by Jim Johanson
There was a long period of silence.
"Well, yes ma'am, I understand that, I was just wondering---
"Listen, we don't mind waiting, maybe we can just come down there and talk to the doctor, and he can let us know when Mr. Consolo is---"
Ford put his fingers to his temple, holding back frustration.
"Okay, now can I---"
Tim could hear shrill squabbling coming through the other end of the phone line.
"Okay, yes, you too. Thanks again. M'bye."
"That the hospital?" said Tim.
"Course it was."
“We going to go check in on Mr. Consolo?”
Ford furled his brow.
“I don’t see much point in interviewing someone who can’t speak.”
A keen observer, watching Billy intently, might have noticed the tiniest hint of a smile creeping malevolently across his face as he overheard the news about Consolo.
Chapter 21
Mrs. Salverson concluded her playing of Lord I Lift Your Name on High on the organ to the muffled sound of shuffling in church pews and a few people clearing their throats. Albert Northcote took his position at the pulpit, dressed fully in black with a fake gold cross dangling from his neck.
"My brothers and sisters of God," he spoke, "thank you all for joining us today in reverence to our holy lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Lord, we give thanks to you for allowing us to offer our lives and our eternal souls in devotion to you.
"For many these have been trying times, and many of us count suffering in our lives as though it were a member of our family, joining us at supper as an unwelcome house guest.
“I watch the waves of hopelessness spread out over my flock like the evil that Jesus cast out into the herd of boars, causing them to run wild. But like the boars, we are not entirely to blame for the sufferings that we endure. We are all driven toward sin, and even at our best, we waver in our devotion to the Lord and toward Godly things.
“But we are strong as the boars were not, and we will overcome as the boars could not, for we have the greatest gift ever given to mankind, and that is the love and salvation attained through Jesus Christ, who gave his life so that we might be saved, to repent for our indulgence and find true harmony in life.
"Now as I look out among the crowd gathered here today, I see good people, but I also see sadness, folly, lust and anger, and any number of deadly sins, violations of the ten commandments. I spend many nights wondering why it is that we, children of Christ, are so incapable of devoting our lives to worship and living our lives the way that God intended. It is not enough to simply want to live a pious and righteous life. We must remember to spend every day living it as we would like to be seen in the eyes of God.
"We are a small community, and word travels quick. Just as there are no secrets before the eyes of God, there are few secrets to be kept in Racine. Many of you have come to know of the untimely passing of Evelyn Greer."
Mary, seated four rows back from the front, felt her body twitch at the mention of her mother. It had been less than four days since the murder. Mary had just barely begun to mentally process the passing of her mother and all of the emotions associated therein.
There was no funeral for Evelyn. The surviving Greers had no money to pay for one. Evelyn’s body was cremated, the costs borne by Albert Northcote and the church. Mary placed the urn on a shelf in the garage, not wanting to look at it.
Northcote, a compulsive meddler, had found it necessary to arrive unannounced at Jackie's parents’ house to insist that Mary attend the church service. He drove her there himself. Much like Northcote had assigned Consolo as a surrogate parent for Billy, Northcote now assumed to take some parental responsibility for Mary as well, her personal choice never being a consideration in his mind.
"It is the greatest of sadness that overcomes a shepherd," continued Northcote, "when a wolf overtakes one of his flock, taking them in the most gruesome of violence. But let this atrocity serve as warning to the other sheep, that those who stray from the herd are inevitably made to fall victim to predators that comb the flock for weakness, sinking their teeth into those errant sheep who graze precariously at the far edges of the farm.
"God himself blesses the center, the heart, of the farm, and it is at the center of the herd that we grow closest to the love of the Lord. Those who stray are taken up in pandemonium by the demon Satan himself."
Mary found herself dissociating, trying to find a safe place in her mind to retreat. She dug through childhood memories, desperately searching for any place to pretend to be rather than the church where Northcote was speaking about her deceased mother carelessly, politicizing her death as a tool to arouse fervent devotion among the members of his church.
Images of vibrant, green, summer leaves began to appear to Mary. There was a distant memory, an echo of laughter that appeared to her not unlike the sun slowly rising over a cold winter day, driving away the frost accumulated the night before. The voice was Jackie's. The two girls frolicked happily between game trails, brush, and rusted metal power-line towers, their hair blowing behind them in the wind as their rubber sandals left light indentations in the ground softened by a light summer night's rain. Northcote's voice faded in turn.
Mary paid no mind to Northcote when he abruptly ceased his sermon, him having taken notice that Mary had her eyes closed, a coy smile on her face. Mary was untroubled by the scores of church-goers stealing glances at her through the corners of their eyes, heads faced forward in a feeble attempt to avoid being caught staring.
Mary had become a local celebrity, and all the town were her paparazzi. They were fraught with wondering how they themselves might handle the situation in which Mary had been placed, curious to what her next move would be, how she would react, what she would do with her life after everything had been taken from her, a modern day Job from scripture. Would she retain her allegiance to God? How does one suffer so greatly and maintain their sanity, they wondered.
Their faces, kept cold and somber, failed to reveal the inner turmoil inside the lot, embroiled in a whirlwind of emotions as they watched Mary sit contemptuously, the smile across her face only showing signs of growing wider. They were befuddled at the consideration that Mary might be feeling relief, which she was. Relief was the sensation that wrapped around her along with the convalescent memory of playing joyfully with her lifelong friend, like winds wound around the eye of a hurricane, a protective barrier from the forces and peoples of the world, and in this memory, cloistered by the storm winds, Mary was freer than she'd ever been.
Chapter 22
Ford opened the bottom drawer of his desk, grunting as he reached in. He dragged out a mostly full bottle of corn whiskey from beneath a heavy stack of old, neglected documents and file folders. Tim looked over to see Ford pouring a few shots worth into his coffee mug. The morning's stale, cold coffee at the bottom of his mug mixed into the whiskey. Ford felt Tim looking at him, but didn't bother turning his head to acknowledge him.
"You're not gonna pull me over on the way home, are you?" Ford chided.
Tim didn't respond, just shifted his attention back to his papers. He felt a sick feeling in his stomach as he wrote "Billy Greer" into a blank space on a form template, documenting their trip to Consolo's house. Billy appeared to be napping in the large, seldom-used jail cell, a quilt wrapped around him and the door left ajar. Ford sipped at his whiskey.
"You know, Sheriff, somethings been bothering me since we left Michael Consolo's house," said Tim.
"What's that?"
"Well, I didn't think much of it at the time, since we were busy getting that big fella out of there, and all that blood all over the place, looked like something out of a horror movie. Guess I was distracted by it. But there was this awful stench, that just smelled downright strange, and I couldn't get it out of my nose even after we left the house. I thought maybe the man had relieved himself when he was having that stroke, but..."
Twenty years of smoking had sto
len most of Ford’s sense of smell. He entertained Tim’s suspicion, with Tim apparently being in possession of some appreciable sense for perception that Ford himself lacked.
"Something about it doesn't sit right with you?"
"No, no sir, it doesn't. And now I know a man's house is his own business, and lots of people don't take no care of themselves, if they don't plan on having company over, and that Consolo, well, his wife passed on, so maybe she kept up with the cleaning and everything, but... well you remember when Mrs. Peters passed away all by her lonesome self, and all seven of them cats we found chewing on her after she'd been laying there for days? Cat feces all over the floor, litter boxes overflowing… just the smell of piss alone had me about to lose my lunch, but wasn't that cat pee smell that I remember at Consolo's. Was more like..."
Ford lifted his mug to let the whole of the drink spill into his mouth, his throat burning as the whiskey fell down into his stomach. He felt warmed inside, though it was an artificial warmth, a replacement for genuine wellbeing.
"Well it wasn't the smell of the cats that I remember, it was Mrs. Peters herself, and I don't mean what she smelled like when she were alive, no disrespect and Lord bless her soul. She didn't have no air conditioning and it was the dead of the summer, and, damn if that wasn't the worst thing I'd ever smelled in my life. All due respect to..."
"You’ve been huntin’ before, right Tim?” Ford interrupted.
"Yes sir, course I have, lots of times. Father used to take me when I was little, 'fore his heart gave out. Never did much of it myself on account of my eyesight. Doctor says I have a stigmatism. Wasn't never no good at shootin'."
Ford took a glance of admonishment down at Tim's revolver holstered at his side.
"Well," stuttered Tim, "game, I mean. With a rifle. Long distance. The sight don't work with my eyes, it's like it keeps moving around on me. Anything within... maybe forty feet, I can see just fine."
There was an awkward period of silence before Ford continued.
"Tim, when your father, rest his soul, brought home a deer or duck or whatever it was he was hunting, do you remember what the remains of the animal smelled like after he took out the good eating parts?"
"Well yeah, now that you mention it, he used to hang the deer up by a tree out by the barn, carve all the guts out of em, said it was okay to just leave 'em on the ground, that the animals would get 'em, nothin’ goin’ to waste, something like that."
"Remember what that mess of animal smelled like, after they'd been sitting there a few days?"
Tim straightened his posture.
"That's it, sir. That's the smell. Like rotten meat."
"Consolo rubbed his calloused hand over his forehead.
"Well, I suppose we ought to be heading back over to the Consolo house before that boy gets out of the hospital, Tim."
Neither of the men noticed that Billy had entered the room, silent and nearly ethereal like a ghost. The persistent blank expression on his face transformed into a perverted guise of horror, his features all twisted up, as if the flesh of his face had been caught on a fishhook and retched upward into a grim countenance of deformity. He was snarling like a cougar, his teeth jutting out like they wanted to escape his mouth.
The sudden appearance of Billy startled Tim. Billy seemed to be transfixed on the hands of the clock on the wall. In the awkwardness of each passing second, the ticking of the clock seemed to grow louder.
The burn of Ford’s whiskey lowered the pitch of his voice by a noticeable degree.
"Son, you alright?"
Chapter 23
Billy struggled to get comfortable in the back of the police car. The burns on his leg had scabbed over and they scraped painfully against his jeans with every twist of his body in the cramped seat. A Plexiglas barrier separated him from the officers. He could sense their unrest, their nervousness ready to crack and come apart.
Mary too felt uncomfortable in the passenger seat of Northcote's truck, though the calm serenity that had come over her during the church ceremony was still yet to fade. Both parties, unbeknownst to each other, were traveling to Consolo's house to speak with him.
Released from the hospital a day prior, Consolo was now recovering from the mild stroke he’d suffered as a result of Billy switching his pills. He’d developed a noticeable droop in the eyelid and lip of the left side of his face, along with a weakened ability to use his left arm and leg.
Consolo sat begrudgingly in a dilapidated armchair in his living room, eyes locked forward in a beleaguered state of sadness and irritability. His fingernails scraped at the wooden arm of the chair, drawing microscopic bits of wood up into the gaps between the nail and the flesh of his fingertips with every compulsive repetition. His teeth ground against each other savagely with barely audible creaking sounds escaping from the gap created by the paralyzed section of his lower left lip. At his left side was a walking cane provided to him by the hospital.
Northcote and Mary arrived at Consolo's. The old man eyed the front of the house suspiciously, mounting disdain for Consolo’s apparently laziness in maintaining his home.
"I won't be long, Mary, darling. Wait here in the truck, if you would. Michael Consolo and I have some… disagreements, to settle."
Northcote lifted his sixty-five-year-old body up and out of the truck, letting the door close behind him. The gravel of the driveway shifted beneath his feet as he trudged up to the door. He was still clad in his preacher outfit from the church ceremony, looking like Martin Luther nailing a list of grievances when he knocked on the door. Despite his age, his closed fist still landed with precision and force, with a sound that Consolo would surely have heard from anywhere in the house.
There was no answer at the door after a minute of waiting.
Northcote looked over his left shoulder at Consolo's truck parked in the driveway. Surely, he was home.
Northcote was in no mood for waiting, and he wasn't the type of man to wait for an invitation to enter a place.
He wrapped his hand around the doorknob and pushed, finding the door unlocked. Inside it was dark, but enough light shone through the rear sliding glass doors for him to see.
"Consolo? Michael?" he asked.
Consolo twitched uncomfortably in his chair. He recognized the voice.
Northcote pressed forward. Even his dulled sense of smell that came with age was able to pick up on the formidable stench filling Consolo's house.
Passing beyond the entryway, Northcote found Consolo seated in the rocking chair, clearly irritated to have someone entering his home uninvited. Consolo tried to hide his disapproval, but Northcote had already taken notice. It was evident to both men that this was not simply a friendly visit.
"Albert," said Consolo. His lips quivered, his tongue struggling to form words.
Northcote was silent, eyeing the state of affairs in the Consolo household, not succeeding in hiding his judgmental appraisal of the unkempt nature of Consolo's home. A burning gas lamp cast grim shadows on their faces.
"Mr. Consolo," replied Northcote, the words falling out of his mouth like a deposit from a cement mixer.
"I understand that you’re having some difficulty speaking. Perhaps I can speak for both of us. Or perhaps better, I can use the Lord’s words. There is a psalm, I forget which one, they all start to run together as you reach my age… ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain...’
“I wonder about my watchman. You were the watchman of the burned boy. You were entrusted to keep him out of trouble, but I wonder about your devotion, your piety. I am sorry about your recent... affliction, but God smites those who He sees fit, and He chooses wisely... Tell me, why has God chosen you? What are your dealings with the child?"
"He is... difficult,” sputtered Consolo. “He doesn't... follow… directions."
"I would have thought you would have known how to deal with a disobedient child, Mr. Consolo. This is
why I trusted you with the boy. You seemed..."
Consolo pushed hard down upon the wood of the chair, shoving himself to his feet, nearly falling but catching himself and placing his left hand on the medical cane. Northcote turned, still examining the living space, nearly aghast at the condition of disrepair and the filth that had accumulated on the floor. He began to make his way to the unlit bathroom, not hearing the pained movements of Consolo behind him, not hearing the modest scrape of a framing hammer being pulled from the countertop behind him. Consolo's left hand was numb and nearly useless, but his right felt full of power as he stalked Northcote from behind, sweat emanating from his hand and coating the handle of the hammer.
Mary had grown awkwardly bored in the truck. Always moving silently as she’d become accustomed to doing so as not to disturb the world with her presence, she’d stepped into the house and was now standing in the doorway unnoticed, watching the scene unfold in the dim lighting. She didn’t spot the hammer in Consolo's hand until he walked awkwardly up behind Northcote and raised the blunt device. Light through the window reflected on the steel of the hammer's head.
A violent shiver overcame Mary as she realized what she was witnessing. Northcote turned to face Consolo, another bible verse fresh on his lips but choked out as the hammer came down upon the crown of his skull. Northcote dropped to the floor, his skin torn and his skull fractured by the blow of the hammer. Blood soaked into the thin gray hairs traversing the top of his head.
Alive but immobilized by the pain and sudden shock, Northcote gasped for life on the floor of Consolo's living room. The sucking sounds of air entering his agape mouth were audible to Mary across the room. Even more sickening than the wet thud of the hammer against Northcote's skull was the staggered manner in which he struggled to breathe in rapid succession, laid out on the stained and mildewed carpet.
