Sorrow's Crown

by Tom Piccirilli

  "How do you know Harnes?" I asked.

  "I don't," he said. "Let's go."

  We got moving again. The van handled well in the mud; all the sports cars were going to have trouble making it back to the highway later tonight. Nick rolled the window down just enough to let a nasty wind whistle come tearing across the front seat. It didn't bother him. Apparently nothing did. I kept seeing Zebediah Crummler come bursting into the restaurant covered in ice, capable of walking miles with the burning wire inside keeping him heated. What made such men? I'd stood in the rain for two minutes ringing the doorbell, complaining the whole time.

  "You were in Panecraft."

  "Yes."

  "Tell me about it."

  "No."

  "I saw your brother."

  "I know, I was watching you."

  "You got past the gate?"

  He huffed, the whistle underscoring his words as we swung up the looping back roads. "You forget that kids like to go tearing up the fields and the thickets behind the hospital? A lot of the fencing has been cut through or torn down, they go there to rip up the grounds with their trucks and get drunk and get laid. Bet you been back that way with a girlfriend or two yourself in your day. I didn't get too close, they've got three-man random patrols, but I saw you leaving. Is he making it?"

  "So far."

  "They won't bother him for a while, not until after they get him off the murder charge by considering him incompetent. A mental deficient. They won't touch him for a few months. Maybe longer. Then it will get bad." Nothing changed in his voice, but I heard his neck and shoulders crackle as he tightened. "Eventually Shanks will probably kill him. There's a lot of empty acreage on that property. A lot of bodies buried on it, too, I'd bet. Who the hell would ever care? Potter's Field isn't the only resting place for the destitute and schizophrenic."

  "Has Harnes always paid off Shanks?"

  "Sure, Shanks has been there at least twenty years." The keening kept up with him, musical strains rising and falling, cold rushing my face and the rain starting to seep and run down the inside of the window. "Theodore Harnes has got a lot of enemies, or thinks he does anyway. A lot of wives and bitter girlfriends, right? I'd think there are accountants who caused him some trouble along the way, too. A few pissed-off bastard sons. Some business partners? It makes sense. It isn't hard for lawyers to get a drinker committed for ten days. Or get somebody hooked up with cocaine. Or oversex them with prostitutes and paddles, living the good life for a while, then pull the whole magic rug out from under them. How about one of his wives or mistresses with post-partum depression. Once they go in for the ten days, they're in for good."

  "Jesus Christ."

  "A nice set-up if you want to vanish somebody."

  Lowell had said the same thing. "Why were you in?" He simply shrugged.

  "Shut that damn window, Nick. How did you get out?"

  "I wasn't crazy, just had a period when I drank too much and didn't handle it well. Made me talk to myself. But I wasn't on Harnes' shit list, or anybody else's for that matter. Not really. So they couldn't keep me in for long."

  "But you dealt with Shanks."

  "Oh, yes," Nick Crummler said, and the honed blade of indignation slid into his tone. "I dealt with him."

  The foothills of High Ridge came into view, rising levels falling back farther and higher into the mountainside. Only when I passed the statue of the lonely revolutionary war hero did I realize I'd been on auto-pilot and heading toward Alice Conway's home the whole time.

  Nick reached for the CD player, checked Pachelbel's "Canon and Other Baroque Favorites," and gave a satisfied grunt. "Good taste in music. You really know how to use those hand controls well."

  "It didn't take long."

  "Yeah," he said. "You can get used to almost anything."

  Alice Conway's brooding house showed through behind the thick line of oak and hickory, that same single foreboding yellow light shining in the darkness. The chipped and rutted driveway tossed gravel up against the grille. Caught in the heaving wind, those rotting leaves spun wildly against the porch. The rain gutters on the east side of the house had torn loose completely and lay on the lawn along with piles of crumbled wooden shingles.

  "Why are we here?" he asked.

  "I think Teddy Harnes might still be alive and hiding inside."

  "I never did buy that cutting the face off thing. There has to be a reason for it." He changed tracks on the CD until he came to Vivaldi's "Concerto in C major: Minuet.”“Harnes is out of his mind, so it makes sense his kid might be, too. Okay, so you think the ME is in on it, too?"

  "No, but he may have been duped, and the sheriff didn't ask many questions."

  "No reason why he should, when you think about it. So who's the corpse then?"

  "I have no idea. A friend he double-crossed. Somebody helping him out until things fell through."

  "Doesn't sound like you really believe it."

  “I don't."

  "Well, you know how to play the string out anyway. Why here? This his girlfriend's house?"

  "Yes."

  We stepped up on the porch; the stairs creaked loudly beneath me but remained silent under Nick Crummler. I thought I saw a blur of activity in the living room, like someone dropping back out of sight. Nick kept so low beside me that when I turned it took me a moment to spot him, hunkered below my shoulder. His coat snapped in the wind and he seemed at complete ease, as if nothing ever fell outside the reach of his own experiences.

  I put my hand out to knock on the door, and he grabbed my wrist and held me in a rigid, impressive grip. Everybody was doing that to me lately and everybody was a hell of a lot stronger than me, too.

  I said, "What?"

  "You didn't hear that?"

  "No, I didn't hear—"

  "Shhh."

  "What?"

  "Shhhh."

  It took a few seconds to focus past the rain pummeling the porch roof and the rustling of overgrown brush pressing hard against the railings. I stepped closer to the front door and heard a soft but anguished groaning. I thought of Alice Conway's look of desperation as she attempted to talk to Harries tonight, and could clearly see her being forced to choose sides: Teddy hiding in the house, arguing with her, Frost fighting and beating him, and Alice going to Harnes to tell him that his son had escaped his influence and was still alive.

  "I'll go around back," Nick said, reminding me how much like a cop he sometimes acted. I nodded at nothing—he'd already slipped away into the storm. I waited a minute but the groaning became louder, more intense, until I was sure Frost was killing Teddy this very moment. I tried the door and found it locked, but the wood of the jamb was so rotted that all I had to do was lean heavily on the knob and the door popped open. Splinters shot against my legs.

  I stepped into the foyer and the harsh sharp stink of blood smacked me in the face like it had been hurled from a bucket. I moved toward the living room. Moonlight sporadically cut through the windows and sliced the house apart into the great black-and-white slats. Dark clouds frothed and the front rooms filled with silhouettes, curling black shapes, and gray murkiness.

  Brian Frost lay in the center of the floor, tied to an overturned chair. Frost's face had been pulped, his teeth broken, and his nose so shattered that it leaned too far to the left and the right at the same time. Blood hung from his eyes and ears. He tried blinking at me but couldn't quite do it. It looked like I'd interrupted somebody from doing the same thing to Frost as had been done to the guy in the cemetery, except this time there'd been no shovel handy. I kneeled beside him and rested a hand on his chest as he gurgled his pain. Despite it all his breathing remained slow and regular.

  I faded backward to the wall, listening for Nick and whoever had done this. A creak from a kitchen floorboard caused my ears to prick up. I sniffed, but didn't smell the hors d'ouevres. It wasn't Nick. I hadn't heard a door or window open, so he might still be outside.

  Another footstep. The house was cold and damp a
nd the rafters groaned and the house shifted mightily with parts of the roof tapping and ringing like a kettle drum. I didn't know what kind of play to make. Frost probably wasn't in any real danger from dying of his wounds, but I didn't want to leave the kid lying in a ring of his own drying blood like that.

  I progressed through the living room. From what I remembered there was hardly any furniture to worry about tripping over. Moonlight kept throwing my vision off, one moment lighting the room and ruining my night-sight, the next casting the place back into total blackness. Another footstep, somewhere behind me. I thought I'd take a lesson from Nick and hunker down, holding my breath, hoping not to misstep on a bad spot on the floor and give away my position. It worried me that he didn't care about the creaking; it meant that I didn't worry him.

  He was moving around from the kitchen to the dining room, maybe trying for the foyer or heading for the back door. Could he see Nick waiting for him back there? Would he circle right into me? Bottled, he'd have to either head upstairs or make a launch for the front door. Was it Teddy Harnes? Or somebody looking for Teddy? And might Teddy still be in the house?

  My cell phone rang.

  Behind me, Freddy Shanks, my old pal Sparky, said, "Now that was goddamn stupid."

  I agreed with him as the phone tweeted again and I spun, and a blackjack with one edge of its leather covering showing glinting metal beneath from so much continuous wear struck me low on the back of the skull, his exposed tooth shining with that ragged lip raised in a blissful snarl, his laughter loud in my head stuffed alongside the sudden black agony and knowledge that I deserved this for being so goddamn stupid.

  ELEVEN

  I staggered and scrambled and he hit me some more, moonlight flashing off his tooth and sick eyes, as he struck down with splitting, glancing blows again and again, on my crown and just over the top of my right ear. He liked to toy with his mark, taking his time to inflict the most damage. Shanks had mastered his technique in the rooms of Panecraft, using the sap for maximum pain but without allowing me to pass out. His shadow spun around me, the blackjack gliding in first from one side and then the other.

  My head became an old dirty sponge jammed with gravel and broken glass. Shanks kept making sounds, little venomous squeaks in between the twittering of the cell phone, until his weird huffing squeals were louder than the tweets. Through the shroud of pain I realized he was laughing. We performed a brutal ballet across the living room and I felt the wet heat heavy in my nostrils, filling my ears and dripping down my neck.

  The pain had almost lifted to a floating ache of dull purple and yellow streaks, and new star systems erupted with each strike, but still nothing that would put me all the way under. I couldn't get to the phone in my jacket pocket. I couldn't even find my hands. Frost gargled on the floor and I fell beside him, scrambling to my knees and collapsing again.

  Shanks switched the sap to his left hand, hauled back and waited until I'd floundered into the correct position for him to bash me over the ear once more. I managed to wheel aside just enough so that he hit my shoulder instead, and my arm went completely numb. I dropped over backward and lay there breathing hard, unable to see him clearly enough through the glittering haze to protect myself in the slightest anymore.

  He knew it, too. A lamp snapped on and a harsh circle of white lit the far corner, igniting among the rest of the swirling patterns of blunted colors vaulting before my eyes. Groaning, I wanted to roll aside but couldn't. My gaze had shifted back to see Brian Frost weakly struggling to get loose from the chair, groaning right back at me.

  I expected a lot from Shanks but not this new silence. It went on and on. I had the bizarre sensation of standing outside myself and running through the house looking for Teddy, moving in behind Shanks and pummeling the crap out of him. Unfortunately, it was only a sensation. He stared at me with the clear and innocent eyes of a Secretary of Defense. He was in no rush to proceed.

  He said, "You know what the beauty of this moment is?"

  Neither Frost nor I had any answer and we both sort of rocked and continued to grunt.

  Nick Crummler appeared in the foyer, hands in his pockets, his wet hair slung down across his eyes. Trails of rain poured down his face, and when he blinked water squirted out like tears.

  "Oh," Shanks said, and stretched and rubbed his bad back. "It's you."

  "Hello," Nick said.

  They approached as if to shake hands, and my chest tightened until I thought it might crack, and I wondered about how it all fit, with the two of them working together. I struggled to think and make connections but the throbbing became a steel-toed boot kicking me in the head. I tried to talk but my bottom lip hung a half mile beneath the roof of my mouth. He hadn't hit me in the mouth, but I must've bitten my tongue because it felt swollen and bloody and too heavy for words.

  Nick glanced down at me and shook his head. He looked up at Shanks as they moved closer toward each other, then back at me once more, still nodding. Sparky broke into a run and rushed Nick with the blackjack raised in his fist, and I felt a great sense of relief washing over me as I started to vomit.

  The blackjack came up high and angled down at Nick, but when it descended it slipped through the air uninterrupted. Nick moved that fast. Overextending that way threw Shanks off and he nearly hit himself in the knee. I couldn't turn my head enough to watch the whole fight: they swerved in and out of my line of sight, Nick feinting, keeping tight, blocking blows and without any indication of what he was thinking. I craned my neck and my skull flooded with a vat of molten metal. I would've screamed if I could have found the rest of my mouth.

  Rain hammered at the windows like the hands of children. The wind roared. They kept circling behind me, where I could hear wheezing and the slap of fists on flesh, Nick's coat still snapping as he wheeled to avoid the sap. They'd come around in a wide circuit over and again, and each time Shanks looked a little sweatier and a lot happier, thin ribbons of blood dangling from his chin, the ripped lip tearing his face up with a vicious smile.

  "I should have killed you a long time ago," Shanks said. "It might've saved your life tonight."

  "First thing I do when I get back to the hospital is break your brother's legs."

  "You're not going back."

  They stepped on Brian Frost's hair as they went dancing by and Frost didn't have enough left in him to even cry out. The floorboard in front of my nose thunked heavily with the weight of the blackjack. The cell phone was ringing and I couldn't tell if it had been doing so the whole while or if it had just started again. The back of Sparky's shoe brushed my nose.

  Nick Crummler scooped up the blackjack and said, "I remember this." He hauled back his arm and brought up the sap. I knew what was about to happen. Nick showed nothing in his face but somehow the seething, irrepressible hatred he felt came through

  I tried to shout "No," but all that came out was a garbled, "Uhnumn…" The blackjack kept rising. "Uhnumn."

  Those hands, with the power in them, backed by his incredible fortitude, his rage, all the grudges in his life, especially those against a tormentor, and his need to protect his brother, coming in and down toward that smiling face. The blackjack wavered just a bit like it had hit an air pocket, then straightened and speeded up, gliding in the ultimate course of action, and smashing directly between Shanks' eyes.

  Sparky stiffened as his frontal lobe caved in, and he went back onto the balls of his feet, wavered there for what felt like a few minutes, and slowly toppled to the floor, dead.

  "Now that's the beauty of the moment," Nick Crummler said.

  ~ * ~

  He answered my phone and told Lowell what had happened. He lifted and carried me over to a divan in the back room, untied Frost and sort of propped him up against my shoulder, staunched our bleeding heads and said, "You're going to be all right. Tell them the truth. I can't get involved with this and you know why." He put the phone on my lap and ate some of the crab meat quiche. "I'll be around."

  I sat o
n the divan with a towel on the back of my neck and listened to Frost mumble in his semi-conscious state, slowly regaining some feeling in my extremities. By the time I heard the sirens and the room filled with whirling red-and-blue lights, and Lowell's face suddenly loomed in front of mine, I could almost stand.

  Lowell put a palm to my chest and gently pushed me back down. "Careful, you might have a concussion."

  "I'm okay," I told him, but it came out as though I was conjugating Latin verbs.

  Lowell kept his hand on my chest. "Whatever the hell you just said proves my point, don't you think? Just lie there."

  The ambulance and other deputies arrived a few minutes later, followed by Keaton Wallace who, for a Medical Examiner, always looked a little put out by blood. He stared at the floor where Frost and I had bled and screwed up his face. He didn't know whether to bag Frost's splintered teeth or let one of the cops do it. He fingered his dentures in sympathy. Wallace glanced over at me and said, "Jesus God, Jonny Kendrick, what the hell are you into now?"

  The EMTs loaded Frost onto a gurney and rushed him into the back of the ambulance, taking his blood pressure and shouting numbers at each other. A petite blond with rubber gloves on and the fingers of a masseuse checked my pupils and scalp. She felt my lumps and washed me with something that stung like hell but also brought me fully back to my senses. She gave me a sweet smile that made me hurt worse. "We're going to take you in for a CAT scan."

  I was ready to consent until the front door opened and a portion of Harnes' party-goers poured in: Anna and Broghin and Oscar, followed by a weeping Alice Conway, who stared over at Frost on the gurney. She hugged her elbows, and her knees were about to give out. Oscar realized she'd fall over any second and fumbled around trying to grasp her in his arms. Broghin pushed my grandmother into the foyer; he'd had a lot more practice with the wheelchair and could've maneuvered it up the rotting steps where Oscar probably couldn't have.

  Lowell said, "Oh, Christ."