Reign (25 page)

Abe
Kipp
did not scream, or faint, or vomit. Instead, he started to cry. He cried for a long time, and finally, when he was done, he went downstairs to find someone who could help.

~ * ~

Dan Munro was eating dinner when he got the call from the station, but he immediately put on his coat and told Patty not to wait up for him. He had had a gut feeling that the
Werton
guy's death had been more than just an accident, and now this new death added a gallon of gasoline to that fire. His deputy hadn't known exactly what the trouble was, just that someone from the theatre had called and said somebody had been killed and that the police should come right away.

Munro arrived at the same time as the ambulance, and went with the medics to the fifth floor. Three men who he recognized as Sid Harper, John Steinberg, and Curtis Wynn were standing in the hall. He nodded to them and went through the large door where he saw Bill, his white-faced subordinate, taking photographs of the body.

"Hey, Dan," he said softly, and shook his head. "I've never seen anything like this before."

Neither had Munro. He felt bile rising in his throat, and looked away from the corpse long enough to force it back down.

"Don't feel bad," Bill said. "I threw up once already, and I'm afraid I'm working on my second shot."

"Jesus," said Munro, "I know this kid. Harry
Ruhl
— played football for Kirkland, didn't he?" Bill nodded. "What the hell happened to him?"

"I'm not sure. The guy who found him seems to know something about it, but I couldn't get much out of him. He kept crying."

"Where is he?"

"Down on the second floor in the offices."

Munro steeled himself and examined the body, wincing as he had to step around the pool of blood on the floor and the pitiful chunks of flesh in it.

"You think we
oughta
be able to pick them up," Bill said. "
Goddam
awful.”

“Not till the M.E. comes," Munro answered.

"I know."

Munro forced himself to look at the mutilated stomach and groin, noticing the angle in which the knife was placed. "It's like he . . .” His words trailed off.

"Yeah," Bill said. "Like he carved himself a . . . " Munro could almost hear the cruder word on Bill's lips, but the policeman pulled it back. ". . . a vagina."

"Is this supposed to be `pussy boy?’" Munro wondered aloud. The row of bloody letters began at the corpse's left clavicle and went downward along his rib cage, finishing just above the gaping abdominal wound. Munro noticed that the Y of "BOY" trailed down the side. When he examined the fingers of the right hand, he saw that the index and middle fingers were coated with blood.

"I called the state police," Bill said. Munro would have expected that, and suspected that Bill had said it more for conversation than to convey information.

On his way to the offices, Munro passed the Medical Examiner and two state police investigators. The M.E. shook his head and muttered, "Lifestyles of the dead and famous," as he passed Munro. Munro didn't smile. He wondered how funny the M.E. would be when he saw what was waiting for him. Probably wouldn't affect him at all. Most of those guys had cast iron stomachs. Hell, they'd have to, wouldn't they, face to face with messy, violent death day after day? Munro was thankful this kind of thing didn't happen very often in his town. But Christ, this damn theatre —two ugly deaths in nearly as many months. Show people.

In the waiting area of the offices, Munro was amazed to find Abe
Kipp
crying.
Kipp
was one of the biggest
hardasses
in town, and had been, Munro had heard, a real hellion when he was younger, picking fights in bars, mostly with guys smaller than he was, and the years apparently had not mellowed him. Yet here he sat, blubbering like a baby, flanked by Donna Franklin on one side and Hamilton's wife on the other. The young man Munro had seen entering the theatre a few days before Thanksgiving was seated in the corner.

"Mr.
Kipp
, I'm Chief Munro."

Kipp
nodded. "I know . . . I know you."

"You found the body?"

"I did, yeah, I did . . . my fault, oh shit, all my fault."

"Your fault?"

"He
wouldn'ta
done it . . . not without my
teasin
' him. I teased him, but it was just
jokin
'
, you know? Just a little joke, he was always so
scared
of everything —"

"Now wait," Munro said sharply. "You mean you think he did this to himself?"

"What, you . . .”
Kipp's
eyes widened. "You think . . .
I
done it?" The surprise was so openly honest that Munro was instantly certain of the man's innocence, at least as far as wielding the knife went. "I . . . I just
teased
him,
y'see
? Teased him about bein' a . . .” The words seemed to lock in
Kipp's
throat. “. . . a pussy boy, that's what I called him. But I didn't do that, oh hell, how could I have done that?"

"I don't know, Mr.
Kipp
. But you might just as well ask how could anyone have done that to himself."

~ * ~

When the medical examiner was finished, he told Munro that death probably occurred between four-thirty and five-fifteen. "Good thing I got called so fast," he said. "The fresher they are the easier it is to nail down the time."
At least
, Munro thought,
he wasn't smiling any more
. "The state boys tell me the prints of the victim are the only ones on the knife."

"You saying it was suicide?"

The M.E. cocked his head. "I know what you're thinking, Munro. Could he have cut himself open, buried the knife in his groin, and then misspelled words in his own blood? The answer, remarkably enough, is yes. He'd be bleeding like a river, but he
would
have time to do all those things.
If
he were so compelled. What would compel a man to do such things is beyond my comprehension. That's
your
job."

"But it's possible."

"Yes, it's possible. Look at the Samurai in Japan — they'd slice themselves open with two cuts, one across and one down. Now they generally had a friend to help finish them off by lopping off their heads, but it wasn't necessary. For all I know, they might have written haiku while bleeding to death, let alone the sad little epitaph our friend there composed."

The interviews with the residents of the theatre were inconclusive. Alibis were abundant, since everyone was with someone else who could account for them. Even Abe
Kipp
had been seen at frequent enough intervals near the end of the day so that Munro knew he would not have had the time or opportunity to go to the fifth floor, perform that act of butchery, cleanse himself of the blood that must have resulted, and return backstage.

When Munro interviewed Dennis Hamilton, he found him red-eyed and unresponsive. There was no hostility, however, in the perfunctory way Hamilton answered Munro's questions, and Munro could not help but wonder if the man were on drugs, as he had heard so many people in show business were.

But maybe
, Munro thought,
it was something else. Maybe it was numbness, like psychological
novocaine
, a protective mask of some sort to guard him from the pain of having another person — maybe just an employee, maybe a friend — die under mysterious circumstances
. Still, Munro couldn't get the idea out of his head that Hamilton knew more than he let on.

~ * ~

After the police and ambulance left with Harry
Ruhl's
ruined body, Sid and Curt drove Abe
Kipp
to Kirkland General Hospital, where he was given a sedative and put to bed in a semi-private room. When they returned to the theatre and Sid checked on Dennis, he found that Robin was in the bedroom, trying, like Abe
Kipp
, to sleep away the horror. Dennis, however, was wide awake, sitting in the living room with a tall drink in his hand, staring out the window at the darkness.

"Let's go out," he said to Sid. "Let's go to that bar two blocks over." He looked at Sid then, and went on, as though he owed him an explanation. "I don't want to
celebrate
, Sid. I just want to get away from this place. It seems . . . terrible tonight. God, poor Harry." He shook his head and stood up. "Let's go, huh?"

There was no reason not to. In all the years Sid had been with him, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times Dennis had too much to drink. Besides, he really wanted a drink himself.

The name of the bar was Riley's, and there were only a few people in it on this Monday night. When Dennis sat at the bar, the bartender recognized him and greeted him by name, then asked what they wanted. Sid had a bourbon, Dennis a scotch.

After a few sips, Dennis said, "I never would have thought it of Harry. He just didn't seem the type."

"Suicidal?"

Dennis nodded. "He always seemed happy, so simple."

"He was simple."

"I don't mean retarded, I mean his wants seemed simple."

"You don't think someone else killed him?"

"Someone else?" He snorted a bitter laugh. "Who, Sid? The building was locked, everybody was accounted for, and even so, which of us could have done something like that?
Marvella
? Donna? John? Hell, me?" Dennis shook his head. "No, he did it himself. The poor man. Poor dumb man. Couldn't even spell his own suicide note right."

Sid felt very cold. He had seen the body, Dennis had not. "How did you know the words were spelled wrong?"

"Didn't you tell me? Or Munro?"

"No, I didn't, and I don't remember Munro mentioning it when he talked to you."

Dennis frowned. "I don't know. Maybe I just assumed it, knowing Harry. I can almost see it if I try," he said. "And I don't want to see it, Sid. I really don't want to." He finished his scotch in a single swallow, then held up a finger for another.

They continued to drink in silence for some time, their eyes on a football game on the TV mounted over the bar. Finally Dennis spoke.

"What makes a person do something like that?" Sid said nothing. Dennis's impeccably clipped speech was starting, very slightly, to slur. "You'd have to hate your life so much to leave it on purpose." He looked at Sid from weary eyes. "You ever think about it, Sid? About suicide?”

“No. Never have."

"I did," Dennis said quietly. "Few years back. When we first went out on the road with
Empire
, remember? I really thought about it. In Chicago. I was standing on the balcony of the suite, and I leaned over the rail, and I looked down, down, and I knew that if I jumped from there it would all be over so fast with just a moment of pain, and then nothing. I climbed over the rail and leaned into the wind holding on with one hand, and I was all ready to let go. But I didn't. I didn't because I was scared. I was scared of the fall. I didn't think I'd like it."

"Why did you . . . want to do it?"

The words came slowly, as if Dennis was forcing them out. "I thought my life was over anyway. I mean, in all my life I had created only one thing — I mean one thing that was
real
. And that was the Emperor. The character. I mean, that really was something. And it was
mine
. Nobody else did that for me, Sid. I did that myself. And I never did anything else. And that's why I wanted to . . . to die. Because I was afraid I'd never do anything else."

"Maybe that was enough."

"It's not enough."

"Dennis, most people go through life not creating a damn thing, and they're happy. But you took a character that only existed on paper, and you made it live. You made people laugh and cry and dream with it, and that'll never go away. The Emperor is really alive because of you." Sid chuckled. "Long live the Emperor, huh?"

Dennis shook his head sadly. "The Emperor's gone, Sid. That's all over. But I found something else to make me want to live. I found Robin, and I found the project. The shows are here now — the new shows, the shows that wouldn't exist if it weren't for me and my money. And my direction, dammit. I'm gonna direct these shows and they're gonna be my shows, aren't they? I'm gonna create these shows . . .” He drained the glass of another drink. Was it the fifth? Sid wondered. Or the sixth? He couldn't remember, and it didn't seem to matter anyway.

"If it weren't for that," he heard Dennis mumble, "I might still try to fly off a roof. Man's gotta create . . . gotta create something . . . make something before he . . . before he dies." And then Sid heard Dennis start to cry softly. "Poor Harry," he said between gentle sobs, "Aw, poor Harry. . ."

~ * ~

Although he knew it was a dream while he was dreaming it, that made it no less frightening. He was wearing his costume, the costume of the Emperor Frederick. He held a fat pocketknife in his right hand, and with the other he held down some kind of animal on an altar of black metal. Was it a sheep? It seemed to be, for the eyes were the eyes of a sheep, dull and mild. The body was docile, yielding, like one would expect a sheep's to be as one held it down to be slaughtered. Even its cry, a pitiful, braying lament, was
sheeplike
.