Pale Immortal (11 page)

Several candles had blown out. Someone had left a book of matches on the ground. He dropped to one knee, grabbed the matchbook, struck a match, and lit the candles.

Were you supposed to say a prayer?

He'd been to church a few times with friends, but he didn't know much about religion or praying.

"Good luck."

Good luck?
That was all he could come up with? Kinda late for luck.
Have a nice trip. Sorry you're dead.

Where did people go when they died?

He stared at the photo of the girl for so long that it suddenly seemed to change slightly. It almost seemed that her eyes were really looking at him, seeing him. And the smile... The smile was so personal and real, directed at him. He caught himself responding with a smile of his own.

He jumped to his feet. He tossed the matchbook to the ground, turned, and walked away. Was he losing his mind? Did a person losing his mind know it? Maybe not. Probably not. So thinking about it meant you weren't crazy.

A car approached from behind, the sound barely penetrating his consciousness. Then he gradually became aware of a vehicle intentionally keeping pace with him, hanging back slightly.

He'd been warned about walking around at night. Whoever killed that girl hadn't been caught. His leg muscles tightened as he prepared to launch himself into a mad run.

"Graham!"

Graham swung around to see Travis hanging out the passenger window of a small green car. "Come on. Cops'll kick your ass if they find you out past curfew. Get in. We'll give you a ride."

Graham jumped in the backseat.

Someone was sitting in the dark corner opposite Graham. He didn't say anything, and Graham figured he was high or asleep.

"We have a few minutes," the driver—the tall kid with the bleached hair—said.

What was his name? Had Travis called him Johnson?

They headed away from downtown. Several blocks and stop signs later they turned into a park that sat high on the bluff overlooking the river.

"Swing around where that stone wall is," Travis said.

The driver, who may or may not have been Johnson, stomped down on the gas, and they flew around the corner, skidding to a stop near a wall. The two bailed out. Graham stayed where he was.

Travis and the driver opened the back door, pulled the guy out of the backseat, and dragged him in front of the headlights.

Graham let out a gasp.

The thing they were wresting didn't look human It was some kind of mummified mess dressed in an old-fashioned suit. Travis and his friend were laughing their asses off. They were drunk or high or both.

Where had they gotten it? Was it real? Or was it some Halloween decoration? Yeah, that's probably what it was. Had to be.

"Look." The tall, skinny guy started humping the body like a dog would hump someone's leg. "Humpin' the mummy," the tall kid said. "Humpin' the mummy."

They both crumpled into a fit of giggles Inside the car, Graham let out his own burst of laughter.

A minute later, laughing so hard they could hardly walk or talk, Travis and the tall kid dragged the body to the wall. With one on each end, they began swinging it, each swing getting wider as they prepared to toss it.

"Wait," the tall kid said, breathless with laughter. "I have an idea. Put him on the wall. Yeah. Like that. Now turn him on his side. Yeah." Giggling, they worked until they had him positioned just right, then stepped back to admire their handiwork.

"Oh, my God," they wheezed in unison, hands to their mouths.

Car lights appeared behind them. "Oh, shit!" They ran for the car, dove in, and pulled away. "Get the hell out of here!" Travis said, laughter bubbling behind his words.

The cell phone rang; Graham almost jumped out of his skin.

"It's ten thirty," Stroud said when Graham answered. "Are you still at the coffee shop? I'll come and pick you up."

"That's okay." Graham spoke rapidly. "I've got a ride. I'll be right there." He disconnected and leaned back in the seat, his heart beating fast.

Five minutes later they were pulling up in front of Stroud's house.

Graham had had enough of Travis and his pals for one night. Maybe for more than one night He got out, slammed the door, and they peeled away.

Inside the house, Graham found Stroud sprawled on the couch, hands behind his head, wearing tinted glasses while he watched TV. Near the door was a pair of muddy leather boots—evidence that he'd been out.

Stroud paused the picture and tossed down the remote. "Have a good time?"

That called up an immediate mental image of the dead corpse Travis and his buddy had been dragging around like some toy. His mind moved backward, to the town square and the candles and the picture of the murdered girl, to Peaches and no Isobel. "Yeah. No. It was okay." He dropped into a big stuffed chair across from the couch, and his gaze automatically went to the TV screen. He wished he hadn't gone out at all. "What are you watching?"

"A documentary. But we can watch something else. Look in the cupboard over there. I don't have
Lord of the Rings
or
Harry Potter,
though. No
Batman
or anything like that."

What the hell did he have then? Graham wasn't really interested in a movie, but now he was curious to see what Stroud spent his time watching. And it kinda pissed him off that Stroud would immediately think he wouldn't want to watch something that was real. Okay, he had to admit a lot of that shit was boring, but some of it was pretty good.

He went to the cupboard and opened the set of double doors. Shelves full of DVDs. Some old movies like
Harold and Maude. Midnight Cowboy. The
Godfather.
But most of them were documentaries and
National Geographic
travel-type things. Ireland. Scotland. Germany. France. Cities in the States like New Orleans and New York.

And then it hit him. Stroud couldn't go to any of those places. He would
never
go to any of those places.

Graham had never really thought of the restrictions Stroud's disease placed on him. He just imagined Stroud roaming around at night. Staying out of the sun. Slathering on sunblock and wearing long-sleeved shirts. But this was it. This was his world. Where it started and where it ended, with not a lot in between. He traveled in his head. He sat on the couch in his living room while the world came to him.

Graham felt kinda sick. He wasn't sure why. Maybe because he'd been clinging to hatred of his father for so long. He'd imagined him having this great life without the responsibility of a kid. But his life was just as fucked up as Graham's. Maybe more.

At least most people could fool themselves into thinking something good was coming around the corner. Stroud couldn't do that. This was it. This house. The couch. The television. His Internet connection. Graham was standing in the center of Stroud's world.

Graham shut the cupboard. "What're you watching?"

"The
Up
series."

"What?"

"A documentary made for British television. It follows the lives of a group of people, reconnecting with them every seven years."

"I think I heard about that."

"This is 7
Plus Seven,
the second in the series, but I can start it over if you want to see it."

"Nah, that's okay. I'll watch from here." He grabbed a pillow from the chair and stretched out in the middle of the area rug.

"I'd like to see the first one again anyway." Stroud ejected the DVD, popped in another, and sat back down on the couch. "It's kind of sad." After issuing that warning, he pointed the remote at the player and started the DVD.

Graham curled the pillow under his chin. "Like real life."

A half hour ago he wouldn't have guessed the night would end like this, with the two of them watching TV together. And that it would feel so un-weird. That it would feel normal and right. Not the boring kind of normal and right: the good kind.

The ringing phone woke her. Rachel checked the readout on her portable handset. Her dad, calling from his cell phone. She gave him a groggy hello.

"A corpse has been found in the park," he told her.

Pressing a hand into the mattress, she scooted up in bed. "Female? Same MO?"

"Well... not exactly sure about either of those things, but from the way the body is dressed, you'd assume it's a man."

Only once had she seen a body so mutilated that they had to wait until the autopsy to determine the sex. "That bad?"

"Come and see for yourself. I told the officers on patrol not to touch anything until you get there. We're at City Park. Lover's Leap."

It was still dark when Rachel pulled to the edge of the steep brick lane with a hairpin curve and a stone wall at the bottom. But morning wasn't far off, which meant they would soon have adequate light. No need to bring in any generators.

She spotted her father's ancient green Cadillac—a gas-guzzling monstrosity, but he wouldn't part with it. Two white patrol cars were angled, their high beams meeting to best illuminate the body on the wall. She cut the van's engine and grabbed her evidence-collection kit.

Outside the van, her ears picked up the murmur of low conversation from a group of huddled officers. The air was damp, the bricks under her soles wet with morning dew. As she approached she smelled coffee. Someone had brought a thermos and was filling a mug. She spotted her dad in his gray fedora. He was off by himself, his back to the crowd, talking on his cell phone. She caught his eye; he gave her a quick wave and smile, then went back to his conversation.

One of the police officers spotted her. "Morning, Dr. Burton." They shuffled backward and parted, giving her a good view of the victim. Everybody was watching her, waiting for a reaction.

What the... ?

Someone stuck a flashlight in her hand. Without taking her eyes from the display, she moved forward.

The body had been carefully arranged. It was lying on its side, head resting against a palm, elbow down. The legs were crossed in what was meant to be a casual pose. Or possibly sexy. It was wearing a cap advertising one of the local gas stations. A few straggly clumps of hair. Dressed in a dark suit.

Now she understood why her dad had told her the sex and MO couldn't be determined. The victim appeared to be a partially mummified corpse.

The clothing was very old. Shredded and rotten and crumbling.

"Is it real?" the cop with the thermos asked. "They can make things that look real. When I first saw it, I thought it was something someone maybe bought online. Don't think any stores around here would sell that kind of thing."

"Come on," another officer said. "You mean you haven't seen the mummies they sell at Grant's Gas and Go?"

Everybody got a chuckle out of that.

The mood was light, a little electric. Certainly none of the somberness that had accompanied the Chelsea Gerber murder. This was probably a sick prank. A prank that was also a felony.

Rachel bent at the waist so her face was a foot from the corpse. "I'm pretty sure it's real. Or rather, pretty sure it was a living, breathing person at one time."

"Freaky."

She straightened. "Let's treat this like any other crime."

The scene had already been somewhat compromised, since the area hadn't been effectively cordoned off, and care hadn't been taken in keeping police from walking over possible clues.

Her dismay must have shown on her face; suddenly one of the young policemen nudged his fellow officer, then pulled him back. Everyone else did the same.

Until the other night they'd never had to put into practice the lessons they'd been taught. And now, in all the excitement, they'd forgotten it all.

"I've had extra patrol on duty," Rachel's father said, coming up behind her.

"Anybody see anything suspicious?"

"Been pretty quiet. Nothing that stood out." He struggled to control a cough, reached inside his jacket, pulled out a nonfilter cigarette, and lit it. She managed to keep her mouth shut. Normally he didn't smoke in front of her, but he probably figured she'd find a fit of coughing even more disturbing.

She took a large number of digital photos, then almost as many more with her thirty-five-millimeter camera.

Dan showed up, skidding to a stop beside her. "Got here as fast as I could," he said breathlessly. He wore jeans, tennis shoes, and a brown jacket.

She gave him a couple of minutes to meet their new friend; then he was off to the van to return with a white sheet and plastic body bag. He spread the sheet on the ground, butting it up against the stone wall. They both snapped on latex gloves.

"I'll get the head," Rachel said.

She put her hands under the shoulders. Dan grabbed the ankles. They lifted.

"Whoops."

She looked up to see Dan holding a shoe in his hand. It took her a moment to realize that the shoe had a mummified foot in it, with a jagged piece of brown bone sticking out.

They placed the body on the sheet. Dan made a feeble attempt to reattach the foot; the shoe and bone fell over. He tried again. Same thing, so he gave up.

Behind them someone let out a loud snort. That was all it took for everyone to burst into laughter.

Glancing up at Rachel, Dan finally placed the shoe and foot next to the body. "Sorry," he muttered.

They wrapped the body in the sheet so there would be no chance of losing anything between the crime scene and lab. The body was then placed inside the plastic body bag, zipped, and sealed with a chain-of-custody tag.

Rachel wanted to get out of there before the local paper got wind of the discovery. The
Tuonela Press
dealt mainly with church bazaars, high school sports, and the occasional spotting of a riverboat passing through town on the Wisconsin River, but editor Bonnie Stark had been hoping for a big-break story for the last twenty years. With Chelsea's death she'd gotten it, and this discovery would further excite her.

Rachel and Dan placed the cadaver on a gurney, then slid the collapsed gurney into the back of the van and slammed shut the double doors.