The Travelling Man (6 page)

His mind was so full of his problem that he didn’t hear the bell of the store at first. He looked up in surprise as he was sure that he had locked it securely when he’d returned.

“Can I help you?” Harlan called out to the shadow in the doorway, with as much false friendliness as he could muster. It was imperative that he maintained his carefully constructed image about town.

“Not exactly,” the man replied in a crisply cool English accent. “But I may be able to help you.”

Harlan stared at the well dressed man. “Look, Mister. I don’t know what you’re smoking but I have no idea what you’re talking about and we’re closed.”

“Of course you do, Mr. Harris. I was there, after all, or have you forgotten?” the man replied with a pleasant smile.

Harlan suddenly had a flashback of the man who’d watched him from across the road when he’d smashed Davey into road kill. He’d thought that he’d dreamed the conversation with this guy, the whole afternoon had been so surreal. “We spoke, didn’t we?”

“For but a brief passing moment,” the man replied. “But I’m afraid that I had business elsewhere in town,” he apologized. “I do hope that you’ll excuse my rudeness.”

Harlan listened on, entranced. The man had a lilting accent that washed over him in waves of comfort as it flowed with poetry. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he said in a small sheepish voice.

“I know,” the man said soothingly. “You slipped, isn’t that right? Just a little slip that could happen to any of us I’m sure.”

Harlan nodded in boyish agreement, eager for the verbal lifeline. “I don’t even know your name,” he said looking up in surprise.

“Where are my manners? Gilbert Grange,” the man replied, offering a formal hand.

Harlan shook it and noticed just how cool and smooth the man’s hand was, despite the hot evening. “I’m afraid that we are closed, Mr. Grange. I’d be happy to help you in the morning.”

“It’s not your store that I’m interested in, Mr. Harris,” Grange said, as he started to wander around the shop with his hands behind his back checking over the shelves and merchandise.

Harlan’s internal warning system cranked into life again and he started to wonder just what threat this odd man may hold for him. “If you’re not interested in my store perhaps you are here about my business?” he ventured.

“I have no use for your drugs or guns or anything else quite so sordid,” Grange said, and Harlan could hear the smile in the man’s voice.

“Then what?”

“I told you, Mr. Harris, I’m here to help you. Now I’ve been all over town and I have to say that you, my friend, are by far the most enticing prospect and every waterfall does start with a single raindrop.”

Harlan stood transfixed as the man spoke. He knew that he should be reaching for the sawn-off shotgun that he kept under the counter. Grange obviously knew about his extracurricular activities and didn’t feel any qualms about saying so to his face. “What is it that you do?”

“I am a seller, Mr. Harris,” Grange said, turning back to face him.

“A seller of what?”

“In your case, Mr. Harris, I am a seller of solutions.”

Harlan looked up in hope as Grange suddenly produced a briefcase that he lifted and placed on the counter. The case now looked old and was darkly colored. The texture looked leathery but not any normal animal’s hide. Up close he could see that the surface wasn’t smooth like leather but cracked and ridged. In the dim light Harlan now thought that it seemed more dark red than black. “What’s in there?” he asked in awe.

“Answers, Mr. Harris. The answers to your problems,” Grange said, flicking open the shiny golden clasps.

Harlan stared in fascination, waiting to see what this strange man was about to produce from the equally strange case that he had seemingly produced from thin air. Disappointingly, Grange withdrew a single sheet of pristine clean white paper.

“I can assure you, Mr. Harris, that there is no reason for disappointment,” Grange said, as if reading his mind. “But we must hurry, Mr. Harris. I understand that the Sheriff is closing in fast on your little…, indiscretion.”

Harlan’s face paled in fear. He had known that this was going to all fall down about his ears. “That bitch!” he spat. “That fucking bitch!”

“Quite so, Mr. Harris, although I doubt that name-calling is really a prudent way forward,” Grange said, his good grace unbroken.

“What can you do? Can you help me move the body, make it disappear? Kill the Sheriff?” Harlan panted.

“Really, Mr. Harris! Do these hands look as though they were meant for manual labor?” Grange smiled.

“So what fucking good are you then?” Harlan snapped angrily and immediately regretted it.

“Well, if you’re not interested in my services I shall bid you good evening,” Grange said, making to close the briefcase.

Harlan still had no idea just who the man was or even what he was offering, but one thing he did know instinctively was that Gilbert Grange represented his only way out. “I’m sorry, Mr. Grange. Please, you have to help me.”

“Well now I don’t know if I want to, Mr. Harris,” Grange pouted theatrically.

“Please,” Harlan begged.

“Very well. If you would perhaps cease your love affair with vulgarities then I will continue.”

Harlan nodded eagerly in agreement.

“What is your best way out of your mess, Mr. Harris?”

“To make it so that nobody finds Davey’s body?” Harlan offered.

“Better than that.”

“To make the body vanish? To make people stop looking?”

“Better than that,” Grange smiled.

Harlan watched on as the smart dapper man before him suddenly seemed no longer so soft and effeminate. The man’s face was now darker and his smile emanated from a wide and hungry mouth with shark’s teeth, sharp and eager.

“To undo it?” Harlan said suddenly with inspiration.

“Ah, now therein lies the answer. To wipe out the heinous act, a clean slate, a do over as I believe you might call it,” Grange grinned.

“Yes, yes!” Harlan said eagerly.

“Then we might be able to do business after all, Mr. Harris,” Grange said, turning the sheet of paper on the counter to face Harlan.

Harlan looked up as he thought that he caught the faint sounds of police sirens in the distance. His face sank as he turned to his new friend.

“Ah, the hour grows late I’m afraid,” Grange said sadly. “Your lady Sheriff is certainly determined, is she not?”

Harlan looked down quickly and saw that the previously empty piece of paper was now full of black chicken scratches masquerading as writing. The words were illegible and seemed to not even be written in English. “I can’t read this,” he said, looking up as the sirens drew closer.

“It’s just a standard contract, Mr. Harris, I assure you. I agree to bring one David Mackie back to you, in order that you may eliminate your problem and save the day.”

“In return for what?” Harlan asked suspiciously. His mind was not even bothering to process the legitimacy of the offer; he was just clinging to the lifeboat in front of him as the sound of screeching tires skidded to a halt outside of the store now illuminated by flashing red and blue lights.

“Nothing at all. Call it an introductory offer,” Grange smiled. “We do business, you’re happy and then you tell your friends; simple word-of-mouth business.”

Harlan heard the pounding on the front door which now seemed to be locked again. “I just sign and all this goes away?”

“Exactly, Mr. Harris. You have my word.”

“HARLAN HARRIS!” a bullhorn from outside blasted out. “THIS IS THE SHERIFF. OPEN UP NOW OR WE’LL BREAK IT DOWN.”

“You can really bring him back?” Harlan yelled loudly above the cop’s noise outside.

“I promise,” Grange said, holding out a pen.

Harlan snatched the pen and felt a sharp stab in his finger as he grasped the slick silver implement. He scrawled his name where Grange pointed and the fountain pen signed in dark red ink.

As soon as he’d finished the last “S” in his name, the world went silent. The pounding on the door ceased, along with the Sheriff’s augmented bullhorn voice and the flashing lights. He stood up and ran to the door, unlocking it and flinging it open. The night was dead outside and empty.

He closed the door, breathing normally again, and walked back to the counter to find it now deserted. Gilbert Grange was nowhere in sight and for the first time in his life Harlan wondered if he had gone mad; there was a family history, after all.

He looked down at his finger where the pen had cut him and saw a small wound which offered no real comfort as to his questionable sanity.

He was standing in the middle of his store wondering what the hell to do next when there was a small knock at the back door. He crossed the room in a daze, through the counter top and out to the door at the rear. The knocking grew insistent.

“Alright, ALRIGHT!” he yelled at the persistent rapping.

He threw the door open, wondering what else was going on in his world that currently resembled a madhouse. Standing in the doorway was Davey Mackie, still stinking of the ground that he’d buried him in.

Davey’s body was a collection of hastily jammed together pieces that hung awkwardly as though reassembled hastily and without care. He stumbled forwards, his mouth spilling foul desert sand as it tried to speak, but no sound other than a hollow moan spewed forth. He reached out with blackened fingers curled into claws and caught Harlan’s face.

Harlan staggered backwards as the flesh was torn from his cheeks under sharp nails leaving long bloody gouges. His feet caught together and he fell down hard onto the wooden floor, his eyes bulging with the madness that consumed him at the sight of Davey’s bloodless animated corpse.

As Davey fell upon him with clumsy limbs and tearing teeth, Harlan couldn’t even manage to scream as his throat was torn out and he drowned in his own blood. This was thankfully long before Davey’s slow witted mind finally thought to make use of the hardware store’s various sharp edged implements.

CHAPTER 5

cleanup on aisle gross

Cassie hung the phone up and stared down at the black plastic handset as if seeing it for the first time and marveling at the invention. Deputy Tom Lassiter had just shattered her world and, she imagined, the entire town’s world into the bargain.

Apparently, Cora Cohen had let herself into Harlan Harris’ Hardware Store early this morning to clean as usual, only she had found far worse on the floor than a few muddy footprints. According to Tom, Cora had run screaming from the store and had started pounding on the police station doors which were fairly close by. Tom had opened the door to the hysterical woman and it had taken some time and several shots of medicinal brandy to get her to calm down enough to make sense. Tom had left her at the station and gone to investigate himself, unable to believe her wild claims. Cassie had just got off the phone with the deputy to find out that Cora’s claims were not quite so wild after all.

She dressed quickly, shucking on yesterday’s uniform, caring little for questionable fragrances. She ran down the stairs before catching a whiff of Ellie’s breakfast cooking in the kitchen and, not wanting to alarm her daughter by her own hastiness, slowed down.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Ellie asked, looking up.

“I gotta go in early sweetie,” Cassie replied, trying to keep her voice light.

“Bad news?”

Cassie looked at her daughter and, not for the first time, wondered just how smart an 11 year old could or should be. Ellie also looked a little more tired than usual this morning and there were black bags under her eyes that denoted a lack of sleep. Ellie’s chemo had taken a real toll on her. It had been rough and their doctor had told Cassie that Ellie would have some down days as the poison worked its way through her system.

“You sleeping okay, hon?” Cassie asked as she placed a hand on Ellie’s head and ran her fingers across the girl’s forehead, checking the temperature.

“I’m alright,” Ellie shrugged casually. “Just a little tired I guess.”

“So you’re not sleeping then.”

“Easy there, Columbo,” Ellie grinned, with more of her natural good humor. “I was just up late watching TV, is all.”

Cassie smiled back and gave Ellie’s hair a little ruffle before moving to grab a cup of coffee. Her town duties were pressing, but her daughter would always have to be her priority. Ellie’s grin had seemed more like her old self, but she knew that Ellie had never been a big TV watcher, preferring to paint and draw. Cassie also knew that her daughter took after her in being primarily a private person more concerned with alleviating others’ fears rather than giving them credence and fuel. As far as Cassie was concerned, it was an admirable trait in an adult but was an unfair burden to a child.

“I gotta go, Ellie-Belly,” Cassie said, using the teasing nickname to casually watch her daughter’s reaction.

“How many times have I told you not to use that name?” Ellie said exasperatedly.

Cassie was pleased at the response but still made a note in her mental book that she kept for reminders to dig a little deeper into Ellie when she got home. She had found that over the years she had developed an uncanny habit of remembering things at the end of a day, no matter how busy it had been, simply by visualizing the thought as a written scribe in a small brown leather book in her mind. The mental book was filed carefully away in a large silver filing cabinet where she kept everything of use. There were drawers of memories both happy and sad, images of her father and their family growing up, along with photographs of Ellie that she fiercely protected and maintained especially since her daughter’s diagnosis.

She had always been losing pieces of scrap paper or even whole notepads, and even if she did find them often her writing was illegible. Her mental system seemed much more effective and efficient.

She drove the Sheriff’s car as slowly as she could mange through town, not wanting to alarm the early morning risers. Word would spread soon enough around Granton, but she didn’t want to start the fire before she had cast her eyes over the scene personally.

She’d phoned Kevin on the road and roused him from his slumber. To the man’s credit he had been awake in a second as soon as she’d told him that there was a potential homicide situation. She’d told him to get down to the hardware store in uniform and protect the scene as he lived closer than she did. Kevin was a reliable rock and never deviated from his orders; she could rely on him to not let anyone in to contaminate the scene. Her mind was racing as she tried to open the filing cabinet in her mind and recall all appropriate procedurals in these circumstances.

Crime in Granton was relatively rare and they were rarely called upon to act like anything other than public servants no different from Town Council members. They cleaned up the occasional drunken brawl and sporadic petty domestic squabbles. There was little call for real police work, which suited her and the residents just fine. She knew that Tom longed to be a real detective, but she had stood at enough bloody crime scenes to know that the reality was far from an attractive proposition. During her stint in the big city, most deaths were pointless explosions of violence that left the perpetrator as equally shocked as the victim.

She pulled up outside the hardware store and was pleased to see that the whole area had been taped off with blue and white police issue plastic. Tom must have found some tape in one of the storage closets at the station; she was surprised that the sticky side hadn’t perished, such was the length of time since they had last used it.

There were people starting to mill around nosily as word was beginning to spread that something out of the ordinary was happening. Tom was walking slowly up and down the perimeter and Kevin was standing guard like a stone sentry at the door to Harlan’s store.

Cassie parked up and ignored the occasional enquiry from some of the gathered crowd that had started to form outside on the street. She ducked under the tape and headed across the parking lot towards Tom. “How you doing, Tom?” she asked, looking over the young deputy for any signs that he was in shock.

“I’m okay Boss,” he replied, nodding curtly. She was pleased to see that apart from looking a little green around the gills, he seemed to be okay.

“You didn’t touch anything inside did you?” she asked pointedly.

“Nope. I can’t speak for Cora, the cleaner, but you won’t find any contamination of the scene by me. I took Cora’s prints at the station to eliminate them.”

“You’re sure that she wasn’t involved?”

“Believe me Boss, when you see what’s in there, you won’t think so,” Tom said with a small shudder. “I ascertained that the place was empty of suspects and that the rear doors were locked securely.”

“Did you confirm that the body was, in fact, dead?”

“I didn’t need to,” he said gingerly.

Cassie left him patrolling the perimeter and headed towards Kevin.

“Morning, Sheriff,” the big man greeted her.

“You been in?” Cassie asked, nodding towards the doorway.

“No, just taped off the parking lot and made sure that no one else did,” he answered officiously.

“Good man,” she said as she stopped to put on surgical gloves and shoe covers before ducking past him and entering the store.

The first thing that struck her was the smell. There was a scent to death; once it got in your head, it never left. She had been around plenty of crime scenes when she’d lived and worked in Cedar Falls a few years ago, before her return to Granton. It was true that blood had a coppery metallic aroma and a taste that seemed to sit in the back of your throat for the rest of the day no matter what you ate or drank to drown it out.

She crossed the store, steeling herself for what she was about to find. She’d deliberately avoided gathering details from Tom as she wanted to discover the scene fresh and without his prejudices or theories. Tom was an avid studier of the work of detectives, but he had yet to put any of his theoretical knowledge into practice. She had a feeling that he would be a good cop one day, but he needed to realise that not everything could be found within his text books. She had been well on her way to making detective in Cedar Falls until her father’s death had brought her home.

The store was dimly lit with only the natural light streaming through the front windows acting as illumination. The overhead store lights weren’t on but she found the switch on the wall easily enough. The store was suddenly bright and clear as the shadows were forced back, extinguished by the light.

She walked carefully, making sure that she trod on no evidence left behind. She reached the counter and took a deep breath as she stepped around it. In spite of her experiences in Cedar Falls, her hand flew involuntarily to her mouth at the sight on the floor below her.

She recognised Harlan Harris, or at least what was left of him. Harris had been a big man but in death he seemed strangely diminished. His Hawaiian shirt was shredded open and the multicolored garment was now mixed with a whole new set of garish patterns as his blood and guts were strewn about. At an initial glance, it seemed like an animal attack of some kind. The man’s flesh seemed to have been torn open and chunks of his innards were pulled free and it seemed as though something had been eating him.

She couldn’t help but look around a little nervously at the surroundings, spooked by the violence on show in such a timid setting. While she had attended several murder scenes and worked on multiple investigations in Cedar Falls, Granton had never seen anything like this before and she was worried about the mass panic that may start to spread. She made a mental note in her book to put together a town meeting before the rumor mill started turning.

A sound in the back caught her ears and her hand flew instinctively to her gun in the belt holster on her waist. The revolver was almost drawn in a flash before she realised just how jumpy she was.

Harlan’s hardware store had a couple of rooms off the back of the shop floor and while Tom had assured her that he had checked them over, she wasn’t about to trust him with her life. Chances are that it was just a random noise of no significance - maybe a cat, maybe a soft breeze making itself a nuisance - but she stood to check it out.

She stepped carefully around the body, avoiding the mess on the floor, and at the same time thinking to herself that, given the man’s injuries, there surely wasn’t enough blood on show.

She passed by the back door and gave the handle a tug, reassuring herself that it was indeed locked. With her hand on her revolver, she moved slowly and cautiously, refusing to draw the weapon as she didn’t want to give in to irrational fears. That thought was quickly extinguished when she briefly turned back to what was left of Harlan and figured that perhaps fear wasn’t that irrational after all.

She drew the gun smoothly for the first time in her position as the Sheriff of Granton. The weapon felt heavy and unnatural in her hand but the very weight of it felt substantial and comforting.

She ducked into the kitchen and saw that it was empty with no place to hide. She moved around the room quickly, finding nothing and stepping back outside. There was one other room to the side and the door was shut.

She looked down at the floor and saw a couple of small spots on the linoleum. She knelt down and took a closer look. The two dots were dark in color and seemed to be dry. As she peered closer at the floor, she could see that it had been recently cleaned and there was a strong smell of detergent. She touched one of the dots and rubbed what came off between her fingers, thinking the worst.

With a deep steadying breath she stood and raised her gun arm, using the other hand to grip underneath, firming her stance. She pushed at the door with her foot and it swung open with a gentle creak.

Inside the room were several boxes stacked high for storage. There were shelves lining the walls which were laden with stock for the store. There were two large filing cabinets, free-standing on the floor, and piles of paperwork were placed neatly on top in matching folders. The room looked like an office come stockroom and she had to admit that Harlan had been one neat man despite his outwardly scruffy appearance.

She checked around carefully and saw nothing out of the ordinary. She was about to leave again when she spotted the mop bucket standing in the corner of the room next to a white porcelain sink. Something made her walk closer and as she did she could see that it had been used recently.

Her curiosity was piqued, as surely Cora the cleaner hadn’t stopped to do her morning cleaning duties before running screaming from the store after finding Harlan’s body. If someone had used the mop and bucket then they presumably had something to clean up.

As she stepped to the sink, she could see that the inside of the sink was splashed with fading pinkish water. She pulled the mop from the bucket and saw that the rag ties were darkly stained. She heard something gently tap behind her and she spun around quickly, gun raised and steady. The sound seemed to have come from one of the two large metal lockers at the back of the room against the far wall. She crossed the room, quickly flicking off the safety catch from the 38 and wrapping her finger gently onto the trigger.

“POLICE, COME OUT SLOWLY!” she ordered with a strong authoritative voice.

She took another step closer when there was no answer. The two lockers were around six feet high and three feet wide, perfectly capable of concealing a human being. She knew that protocol demanded that she call in either Tom or Kevin for backup, but they were the amateurs here.