Blue Stew (Second Edition) (7 page)

Henry dropped him off at five-before-eight. A heavy, driving mist still enveloped the wet town.

Henry pulled away, and Walter had only taken a few gimpy paces towards the front entrance when the door burst open.

“Walter!” It was Kall Chansky, the proprietor. “I can’t believe you would come in this morning!”

“So you heard?” Walter had to fight back an inappropriate grin.

“Melisa Corey came in early. Sounds like Tom has been up all night with this one.” Kall shook his head. “Can you believe
any
of it?”

Walter gave him a look.

“I mean—of
course
you can, you were
there
. What am I saying?” Kall laughed, but then tried to cover it over with a cough. He frowned, now, instead. “I didn’t think there’d be any chance you would come in, after going through that. How
are
you?”

Walter shrugged, and, knowing full well it wasn’t what Kall meant, said, “I’m still sore from the crash, but nothing I can’t work through.”

“
No
, no. I heard about the man in the jeep . . . about Tom Corey cornering the disfigured psychopath in Doris’s house . . . and then him stabbing himself right in front of the both of you. How do you
deal
with stuff like that?”

“Well, Kall, I guess just come into the work the next day and try to act like everything’s normal.”

Kall held up his hands apologetically, “
Yeah
, yeah. Of course you didn’t come in to talk about this, I’m
sorry
. I can—”

“It’s okay,” Walter cut in. “That’s not what I meant.”

“
No
, I can put you to work on the lift in the stock-yard so you don’t have to deal with no-good gossipers like myself.”

“Really,
no
,” said Walter with powerful emphasis. “I think it’ll be good to talk about it. Therapeutic, you know?”

Kall tightened his lips and nodded. “Okay, sure, okay. Hey, speaking of therapy, is it true about Doris, that she’s going to have to go see somebody?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I guess having a deranged lunatic break into your house at night and try to kill you can . . . have that effect.”

“He wanted to do
much
worse than kill her,” Walter spoke flatly. “If you had seen him, or seen the man in the Jeep . . .”

Kall didn’t respond. His sense of decency had just been pitted to a stalemate against his curiosity: both were strong.

“Anyway,” Walter spoke into the silence. “What are we still doing out here?” He held out his hands, bringing to attention the drizzle.

“Yeah! Sorry. Let’s get in and get us some coffee, then get to it.”

•   •   •

The short, initial back-and-forth between Kall and himself turned out to be a pretty consistent template for Walter’s interactions throughout the day. Everyone has a dark side, and as much as everyone’s dark side yearned to dive into the gruesome nitty-gritty with Walter, everyone that day showed enough self-restraint to only brush over or hint at the extent of the derangement that Walter had witnessed.

One, maybe two of the customers who drove around back to have their heavy purchases retrieved and loaded by Walter touched on something unfamiliar, something about “men in the woods.” But, with how they would vaguely jumble it in with other muddy details of the night, Walter just assumed that they had misspoken, or simply were regurgitating third- or fourth-hand gossip decidedly removed from the truth. At any rate, in each instance there was never a good opportunity to clear up the details.

So, when Melisa Corey—wife of Officer Tom Corey—came around again near two in the afternoon, Walter was oblivious to the large ongoing developments.

Walter, just inside the store’s entrance, was arranging the heavier pumpkins throughout an autumnal display of twine-bundled dried cornstalks, locally woven brooms, and green squash. It was part of an attempt to bring some local, old-fashioned flavor to an establishment that resided in one of the most modern-looking buildings in all of Sutherland, Vermont.

A bell jingled, announcing the arrival of a customer.

“Oh, good afternoon, Walter,” spoke a female voice from behind Walter.

Walter set down a pumpkin and turned. Melisa Corey had just come in through the front entrance. Unthinkingly, Walter dusted off the grimy work clothes that Henry had lent him: Melisa was a good looking older woman.

“Hi, Melisa.”

“I’m surprised you came in today,” she stepped out of the way of the entrance as another customer opened the door, tinkling the bell.

“So is everyone.”

“
Hah
. Then everyone’s heard, I take it?” she asked.

“So far,” Walter grinned.

“Well, five
horrible
deaths in one night . . .”

“Yeah—
what? Five?
”

Melisa frowned, “So everyone
hasn’t
heard, then?”

Walter drew his head back, making a confused, keep-talking sort of face.

“Yes, poor Tom had only been home for an hour, the sun had already begun to come up, when the next call came in. Paul Stanley had been out walking his sap lines, the ones in the woods behind his house, when he came across the night’s fourth fatality . . . dismembered . . . hanging from a low branch . . . sap lines coiled around his neck . . .”

Walter had enjoyed it too much to note how unnecessary the grisly details had been.

“Fourth? So who was the
third?
”

“Well, this is how Tom’s been referencing them,” explained Melisa helpfully, like someone relaying a favorite recipe: “After that corpse was found, Tom radioed in all the local police, firefighters, and volunteer first-responders, and he had them sweep the stretch of woods from Paul’s house to Doris’s. A fifth victim was found within an hour. Had his head smashed against an old stone wall, over and over . . .”

Walter didn’t even think to cringe out of civility, “But that’s still only four . . . ?”

“Yes,” Melisa went on, “at that point, seeing how the river ran straight through this hotspot of
unthinkable
butchery, Tom instructed everyone to operate under the assumption that you in fact
had
seen a man floating down the river, even though you hadn’t been completely sure. They’re looking for him now, actually: Victim Number Two. Victim Number
Three
is also the leading suspect.”

Up until now—tired and overwhelmed as he was—Walter had not spared any thought for the man in the river.

“Oh
yeah
. Wow. I’m afraid to ask . . . have they identified any of the victims yet? Or their killer?”

Melisa lifted her shoulders, “No . . . I’m sorry to say you’re pretty much up to speed at this point, Walter. Tom’s never seen or heard of
anything
like this.”

“Who has?”

Melisa nodded gravely.

“Poor Tommy . . . I’m afraid he’s going to work himself into the loony bin with this one . . . but how are
you?
Tom’s
supposed
to deal with these things. You just had a night of
horrific
luck.”

“No one’s
supposed
to deal with these things,” was all Walter said.

Melisa appeared on the verge of protest, but didn’t, “You’re right.”

A country song was subliminally filling the store, coming from a radio on a high shelf beyond the two nearby checkout aisles.

“Anyway,” Melisa started fresh, “I heard you were here. I wanted to extend an invitation for you to come over to our place for dinner. I used to be good friends with your mom.”

Walter—out of a reflex that would have him reject any act of generosity—was about to decline, when he thought about sitting down for dinner with Officer Tom Corey. That would be weird. Also, it would be an opportunity for him to immerse himself in the investigation again, which was another attractive prospect.

“That’s very kind of you.
Sure
. Tonight?”

“Well, I’m going to guess that if Tommy’s even home for dinner tonight, he will be a corpse himself.” Melisa reacted to her own joke with a quick sniff of distaste, “that’s not funny.”

Walter laughed louder than he should have at the instant joke-retraction.

“But . . . how about a tentative plan for tomorrow night?”

“Sounds great, Melisa.”

This was good, because, although he didn’t know it (this time), Walter already had dinner plans that night.

Henry picked him up sometime after four. As they drove away from the store, Henry relayed—sure to emphasize the second-hand nature of the message—how Nigel had told him that they still had a lot of food leftover from the night before, and thought that they should all get together and have a second go at the group dinner. Walter was still consumed by the content of his conversation with Melisa earlier, so he remained ignorant to what this could easily imply, and he agreed.

•   •   •

As Walter and Henry watched TV in the living room while Nigel and Jamie prepared the food in the kitchen, there were no loud hints at likely topics of dinner conversation, and so the absentminded Walter remained oblivious.

Walter finally considered what might be happening
only
when Nigel asked Jamie, while all four of them were seated in the dining area of the kitchen in front of a plateful of rotisserie chicken and a cob of corn, “So I guess no one else is coming, at this point?”

Nigel and Jamie made significant eye contact.

Walter narrowed his own eyes at Nigel.

Why
hadn’t he thought of this before?

Jamie said, “Doesn’t matter,” and her anticipatory glare at her boyfriend was as sharp as a needle.

Nigel turned tentatively back towards Walter, who wore an only a slightly less dangerous look.

“Okay, I know a
lot
has happened,” and here Nigel coughed a most uncomfortable cough, “but it
shouldn’t
distract us from other
real
issues. It’s gone far beyond any youthful, stupid experimentation at this point . . . I would know a thing about that. Walter . . . we talk about you . . . we
worry
about you.”

If he had showed no emotion in response to the heartfelt sentiment, or even if he had indignantly gone on the defensive, at least his reaction would’ve been understandable. Walter’s mind, however, took it all in a very different direction. His eyes had moved over to Jamie’s glare, trained on Nigel as he spoke. He wasn’t able to stop himself from visualizing Jamie, sitting so close to Nigel, having stuck her hand up his ass and working his mouth like a puppet. Only for a second, but nonetheless Walter failed to suppress a horribly-timed grin.

Nigel saw it. His mouth gaped and he dropped his hands to the table, rattling the plates and utensils. He had been put under a huge amount of pressure these past two nights, and this seemed to set him off.

“And
that’s
just the point of all this,” he spoke with much more conviction now, “how can you think any of this shit is
funny?
When did you stop
caring
, Walter?”

“No, I’m sorry, I just . . .” Walter trailed off. Explaining what had happened in his head would not help.