Superbia 2 (12 page)

“Okay.”

“Honey?” Cole called out.  “Get Jesse’s room ready for a guest, if you don’t mind?”

“Ok.  Can it wait till my show is over?”

“Course it can.”  Cole cracked his beer open and said, “My boy Jesse’s over in Europe.”

“In the military?”

“Nah.  I thought he’d go into the Army like his old man, but he’s got brains.  He’s in Spain right now, teaching English to young
mamacitas
.  His mom misses him like crazy, though.”

Frank looked down at the beer in his hands and chuckled.  Miller Lite.  The
good
stuff. 

1
3.
Apparently nobody needed alarm clocks in Potter County because at six o’clock the next morning, everything suddenly woke up.  It wasn’t just the roosters.  It wasn’t just the horses and cows.  It was everything, both living and mechanical.  Tractors, trucks, table saws, and more.  It was people walking around outside hollering, “Hey, Cole!  How you doing?” and Cole hollering back, “Can’t complain, Roy.  How’s the crops looking?”

Frank looked for his clothes on the floor and saw that they’d been laundered and folded on the back of a chair near the bed.  He got dressed and found Mrs. Clayton in the kitchen, “Thanks for everything again, ma’am.  I don’t know what to say.”

“You came up here to get rid of a bad man, isn’t that enough, honey?” she said.  “You hungry?”

“I wasn’t until the moment I walked in here.  I’m going to send my wife out here for cooking lessons.”

She smiled and said, “Cole’s out on the porch reading the newspaper.  Here, take some coffee.”

Frank carried his mug onto the porch and squinted in the early sun.  The wheat field across the street swayed in the light breeze, like a gently rippling sea of amber. 
Cole held up a piece of paper and said, “I found your boy.  There’s a small house not too far away that belonged to a Ronald Polonius.  Old Ronald P. kicked the bucket in a car accident seven years ago, but somebody’s been paying the taxes in his name ever since.” 

“That’s good news.”

“No it ain’t.  He’s a mile outside my jurisdiction, in the unincorporated part of the County.  That’s State Police’s territory.”

“Shit.  Does that mean we need to call them?”

“Supposed to.  They’ll be here in about twelve hours with a SWAT team.” 

“How far is he from us right now?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

Frank leaned against the porch post and sipped his coffee.  “Okay.  Just show me the way, and I’ll go get him by myself.  You won’t have to worry about it.”

Cole looked up at him, one eye closed in the sun.  “That how you boys do it down there in the big city?  Stop being lawmen when it’s convenient?”

“Only some of us, Chief.  Not all.”

“Good.  Follow me around the back.”  Cole led him to a small shed behind the house with an electronic lock on the door.  He punched in a code and pulled the heavy steel door open.  Frank looked in and whistled at the racks of assault rifles, body armor, and night-vision goggles lined up along the walls.  “We had trouble with a local militia a while back.  I got some grant money out of it and spent it on repurposed military ordnance.” 

Frank picked up a black M4 Carbine rifle with a red holographic site display attached to the gun’s frame. 
Cole handed Frank a bullet proof vest and a stack of rifle magazines and said, “Let’s go catch us a bad guy.”  

***

Aprille Macariah knocked on the glass window and held up her badge.  “I’m here for the autopsies.” 

The secretary nodded and buzzed her in. 
She followed the secretary through the alley of cubicles toward a secured door at the rear of the office.  The secretary swiped her ID card at the sensor, and the lock deactivated.  “Just go down that hallway, toward the autopsy room.  They’re in there waiting for you.”

There were windows along the walls, but when she knocked on one, both men inside the room waved for her to come in.  They were dressed in surgical scrubs with face masks and hair covers.  Both of them had
on long smocks and booties over their shoes.  The floor was polished and lined with drains.  “Have you ever done this before?” the coroner said.

“No.”

“Did you bring a camera?” 

Aprille pulled it out of her back pocket and showed him.

“Excellent.  We’re going to bring the first specimen in.  Once we uncover her, take a few overall shots, and then when we begin the external examination, I will nod each time I want you to document my findings.”

“Okay,” Aprille said.  

“Make sure you stand back during the cutting phase.  It can get messy.  How is your sense of smell?”

“Pretty good,” she said. 

The coroner smiled thinly.  

The assistant wheeled in Mary Polonius’ body and yanked the white sheet off of her.  She was nude under the harsh lights, every inch of her body exposed and unprotected, undignified.  Her facial features were distorted with most of the bones shifted from the pounding of the brick on her skull.  The bruises covering her eyes had not gone down, making her look like a bullfrog or a dazzled prizefighter.  Her mouth was open slightly and her tongue stuck out.  It was grey.  Her lips were purple. 

Aprille snapped photographs of the woman’s body from head to toe, taking pictures of Mary’s feet, her ankles, her shins, and thighs.  The coroner tugged Mary’s legs apart and opened her labia with his fingers, waving for Aprille to come closer and take a photograph.  “No signs of sexual trauma.”  He looked at his assistant, “That’s nice to see every once in a while, yeah?”

When they reached the top of her head, Aprille began snapping multiple photographs, trying to get the injuries from every possible angle.  “Don’t wear yourself out on that.  We’ll get a much better view of the injuries after I remove her scalp,” the coroner said. 

Aprille stopped photographing as the coroner picked up a scalpel.  “Okay, time to step back.”

He covered up Mary’s face with a blue towel and made three quick incisions along her torso, cutting her in a Y that went from each shoulder to meet in the center of her breastbone and straight down her stomach. 

Within seconds, she was opened up.  They deconstructed the woman with the precision of auto mechanics.  They popped her hood, dug into her engine, and started stripping her parts.  They used scalpels and saws.  Mary’s innards leaked through their fingers and splattered the floor. 

Two hours later, they were spraying down the metal autopsy table, washing the leftover chunks of Mary Polonius down into the drain.  The assistant set a bag full of Mary’s organs back inside of her empty chest cavity and rolled her out of the room.  The coroner looked at Aprille and said, “How you holding up?”

It smelled like a slaughterhouse.  It smelled like spoiled meat and wet, rotting vegetation.  It made her eyes sting.  “I’m fine,” Aprille said hoarsely.  “No big deal.  Let’s just keep moving.”

“Bring in the second specimen,” the coroner said. 

They uncovered Kayla and straightened out her crooked limbs, making notes about her deformities and underdeveloped genitalia for their medical records. 
Just a girl,
Aprille thought. 
Just a young, fragile thing who’d never known anything, really.  Not even walking.
 

She thought about the Mickey Mouse nightlight in the bedroom.  Innocent.  As innocent as the fairy princesses on the pillowcase her father threw over her head right before he bashed her brains in. 

Don’t cut her open,
she thought.  She wanted to grab the cart and run out of the room, to take the body somewhere else, somewhere pleasant and peaceful and not some fucking sterilized laboratory with saws and knives and scales and plastic biohazard bags. 

Don’t cut her open. 

But they did.  They cut into her small body and unzipped her like a winter jacket, and all Aprille could do was watch. 

***

Cole stopped his truck a half mile down from the nearest driveway and said, “That’s it up ahead.  We’ll go in on foot.  Stay low and follow me.”

Frank grabbed his M4 and closed the truck door quietly, letting it catch without fully shutting. 
Cole ducked into the brush, moving from tree to tree for cover.  Frank copied his movements and came up behind him.  The house was only fifty yards away.  A small one-story shack with a wood stove and rotting wood on the porch and windows.  Frank tapped Cole on the shoulder and showed him the trash cans sitting at the end of the driveway.  “Where’s his car?” Frank whispered.   

“Don’t know.  From here on in, you cover me while I advance, and I’ll do the same. 
Keep an eye on those windows.  He might try and snipe us.” 

Frank lifted his rifle and painted each window on the house with the tiny red hologram in the sight display. 
Cole made it to the corner of the house closest to them and waved for Frank to hurry up.  Frank raced forward, running to get back to Cole’s side.  “Okay,” Cole said, taking several deep breaths.  “We go to the front door together and stack up.  I’ll break right and you break left.  As soon as we clear that room, we’ll regroup.” 

Both of them walked in low crouches, keeping their weapons ready. 
Cole ducked under the wide living room window and said, “Watch that!” 

Frank turned and lifted his rifle, keeping his finger near the trigger. 
Cole leaned over the porch and pulled open the screen door, then closed it again and came back to Frank.  “His car’s along the side of the house.  I just saw it.  He’s definitely here.”

Frank felt sweat leaking into his eyes from his hair.  He nodded and said, “I’m ready when you are.”

Cole went back to the screen door and pulled it open slowly and quietly.  He tried for the door handle, and it was locked.  “Son of a bitch,” he said.  “We’re gonna have to do this the old fashioned way.  Come on.” 

“I’ll do it,” Frank said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ll do it.  He’s my guy, and this is my mess to clean up.  I’ll go in first.”

Frank’s hands were shaking so much the gun was rattling.  He chalked it up to adrenaline.  He moved around Cole and grabbed the screen door, leaning back on one foot and about to kick when it occurred to him that he hadn’t talked to Dawn since their fight. 

He’d tried to call her once he reached Potter County, but there was no cell service. 

He hadn’t wished the girls goodnight. 

Cole
clapped his hand on Frank’s shoulder and said, “Whatever the hell it is you’re thinking about right now, put it out of your mind, boy.  Kick that door in and let’s go.”

Frank reared forward and blasted the door open with the heel of his boot, sending it crashing into the kitchen wall.  “Police department!” Frank bellowed, racing inside the kitchen and crouching low with his weapon raised. 

“Ralph Polonius, you are under arrest!” Cole shouted. 

“Kitchen’s clear,” Frank said. 

“On my six,” Cole said.  He moved forward and stopped at the living room threshold.  There were rifles leaned up against each window.  Each of them scoped, each of them ready to go.  “Holy shit.  He was waiting on us.  Where the hell is he?”

Cole
moved toward the bathroom with his rifle raised, and Frank opened a small door in the hallway.  “There’s a basement!” Frank shouted. 

“Give me a minute to look in the bathroom,”
Cole said. 

Frank squinted down into the darkness and saw light flicker.  He bent low and raised his rifle, seeing something holding a lantern. 

He started down the steps slowly, feeling the loose boards bend under his weight.  They were loose enough to vibrate even as he stood there, trying to see into the dark.  The lantern’s light was dim and flickering like a candle, as if the oil inside of it had nearly gone out. 

Frank looked down to take another step but shouted in fright at the sight of a man’s leg sticking up from the floor.  He bent down to see that it was Ralph Polonius, face down on the basement floor.  Ralph’s neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, bent up so that he was looking back at
Frank over his right shoulder.  Flies landed on his open eyes and small white maggots spilled out of his nostrils.

“Where are you?”
Cole called out from the living room.

“
Down here.  I found him,” Frank said.  He looked up at the figure holding the lantern, backed against the far wall of the basement.  The light was nearly out, casting a golden halo over the muddy walls and pool of black slime under Ralph Polonius’ head before it finally went out.   

“Are you serious?  He’s down there?” 
Cole reached into his pocket for a flashlight and aimed it down at the body.  There was a shotgun on the basement floor, a foot from where Ralph lay. 

Cole
came down the steps and aimed his flashlight around the empty basement.  “No circuit breaker, no supplies.  Not even a damn door.  What the hell was he coming down here for?”

“He heard something,” Frank said.  “Or saw something.  He was coming down to check it out with his gun, when he must have slipped and fell.”

“Lord, have mercy,” Cole said.  “Lucky for us, yeah?”

Frank bit his lip and said, “Yeah.  Pretty damn lucky.”