Flesh (12 page)

“Wait in the car if you’re scared.” Jason threw open the door and climbed out. He walked straight to the porch stairs. He took them two at a time.

Bad enough, he thought, without Roland talking about that stuff and acting like he’s scared some nut might be hiding in the restaurant.

In front of the door, Jason hesitated. Nobody’s in there, he told himself. Except maybe Dana.

She’ll be standing inside, a hip thrust out to the side, hands on her hips and a smirk on her face. “So, my ride is here at last. Took you dorks long enough. If you thought I was gonna
walk
back, you were nuts.”

She won’t be in there.

Maybe her body. Hanging naked, all cut up.

She’s probably back on campus by now.

She’ll get a big laugh when she hears about this. Our rescue mission.

She won’t get a big laugh. She’s dead.

Jason looked over his shoulder. Roland was coming, so he waited. He rubbed his sweaty hands on his jeans. He tried to take a deep breath, but there was a hard, tight place below his lungs that wouldn’t let them expand enough.

Roland climbed onto the porch. Crouching, he picked up a board with nails at both ends. There were several such boards lying around. Apparently, they’d been used to barricade the door. “Why don’t you get one?” Roland whispered.

Jason shook his head. He didn’t need a weapon unless he believed there was danger inside; he didn’t want to believe that.

He pushed on the door. It swung open. Cool air from inside breathed on him, raising goose bumps. He took a single step forward.

Enough light entered the restaurant through the doorway and windows for him to see the cocktail area to his right, the big dining area to his left. He stepped toward the dining room. It looked empty except for a ladder, an open toolbox, some cans and jars, a vacuum cleaner and broom, all clustered near the right wall. Nothing moved.

“Dana!” he called out. His voice sounded hollow, as if he’d yelled the name into a cave.

No answer came.

Did you really expect one? he thought.

He looked to the right. On the floor in front of the long bar was an empty vodka bottle. Had Dana and Roland been drinking? Maybe they both got drunk. Maybe that’s how it started.

He could ask Roland about the bottle. But he didn’t want to hear his voice again—didn’t want anyone else to hear his voice again.

With Roland at his side, he walked into the dining area. Along the wall beyond the ladder was a double door—the kind that saloons always had in westerns. He pushed through it and entered the kitchen.

The linoleum floor had footprints, maybe a dozen of
them, rust-colored stains made by a bare left foot. A small foot. Dana’s foot? The tracks began at a dried puddle of blood near the far side of the kitchen and became fainter as they approached the place where Jason was standing.

Near the blood puddle was a sack of flour. The floor directly behind the sack was coated with the white powder.

“What’s all this?” Jason whispered.

“The blood’s from those two who were killed Thursday night.”

Christ, he thought, don’t the cops clean it up? If they don’t, who does?

“What about the flour?”

“It was here when we came,” Roland answered in a voice as hushed as Jason’s.

“The footprints?”

“I don’t know.”

“They weren’t here?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Was Dana wearing shoes?”

“Sure. Anyway, she had shoes on last time I saw her.” Roland pointed with his board at an open door. “The cellar’s down there.”

Jason walked slowly toward it, rolling his feet from heel to toe so he wouldn’t make any noise though he knew that anyone down there—anyone alive—would’ve heard him call out Dana’s name and maybe even heard the quiet conversation in the kitchen.

He peered down the steep wooden stairway.

Dark as hell down there.

He hoped that the restaurant had electricity, then recalled that there’d been a lamp and vacuum cleaner with the ladder and things in the other room. He flicked a switch on the wall beside the door. A light came on below.

“Want me to stay up here and keep watch?” Roland whispered.

“Keep watch for what? Come on.”

He started down the stairs. They groaned under his weight. He pictured breaking through one, falling. Worse, he pictured someone hiding behind the stairway, grabbing his ankle from between the boards.

Partway down, he stopped and ducked below the ceiling. From here, he could see most of the cellar. Straight ahead were several sections of empty shelves, some made for holding wine bottles and others apparently intended for the storage of other restaurant supplies. Off to the left was a vast area with pipes running along the ceiling, a furnace near the far wall.

No Dana.

No one else.

That he could see.

Jason rushed to the bottom, got away from the staircase and looked back. Nobody behind it.

His tension eased a little. Even though the cellar had plenty of places where someone might be hidden, he doubted that anyone, alive or dead, was down here.

Just me, he thought. And Roland.

Nevertheless, he began to search. Roland stayed behind him as he walked through the aisles between the shelves.

Roland. Behind him. Carrying that board with the nails in it.

And I’m probably the only one who knows he was here last night with Dana.

If it
was
Roland who…

He could almost feel those nails piercing his skull.

He turned around. Roland, with the board resting on his shoulder, raised his eyebrows. “You want to take the lead for a while?” Jason whispered.

Roland’s lip curled up. “Thanks anyway.”

“I’m going first, I ought to have the weapon.”

“Could’ve got one for yourself.”

“Don’t give me shit.”

“What’ll
I
use?”

“Don’t worry about it, huh? Anything happens, I’d be better with that thing than you.”

Roland’s eyes narrowed. For a moment, Jason half expected Roland to swing the thing down at him. Wouldn’t dare, he thought. Not with me facing him. Knows he wouldn’t stand a chance. I’m bigger, stronger, quicker. By a long shot.

“Guess you’re right,” Roland said, and handed the board to him.

They resumed the search. Now that he had the weapon, Jason wondered about himself. He must’ve been crazy to think that Roland might try to kill him.

The kid’s more scared than me about being down here.

He didn’t lay a finger on Dana.

He’s sure, in that twisted mind of his, that some maniac right out of a slasher movie was down here last night and did a number on Dana.

What if he’s right?

No, please. Nobody got her. She was down here alone, she did that laugh herself to scare Roland off, she’s probably back at her dorm by now.

She’s dead, whispered Jason’s mind.

But he didn’t find her body in the cellar. He didn’t find a pool of blood. He found none of her clothes. He found no signs of a struggle. He found nothing at all to indicate that Dana had ever been in the cellar, much less murdered there.

He was glad to get out of the cellar. He shut the door and leaned against it.

“What do you think?” Roland asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we get out of here?” Without waiting for a reply, Roland walked to the rear door of the kitchen and swung it open. He stopped. “Hey.”

“What?”

“Take a look at this.”

Jason hurried over to him. Roland was fingering the edge
of the door. The wood on its outside, near the latch, was gouged and splintered. “Someone broke in,” Jason said.

“Not me and Dana. We came in the front way.”

“Christ.”

Roland whispered, “There
was
someone else.”

Jason tossed the board aside and stepped through the doorway. Beyond the rear of the restaurant a vast, rolling, weed-covered field stretched to the edge of a forest.

He stepped down from the porch. He walked through the tall grass and weeds of what had once been a lawn. The edge of the lawn blended in with the start of the field, only different in that the lawn was flat and the field began with a small rise. He climbed the rise.

Roland came up behind him and stood at his side while Jason shielded his eyes against the sunlight and scanned the area.

“What now?” Roland asked. “Search in the weeds?”

“I don’t know.” There were acres and acres, and then the forest. The idea of trying to find Dana out there seemed overwhelming and futile.

If she’s in the weeds, he thought, she’s dead.

“Maybe the guy has a place in the woods,” Roland said. “A shack or something, you know? That Ed Gein I was telling you about—”

“We’ll never find her,” Jason said.

“Maybe…” Roland didn’t continue.

Jason looked at him. “Maybe what?”

Roland shrugged. “It’s probably a dumb idea. But if we go back to campus and she still hasn’t shown up and we figure maybe she really did get snatched by some kind of a nut…”

“Then we’ll go to the police.”

“Hell, shit, they’ll think
I
had something to do with it. Man, I was the last one with her last night. They’ll blame
me,
and then we’ll never get the guy that did it. I mean, she might still be alive. If some crazy guy got her, maybe he’s
keeping her alive. Maybe he doesn’t want to kill her till after he’s done…messing with her. You know?”

“Guy sounds a lot like you,” Jason said.

Roland made a nervous laugh. “Yeah. Takes one to know one. Shit, though, I’d never
do
anything like that. I just think about it, you know? But that gives us an advantage, right? I can like imagine what he might do. And that’s why I’ve got this idea.”

“What idea?”

“How to get him. And how to find Dana.”

“Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

“How you doing, fella?”

“Just fine,” Jake said into the phone. He didn’t feel fine at all, he felt depressed. As soon as he hung up, he would be taking Kimmy back to her mother. “Did Steve get in?”

“Sure did. He wants to talk to you. Hold on a sec.”

Moments later, Steve Applegate came over the line. “Jake? I finished up on Smeltzer. I want you to get over here.”

“Find something interesting?”

“Interesting? Yes, I’d say interesting. How soon can you be here?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“Higgins should be in on this.”

The Chief? “What is it?”

“Whetted your curiosity, have I? Well, then you’d better get moving. I’ll phone Higgins.” Without another word, he hung up.

Jake put down the phone.

Kimmy was huddled in a corner of the sofa, watching television. The Three Stooges. Curly saluted his nose to block a two-fingered eye jab from Moe, then went “Nyarnyar-nyar!”

“Hon,” Jake said, “we’d better hit the road.”

“Do we have to?”

“You giving me back talk?” he snapped. “Huh?” He rushed over to Kimmy. Eyes wide, she clamped her arms to her sides. Jake pushed his fingers under them, digging into her ribs. She laughed and writhed. “I’ll teach you! Sass me, will you?” Rolling on her back, she kicked out at him. The sole of her shoe pounded his thigh. “Owww!” Clutching his leg, he staggered backward and fell to the floor.

Kimmy grinned down at him from the sofa. “That’s what you get,” she said, “when you mess with She-Ra.”

“Jeez, I guess so. You discombobulated me.”

She waved a fist at him. “Want some more?”

“No, please.” Jake stood up. “Anyway, we really do have to go.”

The joy went out of her face. “Do we
have
to?”

“I’m afraid so, honey. Mommy’s expecting you, and besides, I have to go to work.”

“I’ll go to work with you, okay?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I won’t make the siren go,” she assured him, looking contrite and hopeful. “Really I won’t. Can’t I go with you?”

“I’m sorry, honey. Not today. Besides, I won’t be using the siren car.”

“I want to go with you, anyway.”

“You wouldn’t want to go where I’m going. I have to see a guy who’s toes up.”

“Oh, yuck. Really?”

“Yep.”

She made the kind of face she might have made, Jake thought, if somebody stuck a plate of beets under her nose. “Well, don’t touch him,” she advised.

Stopping behind BB’s Toy, Jake got out and opened the passenger door for Kimmy. She watched him with somber eyes. When the safety harness was unsnapped, she didn’t throw the straps off her shoulders in a hurry to climb out. She just sat there.

“Let’s see a smile,” Jake said. “Come on, it’s Mommy’s birthday. She’ll want to see a smile on that mug of yours.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“Are you sick?”

“I am not happy.”

“Why not?”

“You’re making me go away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

Jake lifted her out of the car seat. She wrapped her arms and legs around him. “You’ll have a good time today,” he said as he carried her toward the house.

“No, I won’t.”

“And I’ll be back on Friday and we’ll have two whole days together like we’re supposed to.”

Kimmy squeezed herself more tightly against him. He could feel her begin to shake, and he knew that she was crying. She didn’t bawl; she cried softly, her breath making quiet snagging sounds close to his ear.

“Aw, honey,” he whispered. And struggled not to cry, himself.

Jake swung his car into the lot beside the Applegate Mortuary. The town of Clinton wasn’t large enough to justify a city morgue, but Steve, whose brother took care of the funeral parlor side of the business, had spent twelve years as a forensic pathologist with the Office of the Medical Examiner in Los Angeles—resigned in a huff after Thomas Nogushi got canned—and had come back here to practice in his hometown.

Clinton didn’t do a booming business in autopsies, but
there were evidently enough to keep Steve happy. An autopsy was required for everyone who died as the apparent result of an accident, suicide, or homicide, under any kind of circumstances in which the death was not pretty much expected by the deceased’s physician. An autopsy was also required for every corpse headed for the crematory instead of the grave. With all that, even a small, peaceful town like Clinton provided quite a few opportunities for Steve to practice his art.

Three new customers Thursday alone, Jake thought as he climbed from his car. Steve must think he’s back in LA.

Jake entered through a rear door that opened into Betty’s office. She looked away from her typing, smiled when she saw him, and swiveled her chair around. “Been a while, Jake.” Tipping back her chair, she folded her hands behind her head—a posture that seemed designed to draw Jake’s attention to her breasts. Betty’s job didn’t require her to face the public, so she was allowed to dress as she pleased. She was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan, “Make My Day.” It clung nicely to her full breasts. Her nipples pointed at Jake through the fabric.

“Looking good,” he said.

“Natch.” She stared at his groin. He didn’t look, himself, but he could feel a warm swelling down there.

“Well,” he said, “Steve’s waiting for me.”

“No hot hurry. Higgins isn’t here yet.” She looked up at his face. Her eyes widened a bit. “So what’s the story?”

“What story?”

“Got a new friend?”

Jake shook his head.

“Taken a vow of celibacy?”

“Just busy, that’s all.”

A smile tilted her mouth. “Well, if you ever happen to get unbusy, I just bought a rubber sheet for my bed and I’ve got a great big bottle of slippy-slidy oil we can rub all over each other. You oughta just see how it looks on me in candlelight.”

Jake could imagine. He pursed his dry lips and blew through them. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said.

“Just in case you find some free time on your hands.”

“Yeah.”

She nodded. Again, her gaze lowered to his crotch. “I’d be glad to take care of
that
for you right now, if you’d like. Plenty of empty rooms around here. How about it?”

“You’re kidding.” He knew she wasn’t. “We’re in a morgue,” he reminded her.

“Just the place for taking care of stiffs, and I’m looking at one.” She rolled back her chair and stood up. She was wearing a short, black leather skirt. Her bare legs were slender and lightly tanned.

“This is crazy,” Jake muttered. He felt shaky inside. Was he really going along with this?

Then the rear door opened and in stepped Barney Higgins, Chief of the Clinton Police Department. Betty rolled her eyes upward. She turned to Higgins. “Hi-ya, Barn.”

“Hey, Betts.” The small, wiry man winked and snicked his tongue. “What’s that y’ got in yer shirt?”

“Your guess is good as mine, Barn.”

“Where’d you pick ’em up? I’d like to order a set for the wife.” He laughed and slapped Jake’s shoulder. “Let’s get a move on, I got a hot poker game back at the house.” He turned to Betty. “Where’s the Apple, down in his butcher shop?”

“B-1,” she said. “Have fun, boys.”

Leaving her office through a side door, they started down a flight of stairs toward the basement. “You get a good look at that gal?” Barney asked.

“Sure did.”

“Prime.
Ooo!
How’d y’like playing some hide-the-salami with a prime thing like that? Yeah!”

“She’s a knockout, all right.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Jake pulled open a fire door. Directly across the corridor was B-1, the autopsy room. His
stomach fluttered as he walked over and opened the door. From the room came a high whining buzz like the sound of a dentist’s drill.

Steve Applegate, a cigar stub clamped in his teeth, squinted down through the smoke at what he was doing. Whatever he was doing, it involved the head of a naked woman who was stretched out on one of the tables. And it involved the small buzz saw that was making such a racket.

Jake chose to watch his shoes as he walked across the polished linoleum floor.

The saw went silent.

“Who y’got there?” Barney asked.

“Mary-Beth Harker. A probable cerebral aneurysm.”

“Joe Harker’s girl?”

“That’s right.”

“Aw, shit. Shit. When’d it happen?”

“Last night.”

“Shit. She’s not, what, eighteen, nineteen?”

“Nineteen.”

“Shit. That’s his only daughter.”

Jake felt cold spread through him like a winter gust. Kimmy. God, what if it was Kimmy? How could a man go on living if something like that happened to his kid?

He turned away and walked toward another table. The body on this one was covered with a blue cloth. “This Smeltzer?” he asked without looking around.

“That’s Smeltzer, Ronald. I’ll get to Smeltzer, Peggy, later today.”

I killed this guy, he told himself, wanting to feel the guilt, wanting it to come and take away the terror of imagining Kimmy dead. I killed this guy. He’s dead because of me.

His mind began the replay. Fine. Smeltzer raising his head, tearing a flap of skin from his wife’s belly, turning in slow motion to reach for the shotgun.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Steve said, pulling Jake out of the memory. He drew back the cover.

Smeltzer was facedown. Jake’s bullets had left five exit wounds on his back and splayed open the side of his neck.

“Good shooting,” Barney commented.

Jake was looking at the gash that ran from the nape of Smeltzer’s neck, down his spine, over his right buttock and down his right leg to the outer side of his ankle. The raw, bloodless gash was bordered by about half an inch of blue-gray skin. “What’s this?” Jake asked.

“Something of a puzzle,” Steve said. With the tip of his cigar, he pointed at the quarter-sized ankle wound. “Know anything about it?” he asked Jake.

Jake shook his head.

“When I stripped him down this morning, I found it along with the hematoma—that discoloration you see there. Frankly, I didn’t know what to make of it. A bruise is usually caused by blunt trauma that breaks capillaries in the skin. So I asked myself what could’ve hit this man in such a way as to follow the curves of his body this way.”

“Something flexible,” Jake said.

“A whip,” Barney suggested. “Maybe a hose.”

“That occurred to me. The problem is, the epidermis showed no evidence of injury, which you’d expect if the man had been struck by that kind of instrument. And the ankle wound made me suspicious. So I made an incision at the wound and followed the track of the hematoma to his neck. What I found was a two centimeter separation between the fascias and—”

“Spare me the jargon, huh?” Barney said.

“Along the entire length of the bruise, the connecting tissue between the skin and underlying muscle was no longer connected. It’s as if approximately an inch-wide area of skin had been forcibly raised from the inside.”

“What are you gettin’ at?” Barney asked.

“Something entered this man’s body via the ankle wound and burrowed its way up to his neck.”

“Y’mean like somethin’
alive
?”

“That’s just what I mean.”

“Balls.”

Steve tapped some ash off the end of his cigar. It dropped into a gutter at the foot of the table. “I found considerable trauma to the brain stem. Appears that it had been chewed into.”

Jake stared at the body. “Something tunneled up his body and bit his brain?”

“That’s sure the way it looks.”

“Jesus,” Jake muttered.

“Okay,” Barney said. “So where’s it at, this
thing?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“After this man was deceased, it chewed through the posterior wall of his esophagus, traveled down to his stomach, chewed through the stomach wall and made a beeline for his colon. Chewed through that, and exited through his anus.”

“You gotta be kiddin’.”

Steve punched his cigar dead in the metal gutter. Then he bent down and picked up a pair of boxer shorts that had been turned inside out. The seat was smeared with feces and blood.

Barney wrinkled his nose.

Steve picked up a pair of blue jeans, also pulled inside out. Down the right leg was a narrow trail that diminished as it neared the cuff. “Kidding?” he asked.

Barney shook his head slowly from side to side.

“What could’ve done something like this?” Jake asked.

Steve shrugged. One side of his mouth stretched upward. “An ambitious snake?”

“Yer a festival a’ laughs,” Barney said.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what did this, but it appears to have been something
shaped,
at least, like a snake.”

“I never hearda’ snakes doing shit like that.”

“Who has?” Steve said.

“Smeltzer was alive when this thing got in him?” Jake asked.

“Definitely.”

“How can you tell?”

“The amount of subdural bleeding and the quantity of blood on his right sock. I’d guess, from the degree of coagulation of his ankle wound, that the thing got into him only minutes prior to his death.”

“And it left his body after his death? How do you know that?”

“Again, the amount of bleeding. Very little in the areas that it chewed through on the way out.”

“Fuckin’
Twilight Zone,”
Barney said.

“So what do you make of it?” Jake asked.

“I couldn’t say.”

“We’re talking, here,” Jake said, “about a guy who blew off his wife’s head and started to eat her. And you’re saying that, before he went at her, this snake-thing burrowed up his leg and bit him in the brain?”

“That’s sure the way it appears.”

“And after I shot him, it took off.”

“Didn’t see it, did ya?” Barney asked.

“I didn’t stick around long. I took a quick look through the restaurant to make sure there wasn’t a third person, then I headed back to my car to call in. I must’ve been gone close to fifteen minutes. I guess that gave it time to get out.”

“The poop-chute express,” Barney said.

“It might still be in the restaurant,” Jake said.

“I already searched around here,” Steve said, “and the van that brought him in. Didn’t want that thing sneaking up on
me.”