The Absence of Mercy (6 page)

Ben trod quietly down the hall and across the living room, Alex padding not so softly behind him. He crossed the family room and ascended the stairs. At the top of the staircase he paused for a moment, then turned right and walked down the short hallway leading to the bedrooms of his two sons. He stood outside their rooms in the darkness for the span of about thirty seconds, simply listening, needing to be close to them for a moment. Then he turned and headed back down the hallway in the opposite direction toward the bedroom he shared with Susan. Having successfully escorted his owner to the appropriate sleeping quarters, Alex turned and descended the stairs to his own bed beside the living room's front-facing bay window. Ben pushed open the bedroom door and entered quietly, trying not to wake his wife.

For Susan, sleep was often restless and difficult to initiate. She'd suffered from some degree of insomnia for as long as Ben had known her, and had experimented with a multitude of unsuccessful remedies throughout those years. Contrary to the experience of many women, however, she'd managed to sleep well during both of her pregnancies. Even during her third trimester, sleep had come easily to Susan, and she was often breathing slowly and softly within ten minutes after turning out the light. Ironically, it was Ben who seemed to have difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep during that time. He would lie in bed and watch the shadows cast from the swaying branches of the oak tree in their front yard play deftly across their vaulted ceiling. He would listen to the steady respirations of his wife lying blissfully in bed next to him, and he would consider the day's events: the slow but perpetual ascent of gasoline prices that summer; the upcoming gubernatorial election; the positive gram stain of Mr. Flescher's cerebrospinal fluid last Thursday. The hours of potential sleep would slip away from him like water over a steep ledge, leaving him befuddled and sluggish the following day, a dull heaviness clinging to his head like a massive barnacle. He would blunder through the day in this hebetudinous state until the sun finally descended once more beyond the horizon. Dinner that evening would be absently eaten and barely tasted, and although he tried to be interested in conversations with his wife, he always seemed to fall behind, finding himself at a break in the dialogue and wondering whether she had just asked him a question or whether it was simply his turn to speak. Excusing himself apologetically, he would head off to bed early in search of the nocturnal respite that had eluded him the previous night. Sometimes sleep would come, mercifully falling upon him like a summer storm. When it did, his dreams would be strange and wild, and he would often awaken in the night, sweating lightly and wondering whether he had cried out and, stupidly, whether he and Susan were alone in the room.

He'd continued in this tormented state for most of Susan's pregnancy, watching her with growing jealousy as she slipped effortlessly into sleep every evening and awoke refreshed and good-spirited the following morning as brilliant sunlight flooded their bedroom. It was as if Ben had somehow taken upon himself all of Susan's familiar struggles with insomnia and had shouldered them through the course of her pregnancies so that the children could develop unfettered within her. If that were the case, it was a noble yet arduous deed, and he was relieved when—oddly, but almost predictably—the balance returned to its original state within a month of the birth of each of their sons. Suddenly, Ben found himself having to set the alarm clock in order to awaken for the infant's nightly feedings. On many of these occasions, he would find Susan's side of the bed empty, and he would get up to investigate only to find her already tending to the baby despite the fact that it was his turn at the helm. “
Honey, I can do that,
” he would say to her sweetly in a tired voice. “
It's okay,
” she'd reply. “
I was already up.
”

“Tough day at the office, hon?” Susan greeted him from the darkness, startling Ben as he unbuttoned his shirt.

“
Jesus,
babe. You scared me.”

“Sorry,” she said. “How was the autopsy?”

Ben unlaced his shoes and slipped them off, then pulled off his slacks and placed them in the closet hamper. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could now make out the figure of his wife, propping herself up on one elbow as she surveyed him from their bed.

“Pretty horrible,” he answered. He exhaled deeply and stretched, trying to release as much of the day's stress from his body as possible. He felt old and tired, and more than a little unnerved by the evening's events.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” he said, climbing into bed. He felt utterly exhausted, emotionally as well as physically.

Susan wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tightly, spooning his body with her own. She was warm beneath the covers, her soft breasts pressing up against his skin. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” Ben replied in a voice that was just above a whisper in the silence of the room. And he did. After seventeen years of marriage, he realized that he loved her more now than in all the days and nights that had come before. It was a love that had grown within him steadily throughout the intimate partnership of their lives, and continued to evolve in ways that surprised and amazed him. He turned to her now and kissed her softly in the darkness. Her hand found his own, and their fingers interlaced with the familiarity of the years between them. Then she was guiding his hand to the bare skin of her left hip. Her body rose to meet him, and this time her kiss was more passionate, more insistent than before.

“I'm glad you're home,” she whispered, and Ben decided that sleep could wait just a little while longer.

That night he dreamed of Thomas, and a trip he and Susan had taken with their oldest son to the circus twelve years before. It had just been the three of them then—Susan's pregnancy with Joel still three and a half years down the road.

The smell of hot dogs and candy apples hung thickly in the air, intermixed with the less pleasant aroma of animals pacing restlessly in their cages. Hay and broken peanut shells crunched underfoot as they exited the colossal tent. Thomas was four years old, and Ben had stopped to buy him an orange hydrogen-filled balloon from one of the countless vendors. The transaction had taken less than thirty seconds, and he'd assumed that Susan had been holding on to their son's hand during the process, but by the time he turned around Thomas had vanished into the crowd filing out into the massive parking lot in a great swarm.

Suddenly, everything changed. The music being piped out to small speakers high above them took on a taunting, grating, fun-house air. The faces of the strangers shuffling by seemed to smirk at Ben nastily, their eyes darting to the side to watch him as they passed. A man in a purple vest and lime-green bow tie hawking peanuts (“
Fresh peanuts! Get your fresh peanuts here!
”) to the exiting patrons turned in Ben's direction and, covering his mouth halfheartedly, spat something onto the ground that looked like a mixture of mucus and dark blood. His eyes caught Ben's incredulous gaze, and he grinned up at him through a rotten, toothless mouth.
“What about it, mista? Wanna peanut?
” he asked, and then burst into a cackling laugh that caused Ben's skin to break out in gooseflesh.

For twenty endless minutes they looked for Thomas, with Susan anchoring the spot where they'd first lost sight of their son and Ben setting out through the crowd in expanding circles around her, calling out Thomas's name into an ocean of passing strangers, trying to make his voice heard above the blaring music emanating from the speakers above him. In that short time, his mind discovered the ability to think of every possible evil thing in the world that might have beset his son.

Then, through a small opening momentarily created between the bodies of the shifting crowd, Ben spotted his boy—or at least thought he did.

“Thomas,” he called, pushing his way roughly past a large man clutching an enormous bouquet of cotton candy.

“
Hey!
” the man protested indignantly, but Ben barely heard. For on that warm August night, with the first tendrils of fall still three weeks away and the trees holding steadfastly to their summer foliage, it
had
been Thomas, the familiar brown cowlick of hair rising like a question mark from the top of his head as he stood looking up at the unfamiliar faces all around him.

Ben dropped to his knees and swept his startled son into his arms. “
Jesus Christ, you scared me!
” he scolded him, hugging the boy tightly. The man in the purple vest and lime-green bow tie (“
Fresh peanuts! Get your fresh peanuts here!
”) glanced over at them suspiciously.

Ben muttered a prayer of gratitude, then stood up, holding Thomas in his arms as he began to make his way toward Susan through the thinning horde.

“They git away from ya, those little ones
.
”

Ben turned in the direction of the voice, and found himself facing the peanut hawker, whose yellowed eyes stared back at him accusingly.

“Pardon?”

The man considered him for a moment. The olive shirt beneath his purple vest was dark with sweat stains and his black boots were caked with mud and flecks of trodden hay. He sneered at Ben with a rotten, toothless mouth. “
Ya oughta watch ya kid more closely nex' time,
” he admonished Ben, and spat another wad of maroon phlegm onto the ground, where it seemed to twist and hiss like a pat of butter on the scorched brown earth before it finally lay quiet and dead. He leered at Ben contemptuously, his buckled jaw listing to the right at an impossible angle as if it were dislocated from his skull. Still, his mandible moved up and down as he chewed, and bits of mashed peanut shells spilled out from between his twisted lips like dead insects and came to rest at his feet. “
Kid like that needs ta be watched
.”

Ben, not knowing what to say, simply stood there, transfixed, staring back at the man.

“
Yaah
,” the peanut hawker said to himself after a moment's consideration, as if suddenly coming to some irrefutable conclusion. He spat again on the ground, then wiped his mouth absently with the back of his hand. “
Kid like that jus' slip away from ya, if ya not careful wit' 'im
.” He paused for a moment, reflectively. Then he unfurled a gnarled, accusatory index finger and held it out in Thomas's direction. Ben pulled the boy closer against himself, turning slightly so that his own body was between his son and the figure in the purple vest.

“
Ya nevah know what a boy gonna do when he git out 'n the world
,” the man said, observing Thomas with a predatory gaze. The volume of his voice began to rise now, high above the crowd like a Bible-thumping preacher before a spellbound congregation. “Ya think 'e's safe, mistah.
But 'e ain't!
Ya think ya gotcha boy back now.
But ya don't!
You don' know whe'ah 'e's been, who 'e's been consortin' wit'. Jus' lookit 'im.
'E'S BEEN EATIN' PEANUTS! AN' THE'AH ROTTEN! EV'RY LAS' ONE!!
”

And with that, Ben turned to look at his son, whom he held protectively in his arms. Thomas turned his face upward, glancing at Ben with a doomed expression of guilt and horror. It was obvious now that the boy was sick. “I'm sorry, Daddy,” he said. “I didn't know.” Then his small body convulsed sharply, and he vomited an enormous torrent of bloody, macerated peanuts onto the ground at Ben's feet.

Part 2

To Witness the Dead

Sam Garston was the sort of man who made it seem as if the job of county sheriff had been established not so much because there was a need for it, but because the Jefferson County legislature realized that they needed to come up with some way to make use of the man's talent and steadfast dedication to public service. Having moved his family to the area thirteen years ago, Ben had not known Sam for as long as some of the true locals. Nevertheless, his position as medical examiner brought him into contact with Sam frequently enough that he felt he knew the man fairly well. He was not surprised, therefore, to find a Jefferson County patrol car parked in front of the Coroner's Office at nine o'clock on this bright Saturday morning and the six-foot-five, 260-pound chief of police leaning casually against the wall of the building, waiting for Ben to arrive.

“Good morning, Chief,” Ben greeted him as he ascended the six steps to the building's front door.

“It's a nice one,” Garston agreed amicably, squinting slightly as he surveyed the blue sky above. His left thumb was tucked casually into his gun belt, and the large man seemed to lean against the building with enough purpose to make one wonder whether he perhaps moonlighted as a structural support beam for the CO's front exterior façade. As Sam pushed away from the building's wall with his right foot Ben could almost feel the CO shift slightly as it resumed responsibility for the entire weight of its frame.

“Thought I might actually beat you here this morning, Sam,” Ben commented as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside. A fine mist of dust floated within the identical sunbeams cast through the lobby's two large front windows. The CO was old, erected at least eighty years ago, and had served as county post office for many distinguished decades before its eventual reassignment. The floors were swept and mopped five days a week by a janitor who took pride in his work and did his job well. Nevertheless, the dust inhabiting the old building had apparently decided long ago that it had a right to be there, and returned every evening after the lights went out and the place was locked up tight. It provided a familiar welcome on mornings like this when Ben was the first to arrive and startle it up from its resting place on the wooden floorboards.

“You won't be beating me anywhere showing up at nine
A.M.
,” the big man countered. “Far as I see it, day's almost half over. Been up since five-thirty, and waiting here for you since eight. Hell, I'm almost ready for lunch.”