell there after his fiance left him at the altar on the eve of his twenty-first birthday. I saw myself when my parents died in their car and Anna remained comatose with her legs crushed; I watched my father on the couch at dawn in his dirty T-shirt back before AA saved what few years he had left. The pain seeped into the air, and it seemed familiar to me. Then the light of coherence faded, and Crummler grinned happily, shuddering and snapping, on fire again, unaware or not caring about the reek of blood on him. He sat up and shouted, "Jon!"

  Broghin had a few ways to play it, and once more he surprised me with his gentleness. He reached down and took Crummler by the hand, led him up to the sheriff's car, and gingerly put handcuffs on the caretaker's wrists and eased the yawning man into the back seat.

  At some point Lowell glided away from me and conferred with Keaton Wallace and the other deputies as they bagged bits and pieces. I didn't want to look too closely. Anubis remembered the police photographers and appeared ready to engage in lively discourse with them. I pulled him down beside me and we sat beneath the knotty limbs of a stunted white oak. It took a while but eventually Anubis murmured and rolled over, and I watched the slow and steady rise and fall of his chest.

  A half hour later, Broghin returned and stepped next to me without a word. We were going to do this gradually. His enormous gut hung over his belt: he had a belly you just wanted to grab with both hands and shake vigorously, then sit back for a few minutes and watch the fun. I wondered if he would question me about Oscar, here over the body of a dead, faceless boy. The sheriff, like most men with high blood pressure who refused medication, couldn't control the flow of his frustration, and would let it out regardless of time or place. His jealousy had to have been prodding him savagely.

  "You know him?" he asked.

  "The kid on the ground? I don't think so."

  "You do or you don't?"

  Besides being lactose intolerant I had a touch of high blood pressure, too. "How can I be certain? He has no face. Who is he?"

  "You sure you don't know him?"

 
"What the hell does that mean?"

  Broghin was nearly as good at looking suspicious as Anubis. It took me another few seconds before realizing that he actually considered me a suspect. "Oh, well now," I said. "That's wonderful."

  "Just answer me, damn it," he hissed, and the slight nub of veins at the edges of his temples suddenly bloated into writhing black centipedes. Anubis caught the ugly inflection and instantly rolled to his feet, giving Broghin his best flat, dead gaze, mouth open a little and showing the barest sheen of fangs. "Goddamn, but I do despise that dog. I never hated a man as much as I do that dog. Now answer me."

  "I did answer you. I don't know if I know him, he's got no face."

  We both glanced up at the sheriff's car and watched Crummler doing some kind of funky Rockette number in the back seat, his heels tapping out against the window. He saw us and started waving ecstatically even while cuffed. One of the other deputies walked over, trying to pacify him.

  "You can't believe he did this," I said.

  Broghin's lips skewed into a sorrowful smile that still had a lot of self-righteousness to it. "Jonny Kendrick, I've never heard you sound so unsure of anything in all the years you've been climbing on my back."

  "Yeah, well … what did he say to you last night when you took him back here?" I asked. "Did he tell you anything?"

  "I swear, it nearly sounds like you're questioning me. Yes, I think I hear that in your voice a bit, just a little bit, I do."

  Broghin and I could go through the battle of the wills some other time. I wished Anna were here now; she liked it when he pulled out the podunk, and could work him into telling her anything, one way or another.

  "You saw all that blood on him, you don't get that covered just hitting a guy with a shovel."

  "Somebody took their time with him. The kid wasn't only hit, you saw that."

  "Yes, I did, but even so."