The Bones of Old Carlisle (19 page)

“Go on,” Arrowroot muttered from inside the house.
“And there’s been another killing,” Hatfield continued. “Soldier
at Fort Shergawa, picked clean like the others. And based on where it
happened, whatever did it is on its way to Heligaux.”

Karl Arrowroot opened his front door and directed a baleful gaze
at his chief of police.
“Eyes gone and the whole mess?” Arrowroot asked.
“That’s what they told me,” Hatfield replied. “He was on patrol,
he got out a scream over the radio, but no intelligible words. They
found him 10 minutes later. Whatever did it was gone by then.”
“Young boy, wasn’t it?” Arrowroot inquired.
“I didn’t ask the age, but I assume so,” said Hatfield. “I’m not
sure if next of kin have been identified, so this is still super hushhush.”
Arrowroot looked toward the bright blue sky over Hatfield’s head
and mourned for another family that was about to have its heart ripped
out. “Okay, I’m with ya,” he said. “But I’m not going to talk to Mr.
Smiley or whatever. Let me get a quick shower and load up my shotgun
and I’m gonna help you blow this thing to hell.”
“No, c’mon now,” Hatfield said, and he held up his hands. “Army’s
doing that, they don’t need help from either one of us. We need help
with Mr. Smiley. He’s potentially a material witness and you seem to
be the only one he’s willing to talk to.”
“So he’s still in jail, huh?” Arrowroot asked.
“So far,” Hatfield replied. “Army’s paying us nicely to keep him.
They talk like they’re going to ship him off to some military brig,
but I don’t think they mean it. Nothing they’ve charged him with is
gonna stick unless he starts talking. So, it’s fine if you don’t want
to meet with him, but it might mean he walks.”
“Okay,” Arrowroot said, opening his door. “C’mon in. Can you give
me 15 minutes to wash up? Think I’ll go ahead and shave, too.”
“Sure thing,” Hatfield answered, stepping inside.
Arrowroot headed up the stairs, reached the top and turned. “Hey,
Floyd,” he called down.
“Yup?”
“You don’t think he just wants to cuss me out, do you?” Arrowroot
asked. “You know, for yelling at him, calling him things, hitting him
with Otherdog?”
“I honestly don’t know if he’s aware that was you,” Hatfield
shouted back. “I’m telling you, he’s just really not all there. But he
keeps saying ‘Karl,’ over and over.”
Less than an hour later, Arrowroot was ushered through the last
of the security doors at the county jail and into a small, stark
conference room: brown concrete floor, cream cinderblock walls, a
green table and two chairs facing each other. There was a small window
in the door, and Arrowroot took his seat and watched it, waiting for
Mr. Smiley to appear.
This needed to be a brief meeting, Arrowroot reminded himself.
Something was going on with Danielle. Just before he’d given up his
phone at jail reception, he’d looked at it and noticed a text from
her. “Urgent!” she’d written. “Call me!!!!”
Arrowroot had learned long ago that what was important to
Danielle wasn’t necessarily important to him, but he wanted to get
back to her quickly, if only for the relationship’s sake. Maybe she’d
found out something about who killed Robert. She’d been going on about
that the last few days, and it was definitely important to him too. So
let Mr. Smiley have his say, Arrowroot told himself. It’s fine if he
wants to harangue, as long as it’s brief.
He heard footsteps and stood. The window in the door filled with
Mr. Smiley’s odd face, then the door swung open and a guard appeared.
“Just holler if you need anything,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Arrowroot. “I’ll do that.”
The prisoner, in an orange jumpsuit and sandals, walked in and
sat down, staring at Arrowroot, who took a seat on the opposite side
of the table.
“They tell me you wanted to talk,” said Arrowroot. “What can I do
for you?”
“I see the ship on the horizon,” Smiley replied, staring
intently.
“Okay, fine,” Arrowroot replied. “By the way, sorry for, uh, all
the things I did out at the Carlisle place. I wasn’t quite myself.”
“I see the ships at the edge of the sea,” Smiley said.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” Arrowroot said. “But it’s been a
pleasure seeing you again.”
“Is this a simulation?” Smiley asked, and he put his hands
together on the table.
“Is what a simulation?” Arrowroot asked.
“This, all this,” Smiley replied, and he waved his hand around
the room. His voice was as indefinably strange as his appearance.
Something was wrong with the way he talked that Arrowroot couldn’t put
his finger on. The emphasis was off, perhaps, or the vowels were
stretched out or something, like he had been drinking. “Who made all
this?” he asked.
“God,” Arrowroot replied without hesitation.
The answer seemed to surprise Smiley, and he gasped and then he
laughed, “Ha ha HA!”
“Are you real?” Smiley asked.
“As real as you are,” Arrowroot replied, “if not realer.” As
inane as the conversation had been so far, he was starting to enjoy
it, and he was suddenly very glad Chief Hatfield had roused him off
his couch and back into the world.
“Okay, I accept that,” Smiley said. “May I have your card?”
“Huh?” Arrowroot asked. “It’s in my wallet, I had to give that up
at the front desk. But they know my phone number and all, tell them I
said give it to them.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Smiley said. “How much do people know about what
has happened at the fort?”
“Oh, you mean the killing and whatnot?” Arrowroot asked. “Was all
over the news coupla weeks ago, then people got tired of it, I guess.
But whatever’s doing it, we’re gonna find it and kill it.”
“Do you know what it is?” Smiley inquired.
“Some kinda animal would be my guess,” Arrowroot replied. “Do you
know?”
“I might,” Smiley said cryptically, “but it’s highly, highly
unlikely.”
Arrowroot stared at the prisoner for a moment, trying to read his
expression. The man’s face, like any face, was changing constantly
under the direction of the dozens of muscles that lay just under the
skin, but these muscles were behaving indecipherably in Smiley’s
visage. His mouth was forming meaningless shapes, his eyes were
darting insensibly, his forehead was wrinkling at random, leaving
Arrowroot alternately intrigued and irritated.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Smiley, or whatever the hell your
name is,” Arrowroot began, “you better start sharing what you know or
more blood’s gonna be on your hands.”
“No one would believe me,” Smiley said. He closed his mouth and
clenched his fists and pressed them against the table and briefly,
Arrowroot completely understood him.
“Well, why don’t you try?” Arrowroot asked. “They all still think
you’re retarded. No offense, but that’s what they think. But if you’d
start talking to them like you’re talking to me now. . .”
“You’re the only one I can talk to,” Smiley said.
“Now, why’s that?” Arrowroot asked with growing suspicion.
“You’re the only one” were some of the most powerful words in English,
he knew. Expressions like “You’re the only one I love” or “the only
one who understands” or “the only one who sees the value in what I’m
selling” triggered something in the human mind’s desperate need for
identity, for a unique, important existence. He’d used the line
himself enough times to close a deal. But Smiley’s next words were
unexpected.
“You are still curious,” Smiley said. “Your mind is still open,
and even though you fear your curiosity, it persists, and it enables
you where others are lacking. I noticed it on the first day. Colonel
Demizu is a drunk given to delusion, Major Stapleton cannot move past
her law enforcement manual, Corporal Watell is far too full of himself
and his hormones to understand anything beyond that, Dr. Schaumberg
just wants to get out of the service without disruption, Chief
Hatfield is a candidate, but his role precludes true curiosity, the
jailers here are inured to—“
“Okay, okay,” Arrowroot interrupted, “that’s quite a set of
character studies. You aren’t even remotely deficient, are you?”
“It depends on what you mean by deficient,” Smilely replied.
“Well, you got everyone thinking you can’t even talk,” Arrowroot
said. “So what was all that out at the Carlisle house? You know, you
were all ‘gleeb this’ and ‘glub that,’ was it just an act?”
“That was my native language,” Smiley said.
“Where in hell do they talk like that?” Arrowroot demanded.
“Can you guess?” Smiley asked, and he bit his lip.
“Oh God, I bet you’re Gaelic,” Arrowroot said, “Right? Gaelic?”
Smiley said nothing, just stared in a way Arrowroot found
arrogant.
“So we’re all speaking English and you go off in Gaelic or
whatever?” Arrowroot began. “Why, just to piss us off?”
“I was having a traumatic reaction,” Smiley asserted.
Arrowroot sighed, leaned back and slapped his hands on the table.
“You know, your story just gets worse and worse every time you open
your damned mouth,” he said. “So tell you what. I’m gonna excuse
myself, tell the authorities you’re a fine English speaker, a regular
Daniel Webster, and you got all kinds of information about who killed
who or what killed who.”
“No one will believe you,” Smiley repeated, and his mouth curved
in what Arrowroot thought might be a victorious smirk. “My lawyer’s
having me declared incompetent, and everyone else seems to agree.”
“We’ll see,” Arrowroot said, and he looked up at the window in
the door and noticed for the first time the county jail’s constant
rumble, the quiet undertones of an institution designed to protect
society from its most dangerous members, as well as to inflict a
carefully measured degree of unhappiness on them. Doors opening and
clanging shut, footsteps and shouts, buzzes and beeps. A guard walked
by, peered in and Arrowroot waved. What if the guard had heard Smiley
talking up a storm? he wondered briefly.
“Okay, tell me then, what’s eating everyone up?” Arrowroot asked.
“I’m not sure, and I’d rather not guess and frighten you and
everyone you tell,” Smiley replied. “More important is how to stop it,
and if it’s what I think it might be, neither you nor I alone can do
that.”
“Well then?” Arrowroot asked, and he raised his hands and
grimaced at the prisoner.
“I need to communicate with my comrades,” Smiley said.
“Your comrades?” Arrowroot retorted. “How damn many of you are
there?”
“Just a few, a handful,” Smiley said.
“Oh, you mean those folks who got chewed up and banged all to
hell at the fort?” Arrowroot asked. “I wouldn’t exactly look to them
for assistance.”
“I had nothing to do with any of them but the one in the
kitchen,” Smiley said.
“You knew that one?” Arrowroot asked. “You the one who killed
him?”
“I did not,” Smiley replied without any emotion that Arrowroot
could detect. “I don’t know who killed him. He died before I arrived.
But there are others still living, and I need to talk to them.”
“Well, you got a phone call when you checked in, right?”
Arrowroot asked. “Shoulda called them up then.”
“It’s not that simple,” Smiley said. “I need you to send an
electronic message.” He reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit,
pulled out a folded piece of paper and spread it out on the table. On
it, written in pencil, were a series of ones and zeros, perhaps a
hundred of them. “Send exactly these characters in a message to
yourself,” he instructed.
Arrowroot leaned back and sighed. “You know what, boy?” he began,
“You’re as full of shit as Colonel Demizu.”
Smiley looked down, folded the paper slowly, and then he looked
up at Arrowroot and spoke through clenched teeth. “What I am involved
in is more important, and more sensitive, than you can possibly
imagine,” he said. “If you won’t do this for me, people may continue
to die and important things will be compromised and then— and then,
the blood will be on your hands.”
“Prove it,” Arrowroot said back.
“I can’t,” Smiley admitted.
“So I go home, email a bunch of nonsense to myself and you’ll be
all happy?” Arrowroot asked. “And then what? Your Irish buddies spring
you out and you all go on a terrorist rampage?”
“No,” Smiley said. “Then we all disappear and you never hear from
us again. We continue our mission. For good. For everyone’s good. And
we stop the killing.”
Arrowroot laughed and stood. “Who’s the mission for?” he asked.
“For the government,” Smiley replied.
“Which government?” Arrowroot inquired. “Heligaux city
government?”
“No,” Smiley said simply.
“Good answer,” Arrowroot said. “I woulda caught you on that one,
being the mayor and all. County government then? State government?”
“No,” Smiley said after a brief hesitation.
“Then it must be federal,” Arrowroot said. “CIA? Pentagon?
Homeland Security?”
“I can’t say,” Smiley conceded.
“Of course you can’t,” Arrowroot boomed. “Well, it’s been a
pleasure, it really has. If you hadn’t told the police to come pick me
up, I’d still be in my pajamas, tossing and turning on my couch.”
Arrowroot reached out his hand and Smiley took it, offering a
limp handshake. “I hope you get the help you need,” Arrowroot said. “I
understand they’re trying to book you into a group home, and that
might be for the best.”
Smiley’s face was blank, and he held out the folded sheet of
paper and said simply, “Here.”
Arrowroot accepted it, unfolded it and stared, and then put it in
his pocket. Then he walked to the door, opened it and shouted “We’re
through!”
As Smiley and Arrowroot followed the guard to the end of the
hall, back to the main jail area, Arrowroot clapped the prisoner on
the shoulder. “Good luck, Son.”
There were two doors here, left to the main prison population,
right to the reception area and freedom. The left door opened for Mr.
Smiley and Arrowroot heard laughter and the sound of shoes squeaking.
Basketball, most likely.
Someone shouted a greeting to the strange man: “Smy-O-Lee! Yo,
Smy-O-Lee-O!”
Arrowroot went right, to the reception area, collected his phone
and keys from the front counter and saw that Danielle had texted him
again: “I’m just about to find out who killed Robert!” she wrote.
“Call me now!!!”
Another man was collecting his belongings at the same time, a
short, dark-skinned man, possibly Mexican, wearing jeans, a sleeveless
t-shirt and a mohawk, with a tattoo of what was probably the Virgin
Mary on his neck.
The man looked up in surprise at Arrowroot. “You been in here?”
he said, and his accent confirmed his Mexican roots.
“Oh yeah,” Arrowroot replied honestly.