After Death

by D. B. Douglas

  Parks set the page face down on the top of the stack and left the room. Fernando hesitated — Should he follow or just wait here? He decided to follow.

  Park’s partner leaned against the doorway of a closet off the hallway with a look of disgust. He stepped to the side and let Parks through but kept Fernando back with a flexed straight arm and a hard look.

  Even from this position, Fernando could see Parks flashlight as it illuminated junk and clothes that lay in piles on the closet floor. Parks paused over many of the articles; it seemed to Fernando that the clothing looked small — and most was splotched with dirt and what looked like grass stains.

  “Up above — to your left.” Parks partner said and Parks swung his flashlight around the small closet as instructed and stopped on a long shelf.

  Fernando first saw a knife, crusty with dried blood. Parks moved the light further. There were strange tools; something that looked like a make-shift scalpel and a screwdriver with the end ground to a point. Parks moved the light still farther down the shelf and stopped.

  Two severed hands lay palms up. The first was thin and wrinkled and shriveled with age and decay. The other was small and fresh. At the wrist it was pink and ripe.

  Fernando stepped backwards without even realizing it — stepped on Park’s partner’s foot, and made a lurching run for the door.

  He needed air — He needed out of there — A child’s hand! Dios mio! — A child’s hand!

  ***

  Fernando sat on the curb, his stomach empty and sore from heaving. Parks strode up silently behind him and softly tapped him on the shoulder.

  “You okay?” He asked.

  The words seemed caring but contrary to the still noncommittal monotone. Fernando nodded, got shakily to his feet. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and faced Parks. He wanted answers. He wasn’t sure he was ready for them but he still wanted answers.

  “Cough it up, detective — Who did that? Is it his wife? Is she the murderer?”

  Parks seemed undecided for a long moment about what he should divulge. He stretched his neck and it made several loud cracks and pops. He finally looked Fernando in the face but sounded as nonchalant as ever, as if what he was saying was totally commonplace and routine.

  “There is no wife, Fernando. DMV had no record of any Jacqueline Davis, that’s why we’re here. Franklin Davis isn’t married. The only Jacqueline Davis on record was his mother.”

  Fernando swallowed and went blank for an instant. He blinked several times as his mind tried to process this.

  “So, what’re you saying?” He asked weakly, feeling his stomach roll again with a loud grumble. He thought he already knew — he was pretty sure he did but —

  The expression on Park’s face was all the confirmation he needed.

  “Jesus, you’re sayin’…”

  His voice died in his throat and he tried again.

  “You’re sayin’ it was Frank…! … You’re sayin’ it was Frank the whole time...!”

  Parks held his gaze — and didn’t deny it. Fernando buried his head in hands.

  “Oh man… Oh, man… It’s him… I can’t believe it’s him..!”

  Parks laid some latex gloves across his shoulder.

  “Put these on — I need you to read his manuscript and tell me what’s real, what’s not, and where he might be now. We need to know as much as we can about this guy and fast. Can you handle that?”

  Fernando nodded, head still buried in his hands.

  ***

  Parks drove and his partner called in the APB on the radio. Fernando tried to read in the back seat, the pages set across his lap, but his thoughts kept being interrupted.

  He’d been friends with a psycho! He’d hung out with a psycho and didn’t even know it! He knew Frank was a little weird but so were a lot of people… Why hadn’t he seen it? A killer — a full blown whacked out child killer…!

  Reading the material was like looking at a scan of another person’s brain. Fernando had witnessed a lot of what he was reading and seen what had actually happened and now he was reading a re-imagining of the events, a complex twisting of reality through the eyes of —

  Parks broke the silence and interrupted his thoughts:

  “The people he describes in there — Are they all real? I know about Lidia — what about this Rachel and Eli?”

  Fernando leaned forwards toward the front seat.

  “The names are right; — but nothing went down like he says… It’s all… spun… Rachel was a nice old lady from the hospital. Eli was a barber… All this promise shit — Eli comin’ back from the dead and all that — I never heard nothin’ about it…”

  Fernando fell back in his seat.

  “It’s too weird, man… In his head, he came up with an explanation for everything..!”

  Parks kept his eyes on the road.

  “I saw something in the table of contents about a lair — you know anything about that?”

  Fernando frowned.

  “What’s a lair?”

  “A secret hiding place.”

  Fernando shook his head.

  “No way, man — Not a thing...”

  Parks eye-balled him in the rearview mirror like he was checking his face for signs of deception.

  “We need to know where he’s gone, Fernando. The story seemed chronological. Try skipping to where you saw him last and see if it says where he went next…”

  Fernando quickly scanned through the pages. Sure enough, Parks was right. The story followed a linear path. He saw his own name mentioned again when Frank had come to his apartment. It was the oddest thing to read the dialog between them and see that he and Rosa were just “characters” in Frank’s book. He flipped further and came to a chapter entitled “ The Mangy Beast”. It was about the dog that had tried to attack him outside the hospital! He scanned it quickly — it described almost exactly what had happened but Frank hadn’t been there! How had he managed to write this? Had he been hiding and watching from somewhere? The next chapter was “The Map” and Fernando saw that Parks had been dead-on — the story picked up right where Frank had ambled off and disappeared along with the dog and even mentioned that Fernando had driven around in circles trying to find them. Fernando felt his pulse quicken as he read as fast as he could. He finished, glanced up and caught Park’s eye in the rearview.

  “Find something?” Parks asked and Fernando could tell he already knew the answer.

  Fernando nodded, mouth going dry. “He went to somebody named Burt’s house to get a map. There’s even an address here.”

  “Show the page to my partner.”

  Fernando reached across the back seat and held it up for Park’s partner to read.

  Parks gave a slight tip of his head towards Fernando in the reflection.

  “Good job, Fernando. What about any reference to blood? Can you read anything you find out loud? — It could be important…”

  Fernando searched the pages for the word “blood” and tried to block out the sound of Parks and his partner conferring about how to best get to Burt’s address. He found it on the bottom of page 194 of Frank’s manuscript.

  “Here it is.” He interrupted. “Eli says to Frank: Even if you have purpose, you need blood to complete the journey, to attain the physicality to stop me. Even as we speak you feel yourself losing coherence… You’re dissipating — beginning to become… Nothingness! What are you going to do, kill someone, drink their blood and come out and play? I don’t think so. You don’t have it in you — Get it? — You don’t have it in you….”

  Parks nodded to himself with a wistful look.

  “Sounds like the ghosts in Homer’s “Odyssey” — drinking goat’s blood enabled them to speak to the living. I’m not sure what the rest of it means but it seems our perp’s an educated man…”

  Park’s partner grumbled in his deep baritone.

  “Just what we need, an educated psycho — how wonderful.”

  CHAPTER 34 – Family

&nb
sp; Park’s pulled the car to the side of the road before the address they’d found flagged in Frank’s document. His partner looked out the window at the dilapidated shack and blew out a long exhale through pursed lips.

  “You take me to the nicest places.” He mumbled sarcastically towards Parks under his breath.

  They exited the cruiser and Fernando could see that they all had the same impression of the place; another dump. They made their way across the small overgrown front yard and Parks indicated with a subtle point of his finger that many of the weeds to the sagging front steps looked recently trampled. There was no doubt someone had been there recently.

  They took up position outside the front door and Parks once again indicated for Fernando to stay back and out of the way. He chose to tuck behind an old refrigerator that was leaning at a severe angle on one side of the yard.

  Parks knocked on the front door, the impact rattling it on its tired hinges. A moment and a ruff gravelly voice laced with fear responded from inside.

  “Go away — the map I drew you was good — It was perfect!”

  Parks and his partner exchanged a glance. Parks called through the door.

  “It’s the Police, this is detective Parks, please open the door.”

  Fernando again noted that strange quality of quiet forcefulness in Park’s voice — the quality that somehow usually made a person comply before they even realized what they were doing.

  “Yeah, right.” The husky voice called back. “I’m not buyin’ it. Let’s see ya slip yer ID under the door, bozo.”

  Parks complied with the trace of a scowl. A moment later the door opened a crack and Burt’s scrubbly face peeked out, all smiles, his voice sickly sweet:

  “Oh, hiya. What can I do for you, officer?”

  Parks just looked at him flatly. Burt swung the door wide in a grandiose gesture and shuffled/waddled out of the way.

  “Sorry ‘bout the confusion — come in, come in…”

  Parks kept a hand on his gun, moved past. His partner stepped right up into Burt and towered over him.

  “You lead, Burt.” He said gruffly.

  Burt’s small eyes darted fearfully this way and that and he nodded several times, then sidled through the columns of newspaper — but not before taking a good long glance at Fernando who had come in last. There was a quick feral gleam of curiosity — he clearly knew that Fernando wasn’t a cop and wondered what he was doing there. The hitch was only momentary and he was on his way — leading them to one of the few small open spaces in the rats nest and pausing there to face them. He nervously twiddled his hands in his dingy white undershirt, twisting and pulling it in all directions.

  “What brings you out this way, officers?” He asked politely, and again his eyes strayed and lingered for an extra curious second on Fernando.

  Parks withdrew a small photograph of Frank and flashed it towards Burt.

  “Know this man?” He asked quietly.

  Burt swallowed. It took him all of two seconds to see how he needed to play this.

  “Yep.” He said, with his most mournful and downcast look. “Sorry to say, that’s my brother — er — Step-brother.”

  “He came by to see you recently, didn’t he?” Parks asked with just a modicum more firmness. “A bit wild — demanding something maybe?”

  Fernando almost smiled.

  Parks was leading him — making it clear they knew a lot and implying they knew a whole lot more. He didn’t want to waste time in the hunt.

  Burt got the drift and moved right into self-preservation mode.

  “That’s right, officers. He came by, all right. Out of his goddamn mind, he was. After someone named Eli as though I was ’posed to know who the hell that was! Even threatened to kill me if I didn’t help him. Guess I shoulda called the police myself but… after all… he is my brother — er — Step-brother.”

  Parks saw the advantage and pressed it.

  “Tell us about the cave. We know it was your father’s. How do we get there?”

  Burt’s mouth flapped for a moment and no words came out — Fernando could see Parks had guessed right.

  It made sense! There were too many murders over too long a period of time… Frank hadn’t even been born when the first ones took place...!

  Burt struggled to regain his composure and Fernando could almost see the wheels turning and finally the walls going up with his decision to bluff this out.

  “Don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout no cave.” He said, his brows dropping in indignation. “An’ I don’t ‘ppreciate folks shittin’ on my daddy’s good name.”

  Park’s partner’s leapt right into Burt’s face, his patience gone. He bellowed, his deep voice violent and menacing.

  “Shut the fuck up, dirt-bag! — We know you know about it — You even said you already drew a map!”

  Burt quaked like a cowering dog — bluster suddenly evaporated. His eyes darted wildly around the room like a rat in a corner.

  “Well I know where it is… but only cause I was told. I never been there — honest!”

  Parks slid in-between the two of them and used his body to edge his partner gently backwards.

  Fernando just watched in admiration — They took good cop, bad cop, to a whole new level.

  “Fine.” Parks calmly said and handed Burt a pen and his small notebook that was already folded open to a blank page. “Just draw us the same map you gave Frank and we’ll be on our way.”

  Burt chewed his lip, trapped. He reluctantly took the pen and paper and began to draw.

  CHAPTER 35 – The Descent

  They all knew where Will Rogers state park was and reached the Santa Monica mountains in good time. Burt had told them they would need to park near the entrance and walk the rest of the way and Fernando saw that Parks immediately had the same question on his mind that he did — Where was Frank’s car? Parks shone his flashlight around the immediate vicinity but the parking area was empty. Parks had already asked Fernando what Frank drove since there had been no vehicle registered with the DMV. The thought kept bouncing around in Fernando’s mind —

  How had all this escaped everyone? How could a kook be living and interacting with everyone and not get caught? Fernando couldn’t even drive to work without someone giving him the once-over yet here was a guy that was literally living in a totally made-up world and no one had noticed a thing! It was like he was the perfect chameleon and everyone simply believed what he projected; that he was just an average nice guy trying to write a book and, in the meantime, do the right thing by everybody. Fernando couldn’t even remember how many times Frank had seemed to feel guilty or had regrets about the smallest things — and here he was — a serial murderer! What was it that made Frank seem so believable? Was it because he believed his own BS — that he’d convinced himself absolutely and that made it a piece of cake to convince everybody else? Was that what made him seem so trustworthy?

  Parks radioed in for back-up and his partner strutted ahead, starting to move through the dark woods like a bull — knocking branches aside, kicking or thumping obstacles out of the way.

  Here was a guy you wouldn’t want angry at you, Fernando thought. Or Angrier, he corrected himself.

  Park’s partner paused and turned a menacing eye back towards him like he’d read Fernando’s thoughts. With only the light of the downward flashlight in his hand, he cut an ominous figure; solid, determined, and scary in his single-mindedness.

  Parks used his flashlight to consult the map again and called out to his partner.

  “Washington — Let’s stay tight — easy to get lost in this.”

  So that was the tank’s name; Washington, Fernando thought.

  Washington wasn’t listening — he was back to barreling through ragged underbrush, his flashlight beam cutting this way and that like a saber. Parks didn’t bother to press the issue and adapted.

  “Stay left.” He called out. “Just keep to the left for quite a while.”

  ***

  The
trees and bramble were thick and Fernando was dirty, sweaty, and tired. He’d been cut and whipped at by a dozen dark shrubs and he felt done for — He hadn’t signed on for this — he’d much rather watch stuff like this on TV. Why had he agreed to come along in the first place? He knew why; Parks and his commanding voice — and his own morbid curiosity. Still — enough was enough. He was just about to suggest bailing out when the trees and bushes abruptly ended and they came to a small clearing.

  In the center, looking like something out of a Grimm’s fairytale, was a gigantic forked tree. The knee-high mist floating above the ground that wrapped around its huge base and the full moon that seemed suspended just a few feet above its gnarled branches exaggerated the surreal effect — it looked like a matte painting from a gothic horror film.

  Parks and Washington were unfazed and moved quickly forward. They examined the ground at its base while Fernando again hung back — there was something unnatural and hideous about that tree and he preferred to keep his distance.

  The assortment of fresh footprints of man and dog in the mud were so clearly visible in the moonlight that they didn’t even need their flashlights. Washington scanned the torn up earth and the prints that seemed to go in all directions at once. There wasn’t a single clear area around the base, indentions were everywhere.

  “Look at all of ‘em — What the fuck was he doin’ — dancing with his dog?”

  Washington shook his head, spat on the ground, and glanced towards Parks.

  “Maybe he’s a fuckin’ Satan worshipper.”

  Washington noticed two sets of prints, those of man and dog, that split off from the rest and seemed to lead away from the tree.

  “Whoa, wait a minute. What do we got here.”

  Washington followed them, mumbling under his breath.

  “Ain’t getting’ away that easy, you sonofabitch…”

  The last was said with such vehemence, Fernando realized that Washington was actually getting more tightly wound as they went on. He was already a bomb ready to go off, now the fuse was getting shorter. He wondered if Washington was always this way or if it was the fact that this dealt with children that was the trigger..? He’d heard somewhere that cops often had areas that really set them off — things they considered sacred that, if breached, violated their sense of right and wrong and justice to such a degree, they had trouble maintaining control… Was that what was going on here? Somehow, despite the fact that these two cops were almost complete opposites, they had one thing in common; they were closed books — walls high and airtight. Fernando could make all the guesses he wanted but he was pretty sure that’s all they’d ever be; guesses. With guys like these, he’d never really learn anything about either of them for certain —