The Bones of Old Carlisle (18 page)

Nor had any of the corpses been transported yet. None were
covered with sheets, and now the tables held a fourth one, eyeless and
horribly defleshed, her arms hacked off just above the wrists.
Demizu was hovering above her, and he looked up. “Welcome back,”
he said with a ringing voice. “All the mysteries will soon be
revealed.”
Schaumberg approached the table with the new remains, looked down
and offered a brief assessment without bothering to record it.
“Similar damage,” she said, “but no active blood flow. Mutilation
occurred after death.”
“Captain,” Stapleton said to Bonaventure, “I thought you said you
were going back to the clinic.”
Bonaventure said nothing, just raised his hand again.
“So who have we here?” Demizu inquired, and he wiped his hands on
his camouflage pants and began moving toward the prisoner. He
staggered, put his hand on the blue-gray foot of one of the corpses,
then continued until he was face to face with the man.
“So you do exist,” Demizu said, and he raised a finger and waved
it in the man’s face. “But no, my friend. You’ll have to get up very
early in the morning to fool Col. Demizu. You fit. You fit. With a
blue line you fit. Let me show you.”
Demizu turned toward his whiteboard and screamed. Arrowroot saw
that Demizu had been busy while they were gone, drawing out an
elaborate network of colored lines that connected houses, bodies,
words and names. But the rain was ruining it all now, the colors
running down the board together, everything blurring together.
“Ooooh hooo hooo,” Demizu cried, rushing to the board. “Noooo!”
He grabbed a red marker and tried to redraw one of the lines, but the
ink just puddled out, spreading sideways and down through the
rainwater. Demizu next tried to rework the diagram with his hands,
forcing the lines and shapes back into place through a physics known
only to him. That attempt failed as well, and he turned back to the
rest of the team, his hands against his beard, smearing himself with
red and blue and black ink. He took a deep breath and, with what
appeared to be a profound effort, composed himself. “The conclusion is
not lost,” he announced with just a hint of slurring, on his s’s.
“Only some of the underlying logic. Another is coming, and he or she
will explain everything to us.”
Demizu walked up to the prisoner. “That’s right,” he confided in
a stage whisper. “You are not the last. You are only here to deceive
us. But another is coming.”
The prisoner was blinking, rain dripping over his forehead and
across his eyes, so Schaumberg loaned him her cap. He looked at her,
nodded and said what sounded like “ee-gleeb,” and she nodded back.
Arrowroot noticed that the drizzle was gathering in Schaumberg’s
hair, beading up like tiny, bright metal pellets, and he assumed this
is what water did among the innumerable chemicals women used to
darken, straighten, thicken, tame or tangle what grew upon their
heads. He wondered why she bothered to go to the trouble if it was all
going to be shoved under a camouflage military cap. But he looked at
her anew, in the context of her kindness and not just her ethnicity,
and he thought perhaps he understood the young soldier’s attraction.
A rainbow appeared across the valley, a little north of Heligaux,
and Demizu pointed to it. The prisoner said “aha!”
Arrowroot looked back toward the house and saw that another
corpse was on its way, probably the man with the broken neck, borne on
the stretcher between two grim soldiers.
His desire to leave became suddenly a desperate need, and he
grabbed Chief Hatfield’s arm. “They’re going to bring Robert next,” he
whispered urgently, and his eyes filled with tears and his voice shook
with misery. “I can’t— I can’t.”

A large tract of undeveloped land lay on the Heligaux side of the
Mittelkopp, a little north of the town proper, and its disposition
became, in Karl Arrowroot’s eyes, central to his undoing.

It was called, informally, the First Acre, because it was the
site of the first settlements of what eventually became Heligaux, but
it consisted of more like 1,000 acres, all told. There were old growth
forest, hiking trails, creeks, meadows and ruins, some of them so
ancient and of such unknown genesis they qualified as prehistoric.

One of the most popular corners of First Acre was a promontory
that stood 20 feet above the river, at a bend that afforded grand
views up and down the waterway. In the winter, you could see through
the bare trees all the way down to the Promenade. In the fall, you
could look upstream and see a blazing cathedral of oak, birch and
maple, a veritable madness in yellow, orange and red.

First Acre had long been in the town’s possession and was merely
enjoyed; but Mayor Arrowroot saw more.
So when Expert Manifold came calling, early in his second term,
Arrowroot grasped for the chance to at last bring some of this old
land to life.
Expert Manifold made things that went into car engines and boat
exhaust systems, as well as machines that made other things, and they
needed cheap land and a lot of water and First Acre was ideal.
All Arrowroot had to do was get the land rezoned and get City
Council to sign off on the sale of 10 acres along the Mittelkopp.
There would be jobs, a significant improvement to the city’s tax base,
and a spark to local development as the new plant drew more people and
additional enterprises. Eventually, the moribund market for commercial
real estate would rise, perhaps, and Arrowroot could start selling in
earnest again. He didn’t need any more money for himself, of course,
but he wanted to leave something behind for Danielle and Robert,
enough so they’d never have to worry about money again. Expert
Manifold was going to make that possible.
Then, word of the initial discussions leaked and all hell broke
loose, so Arrowroot and Expert Manifold make an official announcement
beneath a great oak tree on the edge of First Acre, and all hell, as
Arrowroot liked to say, “broke looser.”
There were threats of lawsuits and impeachments, and a new gaggle
of citizenry, younger people, angrier people, started attending City
Council meetings to be heard, to be seen, and to make a general
nuisance of themselves.
And one of those kids was Danielle Arrowroot, fresh out of
college, tragically mis-educated, opposed to anything that smacked of
progress or goodness or decency. Her presence among the junior rabble
was both an affront to the elder Arrowroot, and deeply humiliating.
Robert Arrowroot had his opinions too, but he shared them gently
and privately.
In the midst of the controversy, Karl and Robert Arrowroot were
sitting on the front porch, enjoying a late Sunday afternoon. It was
summer and the newspaper had just offered a tentative endorsement of
general First Acre development, if not Expert Manifold’s specific
plans.
“So, Robbie,” Arrowroot began, “think we’re gonna get First Acre
made into something?”
“I don’t know,” Robert had answered after a long pause, and he
looked toward the sun and squinted. Then he ran his hands through his
hair, something he did when he was uncomfortable. “Some of my friends,
you know, they—“
And that was the most Robert ever said on the matter. And now he
was dead, killed in an unspeakable way, left alone to mummify, then
dumped under a tree by horrible, hateful people.
For two weeks after that day at the old Carlisle place, Karl
Arrowroot ceased to exist. More precisely, there was nothing to his
life he could compare to anything else he had ever known. He’d lost
his mother and a brother, but the loss of a beloved son, in the prime
of life, put him in a place he had never known and could not
recognize. The world looked and felt and even tasted impossibly
foreign. He stopped shaving and spent a lot of time studying his beard
in the mirror, and he did other things that, to an outsider, would
appear exceedingly strange.
Nothing could bring him out of the yawning misery that was every
waking moment, and nothing, he thought, probably ever would. There
were so many flowers coming he had to dump them out back almost daily,
and there was a funeral attended by more than 300 people where some
very nice things were said, but the nearest thing to solace was
Danielle, who took a leave of absence from her job and moved back in
with him. For a week, she put on makeup every morning for some reason
and then cried it all off on the front porch by lunch time.
The story of Robert’s death became part of a bigger story, about
the deaths of three John Does and two Jane Does at Fort Shergawa.
Everyone, especially the national media, got the stories all wrong, of
course, in part because the Army didn’t tell everything they knew.
Animals were blamed for the most grisly deaths, and it was decided
that the fellow with the bashed-in head had first killed the fellow
with the turned-around neck, and then got himself killed by someone
else. Or maybe he killed himself with a baseball bat. Drugs and mental
illness and sociopathy were all blamed.
Arrowroot had been out there and didn’t buy a word of it, but the
Army had asked him not to talk about what he’d seen and he was glad to
oblige.
One thing the media did get right was Robert’s connection to the
horror, which was described accurately as no connection at all. It was
clear that he’d died six months before everyone else, in a manner that
had nothing to do with them. He was where he shouldn’t have been –
that was a given. Then someone in an Army chopper shot small ordnance
where they shouldn’t have shot it. Happens all the time, Arrowroot
knew, and Robert wasn’t the first innocent victim in the history of
ordnance misdirection. But that was no excuse, and Arrowroot knew that
if he ever got his hands on the gunner who killed his son, he’d make
him pay, or die trying. The Army wouldn’t admit anything, of course.
If they knew who’d fired into the Carlisle house late the previous
year, they weren’t going to share it with him.
Thankfully, the media didn’t know, or didn’t choose to report,
that the body had been severed, and Arrowroot – without knowing he was
doing so – instructed his mind to ignore that detail as well. Robert
had died instantly, and intact. His upper half had not propelled
itself desperately, mindlessly away from the mayhem, nor had his lower
half been moved (Otherdog had dragged the legs, the Army eventually
decided), because there were not two halves to move. Or so Arrowroot
told Danielle, and so he eventually came to believe himself.
And so the mystery of Robert Arrowroot was solved, at least
insofar as how he died. Why he chose to haunt the Carlisle home for
weeks at a time was another question, one perhaps answered by the
things he’d left in his backpack. But Arrowroot couldn’t bring himself
to go through it. No, not yet.
The national media focused on the story for a couple of days, the
dead mayor’s son and the five anonymous corpses, and then they moved
on to other things. There wasn’t anything to take pictures of other
than Army officials waving people away from the gate of Fort Shergawa,
and some old images of the Carlisle home, so the story got boring
pretty quickly. The whole thing was eventually written off as the
product of a cult, with probably some drugs thrown in. The hardest
thing to account for was the anonymity of all of the deceased, other
than Robert Arrowroot. How could five people grow up for two decades,
sneak onto a military facility, then die and never be missed or
claimed by anyone?
The only hope for a better understanding of the deaths lay in two
people who were still alive but, for different reasons, unavailable.
One was the man they’d found hiding in that closet, but he was quickly
dismissed as mentally deficient. Couldn’t read, could barely talk,
didn’t have a name, couldn’t even look at you right. Perhaps he’d been
kidnapped by the other murderers, and only escaped with his life
through good fortune.
He’d been charged with accessory to murder, resisting arrest,
impeding a federal investigation and trespassing, but all that was
just to keep him on hand while they tried to sort things out. There
was no evidence of anything except the trespassing, and that was
flimsy too since they probably couldn’t prove he’d actually cut
through a fence or ignored a no trespassing sign.
He was being held for now in the county jail, but he’d been
assigned a public defender who was trying to get him declared
incompetent and moved to a group home.
And then there was Tamani, a dark-haired girl with a dark
complexion, no last name, no past, nothing but a lot of muscle and a
solid command of hand-to-hand combat. There were no pictures of her,
so all anyone had to go on was a vague description of her looks and
her behavior.
In the rare instances when Karl Arrowroot thought about Tamani,
he got no further than believing she could be in California by now,
and then he returned to the war with his demons.
He was sleeping badly, seeing things in his dreams that woke him
more than once most nights. He was blaming himself, hour after hour,
day after day, for all that had gone wrong with his life, for First
Acre and the decisions he’d made and the people those decisions had
killed – Robert wasn’t the only one who’d died. And always, every
minute, he was fighting the urge to drink.
As soon as Chief Hatfield had told Danielle they’d found Robert’s
body, she went back to the house and poured all Arrowroot’s liquor
down the kitchen sink. Then she left, because she didn’t want to face
him right then. So he came home from Fort Shergawa, went straight for
the gin, found it gone and damned everything within earshot for half
an hour.
He grabbed his keys and headed for the front door, and then he
stopped. Always burdened with a good imagination, Arrowroot couldn’t
help but think about what would happen next. He’d drive to Miracle
Beverage, and it would probably be Duke or his daughter Sweenie
working the counter and they’d say how sorry they were about
Robert, and they’d know why he was buying two bottles of vodka. Or
he’d see someone else he knew at some other store, and they’d want to
talk, and then they’d tell other people they saw the mayor at the
liquor store, mourning his son and buying booze.
So he stood by his front door and argued with himself for a good
45 minutes, and then he punched the door jam and cried. And then he
went upstairs and looked at his face in the bathroom mirror, decided
not to shave for awhile and went to bed.
Whenever Danielle was gone, he repeated the ritual, standing with
his keys in his hand by his front door for 15 minutes or 30 minutes or
an hour, arguing with himself.
He knew God could help at times like this, and he prayed for
emotional relief, or for something in his life to change, or even for
himself to die, but nothing improved and he decided he was being
punished for what he’d done, and he gave up.
Robert was in heaven, of course, no doubt about that. And maybe,
Arrowroot thought, he’d make it there as well, sooner or later.
Preferably sooner. It was all he had to go on.
It was hardly an existence, barely a life at all, and after two
weeks, Arrowroot was reaching the point where he was wondering if he
could ever live any other way, if he could ever preside over another
City Council meeting, or sell another piece of commercial property, or
smile at anyone.
Then, on a Monday afternoon 15 days after everything happened at
Fort Shergawa, Chief Hatfield knocked on his front door. Arrowroot had
been sleeping fitfully on the couch downstairs, and he rose with a
start.
“What?” he cried. “Who’s that? Who’s there?”
“It’s Floyd,” Hatfield yelled through the door.
“Whatcha want?” Arrowroot shouted back.
“Let me in, I need to talk to ya,” Hatfield replied.
Still in his pajamas and bathrobe, Arrowroot went to the door and
opened it.
“How’re ya doin’?” Hatfield asked quietly.
“Not good,” Arrowroot answered back immediately. “Not good at
all, in case it’s not obvious.”
“Can I come in?” Hatfield asked.
“Now’s not a good time,” Arrowroot said. “And I’m sure Gertrude
and Al can help you with anything you need,” he added, referring to
the city’s vice mayor and manager.
“This is about you, Karl,” Hatfield said. He put his hand on the
wall next to the front door, and Arrowroot knew he wasn’t going to get
rid of the police chief that easily.
“I haven’t been drinking,” Arrowroot said, “in case you’re
wondering. You know that, right? The last time I was drunk – oh, God,
it seems like years ago. But it was the night before we had breakfast
at Bernardo’s. You remember?”
“I do,” Hatfield said. “Can I come in?”
“You know, I heard all that nonsense on the scanner, that soldier
and that girl,” Arrowroot continued, and although he was warming to
his subject, and he loved to tell stories, his voice was strained and
nearly toneless, almost a monotone. “Tamani. The girl in the wedding
dress. Remember? I called her wedding girl, looked for her all that
day, finally found her. God, that seems like years ago.”
“I remember,” said Hatfield, yielding to Arrowroot’s need to
reminisce. “She took off her army fatigues out front, put back on her
wedding dress.”
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot that part,” said Arrowroot, and he
smiled weakly.
“So I thought nobody saw,” Hatfield recalled, “but then that
ladies literary group shows up. You know, those women that walk around
and get ideas for books?”
“Oh yeah,” Arrowroot said. “They’ve done seven or eight of them.
I’ve bought every one. Great stuff.”
“So they showed up, asked me about a naked angel warrior or
something, like they knew all about it.”
“Oh my God!” Arrowroot exclaimed, and for the first time in 15
days, he laughed. “I told ‘em to ask you about that. Thought it might
liven your day up a bit.”
Hatfield smiled and looked down, but he clearly wasn’t of a mind
to laugh. “You know I wouldn’t be bothering you today if it wasn’t
urgent, right?” he asked.
“No,” Arrowroot replied, “I don’t necessarily know that.”
“Okay, then, let me get to the point,” Hatfield said, and he
stepped back from Arrowroot’s front door and crossed his arms. “Mr.
Smiley wants to talk to you.”
“Who the hell is Mr. Smiley?” Arrowroot demanded. “Unless he
wants to buy some land or a building somewhere, let him know I got no
interest. But thanks for stopping by, Floyd, good to see ya.”
Arrowroot tried to push the door closed but Hatfield was too
quick for him, shoving his foot in the gap.
“Dammit, Karl, I said this is important,” Hatfield protested.
“You get your foot out of my door or you’re gonna lose half of
it,” Arrowroot hissed.
Hatfield pulled his foot back and Arrowroot slammed the door.
“Just listen, just listen,” Hatfield shouted. “Mr. Smiley is that kid
they picked up at the Carlisle house. You’re the one that gave him his
damned name, that’s all he calls himself now. He refuses to talk to
anyone but you, keeps saying ‘Karl, Karl.’”