South of Shiloh (27 page)

Rane staggered, the pool balls clattered on the floor, and the guy skipped to avoid them. Rane darted in, stripped the cue from his hand, reversed it, and butt-stroked him hard in the throat with the handle. The guy gasped and went down, raising a hand to his neck. Rane stabbed the cue tip down into the table’s corner pocket and was about to snap it off, turning it into a lethal spear. Paused.

No one moved on him?

They’d stopped. Sweet had dropped his bottle and discreetly kicked it away. Darl Leets leaned back on the bar counter, shaking his head. Then. Oh shit. A pair of powerful hands seized Rane firmly by the elbows from behind. He dropped the cue, craned his neck, and saw two clean-cut, solid men in tan on darker tan. The guy holding him smelled of aftershave, his uniform shirt was freshly pressed, a loaded leather duty belt strapped his waist, and the patch on his shoulder read,
MCNAIRY COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT
.

“Everybody just take it easy, now,” a third man in plainclothes said, stepping forward. He glanced at Rane. “Sir, you’re bleeding.”

“Nothing,” Rane mumbled. “Little argument.”

“Leets,” the speaker said, “what’s going on?”

Darl shrugged. “Like he says. He come in here and proceeded to lecture us on local history and it became heated.”

“Anybody hurt? Anything broken?” the speaker asked.

Leets and Sweet shook their heads; the one pool shooter was catching his breath, massaging his throat.

“Okay then. I’m going to escort this fella on down the road. To ensure he ain’t followed, Deputy Mason’s gonna sit outside for a while. We clear?”

With that, the three Tennessee cops escorted Rane outside. One of them took a first-aid kit from the trunk of his cruiser, wiped blood away from the bump on Rane’s forehead with a compress, and applied a Band-Aid.

As the cop treated him, Rane listened to the plainclothes man talk on his cell phone.

“Bee? Yeah, Sam Terell, over McNairy. Your Yankee pilgrim you asked people to keep an eye on? Red Jeep. Minnesota plates? Well, I got him over at the XTC on old 45 and he ain’t bleeding too bad…”

37

THEY WAITED FOR KENNY BEEMAN, PARKED OFF
the side of the road just inside the Tennessee line, next to the cracked foundation of the Shamrock Motel with the ghosts of Louise and Jack Hathcock. Sergeant Terell, an investigator for McNairy County, had driven Rane’s Jeep to give Rane’s head some time to clear. A county cruiser trailed them to give Terell a lift back to his car and was parked behind the Jeep. Now they were out of the Jeep and Terell was satisfied that Rane was walking and talking normally.

“Just a formality, you understand,” Terell explained, his eyes now unavailable behind sunglasses. He asked for Rane’s driver’s license after he looked at his photo ID from the
Pioneer Press
. Then he walked to the cruiser and called the license in to Selmer dispatch to run the NCIC check.

“Figure where you’re from the cops all got the mobile video terminals. We’re still in radio cars,” Terell said. When Rane cleared the check, Terell returned his license and then asked casually, “You ain’t packing any guns or drugs in your vehicle are you, Mr. Rane?”

“There’s reenactor gear and an old rifle I borrowed, in the back,” Rane said. “I was planning on going to Shiloh on Saturday.”

“Mind if we have a look?”

Rane said, “Sure.”

As Terell and the other cop poked through the gear, Rane tested the swelling over his forehead. Dumb. Then he checked through his haversack to make sure his camera was still working. No damage he could see. He set the bag on the hood as Beeman pulled up in his black car and got out.

Beeman stood with his hands behind his back, flexing slightly on the balls of his feet. Terell walked up to Rane, holding the cased rifle in one hand and the black leather cartridge box in the other. He grinned at Beeman, leaned the rifle against the side of the Jeep, and opened the flap to the leather case. “Usually they have tins in here to hold paper cartridges. You have, let’s see, a reporter notebook, a pen, a pack of, ah, baby wipes, a pair of wool socks and what’s this?”

Terell held up a compact plastic rectangle.

“Light meter,” Rane said.

Terell tucked the meter back into the case and snapped the slotted flap over the brass-button latch. He looped the strap over his shoulder, picked up the rifle case, undid the tie, and slowly pulled out the slender weapon. “Fuuack,” Terell grimaced as he rubbed a finger along the scum of rust and dried mud that streaked the barrel, the hammer, and the lock.

Rane gave his best weak-ass smile as Beeman widened his eyes and rocked on his heels.

“Mr. Rane,” Sergeant Terell inquired in a pained voice, “you know what you got here?”

“Ah, this old gun my uncle had back in his closet. It weighs less than those bigger ones the reenactors use…”

“And this tape you got here over the rear sight?”

“To keep them from flopping around?”

Terell exhaled and gritted his teeth, turning the rifle in his hands. “Mr. Rane, this is an original, single-trigger, Model 1859 Sharps military rifle. They only made a couple thousand of these.”

Rane shrugged and smiled helpfully.

Terell drew himself up, raised one hand, and tipped his sunglasses down on the bridge of his nose, revealing a glare of hazel eyes. “I got a mind to run your ass in for abuse.” He glanced over at Beeman, who was stifling a hopeless laugh. “Whattaya think, Bee. Can I hold him twenty-four hours till I get a legal opinion?”

The third cop had left the squad and joined them. “Yankee city boy,” he muttered softly.

“Is anything wrong, officer?” Rane asked Terell nervously. The three cops grumbled and walked off a few paces and huddled briefly. Beeman poked through the uniform and gear in the back of the Jeep, then joined the other two, and they proceeded to bray over the Sharps and the contents of the cartridge box. Terell elaborately cased the leprous rifle and placed it in the back of the Jeep along with the leather bag. Then the two Tennessee cops shook their heads.

“Good luck, Bee,” Terell said philosophically as he got in the cruiser. Beeman and Rane stood on the side of the road and watched the Tennessee car head back up north. It was quiet on the highway, just a whisper of breeze, the tick of insects, and, far off, the sound of a tractor.

Beeman turned to Rane with a pained expression. “Baby wipes?”

“To keep my hands clean in the field.”

Beeman scratched his hair. “What happened to the ground rules, John? Look around. Think where you’re at.” Still smiling patiently, he said, “Okay. It’s like this. Ever since we hooked up this morning there’s something been bugging me about you. Something I can’t figure out. You say you’re a photographer and you been in town for hours and you don’t take any pictures. You analyze a shooting scene in half an hour flat.
Then
you go off on your own into a redneck joint that most local cops wouldn’t venture in without backup.”

He took a step closer. “Terell says you hit a guy in there with a pool cue. The guy’s name is Jimmy Beal, Dwayne Leets’s driver. He’s Dixie mafia.”

Beeman shook his head, turned, and picked the haversack off the hood. After a brief look inside, he handed it to Rane. Rane slung the bag over his shoulder, reached in his pocket, pulled out the folded napkin, and handed it to Beeman.

“What’s this?” Beeman asked, opening the tissue and staring at the cigarette butt.

“I picked it out of Darl Leets’s ashtray. The crime lab in Jackson can run it against the one at the scene for a DNA match,” Rane said hopefully.

Beeman smiled manfully and let the butt drop to the ground. He patted sweat on his forehead, then bit his lower lip in a patent grimace, and said, “You keep this detective shit up I’m gonna start calling you Virgil. But you gotta understand—this ain’t Sparta, Mississippi, in the sixties and I ain’t Rod Steiger with a busted air-conditioner.” He squinted. “Now how the hell did you get onto Darl?”

Rane said, “I didn’t want to hit a strange town without a guide. So my photo editor checked with a former boss of mine in Atlanta and got onto a local lady named Anne Payton who…”

“…talks a lot,” Beeman said, his smile broadening.

“You know Anne?”

“Know
of her
. We’re not exactly close.”

“When we found the cigarette butt you said his name. So after you dropped me off I called her up and got directions to his bar.”

Beeman sighed and clucked his tongue. “Tell you what, John,” he said. “I suggest you drive back to the Holiday Inn and check out.”

“I thought we had a deal?” Rane protested.

“Yeah. Be nice if you stay alive to keep your end of it. So how about I invite you out to my place for a couple days,” Beeman said slowly, like he might be regretting it.

Rane pointed to Beeman’s wedding ring. “Don’t want to impose.”

Beeman nodded. “Wife and two boys, six and eleven. They’re at Marge’s folks’ in Tupelo, went down with a police escort Sunday; right after we came home from church and found the picture window shot out. Or did Anne Payton leave that part out?”

“I guess she did mention it,” Rane said.

“And after I got this.” Beeman took out his cell phone. He thumbed into a directory and showed Rane the text message on the screen:

MISSED YOU
@
KIRBY CREEK. CATCH YOU
@
SHILOH IF YOU GOT THE NUTS. I’M CALLIN YOU OUT BITCH
.

“Could be bullshit,” Beeman speculated. “Like a crank call. Things are heating up and the assholes are coming out of the woodwork. Monday night somebody put a pipe bomb in my mailbox. Then,” he glowered, “last night they dumped some kinda poison in my catfish pond.”

“Leets?” Rane asked.

“Punks, kids, probably come in from West Alcorn be my guess, where the Leets family has allies.” Then he held up the cell phone. “But this is more serious; these messages were sent from a phone account listed to Mitchell Lee Nickels.”

“There’s more than one?”

“Oh yeah,” Beeman sighed, selecting another message.

HEY BEE, UR WIFE KNOW U R STILL FUCKEN THAT NIGGER NURSE
?

This time, Rane decided it best not to comment. After a moment, Beeman said, “Officially we’re still carrying Paul’s death as an accident but the sheriffs are having a meeting, Jimmy’s on his way to Savannah, Tennessee, to get with his Hardin County counterpart. Gonna discuss how to handle Shiloh…”

“Meaning?” Rane asked.

“Meaning how to use me as bait.”

Rane chewed his lip. “Okay. So where do you live?”

“Just go back to town, check out of the motel, and wait in the lot. No side trips, you hear?”

“No side trips,” Rane said.

“Okay. I’ll be right behind you soon’s I make a call. Now go. Git.”

Rane picked up his haversack, got in the Jeep, turned the key, pulled onto the road, and headed for Corinth. Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw Beeman standing beside the road, tapping numbers in his cell phone.

38

PAUL’S BODY ARRIVED IN THE MORNING.

At one p.m., Jenny wheeled the Forester into the lot of the Bradley Circle of Life Center off Highway 36 at the western edge of Stillwater, parked, and turned off the key. She heaved her shoulders and exhaled as she watched traffic stream along the highway.

Other people doing normal things.

After what she hoped would be her last long-distance showdown with her mother-in-law, it was time to sign the papers giving the center permission to cremate Paul’s remains. Paul’s family did insist on minimal due diligence; that someone view the cadaver to make sure Jenny was consigning the right body to the fire.

Jenny was unfazed. Her mind was made up. And she had Paul’s will to buttress her decision. Molly’s last memories of her dad would be of him alive. She would not see him pumped full of chemical preservatives and tarted up with cosmetics in a casket.

Dutifully, she got out of the car, hauled from the backseat the biggest suitcase they owned, and carried it toward the discreet one-story building.

Molly viewed the cremation as more than a practical matter and had insisted that she be allowed to participate in the funeral discussions. After half an hour of discussion she did not back off on her stubborn desire to pick the last clothes her dad “would wear.” Then she expressed a desire to pack a farewell bag.

Jenny, Vicky, and Mom saw it as a step toward acceptance, and agreed.

So now Jenny carried a suitcase that contained Paul’s bulky green terry-cloth robe, his Acorn slippers, and the frayed Minnesota Twins cap he’d always worn on canoe trips. A smaller wooden latch box Molly had purchased with her own allowance at Michaels craft store was tucked in the folds of the robe. She’d selected a favorite handmade Father’s Day card to pack in the case.

To Dad. Happy Father’s Day.

Molly, age five, struggling with her first cursive penmanship. She had drawn a red cardinal with mismatched wings in pastel.

She’d also included Paul’s favorite coffee cup, a package of Pecan Sandies, and a box of green tea. The final item she’d added was the much-handled copy of
The Red Badge of Courage
, the last book she had seen him reading.

Jenny hefted the suitcase and opened the door, like a traveler heading for baggage check-in at the airport. She cleared the door, walked through the quiet lobby to the reception desk, and told the woman behind the desk, “I have a private viewing for Paul Edin.”

The receptionist nodded, picked up her phone, spoke for a moment, and then said, “Mr. Bradley will be right with you.”

Donald Bradley, director at the center, appeared in less than a minute. He was a tall, white-haired man with deep blue Himalayan eyes, a reliable Sherpa who would guide Jenny through the foreign terrain of the Dead Zone.

“I have some things,” Jenny said, nodding to the suitcase.

“Of course,” Bradley said, leaning forward, offering to carry the case. Jenny smiled tightly and held on to the suitcase. She would carry it herself.

“This way,” Bradley said. He led her down a corridor to a large elevator, like a freight elevator; big enough to accommodate a wheeled gurney.

Going down evoked a bevy of odd thoughts. Shrouding. Sally Fields in a movie, dutifully washing her dead husband’s body and sewing a winding sheet from bedsheets.

Women’s work.

She didn’t know what to expect. She and Paul had given up on
Six Feet Under
after one season.

The basement level was a clean, quiet corridor. Bradley’s staff were apparently all ninjas, who walked without making a sound.

“In here,” Bradley said, opening a door to a carpeted room.

Jenny stepped into the room and held her breath. Not Paul. A manifestation of Paul lay on a table draped in an off-white sheet. His eyelids were shut. According to Molly’s relentless Google research, the eyes were closed with tiny curved plastic discs called “eye caps,” inserted under the eyelid. The cap was perforated to hold the lid in place. Bradley had explained they didn’t use the caps. Stitches.

Jenny exhaled.

The manifestation of Paul wore a braced waxen expression, the head resting on a dark rubber block with a sheet pulled up to the chin. A livid bruise marred the forehead and the neck wound had been closed and tidied. Bradley indicated a portable table on casters and helped Jenny hoist the suitcase and open the latches. Two metallic clicks dissolved in the huge silence.

“As you requested, we’ve removed the travel garments. You understand, when I lift the sheet, you will see the autopsy sutures,” Bradley said.

“I understand,” Jenny said. Staring at the antiseptic mangle in the neck brought back phrases from the coroner’s description on the death certificate:

Projectile clipped the carotid artery left side, penetrated the windpipe, causing massive hemorrhage…missed the vertebrae column…exited through soft tissue…

Jenny took a deep breath as the sheet was removed and she saw the puckered pattern in the pale skin. No actual stitches were visible.

New word:
Autopsy.

She removed the bathrobe, which, on Bradley’s instructions, had not been divided down the center of the back to facilitate draping. In keeping with the center’s natural approach, dressing a body meant dressing without costume gimmicks.

They cut the body open and take the insides out and inspect them to help determine the cause of death. They start by making a Y-shaped incision from each shoulder, which meets over the breastbone. Then they cut down to the pubic bone. After they peel back the skin, the chest cavity is opened by cutting the bones away with an electric saw…

With Bradley’s assistance, Jenny lifted the body slightly. When she inserted one arm in the sleeve, the joints of the elbow and shoulder resisted moderately and some effort was required to thread the sleeve. They lifted the chest and head and tugged and tucked with their free hands. The empty sleeve was scooted underneath the raised back to the other side.

Scheduling this visit, Jenny had asked Bradley a specific question. She’d wanted to know just how much of her husband had been returned, embalmed, from Mississippi, following the forensic procedure conducted at the state lab in Jackson.

Jenny’s eyes riveted on the Y-shaped line of puckered skin, diagonal across the chest to the stomach and down to the pubic bone. She tried to imagine the bright steel electric saw. What it sounded like.

The director had assured her that all the organs had been returned after the examination; although they might not be in their proper places.

Did he know that for certain?

No.

Jenny’s doubting mother was not convinced. She’d read stories about pathology labs lifting organs for dissection and display purposes after autopsies. Paul’s cadaver, according to Lois, could be packed with sawdust.

Now Jenny and Bradley moved to the other side of the table and repeated the procedure of fitting the sleeve and lifting and tugging. After the difficulty of managing the sleeves, the rest of the robe easily draped around the torso and legs. Finally, the stitches were covered.

Sometimes the saw makes so much dust cutting through the bones that they use big shears instead. They cut through the ribs on each side so they can lift the ribs and sternum out in one piece. This piece is called the chest plate.

So they can get at the stuff inside.

They also cut around the circumference of the skull, leaving a flap intact in the front so they can tip it forward and remove the brain.

People wearing white coats, masks, and vinyl gloves had used shiny steel saws, big shears, and scalpels to eviscerate Paul’s body. Briefly, she wondered if there were flirtations around the autopsy table? Did they wash their hands a lot?

The point was, when they were finished, they put it all back, replaced the chest plate, sewed the chest up, and fitted the top of skull back on, like one of those eggs silly putty comes in. Except what if Mom was right? What if the egg was empty? And the chest. After the examination, what if they’d carted Paul’s insides off to an incinerator and burned them? Or pickled them in jars?

Jenny’s chest ached and her stomach heaved. It was a new sensation that she now thought of as advanced crying. No tears came anymore. The sadness had become a deep, regular vibration that echoed her breathing and her heartbeat and glowed in her bones. She wondered if it was going to be permanent.

Jenny reminded herself that Paul had been an unsentimental man with slightly Buddhist leanings and he would have approved of her frank reactions to the leftovers of a life. Such were her thoughts as her hands touched the cool, stiff skin of the man she’d lived with for eleven years. Carefully, she adjusted and tied the robe, put the slippers on the white feet, fitted the hat, and positioned Molly’s briefcase on the chest.

My gentle, decent man.

She looked at the smooth, wax-museum face for the last time, laid her palms alongside the cold cheeks just once, then stepped back and nodded to Bradley.

Bradley escorted her upstairs to his office and held out a chair at a small table. Jenny sat, declined a cup of coffee, but took his advice and drank the small cup of water he held out. Then he placed the form for the cremation authorization in front of her.

“You’ve had a chance to thoroughly look this authorization over?” Bradley asked as he placed a pen next to the form.

“Yes,” Jenny said as her eyes flicked at the document’s upper right corner, where she noted the blank line identified as “cremation number.”

I authorize and request…cremate the body of…(hereafter Decedent) who died…

I assume legal responsibility for the disposition of the Decedent…

Jenny’s eyes bounced over the small type descending through the subparagraphs at random…

to the best of my knowledge the body of the Decedent does not contain any implanted or attached mechanical, electrical, or radioactive device that may create a hazard when placed in a cremation chamber…

…the cremated remains of the Decedent will be mechanically reduced to granular appearance and placed in an appropriate container…

…even with the exercise of reasonable care it is not possible to recover all the particles of the cremated remains of the Decedent and that some particles may inadvertently become commingled with…other particles of cremated remains…

Routine setting in. The wheels keep turning. She picked up the pen and signed the form in all the appropriate places.

Next Bradley opened the price list for cremation caskets and alternative containers. “Have you made a decision as to a cremation container?”

Jenny smiled briefly. “Do many people choose the velvet-lined mahogany casket for over three thousand?”

“No.”

“It was my mother-in-law’s first choice in lieu of an earth burial,” Jenny said. “Fortunately Paul left a will. He wanted a simple ceremony and then an unadorned temporary urn. We’ve decided to scatter his ashes in Quetico. So we’re going with the standard alternative container…”

Jenny stopped in mid-sentence when her cell phone rang inside her purse. She retrieved it, checked the display, and saw the 662 area code.

Mississippi.

“Excuse me,” she said as her heartbeat doubled. With a steely finger, she connected to the call. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Edin? This is Deputy Beeman, from Alcorn County, Mississippi.”

Her chest relaxed visibly. “Yes, ah…could we talk later, I’m in a funeral home and…”

“Mrs. Edin, I’m sorry to bother you but I think we gotta talk now,” the cop said forcefully.

The quiet decor of the office swam in her vision and she began to sweat. Her eyes settled on a framed Dr. Seuss cartoon on the wall over the desk. An odd Seuss-type character reclined in a coffin, talking on a phone. It was too far away to read the caption. “Just a moment,” she said to Beeman. Then she turned to Bradley. “I’m sorry, but I have to deal with this.”

“Of course,” said Bradley.

“I’ll just be a few minutes. Could I take this outside?” Jenny asked, rising from the chair. Courtly and low-key, Bradley escorted her out of the office, across the hall, through the room with casket and urn displays, and through a door into a patio area. She walked to a wooden bench in front of a block wall, sat down, and raised the phone. “Deputy?”

“Are you familiar with a news photographer with the St. Paul paper, named John Rane?” Beeman said without preamble.

Familiar, Jenny thought. It was an imprecise term.

“Mrs. Edin?”

A siren whelped on Highway 36 and her eyes caught the green, white-trimmed ambulance racing through traffic. Closer in, she noticed the grounds beside the walking path were planted in prairie grasses emerging from winter sedge.