Flesh (13 page)

Barney sidestepped, reached over, pinched a leg of Steve’s white trousers and lifted. “I already checked that, myself,” Steve said. He raised both cuffs above his socks.

Barney crouched for a close look, then turned to Jake. “How ’bout you?”

“I took three showers after—”

“So y’got hygiene. Lift your pants.”

Jake drew them up to his knees. Barney squatted beside him, took a long look, then slid Jake’s socks down around his ankles.

“Okay, so now we know you guys aren’t gonna start munchin’ on me.”

Jake nodded. “So I’m not the only one who thinks this snake-thing made Smeltzer go haywire.”

“It don’t make sense, but it makes sense.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree,” Steve said. “It sounds mad but the possibility is certainly there…some kind of creature that sustains itself through a symbiotic relationship with its human host. A parasite. But it doesn’t simply take its nourishment from its host, it somehow controls his eating habits.”

Barney smirked. “Less Smeltzer was in the habit a’ eatin’ his wife.”

“So we’re talking,” Jake said, “about a snakelike creature that burrows into a person, takes control of his mind, and compels him to eat human flesh. That
is
what we’re talking about here, right?”

“Can’t be,” Barney said. “Last time I looked I wasn’t nuts.”

“If there’s another way to interpret this situation,” Steve said, “I’d be more than eager to hear it.”

“Yeah. You guys are figments a’ my fuckin’ nightmare.”

“Neither of you, I take it, has ever heard of a similar situation.”

“You gotta be kiddin’.”

“I’ve heard of cannibalism,” Jake said, “but never anything about a snake or whatever that gets inside you and turns you into one.”

“Gentlemen, I think we’ve got a situation.” Steve slipped a fresh cigar from a pocket of his white jacket, stripped off its wrapper, and bit off its end. He spat the wad of leaf into the table gutter. He licked the whole cigar. Then he poked it into his mouth and lit up.

“I drove over to Marlowe, yesterday, at the request of a colleague, Herman Willis. Thursday afternoon, the nude body
of a twenty-two-year-old female was found. It had been buried in a field just east of Marlowe. Might never have turned up, except a kid happened to be out playing in the field with his dog. The dog found the grave. The kid ran home for a shovel, apparently thinking he had stumbled onto a buried treasure. He dug for a while, then ran home yelling.”

“Musta’ gave’m a good turn.”

“Here’s the interesting part: the body had been eaten. Quite a lot of the skin had been torn off, portions of muscle devoured.” The cigar in Steve’s hand was shaking. “She had bite marks all over her body. Some were just enough to break the skin, others took out chunks of her. Her torso had been ripped open. Her heart had been torn out and partly eaten. Her head…she had been scalped. Her skull had been caved in with a blunt instrument, possibly a rock. Her brain was missing.”

“Holy fuckin’ mayonnaise,” Barney muttered.

“Willis had never seen anything like this. I think he called me in more for moral support than for my professional opinion. At any rate, the teeth marks and the saliva samples we took from the wounds indicated that her assailant was human.”

“Yer sayin’ she was a victim of this thing.”

“Of someone ‘occupied’ by this thing.”

“When was this person killed?” Jake asked.

“Wednesday, around midnight. Willis was able to pinpoint the time of death pretty accurately based on her stomach contents. She’d been seen at a local pizza joint at eight that night. The degree to which the pizza had been digested—”

Barney flicked the back of his hand against the hip of the body stretched in front of him. “So, where was Ronald Smeltzer Wednesday night?”

“I don’t think Smeltzer did it,” Jake said. His heart was beating fast. “That van, the one that tried to run down Celia Jamerson, was coming from the direction of Marlowe.
Thursday afternoon. Someone, some
thing,
got out of the van alive. There was blood on the pavement behind the rear door. I followed the traces into the field, but couldn’t…” He shook his head. “Where the van crashed was only a few hundred yards from the Oakwood Inn. Suppose what I tried to follow was this snake-thing and it found its way to the restaurant, got into Smeltzer that night?” Jake turned to Steve. “You got that John Doe from the van?”

“This way.”

They followed Steve out of the autopsy room, down the corridor, and into a room, with a dozen refrigerator compartments. He checked the drawer labels, then slid one open. The body that rolled out was covered by a sheet. Jake was grateful for the aroma of Steve’s cigar, though it wasn’t enough to mask the odor of burnt flesh and hair.

“If you’d prefer not to see this,” Steve said, “I think I know what we’re looking for.”

Jake, who had seen the charred corpse hanging out the windshield of the van, wasn’t eager for a close-up view. But he didn’t want to look squeamish in front of Barney, so he kept quiet.

“Let’s see’m,” Barney said.

Steve drew back the sheet. Jake stared at the edge of the aluminum drawer. Though he didn’t focus on the body, he saw it. He saw a black thing vaguely shaped like a human.

“I’ll have to turn him over,” Steve said.

“Manage?” Barney asked, sounding reluctant to help.

“No problem.”

Jake swung his gaze over to Steve and saw that he was wearing surgical gloves. He watched Steve bend over the body. Jake heard papery crumbling sounds. He heard himself groan.

“Guy’s a real flake,” Barney muttered. “Fallin’ apart over ya.”

Steve grinned rigidly around the cigar in his teeth. Lifting and pulling, he wrestled the black lump onto its front.
When he finished, the front of his white jacket looked as if someone had rubbed it with charcoal.

“Jake, you were right.”

Jake let his eyes be guided by Steve’s pointing finger to the gray knobs of spinal column laid bare from the nape of the corpse’s neck to midway down its back.

“Looks like the thing was positioned the same as in Smeltzer,” Steve said.

“Only didn’t take a sneaky way out,” Barney added.

“With all this damage, it’s hard to be sure exactly what happened, but it appears that the thing made an emergency exit by splitting open the skin all the way up.”

“Must be awfully strong,” Jake said, “to do that.”

“Yeah,” Barney said. “And to open the van’s backdoor.”

“The impact probably popped the door open,” Jake told him.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I’ll take a mold of this man’s teeth and draw a blood sample,” Steve said, “and make a run over to Marlowe. I’ll call from there and let you know if it’s a match, but I’d be willing to bet on it.”

“Call me at home,” Barney told him. “I got a hot poker game goin’.”

“If this
is
the guy who killed the woman in Marlowe,” Jake said, “it pretty much clinches our theory.”

“I think we can assume it’s clinched.”

“Yeah,” Barney agreed. “So we got us a snake that gets inta guys an’ turns ’m into cannibals. Y’believe it?”

Jake stepped away from the corpse. He leaned against the wall of drawers, scooted sideways to get a handle out of his back, and folded his arms. “The thing killed on Wednesday. It tried for Celia Jamerson on Thursday afternoon, then started to go for Peggy Smeltzer on Thursday night. That looks like maybe it goes for a new victim daily.”

“Give us this day our daily broad,” Barney said.

“This is Saturday. I wonder if it got someone yesterday.”

“Can’t do it on its own,” Barney said, “or it wouldn’t be climbing inta guys.”

“We’d better check out everyone who was at the restaurant Thursday night, everybody who’s come into contact with Smeltzer’s body.”

“Y’got yourself a job. Get on it. Do whatcha can on yer own, we’ll see where it gets us. Nobody knows but us three, we’ll keep it that way. Folks hear about this thing, they’ll go apeshit. Yer our task force, Jake. Stay on this till we got it nailed. Report t’me.”

“What about Chuck?”

“I’ll reassign him till yer done. I want y’workin alone. That’s the only way we’re gonna keep this quiet.”

“Are you sure we should keep this quiet?” Steve asked. “If people are aware of the danger, they’ll take precautions.”

“They’ll go apeshit. Or they’ll say
we
got loose screws. Or both.”

“I’m aware of that, but—”

“Keep yer drawers on, Apple. We don’t nail this down in a day or two, we’ll let the whole suck-head world in on it. Okay? Y’can hold a press conference. But let’s take a crack at it before we start tellin’ folks they’re on the fuckin’ menu.”

Alison didn’t know why she was here. She had left the house after lunch and started walking with no destination in mind, just the desire to be alone and to be outside.

The wandering had taken her down Summer Street, to within sight of Evan’s apartment. She was finished with him, but she gazed across the street at his building as if to
punish herself. She saw two windows on the second story that belonged to his rooms. The shades were open. Was he inside? Was Tracy Morgan with him? Was he alone and would he see her passing by and come after her?

He didn’t come after her.

Alison had walked on, feeling empty.

Not knowing why, she’d ended up here—in the woods above Clinton Creek. The creek was swollen and rushing. It washed around islands of rock. Occasionally, it carried along tree limbs, casualties of last night’s storm.

Alison made her way carefully down the steep embankment. At the water’s edge, she noticed a familiar, flat-topped rock. During her years in Clinton, especially when she’d been a freshman and an emotional wreck, she had spent a lot of time on this very rock. Standing on it, sitting on it, sometimes with her bare feet in the water. She used to think of it as Solitary Rock. It was where she always came to be alone when she was feeling low.

She had forgotten about it. She had been down here several times over the past few months, had probably seen Solitary Rock and maybe even stood on it without remembering that it used to be so special.

Now she remembered. She stepped onto it and sat down, drawing her knees up and hugging them against her body.

This is nice, she thought. No wonder I used to come here all the time.

She heard a car cross the bridge, a sound much like that of the rushing water. She looked toward the bridge, but it was hidden by trees beyond the bend in the stream. She looked the other way and saw only the stream sluicing around a rocky curve. The slopes on both sides were heavy with bushes and trees. She saw no one, but wondered if there were couples concealed in nooks among the foliage or rocks, making love.

It was just around that bend where she and Evan…

It was a secluded, sunlit pocket with waist-high rocks on both sides and the stream at one end. A dense bramble at
the other end sheltered them from anyone who might be looking down the slope. They could’ve been seen from the opposite embankment, but nobody ever went over there. They sat on the blanket that Evan always kept in the trunk of his car. They ate sharp cheddar on crackers and drank white wine from Alison’s bota, squeezing the bag to squirt it into their mouths, into each other’s mouths, laughing when they missed. When her blouse was soaked, she took it off and lay back on the blanket. Evan, kneeling between her legs, spurted the cool wine onto her neck and chest and breasts. It trickled down her skin, tickling. The laughter had stopped. He aimed at her nipples, the thin stream of wine hitting and splashing off one, then the other. Then he licked her. He made a puddle of wine in the hollow of her navel, and as he lapped at that he opened her jeans.

That had been Sunday afternoon. A week ago, tomorrow.

How could things have gone wrong so fast?

Don’t idealize it, she told herself. It had been great—fun and thrilling and then incredible. But not quite right. You only planned on a picnic by the stream. You never intended to have sex with him, not there where anyone could show up and find you at it. But when he soaked your blouse with wine, you knew what he wanted and you went along with it. For Evan, not for yourself. Because you didn’t want to disappoint him. And that is not the best of all possible reasons.

Hell, she thought, it sure didn’t bother you much at the time.

Shortly afterward, though.

If there
are
regrets, they start in fast, before you even have time to get your clothes back on. If there aren’t regrets, you know that, too. There had been times when Alison felt right afterward. Not recently, though. Not with Evan. Maybe not since Jimmy, the summer after high school graduation.

Jimmy. It was missing him, more than anything else, that had brought her so often to Solitary Rock during her freshman year. Especially after the letter that began, “I will al
ways cherish the memories of what we shared together, but…” But she was eight hundred miles from Jimmy and he’d fallen for Cynthia Younger in his world civ class.

Sitting on Solitary Rock with the sun warm on her head and back, Alison didn’t feel the loss of Jimmy. She had finished with the pain and bitterness a long time ago. Instead, she inspected the memories of Jimmy and the way her life had gone since then.

The guys she had dated. The guys she had been serious about. The ones she had slept with.

Four of those, she thought, but only three if you don’t count Tom and you shouldn’t count Tom because that was only once and we were drunk. So three after Jimmy—Dave, Larry, and Evan. And it hadn’t been really right with any of them.

Good, but not right. Not wonderful. Not without those regrets sneaking in.

She wondered how she would feel about Nick Winston, the guy she’d met last night at Wally’s. Thinking about Nick, she felt no eagerness to see him again. Probably a nice guy, but…

Her rump was starting to hurt. She changed positions, lowering her legs and crossing them. Leaning back, she pressed her palms against the rock and braced herself up. She lifted her face into the sunlight. The heat felt wonderful. She imagined going now to the secluded place where she had been with Evan, taking off her clothes, and feeling the sun all over her body.

No way, she thought.

But she leaned forward and pulled her skirt up high on her legs. She unbuttoned her blouse, lifted its front, and tied it around her ribs. Then she leaned back again, bracing herself on stiff arms. That was better—feeling the sun on her chest and belly and thighs. The sun, and the mild breeze.

So I’ve struck out a few times in the man department, she thought. It’s not the end of the world. I’m twenty-one, not
bad to look at. No reason to let this stuff get me down. I’m better off without Evan, better off alone than getting stuck with a guy who isn’t exactly right. Hold out for the one who
is
right and don’t lie to myself when one isn’t. That’s the main thing.

Later, when Alison left, she didn’t return to Summer Street. She felt peaceful, and had no need to tease or punish herself by walking past Evan’s apartment. She walked the length of the wooded park, saw a few strolling couples. She spotted lovers leaning against a tree deep in the shadows, and felt only a moment of sorrow.

At the house, she found Celia asleep on the sofa with her headphones on. The quiet tapping of a typewriter came from beyond the closed door of Helen’s room. Alison stepped to the door and knocked. “Yo,” Helen said.

She opened it. Helen scooted her chair back, turned it around, and looked at Alison from under a transparent green visor.

“Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

“Just Celia bitching about her aches and pains, though I don’t believe I would call that exciting.”

“Any calls?” she asked. Why do I care? she wondered. I don’t. But she felt a letdown when Helen shook her head.

“Nary a one. Your public must be otherwise occupied.”

“Just as well.”

“I thought you were finished with Evan.”

“I am. I was just curious, that’s all.”

“Celia got a call from Danny Gard, wanted to go out romping with her tonight. You should’ve heard her pissing and moaning.” Helen scrunched her face. “‘No, I can’t. No, I wasn’t just fine last night, I was in aaaagony. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. No, it’s not you, it’s meeee. I’m in pain. I can hardly moooove.’”

“Celia isn’t really going to stay home on a Saturday night,” Alison said.

“Nah. She’s just waiting for a better offer. I guess she didn’t have a great time with him last night.”

“He’s a gross character. Last time I saw him, he was at Wally’s engaged in a belching contest with Lisa Ball.”

“He’s a Sig,” Helen said, as if that explained it.

Alison nodded. “His idea of a high time is lighting farts.”

Grinning, Helen asked, “You know that from personal experience?”

“I’ve heard him pontificate on—” The sudden jangle of the telephone stopped her words. She felt herself go tight. “I’ll get it,” she muttered, and hurried into the living room.

Don’t let it be Evan, she thought.

Her hand trembled as she picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Celia?”

Thank God. “Just a moment, please,” she said. Celia, still on the sofa, had her eyes closed. The music from the headset had probably covered the blare of the ringing phone. Alison wondered if she was asleep.

Helen appeared in the doorway of her room. She raised her bushy eyebrows.

Alison covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “It’s for Celia.”

“A guy?”

“Yeah.”

“Find out who it is.”

“Who may I tell her is calling?” Alison asked.

“This is Jason Banning.”

“Thank you. Just a moment.” She covered the mouthpiece again. “Jason, the actor, that scuzzball’s roommate.”

“The freshman.”

Nodding, Alison set down the phone and hurried to the sofa. She nudged Celia’s shoulder. The girl frowned and mumbled and kept her eyes shut. Alison lifted one of the mufflike speakers off her ear. “Hey, snoozy, you got a wakeup call.”

“Huh?”

“You got an admirer on the phone.”

A single eyelid struggled upward. “Huh? Who is…?”

“Jason.”

She raised her other eyelid. Her gaze slid sideways to Alison. “Jason? Jason
Banning?”

“That’s the one.”

“Be damn,” she mumbled.

“Want me to tell him you can’t come to the phone?”

“Eat my shorts.” She pulled the headset off and slowly sat up, groaning. “God, I’m death warmed over.”

Alison brought the phone closer. She placed it on the coffee table and handed the receiver to Celia.

“Hi, Jason,” Celia said. She sounded cheerful and friendly and in tip-top shape.

Alison looked at Helen. Helen shook her head and chuckled.

“Yeah, some bastard ran me off the road…No, not too bad. I’m not too pretty to look at, but…Well, that’s just ’cause you haven’t
seen
me…Oh? Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing you either…Tonight?…No, I don’t have any plans that I can’t get out of…”

Helen, still shaking her head, swiveled her eyes upward.

“That’d be great. What time?…Okay. Great…Terrific. See you then.” She held out the phone, and Alison hung it up for her.

“Are you sure you’re up to a date?”

“He’s taking me to the Lobster Shanty, I’m up to that.”

“Decent,” Alison said. The Lobster Shanty was the finest restaurant in Clinton.

“That should be a real thrill,” Helen said, “going out with a freshman.”

“A
gorgeous
freshman,” Celia amended.

“Robbing the cradle.”

“Floss your butt.” She lay down again on the sofa and crossed her ankles. “Besides, he’s twenty-one, same as us.”

“Sure.”

“He is.”

“What’d he do, flunk three times?”

“He worked after high school. Modeled, did commercials, that sort of stuff.”

“What about his girlfriend?” Alison asked. “I thought you said he was going with some gal.”

“Yeah, he was. Guess he saw the error of his ways.”

“Maybe he likes to date cripples,” Helen suggested.

“Wants to use her for a base,” Alison said.

“Wants to slide in,” Helen added.

“You two are a riot.”

“We’re just jealous,” Helen told her. “We just wish
we
could go to the Lobster Shanty with a freshman.”

“I’ll call him back,” Celia said. “Maybe he can set up one of you guys with Roland.”

“I’m not selfish, Alison can have him.”

Celia turned her head on the cushion and smiled at Alison. “We’ll make it a double date, just like junior high.”

“Pardon me while I heave.”

“I realize Roland probably isn’t as handsome and worldly as Evan, but hey, it’s Saturday night, you don’t want to sit around alone on Saturday night, do you?”

“Besides,” Helen added, “he’s obviously got a good case of the hots for you.”

“A case of the hards,” Celia said.

“Way he was eyeing you yesterday…”

“Stripping you with his eyes…”

The talk made Alison feel squirmy. “I’d really like to double with you, Celia, but I happen to know that Roland has other plans. He’s got this
ménage à trois
scheduled for tonight.”

Helen snorted.

“Chortle, chortle,” Celia said.

Alison eyed Helen. “She thinks I’m joking. Don’t you find it a trifle
peculiar
that Jason, who has never before asked Celia out—in spite of her beauty and wit—should invite her
to dinner the very
day
after her chance encounter at the shopping mall with his roommate, Roland?”

Helen stroked her heavy lower lip, and nodded. “’Tis passing strange.”

Celia smirked. “Tell you what, Roland shows up for dinner, I’ll give him my house key and tell him I got two horny roommates just dying for a piece of him.” She winked at Helen. “And I’ll advise him to bring chips.”

“So what do you think?” Celia asked.

Alison, on the recliner, set her yellow highlighting pen into the gutter of the Chaucer text she had been studying for the past two hours, and looked up. “Not bad.”

The bandage was gone from Celia’s brow. Tied around her head was a blue silk scarf that concealed the abrasion. The scarf was knotted over her left ear, and its ends hung almost to her shoulder. She wore big, hoop earrings.

“You look like Long John Silver,” Alison said.

“Cute, huh?”

“Matter of fact, you look great.”

“You’d never know I was damaged goods, would you?”

“Just by your reputation,” Helen said, coming in from the kitchen with a stein of beer and a can of peanuts. She held the can toward Celia.

“No thanks, I’m saving all my room for dinner.”

“Where’s your sling?” Helen asked.

“I’m not going to the Lobster Shanty with a goddamn sling on my arm.” She lifted the arm stiffly away from her side. “I’ve got a bandage on the elbow. And both knees.”