Greely's Cove (29 page)

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.

It
had
to be Jeremy. The boy had come and tampered with his mother’s body. There could be no other explanation. Corpses don’t move around by themselves, and they certainly don’t become—

Don’t even think it! Some things are just too
—

Pregnant.

Mitch’s heart thundered in his chest like a kettledrum, and he knew that he could not wait another minute to dispose of Lorna Trosper’s stinking remains. If Jeremy were to tell the authorities what he had seen here, then they had better not find anything incriminating when they came searching. With a little luck, the cops would think that the boy was still brain-sick, and they would leave Mitch alone with his other miseries.

He set aside the flashlight and bent low to lift her off the bed, trying to remember where he’d last seen the rusting old shovel that had once leaned against his rear stoop, covered with spiderwebs, apparently left years ago by the previous tenants. Cringing against the smell, he slipped an arm underneath her neck, telling himself that he would burn the shirt he was wearing after finishing the chore of burying Lorna, for it would be stained with mold and slime.

The corpse opened her eyes.

As though to protest the move.

As though to warn Mitch Nistler away.

He let her drop back onto the bed. He ran, his mouth agape in terror. Out of the stinking bedroom. Down the rickety stairs and out the living-room door into the night rain, screaming from the depths of his soul.

Conditioned to the urgency of a ringing telephone, Carl’s body moved without need of mental commands. He followed the sound out of the bedroom and into the hallway, and from there to the living room, where his eyes finally opened fully.

The ringing stopped.

Jeremy stood next to the telephone, which sat on the heavy oaken end table that Hannie Hazel ford had lent, holding the handset to his ear.

“Good morning, Dr. Craslowe,” answered the boy in his smooth, cultured voice. He had apparently gotten up some time ago, for he was fully dressed in corduroy jeans and a Seattle Seahawks’ jersey with the number ten on both the front and back. “Yes, of course he’s here. I’ll get him.”

Jeremy smiled cheerily and pushed the handset toward his father, who was clothed only in his boxer shorts, still fighting off sleep.

“It’s Dr. Craslowe, Dad. He would like a word with you.” Carl padded over to the table and took the phone.
How did he know it was Craslowe?
Carl wondered, feeling goosefleshy in the chill morning air. Jeremy had answered the telephone as though he knew who was calling.

“This is Carl Trosper,” he muttered in his sleep-heavy voice, glancing at his Rolex. Seven in the fucking a.m.; not even light yet. He wrestled away images of jetliners, airline attendants, and maddening lines at airport check-in counters—images that just eight hours earlier had been real—and forced himself to concentrate on the voice in the telephone.

“Mr. Trosper, this is Hadrian Craslowe. Please forgive my calling at this appalling hour. I felt as though I should talk to you as soon as possible.”

“It’s okay, Doctor. What can I do for you?”

“Naturally, I want to know how things are with you and your son. I only just spoke with Jeremy, and he certainly sounded all right, but I thought it best to talk to you.”

“Everything seems to be under control,” said Carl. Jeremy appeared at his side with a thick terrycloth robe, having fetched it from his father’s closet like a loving son. Carl wriggled into it and smiled his thanks to the boy, who quickly pocketed his hands in his jeans and smiled back. “I wasn’t able to catch a direct flight from D.C., so I didn’t get into town until after midnight,” Carl told Craslowe. “I rented a car and went straight to the police station to pick up Jeremy.”

“And how was he?”

“Sound asleep in Stu Bromton’s holding cell. He certainly wasn’t hurting for company: Both Lindsay and Stu were there with him, drinking coffee and trying to make conversation.” Carl had been gratified and pleasantly surprised to find his former sister-in-law on the scene, and more than a little touched by this expression of her concern. He had been truly surprised, however, to see old Hannie Hazelford in the parking lot of City Hall, hunched over the wheel of her red Jaguar, waiting in the dark for God only knew what. He had toyed with the idea of approaching her with apologies for whatever involvement Jeremy might have had in her recent troubles but decided to put off the chore until he had gotten a decent night’s sleep and could talk like a sane man.

“I myself saw Miss Moreland earlier in the day,” said Craslowe. “She seems to feel a genuine love for Jeremy. Is she there now? She mentioned that she had something she wanted to discuss with me.”

“I offered to put her up in the spare room, but she was anxious to get back to Seattle,” Carl answered. “I expect she’ll check in later today.” He hoped she would.

“Did the police chief have any more news regarding the charges against Jeremy?”

“Not much. He did venture a guess, though, that the county would decline to prosecute, given the past records of the guys who implicated him. I’m no criminal lawyer, but I’d say he’s right. Both have a history of alcohol and drug abuse, and if you ask me, their testimony isn’t worth much.”

Carl left unsaid the fact that Stu had insisted on showing him the videotapes of Kirk Tanner’s and Jason Hagstad’s interrogations. Unnerving as the tapes had been, Carl could not believe their tales about Jeremy’s strange powers or the control he was able to exert over them. Clearly they had been under the influence of drugs at the time of their interrogations, despite what their blood tests had shown.

“Mr. Trosper, I should very much like to see the boy—today, if at all possible,” said the doctor. “As you know, he was unable to keep his appointment with me yesterday. Undoubtedly he has suffered considerable stress during the past several days, and I think it best if I have a look at him.”

That sounded reasonable, so Carl agreed, and they set a date for nine o’clock.

“You needn’t stay here during the therapy session,” added Craslowe, “for we may not finish until noon or so. I’m sure you’ll understand that I want to be very thorough, given the circumstances.”

“Of course,” said Carl. “I have some errands to run anyway.”

So, at the stroke of nine o’clock on Saturday morning, February 22, 1986, Carl Trosper dropped his son at Whiteleather Place. Father and son parted on the best of terms, their faces full of hopeful smiles.

Some errands to run.

A million things to do at nine o’clock on a foggy, drizzly Saturday morning in Greely’s Cove, Washington, U.S. of A. People to see, places to go, money to spend.

Except that Carl could not think of a single thing that needed doing as he drove his rented Chevrolet away from Whiteleather Place, other than the urgent task of escaping the hulking mansion with its dead and dying trees, its sagging timbers and rusting gate. Whiteleather Place was a sepulcher of forgotten boyhood secrets, not a comfortable place. In another age its halls had resounded with the joyful sounds of little boys’ games—his own laughter, and Renzy Dawkins’s and Stu Bromton’s. But now silence reigned. Silence and shadow. And the verity of Renzy’s parents’ suicides. Not a comfortable place at all.

He drove back toward town on Sockeye Drive and missed the turn onto Frontage Street, so thick was the fog. He turned south at the next intersection, cursing, intending to round the block in order to head home for some much-needed sleep. But a street sign caught his eye, and he slowed to a crawl. This was Marina Street, which led downhill to a little spit of land that jutted into the water. At the end of the street lay Greely’s Cove Marina, where Renzy lived aboard his yacht.

On impulse, Carl drove on, feeling a need to see his old friend, even at the cost of rousting him out of the sack. Renzy had never been known for his early risings, especially on weekends.

The street descended past a huddle of low shops and houses to a gravel parking lot. At one end of the lot was a corroding aluminum shed, warped so badly by time and wind that its yawning door would not close. Inside was Renzy’s most prized possession, other than his yacht: a 1954 Buick Roadmaster convertible, a ruthlessly green classic with leather upholstery and chrome-spoked wheels. Carl parked next to the shed, zipped up his nylon jacket against the chill, and made his way toward the water.

Blanketed in cottony fog, the marina materialized around him like an ill-remembered dream. A dozen long docks clung to tall, pitch-blackened pilings that loomed out of the lapping water like giant toothpicks. Bobbing in the slips were perhaps seventy pleasure boats of every description.

He ambled up and down the docks until he found a boat that could belong to no one but Renzy Dawkins: a majestic forty-two-foot Hinckley sloop with
Kestrel
stenciled across her stem. Carl scanned the graceful craft with a sailor’s loving eyes.
Kestrel
was visual poetry, even at rest in her slip. She had powerful lines meant to rhyme with winds and tides and currents. Her deck was custom-laid teak, whitened by sun and salt. A gleaming chrome helm wheel stood on its post in her cockpit, inviting a helmsman’s caress. With her mainsail neatly stacked on her boom under bright blue canvas, her halyards and sheets coiled into figure eights and tied with hanging knots, and her genoa tightly furled on her headstay, she seemed only to be sleeping.

Carl stepped over the lifelines, swung onto the deck, and knocked on the teak boards that covered the companion way. To his surprise, the boards immediately lifted away, revealing Renzy Dawkins’s smiling face.

“Will wonders never end!” said Carl, reaching down into the companion way to shake Renzy’s hand. “I would’ve bet a hundred beans that you were still in the fart sack, sleeping off a hangover.”

“Well, if it isn’t the Bushman, back from the decadent East! Come on down, damn it. You’re right about the hangover, by the way. I was just in the process of fixing it. I’d be happy to fix yours, too, if you’ve got one.”

Renzy had called Carl “the Bushman” ever since their high-school days, when Carl—the head photographer for the school newspaper—had perfected the technique of photographing female cheerleaders at the very instant when they were kicking their highest, capturing on film glimpses of their “bushes” around the edges of their satin panties.

“No hangover today, but I’ll take some of that coffee I smell,” said Carl, thumping down the companionway ladder into the teak- and cherry-paneled saloon.

Renzy ducked into the galley and poured a mug of black coffee, which he laced heavily with Courvoisier. He handed the mug to Carl, who was lowering himself into a settee.