Evil Harvest (5 page)

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Authors: Anthony Izzo

BOOK: Evil Harvest
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Mikey had bugged their dad for a month to get him an authentic New York Yankees cap, just like Don Mattingly wore. His father had surprised Mikey one night by bringing it home from work, and for the next two months, Mikey had kept that hat glued to his head.
It still had mud caked on the brim. Matt sniffed it to see if he could conjure up a memory of his little brother. He smelled the faint odor of sweat, a child’s sweat, but no bubble gum. Mikey had constantly chewed Double Bubble, stuffing four or five pieces in his mouth at a time. Their mother always worried that he would either choke himself or rot out all his teeth.
Mikey had only been five when They chased him down to the ravine, where he lost his balance and went over the edge. Matt could still hear the high-pitched scream as his brother tumbled over the edge and fell eighty feet to his death on the rocks below. He had screamed for their mother the whole time.
Matt had been fourteen when that happened. Mikey and his parents murdered on the same day, Matt helpless to stop it. He wished for the three of them back. In the next four years after the murders, Aunt Bernie had done well filling in for his mother. Then came the blow up with Uncle Rex and Matt’s departure. After leaving his aunt and uncle’s home, he’d thought long and hard about his future and decided on the Army Rangers. He’d learn to fight, handle weapons. And then he’d return.
Matt felt himself start to tear up; his throat felt as if he were trying to swallow a chestnut, and he thought again that it probably wasn’t healthy to carry around the dead’s clothes. It was even a little morbid, he supposed. But it was also fuel that fed the fire that burned inside of him. Every time he took out that hat, it cut him open again, pissed him off. Like poking a cut just to feel the pain and remember what it was like the moment the skin tore open.
Someone would pay
. That phrase had echoed in his mind while he endured marches with sixty-pound packs, freezing cold mud and water and drill sergeants screaming in his ear. That was why he had almost relished it, the sizzling sand and heat and walking through a minefield during Desert Storm. It all led back to Lincoln, getting ready for his own war.
He put the hat back in his suitcase and lay back on the bed, his hands twined behind his head.
“I miss you guys,” he said.
Remembering the light, he got up, switched it off and flopped back on the bed. As he drifted off to sleep, he prayed for no dreams of a little boy plunging over a cliff.
C
HAPTER
5
The sun creeping through the blinds awoke Matt at six o’clock the next morning. He sat up on the bed and stretched. Six o’clock, the same as every other morning. He swung his legs around, put some weight on his ankle. It smarted, but not as badly as he thought it would. Just a twist, no sprain.
He managed fifty push-ups and two hundred crunches. Normally, he also would have run a few miles, but Jill Adams and her crowbar put that on hold.
Matt went downstairs, opened the door and peered at the house. There were lights on, and Aunt Bernie walked past the dining room window in a fuzzy red bathrobe. He wondered if Uncle Rex was still asleep.
Uncle Rex was the reason Matt left Lincoln in the first place. After the death of Mikey and his parents, he went to live with Uncle Rex and Aunt Bernie. Aunt Bernie cooked him huge meals, trying to fatten him up, always telling him he needed to eat more.
Uncle Rex was another story.
Rex Lapchek was ill-tempered, ignorant and in Matt’s eyes an all-around gorilla. He even looked a little apish, what with his hairy knuckles and jutting forehead. He’d been working at the Ford plant since he was eighteen, starting off in the foundry and still putting together engine blocks after thirty years on the job. In his mind, he was always getting screwed.
The UAW wasn’t fighting hard enough for him, GM was trying to take away his pension, the other workers were “lazy sonzabitches” and he still had to work with too many minorities.
The world was never right with Rex Lapchek, despite the fact that he had a highly coveted manufacturing job and brought home nearly sixty thousand dollars a year with overtime.
When Matt had lived there during his teen years, he made every attempt to stay away from his uncle. It was relatively easy, because Uncle Rex worked second shift—even after thirty years at the plant, he never exercised his option to take a position on the first shift. Matt suspected he worked second shift so he wouldn’t have to spend time with his wife. He would come home at twelve thirty or one in the morning, reheat the leftovers Aunt Bernie left him and slam down a few Budweisers. Then it was off to bed until noon the next day. When he’d been into the Budweiser a little too much, he referred to Matt exclusively as “shithead.” Charming man.
The big blowup had come the summer Matt turned eighteen. Matt had finally gotten Tammy Varga to go out with him after two months of asking. It was a Saturday night, and Uncle Rex had set his curfew at eleven o’clock. Matt and Tammy had gone to the Transit Drive-In, and after about half and hour, they decided they were more interested in each other than the movie.
After some making out, Tammy had let Matt feel her breasts and then took his hand and slid it down into her shorts. He had fumbled around until she asked him if he wanted to see what was “up there.” He happened to catch a glimpse at Tammy’s watch. It was eleven ten.
Disappointed because he couldn’t do any more backseat exploring, but more afraid of Uncle Rex, he dropped Tammy at her door. Tammy called him chickenshit for listening to his auntie and uncle too much, then gave him the finger as he sped away. So much for that date.
He had come home to find the door unlocked. Thank heavens for small miracles, he remembered thinking. Uncle Rex’s truck was not in the yard or the open garage. Matt began to slink into the door when headlights lit him up. It was Uncle Rex coming home from work.
Rex Lapchek didn’t even bother to turn the car or the lights off. Like an angry grizzly, he charged at Matt and caught him in the doorway. He slammed Matt into the wall, making Matt’s teeth rattle in his mouth. Matt could smell cigarettes and stale Jim Beam on his uncle. There had been some yelling, some protesting by his Aunt Bernie for Rex not to hurt him. Uncle Rex cuffed him across the cheek, his high school ring slicing Matt’s cheek open.
He got up, holding his face and muttering “bastard” under his breath as he went to his room. The next morning, he packed his bags and left. He scrawled an apology on a napkin to his aunt for causing so much trouble, withdrew his savings from the bank and took the first Greyhound out of town.
Now he was back, a little older and a lot less apt to put up with any of his uncle’s bullshit.
Screw him
, Matt thought, and went outside.
He walked over to the house and rang the bell. Aunt Bernie opened the door.
“Come on in, Matthew. You look famished!”
“Damn fool had the blunt end of a Phillips head screwdriver up his ass. No lie.” Cora Matthews let out a shriek of a laugh. Folds of fat strained against her blouse and jiggled like a renegade piece of Jell-O.
“How did you get it out?” Jill asked her.
“Very carefully. You shoulda heard that man squeal! We almost tore the ass out of him getting that thing out.”
Jill Adams and the other nurse, Julie Maretto, both burst into laughter, drawing a dirty look from a shrunken old woman seated in the waiting room.
The ER had been quiet all day. An elderly man had been in Room 4 with intestinal discomfort, but he was up having an ultrasound. The other patient was eleven-year-old Danny Lopez, who had come in with a stomach bug.
Jill sat on the desktop among a pile of file folders and someone’s red-and-white 7-Eleven coffee mug. Cora sat in a swivel chair, her bulk making the chair look like a child’s toy. It wasn’t that she was just heavy, she was a large woman, standing at what Jill guessed to be about six-two.
“I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard stories about small rodents being stuffed up there,” Julie replied.
“That’s a one-way street as far as I’m concerned,” Jill replied.
“You don’t know the half of it.” Julie gave her a grin, showing off neat, square teeth. The woman had a terrific smile except for one yellowed incisor that always reminded Jill of a wolf’s tooth.
“I don’t know what little Miss Jilly’s doing here anyway, Jules. She could’ve had a scholarship to Duke,” Cora said.
“What
are
you doing here?” Julie asked.
“I’ve always wanted to be a nurse.”
“That attitude will change.” Julie snorted.
Cora placed a hand on Jill’s leg. “Seriously, Jill. You’re bright and pretty and I’d kill to have that cute little figure. Why don’t you get a job making some real money, find yourself a nice man?”
Cora was starting to sound like her mother. “Like I said, my dad died when I was young. Shot in a robbery. When my mother told me, it hit me like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I’ll bet.” Cora nodded somberly.
“I thought it was awful that he had a chance to live and couldn’t be saved. So I decided I would get into medicine. Maybe I can stop that from happening to someone else. Save a few lives.”
“You’re too idealistic,” Julie said.
“Or it could be you’re too jaded,” Jill retorted.
Julie sighed. “It’s a way to earn a living, that’s it.”
“Don’t you think it should be more than that?”
“It pays the bills,” said Julie.
“Uh-oh. Here she comes,” Cora said, rolling her eyes.
“She” was Dorothy Gaines, their supervisor. She walked down the hallway toward the nurses’ station with long, purposeful strides, a clipboard tucked under her left arm. Reaching the nurses’ station, she stood board-straight and drummed her fingers on the counter.
Dorothy wore horn-rimmed glasses on the end of her pointy nose. She was rope-thin, knotted her hair in a tight bun, favored solid brown or gray tops and pants. Jill heard she was around forty-five, but she looked sixty, and that was on a good day.
“How are we doing, girls?” she asked.
“Things’re just a little slow, Dorothy,” Cora replied.
“How is Mr. Fleisher?”
“Still having his ultrasound.”
She frowned and checked her clipboard. “Jill, what about the Lopez boy? Have you checked his IV? I don’t want him getting dehydrated.”
“He’s got almost a full bag. I just sent one of the aides in to get his temp and BP,” Jill said.
Dorothy pushed her glasses up and gave Jill a look designed to freeze. “This place is going down the tubes. They’ll hire anybody these days.” She stalked away, parting two nurses’ aides as she went.
“Boy, she sure don’t like you,” Cora said.
“I guess not.”
“It’s because you’re smarter than her. Old witch,” Julie muttered.
“There’s just one thing I’d like to know,” Jill said.
Cora and Julie both looked at her.
“When she’s having her operation.”
“What operation?” Cora and Julie said in unison.
“The one to have the two-by-four removed from her ass.”
Cora and Julie broke into a fit of laughter.
 
 
Matt sopped up the last of the syrup on his plate with a piece of pancake and popped it in his mouth, relishing the tangy blueberries. He had polished off seven pancakes and now his belly felt like it would burst.
Aunt Bernie leaned across the table, studied him. “Are you sure you don’t want more?”
“If you want me to explode, I’ll eat more.”
Aunt Bernie smiled at him, satisfied that he had eaten enough, then sat back. She had eaten four pancakes, five strips of bacon and half a cheese omelet. The remains of their breakfast sat on the table: sticky plates, an empty coffee cup and a juice glass. He leaned back in his chair and patted his swollen belly, thinking he would have to step up his exercise program to work off this meal.
Aunt Bernie had asked him where he’d been over the past ten years and he rattled off a list of cities: San Francisco, Seattle, Las Vegas.
They talked about Matt’s mother, what a kind woman she was and how they both missed her. Was he going to stay long in Lincoln? For a while at least. Did he have a job lined up? Not yet, but he was working on it. He was going job hunting this morning, but before that he had a few errands to run.
Thanking Aunt Bernie for the breakfast, he kissed her on the cheek, promising that they would talk more when he got back, and headed for the side door.
Aunt Bernie followed him, asking, “What kind of errands are you running, Matthew?”
“Going to do some clothes shopping and pick up a few groceries.”
She scowled. “You’re a guest here, remember.”
He’d forgotten rule number one: no guest pays for food in Bernadette Lapchek’s house. “I know, I know, but at least let me pick up a few things.”
“Why don’t you take the truck out on your errands? You can fit more in it and it needs a good running anyway.”
“Uncle Rex won’t mind?”
“He barely uses it. One of his buddies drives him to work.” She took the key ring off a wooden holder and handed it to him.
He walked outside, the sun glaring in his eyes even at this early hour. He appreciated the truck, but if anything happened, his uncle would flip out. Matt wasn’t afraid of Rex Lapchek, not anymore, but he was afraid of what he might do to Rex Lapchek if things turned violent.
He felt a little sluggish after the huge breakfast and went back to his room for a morning nap. When he awoke, the digital clock read 9:36 and he decided it was time to get the day moving along.
After a quick shower and shave inside the house (still no Uncle Rex), he borrowed the phone book from Aunt Bernie and looked up Lincoln Firearms, the local gunshop. It had been in Lincoln for years, but he could never remember whether it was on Elmwood or Delevan. The address was 4231 Delevan Street.
He picked up the receiver, dialed the number for Lincoln Firearms. A gruff-sounding male voice on the other end told him that their hours were from ten
A.M.
until five
P.M.
He toyed with the idea of calling Jill Adams but decided it was too early, even though he was dying to talk to her. Besides, she was most likely tending to patients.
Patients at a hospital he wanted to avoid. You couldn’t get him inside Lincoln Mercy if he had blood coming out of every major orifice in his body. As a kid, he and his friends had passed around stories, mostly overheard from grown-ups. Patients mysteriously dying. Botched surgeries. A nurse named Helen Devereaux vanished from the parking deck back in the eighties. Police from three surrounding towns searched for her for a week before finding her dismembered corpse in a wooded area two towns away.

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