Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  There’s no restaurant open this mornin’ . . .’cept maybe Tom Delphin’s diner out to the Interstate. Tom’s an agnostic. No, Ma’am, this grub comes from yours truly’s kitchen. Now eat up before it all gets cold.”

  “Thank you . . . Sheriff,” said Natalie. “But I can’t eat all this . . .”

  “Not supposed to,” said Gentry. “This is my breakfast too. Here’s the pepper.”

  “But my throat . . .”

  “Doc says it’ll be sore for a while, but it’ll work OK for eating. Eat up.” Natalie opened her mouth, said nothing, and picked up her fork instead.

  Gentry removed a small transistor radio from the sack and set it on the table. Most of the FM stations carried Christmas music. He found a classical station playing Handel’s Messiah and let the music soar.

  Natalie appeared to be enjoying her scrambled egg. She took a sip of hot coffee and said, “This is excellent, Sheriff. What about Lester?”

  “He’s not always best described as excellent,” said Gentry. “No, I mean is he still here?”

  “Nope,” said Gentry. “He’s back at the station ’til noon. Then Stewart comes in to relieve him. Don’t worry, Lester has had breakfast already.”

  “Good coffee,” said Natalie. She looked at Gentry over the clutter of Styrofoam containers. “Lester said that you spent the night here.”

  Gentry managed to combine a gesture in which he removed his hat and shrugged at the same time. “Darn eggs get cold even when I pack ’em in these stupid Styrofoam things,” he said.

  “Did you think he . . . whoever it was . . . would come back?” asked Natalie.

  “Not especially,” said Gentry, “but we didn’t have too much time to talk before they gave you the shot last night. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have somebody here to chat with you when you woke up.”

  “So you spent Christmas Eve in a hospital chair,” said Natalie. Gentry grinned at her. “What the heck. It’s more fun than watching Mr. Magoo as Scrooge for the twentieth year.”

  “How did you find me so fast last night?” asked Natalie, her voice still husky but not as strained as before.

  “Well, we’d agreed to get together, after all,” said Gentry. “When you weren’t home and my answerin’ machine didn’t have a message on it, I just sort of drove by the Fuller place on the way home. I knew you had a habit of checking it out.”

  “But you didn’t see my assailant?”

  “Nope. Just you in the front seat, sort of hunkered over holding a bloodied camera.”

  Natalie shook her head. “I still don’t remember hitting him with the camera,” she said. “I was trying to reach Dad’s gun.”

  “Mmmm, that reminds me,” said Gentry. He walked over to the green sheriff’s jacket he had hung on a chair and removed the .32 automatic from a pocket and set it on the far end of the tray table near Natalie’s orange juice. “I put the safety back on,” he said. “It’s still loaded.”

  Natalie lifted a wedge of toast but did not bite into it. “Who was it?” Gentry shook his head. “You say he was white?”

  “Yes. I only saw his nose . . . a bit of cheek . . . and his eyes, but I’m sure he was white . . .”

  “Age?”

  “I’m not sure. I had the sense he was about your age . . . early thirties maybe.”

  “Do you remember anything you didn’t tell me last night?” asked Gentry.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Natalie. “He was in the car when I ran back to it. He must have been on the floor in the back . . .” Natalie put down the toast and shivered.

  “He broke the overhead light in your car,” said Gentry, finishing the last of his scrambled eggs. “That’s why it didn’t come on when you opened the door on the driver’s side. You say you saw a light on the second floor of the Fuller house?”

  “Yes. Not the hall light or in her bedroom. Perhaps from the guest room up there. I could see it through the gaps in the shutters.”

  “Here, finish up,” said Gentry, pushing the small plate of bacon toward her. “Did you know that the electricity was turned off in the Fuller house?”

  Natalie’s eyebrows went up. “No,” she said. “Probably was a flashlight,” said Gentry, “Maybe one of those big electric lanterns.”

  “Then you believe me?”

  Gentry was closing up his Styrofoam containers and tossing them in the wastebasket nearby. He paused to stare at her. “Why wouldn’t I believe you? You didn’t put those marks on your throat all by yourself.”

  “But why would anyone try to kill me?” asked Natalie in a voice smaller than her sore throat demanded.

  Gentry packed up the dishes and containers in front of her. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t tryin’ to kill you. He wanted to hurt you . . .”

  “He succeeded there,” said Natalie, gingerly touching her throat and ban daged head.

  “. . . and to scare you.”

  “Ditto there,” said Natalie. She looked around. “God, I hate hospitals.”

  “And there was what he said,” said Gentry. “Tell me again.”

  Natalie closed her eyes. “You want to find the woman? Look in Germantown.”

  “Say it again,” urged Gentry. “Try to put it in the same tone, the same phrasing as you heard it.”

  Natalie repeated it in a flat, emotionless tone. “That’s it?” said Gentry. “No accent or dialect?”

  “Not really,” said Natalie. “Very flat. Rather like a radio announcer giving the weather on an FM station.”

  “Not a local sound,” said Gentry. “No.”

  “A Yankee dialect maybe?” asked Gentry. He repeated the phrase with a New York accent so pronounced and accurate that Natalie laughed out loud in spite of her sore throat.

  “No,” she said. “New En gland? German? New Jersey—Jewish-American?” asked Gentry and performed flawlessly in all three dialects.

  “No,” laughed Natalie. “You’re good,” she said. “No, it was just . . . flat.”

  “How about tone and pitch?”

  “Deep, but not nearly as deep as yours” said Natalie. “Sort of a soft baritone.”

  “Could it have been a woman?” asked Gentry.

  Natalie blinked. She thought of the glimpse in the mirror, red already clotting her vision— the thin face, slash of cheek, slate eyes. She thought of the strength of the arms and hands. It could have been a woman, she thought. A very powerful woman. “No,” she said aloud. “It’s just a feeling, but it felt like a man’s attack, if you know what I mean. Not that I’ve been attacked by men before. And it wasn’t sexual or anything . . .” She stopped, flustered.

  “I know what you mean,” said Gentry. “Anyway, that’s another clue that whoever he was, he wasn’t trying to kill you. People usually don’t give messages to someone they’re in the act of murdering.”

  “Message to whom?” said Natalie. “Maybe ‘warning’ is a better word,” suggested Gentry. “Anyway the attack went into the log as a random assault and possible attempted rape. I could hardly label it a robbery attempt since he didn’t take your purse or anything.” He cleared away everything except their coffee cups and pulled a short thermos out of the depleted white sack. “Feel up to a little more coffee?”

  Natalie hesitated. “Sure,” she finally said and pushed her cup toward him. “This stuff usually makes me very jittery, but it seems to be counteracting the effects of that shot they gave me last night.”

  “Besides,” said Gentry, pouring coffee for both of them, “it’s Christmas.” They sat awhile listening to the triumphant conclusion of Messiah.

  When it was finished and the announcer was discussing the program, Natalie said, “I didn’t really have to stay here last night, did I?”

  “You had a pretty bad trauma,” said Gentry. “You’d been unconscious for at least ten minutes. Your scalp took eight stitches from where you hit the shoulder harness clip.”

  “But I could have gone home, right?”

  “Pro
bably,” said Gentry. “But I didn’t want you to. It wouldn’t have been a good idea for you to stay alone, you weren’t in any shape to deal with a suggestion to come to my place, and I didn’t want to spend Christmas Eve sitting in my unmarked car outside your house. Besides, you should have stayed overnight for observation. Even the doc said so.”

  “I would have come to your place,” Natalie said softly. There was no hint of coquettishness in her voice. “I’m scared,” she said simply.

  Gentry nodded. “Yeah.” He finished his coffee. “I am too. I’m not even sure why, but I’ve got a feeling we’re neck deep in something we don’t understand.”

  “So you still believe Saul’s story?”

  “I’d feel better if we’d heard from him since he left six days ago,” said Gentry. “But we don’t have to buy every part of his story to know that something’s going on around us.”

  “Do you think you’ll catch whoever attacked me last night?” asked Natalie. Suddenly tired, she lay back on the pillows and adjusted the bed to a more upright position.

  “Not if we depend on fingerprints or forensic stuff,” said Gentry. “We’re checkin’ into the blood on the Nikon, but that won’t tell us much. The only way we’re going to find out is by continuing some sort of investigation.”

  “Or waiting for the guy to come after me again,” said Natalie. “Uh-uh,” said Gentry. “I don’t think so. I think they delivered their message.”

  “ ‘You want to find the woman? Look in Germantown,’ ” intoned Natalie. “The woman would be Melanie Fuller?”

  “Can you think of anyone else?”

  “No. Where is Germantown? Is it a real place? Do you think it relates to Saul’s Oberst in some way . . . like a code?”

  “I know of a couple of Germantowns,” said Gentry. “Parts of cities in the north. Philadelphia has an historic section with that name, I think. But there may be a hundred towns around the country actually named that. My little atlas didn’t show them, but I’ll get to a library to check better references. It doesn’t sound like a code . . . just a place name.”

  “But why would somebody tell us where she is?” asked Natalie. “And who would know? And why tell us?”

  “Great questions,” said Gentry. “I don’t have any answers yet. If Saul’s story is true, then there seems to be a lot more to this than even he understood.”

  “Could that guy last night have been . . . like an agent for Mrs. Fuller herself? Somebody she used the way Saul said the Oberst used him? Could she still be in Charleston, trying to throw us off the track?”

  “Sure,” said Gentry, “but every scenario like that I come up with is full of holes. If Melanie Fuller is alive and in Charleston, why tip her hand to us in any way? Who the hell are we? They’ve got two city agencies, three state law enforcement divisions, and the damned FBI lookin’ into this. All three TV networks did stories last week, there were fifty reporters at the D.A.’s press conference a week ago Monday, and a few of them are still sniffin’ around . . . though they don’t pay too much attention to our office anymore. Another reason I didn’t specify in the log that you were parked right across from the Fuller house last night. I can see the National Perspirer headlines: KILLER CHARLESTON HOUSE ALMOST CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM.”

  “So which scenario makes the most sense to you?” asked Natalie. Gentry finished tidying up the room, moved the tray table aside, and sat on the edge of her bed. For a big man, he gave a strange sense of lightness and grace, as if there were a honed athlete beneath the pink skin and fat. “Let’s say Saul’s story was true,” Gentry said softly. “Then we’ve got the situation where we had several of these mind vampires turnin’ on one another. Nina Drayton’s dead. I saw the body before and after the trip to the morgue. What ever else she was, she’s a memory now . . . ashes . . . folks who claimed her body had her cremated.”

  “Who claimed the body?” asked Natalie. “Not family,” said Gentry. “Nor friends, really. A New York lawyer who was executor of her estate and two members of a corporation that she served on the Board of Directors of.”

  “So Nina Drayton is gone,” said Natalie. “Who does that leave?” Gentry held up three fingers. “Melanie Fuller, William Borden . . . Saul’s Oberst . . .”

  “That’s two,” said Natalie, staring at the remaining finger. “Who’s left?”

  “A set of millions of unknowns,” said Gentry and waggled all ten fingers. “Hey, I’ve got a Christmas present for you.” He went over to his jacket and returned with an envelope. Inside were a Christmas card and airline tickets.

  “A flight back to St. Louis,” said Natalie. “For tomorrow.”

  “Yep. There weren’t any available for today.”

  “Are you running me out of town, Sheriff?”

  “You could say that.” Gentry grinned at her. “I know it’s taking liberties, Miz Preston, but I’d feel a hell of a lot better if you were out and away from here until all this nonsense is over.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about this,” said Natalie. “Why am I safer back in St. Louis? If someone’s after me, why couldn’t they just follow me there?”

  Gentry folded his arms. “That’s a good point, but I don’t think some-one’s after you, do you?” When she did not answer he went on, “Anyway, you told me the other day that you had friends there . . . Frederick could stay with you . . .”

  “I don’t need a bodyguard or baby-sitter,” said Natalie in a cold voice. “No,” said Gentry, “but back there you’d be busy and surrounded by friends. And you’d be out of what ever is going on here.”

  “What about finding my father’s killer?” said Natalie. “What about watching the Fuller house until Saul gets in touch?”

  “I’m going to have a deputy keep a watch on the Fuller house,” said Gentry. “I OK’d it with Mrs. Hodges to have someone stay in her house . . . upstairs in Mr. Hodges’s den. It looks down on the courtyard.”

  “And what will you be doing?”

  Gentry lifted his hat off the bed, creased the crown, and put it on. “I sorta thought I’d take a vacation,” he said.

  “A vacation!” Natalie was startled. “In the middle of all of this? With everything going on?”

  Gentry smiled. “That’s almost exactly what they said downtown. Thing is though, I haven’t gone on vacation for the last two years and the county owes me at least five weeks. Guess I can take a week or two off if I want to.”

  “When do you start?” asked Natalie. “Tomorrow.”

  “And where will you be going?” There was more than curiosity in Natalie’s voice.

  Gentry rubbed his cheek. “Well, I thought I might mosey up north and visit New York for a few days. Been a long time since I’ve been there. Then I thought I’d spend a day or two in Washington.”

  “Looking for Saul,” said Natalie. “I may look him up,” drawled Gentry. He glanced at his watch. “Hey, it’s getting late. Doc should drop by about nine. You can probably leave right after that.” He paused. “Let’s back the conversation up to where you said you would have come to my place to be a house guest . . .”

  Natalie propped herself up on the pillows. “Is that an invitation?” she asked.

  “Yes’m,” said Gentry. “I’d feel better if you didn’t spend much time at your place before you leave. Course you could get a hotel room somewhere to night and I could ask Lester or Stewart to work shifts waiting with me on the . . .”

  “Sheriff,” she said, “before I say yes there’s one thing we have to settle.” Gentry looked serious. “Go ahead, ma’am.”

  “I’m tired of calling you Sheriff and even more tired of being called ma’am,” said Natalie. “It’s going to be first names or nothing.”

  “That suits me,” said Gentry with a grin, “ma’am.”

  “There’s only one problem” said Natalie. “I can’t bring myself to call you Bobby Joe.”

  “Neither could my folks,” said Gentry. “The Bobby Joe didn’t catch on until fellows called me that
when I was a deputy here in Charleston. I sort of kept it when I ran for office.”

  “What did the other kids and your folks call you?” asked Natalie. “The other kids tended to call me Tubby,” said Gentry with a smile. “My mother called me Rob.”

  “Yes,” said Natalie. “Thank you for the invitation, Rob. I accept.”

  They stopped by Natalie’s home long enough for her to pack and to call her father’s lawyer and a few friends. The settling of the estate and dealings for the sale of the studio would take at least a month. There was no reason for Natalie to stay.

  Christmas Day was warm and sunny. Gentry drove slowly and took the long way back to the city, taking Cosgrove Avenue across the Ashley River and coming down Meeting Street. It was a Thursday, but it felt like a Sunday.

  They had an early dinner. Gentry prepared baked ham, mashed potatoes, broccoli with cheese sauce, and a chocolate mousse. The round dining room table was set near the large bay windows and the two sipped their coffee and watched the early twilight seep color out of the houses and trees of the neighborhood. Afterward they put on jackets and took a long walk as the first stars came out. Children were being called in from playing with their new toys. Darkened rooms flickered to the colored lights of tele vi sion.

  “Do you think Saul’s all right?” asked Natalie. It was the first time since morning that they had discussed serious things.

  Gentry stuck his hands deep in his jacket pockets. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I have a feeling that something happened.”

  “I don’t feel right about hiding out in St. Louis,” said Natalie. “What-ever’s going on, I feel I owe it to my father to follow through on it.”

  Gentry did not argue. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let me check out where the professor’s got to and then we’ll get back in touch and plan our next step. I think it’d be easier for one person to take care of this part.”

  “But Melanie Fuller might be right here in Charleston,” said Natalie. “We don’t even know what that guy meant last night.”