The Impaler (35 page)

Edmund wrote it down next to Nergal.

NERGAL STONE, or STONE NERGAL, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

“The Nergal Stone,” Edmund said, smiling. “The stone seal depicting the sacrifice to the god Nergal. Gene Ralston equals the Nergal Stone! Just like the god who visited me all those years ago, the formula, the message pointing me toward the seal had been there all along! Right on Rally’s coveralls!”

One of the cats poked its head out from around the re-cliner—licked its chops and gazed up at Edmund quizzically.

“I understand,” Edmund said with tears of joy.

He drove back to the farmhouse and hid the medicine bottle and the notebooks under the floorboards in his mother’s old bedroom. That was the proper place for secrets, he thought.

Then he drove back to Rally’s and called the police. That was the sensible thing to do, he figured; it was best to just tell the truth about how he found Rally dead in his La-Z-Boy. Surely, if they investigated further, they would have a record of his phone call an hour earlier. Surely, if they investigated further, they would be able to establish Rally’s time of death shortly afterwards.

Edmund told the sheriff that the old man had sounded depressed when he talked to him on the phone—was babbling nonsense, he said, and what a shame he hadn’t gotten there sooner. He gave this as his official statement and then left—not before, of course, offering once again to be of whatever assistance he could. No, Edmund thought, it didn’t take a fat Adolf Hitler lookalike to tell the scene was a suicide; but telling the truth (well,
almost
the truth) was smart just to be on the safe side.

But why was Edmund even worried about all that? After all, he had nothing to do with Rally’s death.

Or did he?

What was it Rally had said on the phone?
“I reckon it was only a matter of time.”
Yes, Edmund thought, Rally had understood
c’est mieux d’oublier
; had obviously heard those words before and seemed almost resigned when he spoke again afterwards.

And hadn’t Rally seemed afraid of Edmund since his return from Iraq? Afraid of something that went beyond the old man’s connection to the illegal absinthe production?

Edmund thought about this on the ride home—scoured his memory banks, searching for an answer—but saw only the General there; the silver stitching of the formula, and the signs and messages that had been there from the God of War since the day he was born.

And when he arrived back at the farmhouse, Edmund concluded that perhaps Rally had sensed the change in him; sensed that the time had come, and that Nergal had returned to claim what was rightfully his.

Indeed, Edmund thought, perhaps because Rally had worn the Nergal message in his name—the Nergal Stone in the Gene Ralston that had been like a tattoo on his chest for all those years—perhaps Eugene “Rally” Ralston recognized deep down the terror that had returned with him from Iraq.

“I have returned,” Edmund said to himself as he pulled up to the farmhouse. He sensed Nergal speaking in him, too, and looked down at his chest, to the left pocket of his shirt and half expected to see a patch there. There wasn’t one, of course, but Edmund saw the potential for his own Nergal Stone underneath. Something more lasting. Something that could not be destroyed or torn away like Rally’s silver stitched name patch; something as durable as the carved Nergal Stone itself.

A tattoo. Yes. But of what?

The answer would come to him eventually, he thought. And once he was certain the business with Rally and the illegal absinthe was finally over, he would need to start readying the farmhouse. He knew what needed to be done, but he wasn’t exactly sure how. That would all be revealed eventually, too, he thought.

In Nergal’s messages.

But would Edmund Lambert be smart enough to decode all the messages? Would he be worthy enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with Nergal in the end?

Edmund took a deep breath and told himself not worry about all that; for when he looked down past his chest to his stomach; when he thought about the searching and looked for it deep inside his belly, a breeze whispered back at him through a window in his mind.

“Finally, Edmund. Finally.”

Yes, after all these years, the searching was over.

After all these years, the answer finally had come.

Names, names, and more names—thousands of them scattered before him—but Andy Schaap held out hope.

The cemetery.

Yes,
he thought as he bounced his ring on his desk.
The cemetery was the beginning for the Impaler. The first star in his personal logo. The star off of which the rest of his constellation would be built.

But why the cemetery? Because the Impaler had a connection there that went beyond the name of Lyons. Schaap was sure of it. Someone important to him was buried there; someone who was connected to the identity on earth that needed to be remapped in the eyes of the lion in the sky. Planting Rodriguez and Guerrera outside the wall directly east of the Lyons plot was only part of the equation, as was the cemetery’s connection to the other murder sites that made up the Starlight Theater logo.

All theory, of course, and nothing really on which to base his assumptions other than a gut reading of the evidence so far. But Andy Schaap was sure he was on to something; and this little side investigation was going to be his baby. He’d
gotten hold of the cemetery records soon after Markham left. That was good. That meant he could follow his leads alone; might even get a little credit for all the hard work he’d done.

Sure, he knew he was becoming a little jealous of Sam Markham. But didn’t Markham also keep things to himself when he was on a case? Isn’t that how he caught Jackson Briggs? Hell, he still never told anyone how he really did it.

Besides, there was nothing Markham could offer from Connecticut anyway. At least not until the medical records were obtained and the lists of servicemen and their units checked against them.

There were over two-thousand residents buried beneath the soil in Clayton’s Willow Brook Cemetery, and Schaap’s first order of business was to begin testing those records against a list of men who fit Underhill’s unit profile. And once those lists were complete, once he got all the names of servicemen living in the Raleigh area, his computer program would rank them in order of probability.

It was complicated stuff, Schaap thought; and without each list to test against the other, just using the cemetery records alone would be like shooting blind from the white pages. No, the cemetery records would only narrow down the unit lists. But even then, it would be slow going. Schaap had seen those names already—Davis, White, Brown, Anderson, Jones—
common
names that seemed to taunt him with the futility of his plan.

But fuck it. He would spend the whole night there if he had to, checking his lists against each other and developing a preliminary cross-section of candidates. Then, once he ran that list through a computer program that would rank them according to
location
—that is, remote areas in and around Raleigh that theoretically would provide the Impaler with good “working conditions”—Schaap would have a better idea where to begin. But he didn’t have much time before
Markham returned Sunday afternoon; not much time to keep his little side investigation secret.

But Schaap
would
keep it secret. As long as humanly possible, he decided.

After all, isn’t that what Sam Markham would do?

Edmund and Cindy arrived at the cast party at exactly 11:30 p.m. They could’ve gotten there sooner, but Cindy insisted on showering at the theater after the show. She even came right out and admitted to Edmund that she wanted to look nice for him. He was dressed in a button-down shirt and jeans that made his butt look beyond sexy, Cindy thought. All she said, however, was, “You look very handsome.” Edmund smiled and said he would wait for her in the green room. He ended up waiting almost half an hour. But Edmund said he didn’t mind. He was used to waiting.

The party was at Amy Pratt’s—a rundown, student-district rancher that had been passed down among the theatre majors for as long as anyone could remember. It was designated “the party house” every year because of its large, fenced yard and L-shaped deck out back.

The party house was already packed when Cindy and Edmund snaked their way into the kitchen amid a sea of second glances and whispers. Cindy had expected that; had even warned Edmund to be ready for a scandal on Monday.
Edmund said that they’d have to come up with something really juicy to get the rumors going.

Cindy had laughed at that, and so did Edmund. Cindy had never seen Edmund smile and laugh so much, and it made her feel beyond ecstatic to know that he was already opening up to her; made the ass-chewing she got from her director about her being unfocused during the show all the more worth it.

Kiernan was right: her mind had been on Edmund Lambert all day.

“Holy shit,” said Amy Pratt when she saw Cindy and her date. “Edmund Lambert? Edmund
Laaam-bert
? What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Hello, Amy,” he said. “I hope I was invited.”

“Of course!” she said as she reached down into her bag of plastic cups. “I’m gonna give you and your date here a cup for free cuz I’m already wasted and you look fucking hot and you never come see me, how’s that?”

“Thank you,” Edmund said.

“
Buuuut
,” Amy said, snatching the cups back at the last second, “you’re gonna have to promise to ditch this ho and dance with me after Brown Bags, okay?”

Edmund smiled and nodded and Amy gave him the cups.

“How much longer until they start?” asked Cindy.

“Bradley-boy and the other seniors are still in my bedroom writing them out,” Amy said, rolling her eyes. “I peeked in and he told me to get out of there—my own fucking bedroom, can you believe it? Someone—and I’m not saying who—but someone told me that Bradley and some of the other guys started doing shots in the dressing room after the show. Bet ol’ Georgie Porgie would love to hear that one. Bradley telling me to get out of my own fucking bedroom!”

Cindy shrugged and led Edmund outside onto the deck. Edmund quickly negotiated the mob around the keg, filled
up their cups, and retreated alone with Cindy to a corner of the yard—drinking and laughing and making conversation just as Cindy had hoped they would.

Cindy discovered that Edmund was a Cancer. She was a Gemini, she told him.

“I don’t really believe in astrology,” she added, “but, if I remember correctly, I think Cancer and Gemini are like the two most incompatible signs possible. What do you think of that?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Edmund said. “I should have been born a Leo, but I came out two weeks early because my mother wasn’t taking care of herself. At least, that’s what my grandfather used to tell me.”

Cindy didn’t know if Gemini and Leo were compatible signs, but Edmund assured her they were, and Cindy asked him to fill her cup again. Edmund obliged.

She could not remember if she was on her third or fourth beer (
it felt like her fourth
) by the time Bradley Cox and the rest of the seniors stumbled out onto the deck. She and Edmund had been deep in conversation about his mother, about how she committed suicide when he was a child. Cindy was on the verge of tears, but Edmund told her not to feel sorry for him and that everything happened for a reason. She wanted to hug him—wanted to kiss him, too—but even though she had good buzz going she held back until Edmund said: “Please, don’t take it as a downer, Cindy. It’s just something that happened. Besides, tonight is about new beginnings, isn’t it?”

Oh yes,
Cindy thought.
Now I’m going to kiss him.
She could see in Edmund’s eyes that he wanted to kiss her, too. But then—

“Okay, motherfuckers,” shouted Bradley Cox. “Gather round, gather round. It’s that time.”

Cindy sighed and gulped down the last of her beer as the rest of the students began crowding onto the deck. Cox and
his cohorts—six seniors total, all men—stood on chairs at the far end opposite the keg. Cindy declined when Edmund motioned to get her another beer.

“I’m buzzing too much already,” she said. “Just hold my hand if it gets too bad, will you?” Edmund smiled and took her hand anyway, and Cindy felt a surge of excitement and pride—especially when she saw some of the other students notice.

“We got a shitload of bags to di-perse,” Cox slurred, “to dis
burse
, I mean, so everybody shut the fuck up and don’t make a big deal. Cuz they’s gonna be
mean,
motherfuckers!”

The crowd cheered.

“Seriously, seriously,” Cox chuckled, “this is all in fun, so nobody start crying and shit—seriously, mine’s like the worst, I’m sure.”

“Get on with it!”
someone shouted, to which Cox replied: “That’s what your mom said before I blew my load in her face!”

Everybody laughed except Cindy and Edmund.

“Okay, okay, seriously,” Cox said, and began reading from the top of his stack of lunch bags. “This first Brown Bag goes out to the guy playing Mentieth. It’s called the ‘Perils of Inbreeding Award.’ Jonathan Reynolds: To the porky freshman with one of the most fucked-up grills we’ve ever seen, your teeth look like a leftover makeup effect from
Deliverance.
In fact, every time you speak on stage, we keep expecting you to add, ‘He’s
suuure
got a purty mouth!’ Who knew that backwoods rednecks lived in eleventh-century Scotland? Your mom and dad, apparently. Hard to keep a secret like that in the house when you’re brother and sister!”

Some laughter, some groans, and the pudgy freshman who played Mentieth pushed through the applauding crowd to accept his award.

“Witty, aren’t they?” Cindy whispered, her tongue thick with beer. “Mine will come at the end. Watch. They usually
go from smallest parts to biggest. With Bradley at the helm, it’s going to be pure poetry all night, I’m sure.”