Otherworld (23 page)

He walked back to the door. Two police cars pulled up to the curb. The other officers jogged up to the door.

“Doesn't look good,” he told them.

All three drew their guns. The first knocked one more time and shouted, “Sheriff's Department! We're coming in!” He kicked the door, budging it a little. He kicked again, putting all of his weight into it, and the door exploded inward. The three men, pistols readied, stepped inside. The first called out one more time, “Sheriff's Department! Anybody here?”

The first thing to hit them was the smell.

They entered the kitchen, and the sight was even worse.

 

Molly gave Mike directions to the Hilton, and he drove Steve to the front door of the lobby.

“Room's already paid for,” Mike said. “You shouldn't have any problems.”

“Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it.”

Steve gathered his bags from the backseat.

“See you around nine,” Mike said.

“Okay,” Steve said, and he nodded.

Mike watched the preacher walk into the hotel lobby and approach the front desk. He seemed like a nice guy. Mike enjoyed his voice, earnest and sincere, and the way Steve made him feel at ease despite his profession. The only ministers Mike had ever known were overbearing types, intimidating presences, loud and obnoxious. They always talked about themselves or told unfunny jokes. Steve didn't seem that way at all. He seemed like an ordinary Joe. A guy you'd want to hang out with. Get a pizza. Grab a beer. Okay, maybe not a beer, but coffee.

Mike found his way back to the house. He walked back to the bedroom. Molly had already fallen asleep. What to do? He wanted to get into the bed next to her, pull her close, hold her, and be a husband to her again. He wanted to cradle her in his arms and comfort her. But he didn't know if she wanted him to do that. Yes, he had slept with her last night, at her invitation, but now was not the time to assume anything. Now was not the time to offend.

He walked back to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. Sitting at the table, he toyed with a dish of pecan pie, plucking off the pecans. In the stillness, in the dim light of the kitchen, with no sound but the wind outside and an occasional car, Mike sat there, eating what was now brown sugar pie, and felt very alone.

He began to think about Dr. Bering. The old man had saved his life. So what if he seemed a little bit crazy? So what if he believed in another dimension? He was a friend, and in a time like this, a lonely, aimless time, a man could use all the friends he could get.

“What're you doing?”

Mike turned around to see Molly standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall, in pajamas he hadn't seen before.

Probably Vickie's
, he thought.
What am I, crazy? They're probably hers. For crying out loud, we haven't lived together in a year! She couldn't have gone out and bought a pair of pajamas? Of course she did! And she probably did a lot of other stuff too. She certainly wasn't hanging around waiting for me to call her up, that's for sure.

She sat down at the table, noticing the pile of pecans on his plate. “You never did like those things, huh?”

“Nope,” Mike said. He took another bite of the pie and followed it with a swig of coffee that had grown bitter cold. Glancing around, he realized that half of the desserts had been eaten—most of them probably by Molly.

This has something to do with grieving, right? What's that short story by Raymond Carver? Some boy gets hit by a car on his way to school, and he dies. His parents never tell the baker who's already made the kid's birthday cake, so the baker makes repeated phone calls, asking about the kid, but never telling them who he is. They keep hanging up on him, believing the guy's making some pretty sick jokes. The baker gets angry. I mean, he's got a perfectly good cake sitting in his shop with this kid's name on it, and nobody's called him. Nobody's come to pick it up or pay for it. Finally, the baker's calls become pretty threatening. The parents realize who the guy is and go down to his shop to confront him. They argue. Then they tell him: “Our kid's dead.” He never knew. He realizes what he's done. He apologizes. Then—and this was Carver's main point, I guess—he starts feeding them. I mean, really stuffing their faces with bread and cakes and rolls and biscuits and whatever else he's got. They eat and talk, but mostly eat, and it helps them grieve. The baker keeps saying, “Eating's good at a time like this,” or something like that. A good ending. It never happens that way in real life.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “What did you think of Steve?”

Her face softened. “I liked him. I liked him a lot. I'm glad he's a friend of Reverend Ayers.”

“So I did okay?” Mike asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, you did great.” She was wringing her hands, and she looked down at them. “Thank you for everything you're doing.”

Mike didn't answer. He watched her pale face. Her eyes were puffy from sleeplessness, her cheeks blushed from weeping. Her lips were thin and peach, no longer pink, no longer luscious. She seemed to have aged a great deal since their meeting at Lily's. But, he admitted, so had he in the last year. His hair had a little more gray. His eyes had gone bloodshot. At least hers were still blue and gleaming, and he'd give anything for her to look into his at that moment. He wanted her to see his thoughts.

Can't you read my mind, Molly?

Her head rose a bit, but she did not look at him. She said, “What have you been doing?”

How can I answer this one? Should I say what I've really been doing? I've been working. You know, the thing you said I did too much of? That's what I've been doing. I've been working my tail off and going to school. That's right! Me. A grown man going to school. I have homework and textbooks and tests and everything. But that's just the tip of the iceberg! I've been into loads of trouble. I've stolen my father's gun. I've gone to movies in the middle of the night and can't remember what I saw. I tried to shoot a lady who tried to run me over with her car. I've been wallowing around in the gutter. Basically, I've lost my mind. I've lost my wedding ring, and I've lost my mind. I'm crazy. You know why I think I'm crazy? Not just because I'm a gun-wielding maniac, but because I've become friends with a college professor who's a UFO expert and who believes in aliens from other dimensions right here on earth, and you know what? I believe him! I really think I believe him! So that's what I've been doing, and it might seem like a lot, or it might not, but I can tell you one thing: I wouldn't have done any of it if I hadn't lost you! Is that what you want to hear? What
do
you want to hear? Please tell me, 'cause I want to say it! Believe me, I want to say it.

Mike looked at Molly, and she looked at him, and for an instant, their eyes met and locked. In that brief, shining, ecstatic moment, sadness and loneliness were forgotten, blurred like buried dreams, and she was beautiful and he was attentive, and they both were in wondrous love. Mike felt like he had that life-changing day he met her.

“I've been missing you,” Mike whispered so low that he couldn't be quite sure she had heard him.

Molly leaned forward and thrust her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder. He took her gladly, pulling her in close and embracing her. He felt her tears, warm and moist through his shirt.

“I miss her so much, Mike,” she cried.

He almost pushed her away, not in anger, but to interrupt the moment he almost believed they had shared.
Oh. Are the tears for me or for her?
His heart sank, but he wanted to console her, and so he did.

 

One ambulance and a dozen police cars lined the street outside the Horn house. They had already taped off the area as a crime scene when Graham Lattimer arrived. He knew when he drove up that someone had been murdered. He also knew that this was a Houston homicide and, therefore, was Houston's jurisdiction, but he figured that they would allow him inside. After all, the kid who lived there happened to be a suspect in two Trumbull crimes, maybe three.

His uniform got him into the yard, his badge got him into the house, and his explanation got him access to all rooms within. He slipped on the latex surgical gloves they handed him.

He walked into the kitchen. Two men dusted the counter for fingerprints, and one man held a camera focused on … well, it was hard to tell. From the hair, Graham assumed the body belonged to a female. Probably the kid's mother. Everything else—her face, her arms, her entire body—was … indistinguishable. Congealed blood covered everything with its black stickiness. It looked like someone had poured out buckets of it onto the linoleum floor. Graham watched his step. A detective approached him calmly, his hands in his pockets as he smacked on chewing gum. Graham nodded toward the body.

“Stab wounds,” the detective said. “Too many to count. Practically sliced her face off.”

“Any ideas—?”

“Had to be the kid,” the detective said.

“Think so?” Graham asked.

“Check out the kid's room. It's Halloween, brutha.”

Graham walked out of the kitchen and down the hall. He looked into the first door he came to. Police officers were dusting a dresser, a mirror, and a stereo. One man had a pair of tweezers poised over a pillow on the bed. He snagged some hair and placed it into a plastic bag. Graham stepped in and looked around.

Posters of rock groups lined the room's walls. An ashtray sat in the middle of the floor, and the tan carpet had hundreds of cigarette burns. He walked over to the dresser and scanned the spines of the books on a shelf above it. Mostly horror novels. A couple fantasy books. A
Choose Your Own Adventure
book. A copy of the Bible. Graham picked the Bible out and examined it. A pentagram had been carved into the cover. He flipped through the pages and found the majority of them torn or marked on with black and red ink.
Halloween, brutha.

“Excuse me,” he said to one of the men. “You mind if I look through these drawers?”

The cop shrugged and continued looking through some comic books by the bed.

Graham opened the top drawer. Underwear. He opened the middle. T-shirts (all black). He opened the bottom. Junk: some baseball cards, a couple packs of cigarettes, some cheap grocery store cigars, some CDs, some socks (all black),
Tales from the Crypt
comic books, a roach clip, an old
Fangoria
magazine, dice, hundreds of loose matches, a handful of jawbreakers, and …

Graham immediately grabbed the deck of tarot cards. They were bound with a rubber band, and he quickly yanked it off. He noticed that the cards' backing bore the same design as the one found in Pops Dickey's barn. He went through them all, and when he had finished, he had not found the death card.

As far as Graham Lattimer was concerned, the mystery of Trumbull's mutilated cows was solved.

“Can I hold on to these?” he asked, showing the man the deck of cards.

“Have to sign them out,” the cop answered. He motioned toward the hallway and added, “Check with them.”

Graham left the room and walked back to the kitchen. “Sure, no problem,” the detective said. Before leaving, Graham looked once more at the mess. He thought about the little girl who had come very close to meeting the same end.