by Gideon, John
“The sooner, the better,” said Jeremy. “I’m certain that he will straighten out this mess. It’s all been a terrible misunderstanding, you know.”
“I’m sure it has been,” said Lindsay. She turned to Stu, whose face had darkened with worry. “Chief, could we talk alone for a moment?”
Outside the closed door of the office, Lindsay asked Stu whether there was any chance on God’s green earth that he would release Jeremy to her custody. She would take the boy home to the bungalow, she promised, and would keep him there until Carl had returned. She gave her personal guarantee that there would be no trouble and that Jeremy would appear in juvenile court whenever his case came up. Surely the chief could see that keeping him here was serving no one’s interest.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Miss Moreland,” said Stu, barely concealing his annoyance at her demand that he bend the rules of the juvenile justice system. “I had to talk like hell just to keep him out of the county lockup. The prosecutor’s office has stipulated that he be released to Carl, and only to Carl. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Lindsay’s eyes flashed and her face hardened. “But you can’t possibly believe all this crap about criminal mischief, can you? He’s just a little boy!”
“Not just any little boy,” interjected Stu. “There are two high-school kids sitting in the county jug right now—a pair of real winners named Tanner and Hagstad—who’ve sworn that Jeremy Trosper conspired with them to hurt Hannie Hazelford, that he somehow made them do it.”
“You can’t possibly believe that!”
“Listen, we’re not talking about harmless Halloween pranks here, Miss Moreland. What they did was malicious and life-threatening. They firebombed a house, for Christ’s sake, and they swear that Jeremy was involved. Besides, it doesn’t matter what I believe. If you knew what I believe, it would curl your hair. All that matters is what the prosecutor’s office thinks, and what they can prove in court.”
“Well, I can see that you’re not going to give an inch on this,” said Lindsay icily. “You’ve got the badge and the gun, and I don’t have any choice but to do things your way.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry. I didn’t write the rules.”
“At the very least, let me stay here with him.”
“Miss Moreland, I’m not so sure that’s a good—”
“Look, you’ve been very nice about not locking him up in that—that vault, there, but even so, he’s just a little boy. He’s entitled to have someone from his family with him. As you well know, Chief Bromton, Jeremy is a child with special needs. He’s been undergoing therapy—”
“I know all that.”
“—and he’s just lost his mother. He needs someone close by who loves him and has his welfare at heart. I’m sure that even you can understand that.”
“Miss Moreland, this is a police station. In case you hadn’t heard, we’re running a search for missing people here. I’m up to my ass in State Patrol, county mounties, reporters—”
“And western civilization will collapse if you let me stay here with my nephew, is that what you’re saying? For the love of God, Chief, show a little human decency!”
Stu Bromton gnashed his teeth and clenched his fists, but somehow he managed to smile. He resolved not to let this woman drive him to an outburst of anger, not with so many people around to watch. In a shouting match with Lindsay Moreland, it would be he who would look like an ogre, not Lindsay. Besides, he had stood his ground against her on the issue of releasing Jeremy, so perhaps it would not kill him to let her remain with the boy in the station house.
In a gesture of magnanimity that amazed himself, he even offered her a cup of coffee.
14
At the Chapel of the Cove, another week of ghoulish business ended. The giant grandfather clock, which presided over the sumptuous front waiting room, lugubriously bonged the hour of five. Matthew Kronmiller’s employees donned their raincoats and rubbers and filed out the back door of the funeral home, happy to have shed the burden of another workweek and eager for a quiet weekend with their families and friends.
The last to head for the back door was Mitch Nistler, who, even though he had no family and no friends, was equally grateful for the bonging of the big clock. He had nearly reached the door when Kronmiller’s deep voice caught him from behind.
“Mitch, I’d like to see you for a minute. In my office.”
Mitch stopped dead and stood still as a statue for a full five seconds, his hand frozen in its reach for the door handle, his weary eyes clenched. What now? he wondered. He knew that no other death calls had come in, that no funerals were scheduled for the weekend, that no bodies were waiting to be embalmed. What does the old fart want with me now?
Matthew Kronmiller had seated himself behind his cumbrous cherry desk and folded his knotty hands on the leather blotter before him. Resplendent in his dark vested suit and his shirt of puritanical white, he had the air of a grand inquisitor who was waiting for the next hapless heretic to be dragged before him.
Mitch approached the desk and stood with his hands clasped obeisantly over his fly.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Kronmiller?”
The old man stared silently at him for a moment, and Mitch had trouble—as he always did—looking his boss straight in the eye. Kronmiller’s left one was of shiny glass that never made real contact. The right one, however, had a mean, eaglelike look that made Mitch uncomfortable.
“I’m afraid the time has come, Mitch,” intoned Kronmiller in his sonorous undertaker’s voice, “for you and I to have a parting of the ways.”
So this is it, thought Mitch. It’s finally happening. The balloon’s going up.
“In the past few weeks your work has been most unsatisfactory,” continued Kronmiller, his gaze passing from Mitch’s down-turned face to the gold pen and pencil set on his polished desk. “You’ve been walking around in a fog. You’re late for work all the time, and your appearance—well, I mean, look at yourself, Mitch.”
Which was something Mitch had been loathe to do recently. His clothes were dirty and wrinkled, because he’d been unable to scrape together the energy to wash them. He knew that his eyes were hollow and reddened, owing perhaps to the fact that he could scarcely ever sleep anymore, which made him appear totally dazed during the daylight hours. He had lost weight that he could not afford to lose, giving him a gaunt look that was even worse than normal. Worst of all, however, were the sores: the fiery, rufescent rash around his mouth, the lurid pimples on his cheeks that festered and ran, the splotches of scabrous inflammation on his neck and hands.
“It’s clear as the nose on my face that you’ve been drinking again, and drinking hard,” said Kronmiller, scratching his full white mustache as though the very sight of Mitch made him itchy. “And as you well know, you and I made a bargain about six months back. You were supposed to get help with your booze problem, and in return I’d give you another chance to keep your job. I even set you up with a counseling program that Dr. Craslowe was nice enough to provide free of charge. But you didn’t take the agreement very seriously, apparently.” Mitch started at the mention of Craslowe, and he glanced up at his boss. “I haven’t been drinking, Mr. Kronmiller,” he muttered weakly. “And I have been taking our agreement seriously. Up until a few weeks ago, I’d sort of been tapering off”—oh, this sounded wonderful—“and just last week Dr. Craslowe told me I didn’t have to come back for any more hypnosis.”
Which was only partially true: Craslowe had abruptly told him that hypnotherapy could not work unless the alcoholic patient was totally committed to changing his behavior, that even though hypnosis could induce revulsion to alcohol, a determined alcoholic could overcome that revulsion and continue to drink.
Or some such garbage. The bottom line was that Craslowe no longer wanted him as a patient.
“I haven’t had a drink since—” Mitch thought a moment, biting his lip. When had he taken his last drink? Monday, February 10, the
night he made his first delivery of Cannibal Strecker’s wholesale crack to Seattle. The same night he—
“I haven’t had a drink in eleven days, Mr. Kronmiller, and that’s God’s truth.”
Kronmiller’s face hardened, and he shook his head, wagging his hanging jowls.
“What do you take me for, son? Do you think I rode in on the last truckload of melons? My God, you look like death warmed over. You look sick.”
You’d look sick, too, if you’d been fucking a corpse, thought Mitch with a sudden, welling hatred for this man.
“A booze-hound kind of sick. You don’t wash, you don’t keep yourself up, you walk around like a goddamn zombie. The long and the short of it, Mitch, is that I can’t keep you on.
I can’t send you out on calls, looking like you do, and on top of that, you’re having a negative effect on the other employees. You’re bad for morale.”
So just like that, you’re turning me out! After six years of working for pigshit, putting in long overtime hours when none of the other employees could be torn away from their precious families; studying and watching and learning in order to become a good enough embalmer to handle even the toughest jobs alone, you’re turning me out!
“I want you out of here, Mitch. Today’s your last day. And as for the house I’ve been renting you, that’s another matter I want to discuss. I went over there yesterday just to check on things—”
Mitch’s knees suddenly weakened, and he feared that he might topple onto the plush carpet. His head buzzed with dizziness, and his stomach lurched. Kronmiller had gone to the house, invaded his privacy! Had he also gone upstairs?
“—and I barely got in the front door when I was hit by a smell I couldn’t believe. Worst thing I’ve ever smelled in my life—and I’m a practitioner of mortuary science, for crying out loud. I had to turn right around and leave.”
Mitch fought to steady himself. To stop the room from swimming, he concentrated on the framed Kiwanis awards that hung on the paneled walls, the diplomas and business licenses, the pictures of Kronmiller pumping some congressman’s hand.
“I don’t know what you’ve done in there, Mitch. Either you haven’t emptied the goddamn garbage for two years, or you’ve got a dead cat under the floor. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it smelled like a human body. Anyway, I want you out of that place. I’ve decided to fix it up, maybe sell it. Just to show you that I’m not a complete asshole, I’ll give you another month rent-free. On top of that, I’ll give you an extra month’s salary, so you’ll have something to live on while you’re looking for another job. But thirty days from today, I want you gone, understand? And I want the house clean and smelling decent.” So Mitch Nistler turned around and walked out of Matthew Kronmiller’s office as quickly as his tired, sickness-ravaged body could carry him. The rear door of the grand old mortuary closed behind him for the final time. He scarcely glanced back at the place as he wheeled his wheezing, grumbling El Camino out of the parking lot.
As he drove west on Sockeye Drive through darkening rain, he became aware of a yawning feeling of emptiness, a sense of rootless vacancy. For the past six years he had been Kronmiller’s assistant embalmer—a distasteful job, but one that had given him an identity. At times he had intensely hated the job and had wished for something—anything—else. He had deeply resented the feeling of being owned by Kronmiller-his-boss, Kronmiller-his-landlord, Kronmiller-his-teetotalling-conscience. But an ex-con with Mitch Nistler’s lack of job skills really could not afford to be choosy. A job was a job.
Now that he had joined the ranks of the unemployed, he lacked even the identity of Kronmiller’s assistant embalmer. But his sense of vacancy went deeper.
The blackness that had lurked behind his eyes, the hunger that had bubbled up from the well of emptiness in his soul, was gone. It had driven him to steal a corpse, embalm it,‘and take it for his wife, God help him. For seven consecutive nights he had lain with it, making cold love to it, pretending that it was still Lorna Trosper, despite icy flesh and the stinging vapors of embalming fluid. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the hunger had disappeared, leaving him with a rotting corpse in his upstairs bedroom and fiery sores over most of his body.
He had nothing now. Nothing but a prison record, an unspeakable sickness, and slavery to Cannibal Strecker. Thirty days from now he would not even have a place to live.
By the time he arrived at the sorry little house in the woods Mitch Nistler was weeping bitter tears that stung the inflamed edges of his eyes. He could not shake off the crawling sensation of having been used—by Strecker as a throwaway in the crack trade and by Kronmiller as a virtual indentured servant for six years. And by something else, too—some force that had invaded his reason and given him hungers that no man should feel. Having used him, having gotten what it wanted, the force had simply left him, cast him off like a worn-out tool.
The stink hit him as soon as he opened the front door. It was a fulsome stink now, noxiously sweet and laced with the sulphurous rankness of bacteria and fungus, the reek of the dead.
Poor Lorna, Mitch moaned to himself. She had been so beautiful. She had been his. He had restored her beauty for a short time and had lavished his love upon her, hoping against hope that the evil magic that had given him his hunger would intervene against the ravages of decay. But it had not intervened, and Lorna had become ugly, as all the dead eventually do, no matter how skillful the embalmer. Her stench permeated the house.
The time had come, he knew, to put her to rest. He would find a spot for her in the woods—a leafy, quiet place, where birds sang and the rain brought flowers, where she could slumber forever in the cool ground.
He tossed his raincoat onto a dusty armchair and fumbled through the cluttered old bureau in the living room until finding the flashlight that he kept there for emergencies. He had never bothered to screw a bulb into the socket on the ceiling of the upstairs bedroom, for what he had done in that room had never required light. After switching it on and slapping it against his palm several times to produce a feeble blade of yellow, he opened the door onto the stairway and trudged up the groaning steps.
The stench grew thicker the higher he climbed, forcing him to breathe through his teeth. Aside from the creaky protests of the old stairway, the only sound was the thrumming of rain against the sagging roof above his head.
Mitch entered the bedroom where the corpse of Lorna Trosper lay and swept the light over the decrepit bed that he had shared with it. As he drew closer, his eyes widened, for something was not quite right. The white sheet in which he had wrapped the body, now dingy and stained with the emissions of putrefactive organisms, lay crumpled at the foot of the bed The body itself, which he knew he had wrapped in the sheet before he had last left it, lay on its side, naked.
This could not be. When leaving her, he had always wrapped her in the sheet, thinking it somehow improper to leave her naked and exposed to the air. Moreover, he had always left her on her back, with her arms folded over her chest. Now the body was on its side, facing away from him, its arms splayed.
He drew closer still and shone the light directly onto the skin of Lorna Trosper’s torso. Irregular patches of green covered the nape of her neck, her back, and her buttocks, consistent with what Mitch knew of the putrefactive process. With some reluctance he gripped her arm, and, fighting his newly acquired revulsion at touching dead skin, pulled her onto her back. Now that the embalming solution had begun to dissipate through her flesh and evaporate into the air, her breasts had become flaccid, her eyes sunken, her cheeks hollow and saggy. The superficial veins of her neck and arms appeared as dark lines through vaguely translucent skin. Her face had taken on that disturbingly blank look of the dead, and the cosmetics that had once rendered her beautiful had begun to cake and rot and peel.
But most confounding was the obvious bulge in the abdomen. Within eight to ten days after death, an unembalmed body begins to bloat, Mitch knew. The linings of the stomach, the large and small intestines
, and other organs produce gas as they decompose, and the gas causes severe distention of the abdomen.
But this body had been embalmed and injected with a solution rich in formaldehyde, which should have slowed the process considerably. If the abdomen was bulging with gas, then the fatty tissue under the skin should also be infiltrated with gas, blistered here and there with eruptions. Judging from the condition of the skin, that process would not be apparent for days yet, possibly even weeks.
And why had the body been moved? Who had moved it?
Tremors of apprehension rattled through him. He had not been sleeping during the past week because of the noises that seemed to come from this room at night—creaking noises, squeaking noises, the thumps and bumps and scrapings of something moving around in this room. But, of course, nothing had actually been moving in this room, for there was nothing here but a corpse. Corpses don’t move.
Do they?
Cowering under his filthy blankets in the downstairs bedroom, Mitch had told himself that he was hearing the wind, the rain, the settling of old and rotting wood that probably warned of the day when this sorry old house would collapse altogether. Still, sleep had eluded him. He had wondered whether the wind could cause the noisy springs of this old bed to squeak, a sound he had experienced often enough during his “marriage” to Lorna. Or whether the rain could simulate the scraping of feet on the floorboards of this room. In the dark of night, surrounded by the stillness of the woods, all manner of explanations had seemed possible, even the most horrific.
Someone has been here, Mitch concluded. Someone had come and taken the sheet off the body, and for some unknown reason rolled it onto its side. Could the culprit have been Lorna’s son, Jeremy, who had once before invaded the ruddering privacy of this room, frightening Mitch nearly to shitting himself?
He shuddered at the memory of the boy, with his wild, light-filled eyes and his demented grin. He thrilled again to the fear that this horrible child would betray the secret of his crimes, sending him back to prison, where he would be even lower than child molesters on the social ladder of inmates.