A Hard Death

by Jonathan Hayes

  He opened the side doors to let the passenger compartment air out.

  Crime Scene had removed the debris from the floor well and dried them; nothing interesting, just utility bills, some paperwork from an old office budget. There had been several coffee cups, two mugs, a sodden, crumbling cardboard box containing a fishing reel, and a handful of new waterlogged thriller novels in a Barnes & Noble bag.

  Jenner opened the glove compartment—already emptied by Crime Scene. He lifted the carpeting, jammed his hands down the backs of the seats, felt underneath. Thirty cents worth of coins, an old brochure from a fishing store.

  Nothing. That’s what he had found: nothing.

  He turned off the flashlight and sat on the old couch the techs used for cigarette breaks. For a few minutes, Jenner stared blankly at the car, all its doors open, its trunk gaping wide.

  And then he finally let himself go down the path he’d avoided for so long. The logic was simple and compelling:

  People get murdered for money, love, or ego, mostly. Random bad luck, occasionally. Insanity, rarely.

  He knew the Roburns well enough to doubt that love, madness, or even ego had got them killed. They hadn’t been killed because they’d showed up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most likely this was about money.

  And it wasn’t a standard home invasion, or a robbery—Marty had been tortured and murdered, just like the men in the swamp. Killed by the same men. Bobbie—not tortured, just bound, thrown into the trunk, and allowed to drown when they dumped her husband’s body—was probably an afterthought: this was all about Marty.

  So why kill Marty?

  Jenner sat staring at the car. Five men murdered, tortured, two of them with clear signs of drug abuse. He tried to figure out how to connect the deaths, but everything he thought up was absurd and fanciful.

  Every possible connection except one.

  Drugs.

  Jenner had seen the bodies of a thousand dead dealers, a thousand dead junkies. Seen men pimp their girlfriends for drug money, seen crack addicts let their children starve to death—most of the genuine depravity Jenner had ever seen could be traced directly back to drugs. Because drugs let the monster out of the man.

  Drugs…But Marty? Jenner couldn’t imagine it, wouldn’t accept it.

  He looked down, and saw his hands twisting at the fishing catalog.

  And then he thought of one place he hadn’t looked.

  He knelt by the driver’s-side door, and reached deep under the dashboard. His fingers stroked down the steering wheel column until they felt the soft rubber box of a concealed spare-key safe. He pulled at the rubber, slipped a finger into the opening, then touched thinner plastic. He tugged and it slipped out into his hand.

  It was a packet about the size of a matchbox, tightly rolled in plastic wrap. Jenner put the packet on the stainless steel table and carefully unfurled it to find a smaller plastic wrap package inside, still dry. A length of coarse waxed twine—the type used in the autopsy room to sew up the bodies—looped several times around the inner packet.

  Jenner fiddled with the twine and the little packet opened like a flower, several grams of fine white powder sitting in the center of the wrinkled film.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Palmetto Court again. Jenner left his muddy waders in the trunk of the car—God willing, he’d never use them again—and carried the jug of water and flashlight back to his cabin. The dog lay sprawled across his porch; seeing Jenner, it rolled onto its side to show its belly as it wagged its tail. The dog was unquestionably male.

  “Still here, eh?” he muttered. “I thought you’d be off seeing the world, or getting laid or something.”

  From behind him, he heard, “Mr. Jenner?”

  He turned to see Mrs. Foley, the blowsy woman who ran—possibly owned—the Palmetto Court. During daylight hours, she had the beery cheer of a Dickensian charwoman, but come dark, her scrappy side emerged. On his second night at the motel, Jenner had found her passed out by the pool at four a.m. He’d helped her to her cottage; when he’d seen her in the parking lot the next day, it was obvious she had no memory of their encounter.

  He was a little wary of her.

  “You’re back late!”

  Jenner nodded.

  “A busy day, right?”

  He nodded again. She was clutching a FedEx mailing box tightly to her bosom with both hands.

  “I know! I saw you on TV!” Her face was flushed and bright. “I saw y’all with the bodies! And they had your office, too.”

  Jenner nodded once more, and asked, “Is that for me? The box, I mean…”

  She read the address label again, and said, “Yeah, sure, sure…I brought it right over when I seen you come in.” She handed it to him and, as he looked at it, said, “So, I bet they were in pretty bad shape, huh? Those bodies…?”

  The box was from Jun; too thick for just a check. He looked at her.

  “Yes, they were. Very badly decomposed.” Jenner paused, then, for reasons he couldn’t have explained, he decided to make her night: “They were…like…soup.”

  “Like soup? Oh my gosh!” She shook her head in thrilled revulsion, her eyes huge, her mouth slack.

  “Yes. Like soup.” Jenner nodded solemnly and then added cheerfully, “Good night, Mrs. Foley.”

  She was bursting with excitement; he’d told her nothing she hadn’t seen on television, but this came from the doctor himself, and the “soup” detail would be a huge hit in the laundry room the next morning. She smiled sweetly and said, “Good night, doctor. I hope you get some good rest—you deserve it! I was saying to Ralph just this afternoon, I just don’t know how you do the work you do!” She waddled happily off toward the main buildings.

  With some difficulty, Jenner squeezed past the dog into the cabin, quickly closing the screen and cabin doors behind him. He dumped his stuff on the kitchenette table and took off his windbreaker. God, how he hated the orange curtains.

  There was a creak as the cabin door swung open; the dog was standing outside the screen door, looking up at Jenner expectantly, his tail wagging briskly behind him. Jenner shut the door.

  He tore open the FedEx box. Two DVDs, carefully wrapped in pale brown craft paper, spilled onto the table, along with a ball of bubble wrap taped tight. Peering into the box, Jenner found a cashier’s check for one thousand dollars. One of the DVD packets had a yellow Post-it note that read CALL US!!! in purple Magic Marker, along with a heart with a smiley face.

  Ignoring the tinny scratching at the screen door, Jenner smoothed the check against the table, then folded it and put it in his wallet. He unpacked the bubble wrap to find eight small brown glass bottles; Jun’s girlfriend Kimi had gone through Jenner’s collection of essential oils and selected a handful. He sat in a chair, opened and breathed in the jasmine sambac; he felt the sweet scent soak into his blood, then closed the vial.

  He picked up the phone and dialed Jun Saito; Kimi answered.

  “Jenner! Good to hear you! How is Florida?” He liked that Kimi never followed the news.

  “Busy. I got your present—thanks for the oils. Very sweet of you. What are the DVDs?”

  She giggled. “Don’t blame me—Jun chose them! I just wrapped them!”

  “Uh-oh…” He smiled. “Okay, well, is Jun there? I need to talk with him.”

  A couple of seconds later, Jun’s voice.

  “Hey, Jenner. So, looks like the joint is jumping…”

  “Yeah, right. Not such a vacation after all.”

  “At least they’re paying you.”

  “They’re not paying me quickly, though. Thanks, I appreciate the check—I’m good for it.”

  “Please—it makes me sad you feel you have to say that.”

  Jenner apologized, and Jun said, “No worries, man. It’s all right.” There was a pause, then Jun said, “So…? How did ya like them?”

  “What?”

  “The DVDs. Kimi picked them out…” Jenner heard a squeal of protest, and th
en the coarse rub of fabric against the receiver as Kimi struggled with Jun for the phone. She was yelling that it was all Jun’s idea, she’d had nothing to do with it.

  Jenner tore off the wrappings, half-knowing what he’d find. No surprises: two Japanese porno DVDs. On the cover of one, an older, voluptuous woman was having sex with various men on an old fishing boat; the other featured enthusiastic student nurses.

  “Jenner, I know you’re really gonna like Do You Know the Old Woman by the Fishing Port—super-hot!”

  “Yeah, sounds it.” He grinned. “Thanks, Jun.”

  Jun said, “No worries, mate. Ain’t no thang. Let me know if you need more money, okay?”

  Behind him, Kimi said something in Japanese, then Jun said, “Okay, Jenner. Kimi says she needs my sweet lovin’, so…” There was another squeal and the phone was abruptly hung up.

  Jenner spun the DVD case on the table, trying to remember how Jun’s tradition of giving him porn had begun.

  He climbed into bed just before midnight. When he turned out the light, the scratching at the door began again, this time furiously. Jenner wrapped the thin pillow around his head, but couldn’t block out the sound. The scratching died down, only to be replaced by a moaning growl.

  Then the scratches came back.

  Finally Jenner could take it no more. He got out of bed and opened the door to find the dog sitting there, peering up at him; the dog looked happy.

  “Jesus!”

  He opened the door a crack, and the dog trotted past him into the kitchen and flopped down on the weathered linoleum.

  It turned to look at him placidly; it wanted food, no doubt. Jenner found a can of stew and sloshed its contents into his only plate, an old plastic cereal bowl that had probably been in the cabin since the motel opened in 1952. For a second, he wondered whether he should microwave it, then just stuck it in front of the dog; the dog didn’t seem to mind that the stew was cold.

  Jenner watched the dog eat, then climbed into bed, the dog following quickly to curl up on the coverlet.

  Jenner slept through the night.

  CHAPTER 34

  Jenner lay in bed, talking to Annie Carr on the phone, feeling her distance in the tinny sound of her voice.

  “So let me get this straight, Jenner: you need to clean the skeletons down to the bone, and they don’t have any equipment?”

  “They usually outsource their anthro stuff.”

  “Huh. Well, just get the biggest stockpot you can find, and a heating ring. Get the biggest thing you can find, that way you don’t have to dismember them…that much.” She was enjoying herself.

  “And what do I put the remains in? Water?”

  “Well, you could do it in just water, but that’d take forever. Here’s my recipe: detergent to emulsify the fat tissue, meat tenderizer to…uh, tenderize the meat, and liquid hand soap, for that meadow-flower freshness.” He jotted the list, pausing at the hand soap.

  He wasn’t laughing, so she added, “No, really: use liquid hand soap too—it’ll help move things along. Let them come to a boil and go for a few hours—if you take them out too soon, the tissues will cook onto the bone, and scraping ’em off will be hell.”

  Jenner was taking notes on a yellow legal pad; he wrote, HELL, and underlined it several times.

  Christ.

  “Okay, Annie, thanks.” He scanned his notes. “I got it. How’s the missus?”

  “She’s good, thanks.” She was silent a second, and when she spoke again, her voice was earnest. “Jenner? We’ve been thinking about driving up to Provincetown and making it official. When do you get back? It would mean a lot to both of us if you could be there.”

  “That’s fantastic! And well overdue.” He paused. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. It was just supposed to be three months, but I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”

  She said, “Rats.”

  “You know I’ll make it if I can—you know I’m all about the hot lesbo wedding action!” He scrawled LESBO WEDDING on his pad.

  She snorted. “Okay, well, let me know. And remember, Jenner, don’t leave the bones in there too long…”

  CHAPTER 35

  As soon as Jenner’s seat belt clicked shut, the dog squeezed forward into the front passenger’s seat, then draped himself through the open window, paws hanging out.

  Jenner drove the few minutes to the Southland Mall, a newish development marked by an Outback Steakhouse at the entrance, anchored by a Super Target at one end and a Whole Foods at the other. He parked under the sparse shade of a small tree, then climbed out.

  He studied the Art Deco mall directory, splashed in aqua and flamingo pink; the restaurant-supply shop was across the mall but the Port Fontaine Pet Sanctuary, the no-kill animal shelter Marie Carter had recommended, was just behind the Super Target. She’d told him to ask for Miss Craine.

  Jenner decided to take care of the dog first—he didn’t want the thing to melt while he was off buying stockpots.

  He found some rope in his scene bag; to his surprise, the dog offered no resistance as Jenner bent to tie the rope around its neck. It trotted happily with him past J. Crew, a P. F. Chang’s, a Borders, an Apple store, and a retro-styled shop that sold fudge and ice cream, and then peed generously on the chrome shopping carts gridlocked along the walkway in front of the vast Target. Though the day was not yet particularly hot, Jenner lingered with the dog in front of the megastore, enjoying the cool air pouring from the open doors.

  The animal shelter looked like a fugitive from an older strip mall. Decorated with amateurish animal silhouettes in bright colors, the building was cheery enough, but strikingly at odds with Southland’s slick and polish. The shelter’s ramshackleness was offset by a gleaming, sapphire-blue Mercedes convertible parked in front, top down, tan leather interior immaculate despite the car being a good twenty-five years old.

  The reception area smelled of dogs, and Jenner heard a muffled clamor of yelps and barks from the kennels in the depths of the building.

  Behind the glass of the counter sat a blond girl with glasses, perhaps ten or eleven years old. She was painfully thin, her skin pale and almost translucent. There was a small bandage on her left wrist, and Jenner noticed small crusted punctures in her lower arm—she’d recently had an IV. Her Hollister backpack spilled colored pencils and notebooks onto the countertop.

  She was drawing dinosaurs. She was gifted; she was carefully cross-hatching them, shading the curve of the brachiosaurus’s belly until it had depth. She didn’t look up as Jenner and the dog came in; he noticed she wore small pink ovals of plastic in her ears—some form of hearing aid.

  The dog padded forward, and she jerked up; behind thick glass lenses, her eyes were an astonishing bright blue.

  She looked gravely at Jenner and then at the dog, then said, “Hello.”

  Jenner said, “Hello. Do you work here? I’m looking for a Miss Craine.”

  She said, “I am Miss Craine.”

  “Hmm. I was looking for an older Miss Craine. Maybe your sister?”

  “Her mother, actually. Can I help you?”

  Jenner turned to see a woman watching him from the doorway to the kennels. She was in her late thirties, he figured. Underneath her white coat, she wore paint-dripped jeans cut off at mid-calf. Her espadrilles, too, were densely spattered with paint—a part-time artist, apparently. Her eyes were jade-green, and she wore her hair back behind a broad gray velvet band; under the harsh fluorescents, Jenner could see silver strands among the dark blonde. A pit-bull puppy cradled in the crook of her arm chewed on her finger.

  She was breathtaking.

  He said, “I was hoping you might be able to look after this dog.”

  Miss Craine looked at his dog, and frowned. “What, you’ve had enough of him?”

  Jenner shook his head. “He’s not mine, he’s a stray.”

  “Oh, okay.” She put the puppy on the countertop, and the girl swept it up into her arms. “Lulu, honey—take him to Leo, �
�kay?”

  The girl slid off her stool and disappeared into the back.

  Miss Craine squatted in front of the dog and scratched his head. “Well, you’re a podgy fellow, aren’t you!”

  She looked up at Jenner, studying him, her pale green eyes clear and calm. In her gaze, Jenner felt suddenly adolescent; when he spoke, he thought he might stammer.

  “I found him near my hotel. A colleague told me to bring him here.”

  She turned to look in the dog’s mouth, and inspect its eyes and ears. It was behaving remarkably well.

  “So, you’re the medical examiner…” She stood. “Marie told me you’d be by.”

  Jenner nodded.

  “Nothing wrong with him that a good wash won’t fix.” She jogged the dog’s belly with her foot. “And some time on the treadmill, eh? Eh, Podgy?” The dog’s hind quarters shook as his tail bounced back and forth.

  She put out her hand. “It’s Dr. Jenner, isn’t it? Maggie Craine.”

  He nodded, shaking her hand.

  She said, “And now you’re supposed to say your first name, Dr. Jenner—that’s how people get to know each other, at least down here.”

  Jenner said, “Most people just call me Jenner.”

  “Well, I’m not most people! What do your friends call you?”

  “My friends call me Jenner.”

  “Okay, Jenner it is.” She laughed.

  “So you’re visiting Port Fontaine from New York?” She leaned back against the counter. “Where do they have you? The Arrowhead?”

  “Oh, no. Somewhere out in the Reaches, not great, but good enough.”

  She frowned. “Oh, God. Sorry about that, Jenner.” She looked him over. “How did you get the shiner?”

  He put a hand quickly to his eye; he’d forgotten.

  She said, “I’m sure there’s a story there.”

  “Not a very exciting one. Some kids were hassling the dog, and I got in a fight with their father.”

  She made a face. “A fight? I hope that’s not how you solve all your problems.”

  Jenner smiled. “If I solved all my problems that way, there wouldn’t be much of me left.”