Pink Butterfly (28 page)

“Did you get that fucker?” Susan asked yelling.

“I couldn’t leave you here to freeze,” the boyfriend replied.

“Where is he?” Susan asked pushing her way out into the warm hallway. They could no longer hear the sound of the guitar strumming, only the humming of the compressor from the walk in freezer. “Call the cops,” she said.

Susan’s cop boyfriend pulled out his cell and called the dispatch at work. He explained the situation and hung up. “Should be a few minutes, who is this guy?”

“I don’t fucking know, he came in with Gary. Said he was a bartender looking for work.”

“I think we should get out of this hallway, we’re trapped in here,” the cop said.

“Which way should we go? He could be at either end,” Susan whispered back. “Maybe we should stay here till the cops get here.”

“Did you see what he did to Gary?” the cop asked.

“No, he locked me up first.”

“Gary won’t be playing any more gigs,” the cop replied. “At least not on Earth.”

“He killed Gary?”

“Tore his head off, banged it up pretty good and stuck it on a speaker pole.”

“That could have been me!” Susan whispered in shock.

“You don’t play guitar.”

“No, but he could have stuck my head on the Juke Box!”

“You can’t impale a head on a Juke Box, there’s no pole on top.”

“Ok, the beer tap then, Jesus! You have to be so fucking technical all the time?”

Then both were shocked to hear Melvin’s voice from around the corner. “Can you two shut up? I’m trying to mix a drink and I forgot the recipe. Do you have a mix drink book behind the counter anywhere?” Melvin asked.

“Next to the cash register,” Susan yelled back.

“Where’s the, never mind, I found it.”

“What are you still doing here?” Susan yelled from the hallway. “The cops will be here any minute!”

“I know, I can hear the sirens,” Melvin replied.

“Leave while you still can!”

“I thought about this for a while now. There really isn’t anywhere I can go, and I ain’t got any money. Jail is all I know so maybe I’m better back there.”

“Fine, can we go then?” Susan asked.

“Yeah, I only need to kill one asshole to get prison, don’t need to kill everyone.”

“What promise do I have you won’t try to kill us if we come out?”

“Promises are like assholes, everyone has one,” Melvin replied.

“I think you mean Opinions,” the cop said.

“That’s right. Opinions are like Promises, everyone has an asshole.”

“No, it goes, Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.”

“Yeah, how did I get that messed up?” Melvin asked rhetorically.

Six weeks later a backhoe dug up Melvin Skankmeyer’s coffin from the cemetery where he was buried ten years ago. Turns out his DNA and fingerprints matched those of a convicted murderer who was put to death by electrocution for the death of a woman he stalked and her boyfriend. He even admitted his name was Melvin Skankmeyer. The authorities were at a loss to explain his reappearance to the world of the living.

The coffin was lifted by crane and set beside the hole. The straps were removed and the lid was opened by the sheriff so the lawyers could see inside. What they found were several plastic bags that once contained ten pound sacks of potatoes, now dry and dusty.

“Where’s the body?” one of the lawyers asked.

“Sitting back in our jail,” the sheriff replied.

“This makes no sense, how was he able to fake his death? Who put these sacks of potato’s in here?”

“I’ll be making a visit to the funeral home,” the sheriff replied. “I remember a guy who worked there hung himself in the jail back then, something about faking a death or stealing a body. When he died the case dried up and we weren’t about to figure out why he hung himself.”

“Who reported the theft?” the lawyer asked.

“Some office guy or sales guy from the funeral home, he changed his story after the hanging. I think he’s dead now. Cancer or something.”

“So for ten years Melvin Skankmeyer has been living as a free man terrorizing the countryside? Why? What did they gain by saving him?”

“What I want to know is how the doctor at the execution fucked up and didn’t realize Skankmeyer wasn’t dead in the first place. How incompetent do you have to be to not be able to take a pulse?”

“Can’t change that now, we have to deal with what’s been handed us, and we have Melvin Skankmeyer in jail for the alleged murder of Gary Stuart.”

“Alleged? He stuck his head on a speaker pole.”

“There are no witnesses, no video, it’s all circumstantial at this point.”

Two days later, Melvin was joined in his cell by a man arrested for transporting drugs across state lines. Caught on the interstate with sixty pounds of meth hidden in his spare tire. At least that was his story. Melvin, suspicious of the man looked him over and sized up his appearance and demeanor. “What are you doing in here?” Melvin asked.

“Found drugs in my trunk,” the man replied.

“What’s your name?”

“Rat,” Rat replied.

“Rat what?”

“Rat face.”

“I don’t believe you,” Melvin replied.

“I don’t give a shit if you do or not,” Rat shot back.

“You’re here to get a confession out of me.”

“No, I’m here because a dog sniffed my trunk.”

“I can tell a jail house snitch a mile away.”

Rat shrugged his shoulders and looked away.

“Don’t play games with me, I can read you like a pack of matches.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Rat asked.

Melvin chuckled to himself and shook his head in disgust. “You never heard anyone say that before?”

“No, never,” Rat replied.

“Go tell your owner, or master or whatever you call him that I ain’t talking.”

“For someone who isn’t talking, you sure are talking a lot,” Rat said sarcastically.

“You think you can get inside my mind?”

Rat looked at Melvin and refused to answer.

“I have more in one part of my mind than most people have in their whole heads!” Melvin snapped back in defiance.

Rat blinked.

“You won’t win, don’t even try.”

“I’m gonna take a nap, shut the fuck up for a while,” Rat said checking out the cold hard slab of a bed.

“I’ve seen men like you before,” Melvin said getting more and more paranoid. “You act like you don’t give a shit, then you turn and try mind games to get me to confess to crimes I never committed.”

“What are you in for?” Rat asked.

“Not telling,” Melvin replied.

“I can ask the guard.”

“I have a right to privacy, if he tells you, I can sue the state.”

“No you don’t, you’re name will be in the paper tomorrow in the crime beat section.”

“What?” Melvin yelled. “I need to call the newspaper! Before they do something they will regret!”

“It’s the first amendment, you can’t do a fucking thing about it,” Rat replied.

“I see, that’s how it’s going to be.”

“Get used to it.”

“So how long have you been a jail house snitch?” Melvin asked.

“I told you, I’m not a snitch.”

“Then why do you have a digital recorder in your shirt pocket?” Melvin asked.

Realizing he had been caught in a lie, Rat did his best to lie some more. “It’s not a digital recorder, it’s for my pace maker.”

“Pace makers are implanted under the skin, not set in your shirt pocket.”

“It’s a radio monitor, so I can send read outs to the heart hospital.” Rat was happy with his made up answer.

“Let me see it,” Melvin stated holding out his hand.

Thinking fast, Rat replied, “Can’t, if it gets too far from my chest it won’t work and my heart could start racing or stop all together.”

“Stupid design,” Melvin said. “What if you bent over and dropped it down a sewer grate? You’d be dead.”

“It came with a chain but I lost it,” Rat said continuing to lie.

“You are a good liar, I admire that, but I’m not stupid, I know a digital recorder when I see one. You won’t get any information from me.”

“Well, since you think you’re so smart, let me ask you one thing. Did you kill Gary Stuart?”

“Who?”

“The guy with the guitar, they guy at the bar who was setting up to play for the night.”

“Let me answer your question with a question. What is the most abundant element in the universe?” Melvin asked.

“Air?” Rat answered.

“Are you serious?” Melvin replied. “You can’t be that fucking dumb. Try again.”

“Radiation?” Rat answered.

“How did you manage to get a job on the police force as stupid as you are?”

“I told you I ain’t no cop!”

“No, you told me that wasn’t a digital recorder, you also told me you are an incompetent drug smuggler. I don’t believe the issue of you being a cop ever came up in this conversation.”

“What does the most abundant element in the universe have to do with whether or not you killed Gary Stuart?”

“Hydrogen,” Melvin stated flatly.

“Hydrogen what?” Rat asked.

“Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.”

“Did you kill him with hydrogen?” Rat asked.

“What a fool you are,” Melvin replied in disgust.

“Don’t act like some sort of mad genius psycho. I can tell you’re dumb as hell, why else would you be here behind bars with me?”

“Maybe I’m here to kill you, to keep you from becoming the president of the United States and setting off a nuclear war?”

“You are one weird mother fucker,” Rat said. “First its hydrogen, now it’s time travel bull shit. Try to make sense for a change. What did you do to Gary Stuart?”

“Nothing, his head was on the pole when I got there,” Melvin replied with a smile.

“And his blood all over your hospital gown?” Rat asked.

“I used it to wipe off the stage so I could sit down and play guitar.”

“Did you think maybe to call the cops?”

“He was dead, wasn’t getting any deader.”

“If you didn’t kill him, maybe his killer was still in the bar. Did you think of that? Wouldn’t you call the cops to come check the place out?”

“All I can say is I didn’t. Can’t tell you why, but that’s what I did, or didn’t do as I should say.”

“An average person would have made the call,” Rat said.

“I came to the bar wearing a hospital gown, what makes you think I’m average?” Melvin replied laughing.”

Forty eight hours later, Melvin was still sitting in his holding cell, his cell mate long gone, back at work behind the detective’s desk. Now Melvin sat alone staring out the bars at the cell across the hall thinking about what he had gone through since being brought back from the other side by the medium psychic. Was his life better now or was it better floating in space like a dead man?

“Hello Melvin,” Wanda Langley said as she approached the bars to his cell. Wanda was the jailor on duty this evening and had a slight southern accent. “How are you today?” she asked. Wanda, a short and round woman with a plump ass and large breasts stood in the hall wearing her tight fitting brown uniform and badge.

“Fine,” Melvin replied in a trance like state. He had stared at the other cell so long he was now mentally stuck on other cell. It wasn’t that interesting, a stainless steel toilet and mirror like he had.

“What’s going on? Are you sick or something?” Wanda asked.

Blinking to get his focus off the toilet across the hall, Melvin replied, “No, I think I might have dozed off or something.”

“It’s almost supper time, I need to know if you want the chicken or the fish.”

“Chicken,” Melvin replied.

“White meat or dark?”

“White.”

“Crispy?”

“Yeah, sounds great,” Melvin replied. “Hey, do you have anything I can read? I’m so fucking bored off my ass in here,” Melvin asked.

“I got a People magazine back in dispatch.”

“Anything not stupid?”

“Like what?”

“National Geographic?” Melvin replied.

“You just want to look at the African women’s tits,” Wanda laughed. “Let me call in your supper order, I’ll be right back honey.” Wanda waddled away like a penguin and left the jail to make her call to the kitchen. It was a small town jail so the kitchen was a stove, microwave and refrigerator. This gave Melvin more time to be bored and think about where he was and what he was going to do. In the back of his mind he knew that running away would never work out in the long run, staying in jail was almost as bad. At least he had crispy chicken coming soon.

The door to the jail section opened again and Wanda walked over to Melvin’s cell with a magazine in her hand. “I found this,” she said handing the magazine to Melvin through the bars.

“Police magazine?” he asked. “I had no idea they made magazines for cops.”

Heck honey, they make magazines for anything these days. My sister gets this magazine on bacon, can you believe it? Bacon.”

“I bet they make a magazine on magazines,” Melvin said.

“That’s funny, are you some sort of comedian?” Wanda asked.

“No, I’m not funny at all.”

“Now don’t be so hard on yourself, I know a good joke when I hear one!”

“You want to hear a joke? Try sitting on this cold ass bench and sleep, you’ll be laughing.”

Wanda crossed her arms and took a step back. “You don’t like your living arrangements honey? I’m sorry but this is the best the county can afford for you. This ain’t no hotel.”

Melvin could almost picture Wanda wagging her finger at him. “Tell me something, why do you do this job?”

“You want the truth or some made up bullshit that sounds like I’m a saint?” Wanda asked.

“Truth first.”

Wanda leaned in close to the bars pretending to whisper. “My husband is the sheriff. He gave me the job.”

“Isn’t that nepotism or something?” Melvin asked.

“Yeah, but so the fuck what? It’s a job and I’m more than qualified.”

“What do you do besides hand out food and magazines?”

“I have a lot of duties, I process everyone that comes into the jail. I keep the books, I keep this place clean. Honey, I do it all. You think those prissy girls in dispatch get their nails dirty? Fuck no”