“We’ll never find her,” Jason said.
“Maybe…” Roland didn’t continue.
Jason looked at him. “Maybe what?”
Roland shrugged. “It’s probably a dumb idea. But if we go back to campus and she still hasn’t shown up and we figure maybe she really did get snatched by some kind of a nut…”
“Then we’ll go to the police.”
“Hell, shit, they’ll think I had something to do with it. Man, I was the last one with her last night. They’ll blame me, and then we’ll never get the guy that did it. I mean, she might still be alive. If some crazy guy got her, maybe he’s keeping her alive. Maybe he doesn’t want to kill her till after he’s done…messing with her. You know?”
“Guy sounds a lot like you,” Jason said.
Roland made a nervous laugh. “Yeah. Takes one to know one. Shit, though, I’d never do anything like that. I just think about it, you know? But that gives us an advantage, right? I can like imagine what he might do. And that’s why I’ve got this idea.”
“What idea?”
“How to get him. And how to find Dana.”
“Yeah? Let’s hear it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“How you doing, fella?”
“Just fine,” Jake said into the phone. He didn’t feel fine at all, he felt depressed. As soon as he hung up, he would be taking Kimmy back to her mother. “Did Steve get in?”
“Sure did. He wants to talk to you. Hold on a sec.”
Moments later, Steve Applegate came over the line. “Jake? I finished up on Smeltzer. I want you to get over here.”
“Find something interesting?”
“Interesting? Yes, I’d say interesting. How soon can you be here?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“Higgins should be in on this.”
The Chief? “What is it?”
“Whetted your curiosity, have I? Well, then you’d better get moving. I’ll phone Higgins.” Without another word, he hung up.
Jake put down the phone.
Kimmy was huddled in a corner of the sofa, watching television. The Three Stooges. Curly saluted his nose to block a two-fingered eye jab from Moe, then went “Nyarnyar-nyar!”
“Hon,” Jake said, “we’d better hit the road.”
“Do we have to?”
“You giving me back talk?” he snapped. “Huh?” He rushed over to Kimmy. Eyes wide, she clamped her arms to her sides. Jake pushed his fingers under them, digging into her ribs. She laughed and writhed. “I’ll teach you! Sass me, will you?” Rolling on her back, she kicked out at him. The sole of her shoe pounded his thigh. “Owww!” Clutching his leg, he staggered backward and fell to the floor.
Kimmy grinned down at him from the sofa. “That’s what you get,” she said, “when you mess with She-Ra.”
“Jeez, I guess so. You discombobulated me.”
She waved a fist at him. “Want some more?”
“No, please.” Jake stood up. “Anyway, we really do have to go.”
The joy went out of her face. “Do we have to?”
“I’m afraid so, honey. Mommy’s expecting you, and besides, I have to go to work.”
“I’ll go to work with you, okay?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I won’t make the siren go,” she assured him, looking contrite and hopeful. “Really I won’t. Can’t I go with you?”
“I’m sorry, honey. Not today. Besides, I won’t be using the siren car.”
“I want to go with you, anyway.”
“You wouldn’t want to go where I’m going. I have to see a guy who’s toes up.”
“Oh, yuck. Really?”
“Yep.”
She made the kind of face she might have made, Jake thought, if somebody stuck a plate of beets under her nose. “Well, don’t touch him,” she advised.
Stopping behind BB’s Toy, Jake got out and opened the passenger door for Kimmy. She watched him with somber eyes. When the safety harness was unsnapped, she didn’t throw the straps off her shoulders in a hurry to climb out. She just sat there.
“Let’s see a smile,” Jake said. “Come on, it’s Mommy’s birthday. She’ll want to see a smile on that mug of yours.”
“I don’t feel good.”
“Are you sick?”
“I am not happy.”
“Why not?”
“You’re making me go away.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
Jake lifted her out of the car seat. She wrapped her arms and legs around him. “You’ll have a good time today,” he said as he carried her toward the house.
“No, I won’t.”
“And I’ll be back on Friday and we’ll have two whole days together like we’re supposed to.”
Kimmy squeezed herself more tightly against him. He could feel her begin to shake, and he knew that she was crying. She didn’t bawl; she cried softly, her breath making quiet snagging sounds close to his ear.
“Aw, honey,” he whispered. And struggled not to cry, himself.
Jake swung his car into the lot beside the Applegate Mortuary. The town of Clinton wasn’t large enough to justify a city morgue, but Steve, whose brother took care of the funeral parlor side of the business, had spent twelve years as a forensic pathologist with the Office of the Medical Examiner in Los Angeles—resigned in a huff after Thomas Nogushi got canned—and had come back here to practice in his hometown.
Clinton didn’t do a booming business in autopsies, but there were evidently enough to keep Steve happy. An autopsy was required for everyone who died as the apparent result of an accident, suicide, or homicide, under any kind of circumstances in which the death was not pretty much expected by the deceased’s physician. An autopsy was also required for every corpse headed for the crematory instead of the grave. With all that, even a small, peaceful town like Clinton provided quite a few opportunities for Steve to practice his art.
Three new customers Thursday alone, Jake thought as he climbed from his car. Steve must think he’s back in LA.
Jake entered through a rear door that opened into Betty’s office. She looked away from her typing, smiled when she saw him, and swiveled her chair around. “Been a while, Jake.” Tipping back her chair, she folded her hands behind her head—a posture that seemed designed to draw Jake’s attention to her breasts. Betty’s job didn’t require her to face the public, so she was allowed to dress as she pleased. She was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan, “Make My Day.” It clung nicely to her full breasts. Her nipples pointed at Jake through the fabric.
“Looking good,” he said.
“Natch.” She stared at his groin. He didn’t look, himself, but he could feel a warm swelling down there.
“Well,” he said, “Steve’s waiting for me.”
“No hot hurry. Higgins isn’t here yet.” She looked up at his face. Her eyes widened a bit. “So what’s the story?”
“What story?”
“Got a new friend?”
Jake shook his head.
“Taken a vow of celibacy?”
“Just busy, that’s all.”
A smile tilted her mouth. “Well, if you ever happen to get unbusy, I just bought a rubber sheet for my bed and I’ve got a great big bottle of slippy-slidy oil we can rub all over each other. You oughta just see how it looks on me in candlelight.”
Jake could imagine. He pursed his dry lips and blew through them. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said.
“Just in case you find some free time on your hands.”
“Yeah.”
She nodded. Again, her gaze lowered to his crotch. “I’d be glad to take care of that for you right now, if you’d like. Plenty of empty rooms around here. How about it?”
“You’re kidding.” He knew she wasn’t. “We’re in a morgue,” he reminded her.
“Just the place for taking care of stiffs, and I’m looking at one.” She rolled back her chair and stood up. She was wearing a
short, black leather skirt. Her bare legs were slender and lightly tanned.
“This is crazy,” Jake muttered. He felt shaky inside. Was he really going along with this?
Then the rear door opened and in stepped Barney Higgins, Chief of the Clinton Police Department. Betty rolled her eyes upward. She turned to Higgins. “Hi-ya, Barn.”
“Hey, Betts.” The small, wiry man winked and snicked his tongue. “What’s that y’ got in yer shirt?”
“Your guess is good as mine, Barn.”
“Where’d you pick ’em up? I’d like to order a set for the wife.” He laughed and slapped Jake’s shoulder. “Let’s get a move on, I got a hot poker game back at the house.” He turned to Betty. “Where’s the Apple, down in his butcher shop?”
“B-1,” she said. “Have fun, boys.”
Leaving her office through a side door, they started down a flight of stairs toward the basement. “You get a good look at that gal?” Barney asked.
“Sure did.”
“Prime. Ooo! How’d y’like playing some hide-the-salami with a prime thing like that? Yeah!”
“She’s a knockout, all right.”
At the bottom of the stairs, Jake pulled open a fire door. Directly across the corridor was B-1, the autopsy room. His stomach fluttered as he walked over and opened the door. From the room came a high whining buzz like the sound of a dentist’s drill.
Steve Applegate, a cigar stub clamped in his teeth, squinted down through the smoke at what he was doing. Whatever he was doing, it involved the head of a naked woman who was stretched out on one of the tables. And it involved the small buzz saw that was making such a racket.
Jake chose to watch his shoes as he walked across the polished linoleum floor.
The saw went silent.
“Who y’got there?” Barney asked.
“Mary-Beth Harker. A probable cerebral aneurysm.”
“Joe Harker’s girl?”
“That’s right.”
“Aw, shit. Shit. When’d it happen?”
“Last night.”
“Shit. She’s not, what, eighteen, nineteen?”
“Nineteen.”
“Shit. That’s his only daughter.”
Jake felt cold spread through him like a winter gust. Kimmy. God, what if it was Kimmy? How could a man go on living if something like that happened to his kid?
He turned away and walked toward another table. The body on this one was covered with a blue cloth. “This Smeltzer?” he asked without looking around.
“That’s Smeltzer, Ronald. I’ll get to Smeltzer, Peggy, later today.”
I killed this guy, he told himself, wanting to feel the guilt, wanting it to come and take away the terror of imagining Kimmy dead. I killed this guy. He’s dead because of me.
His mind began the replay. Fine. Smeltzer raising his head, tearing a flap of skin from his wife’s belly, turning in slow motion to reach for the shotgun.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Steve said, pulling Jake out of the memory. He drew back the cover.
Smeltzer was facedown. Jake’s bullets had left five exit wounds on his back and splayed open the side of his neck.
“Good shooting,” Barney commented.
Jake was looking at the gash that ran from the nape of Smeltzer’s neck, down his spine, over his right buttock and down his right leg to the outer side of his ankle. The raw, bloodless gash was bordered by about half an inch of blue-gray skin. “What’s this?” Jake asked.
“Something of a puzzle,” Steve said. With the tip of his cigar, he pointed at the quarter-sized ankle wound. “Know anything about it?” he asked Jake.
Jake shook his head.
“When I stripped him down this morning, I found it along with the hematoma—that discoloration you see there. Frankly, I didn’t know what to make of it. A bruise is usually caused by blunt trauma that breaks capillaries in the skin. So I asked myself what could’ve hit this man in such a way as to follow the curves of his body this way.”
“Something flexible,” Jake said.
“A whip,” Barney suggested. “Maybe a hose.”
“That occurred to me. The problem is, the epidermis showed no evidence of injury, which you’d expect if the man had been struck by that kind of instrument. And the ankle wound made me suspicious. So I made an incision at the wound and followed the track of the hematoma to his neck. What I found was a two centimeter separation between the fascias and—”
“Spare me the jargon, huh?” Barney said.
“Along the entire length of the bruise, the connecting tissue between the skin and underlying muscle was no longer connected. It’s as if approximately an inch-wide area of skin had been forcibly raised from the inside.”
“What are you gettin’ at?” Barney asked.
“Something entered this man’s body via the ankle wound and burrowed its way up to his neck.”
“Y’mean like somethin’ alive?”
“That’s just what I mean.”
“Balls.”
Steve tapped some ash off the end of his cigar. It dropped into a gutter at the foot of the table. “I found considerable trauma to the brain stem. Appears that it had been chewed into.”
Jake stared at the body. “Something tunneled up his body and bit his brain?”
“That’s sure the way it looks.”
“Jesus,” Jake muttered.
“Okay,” Barney said. “So where’s it at, this thing?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“After this man was deceased, it chewed through the posterior wall of his esophagus, traveled down to his stomach, chewed through the stomach wall and made a beeline for his colon. Chewed through that, and exited through his anus.”
“You gotta be kiddin’.”
Steve punched his cigar dead in the metal gutter. Then he bent down and picked up a pair of boxer shorts that had been turned inside out. The seat was smeared with feces and blood.
Barney wrinkled his nose.
Steve picked up a pair of blue jeans, also pulled inside out. Down the right leg was a narrow trail that diminished as it neared the cuff. “Kidding?” he asked.
Barney shook his head slowly from side to side.
“What could’ve done something like this?” Jake asked.
Steve shrugged. One side of his mouth stretched upward. “An ambitious snake?”
“Yer a festival a’ laughs,” Barney said.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what did this, but it appears to have been something shaped, at least, like a snake.”
“I never hearda’ snakes doing shit like that.”
“Who has?” Steve said.
“Smeltzer was alive when this thing got in him?” Jake asked.
“Definitely.”
“How can you tell?”
“The amount of subdural bleeding and the quantity of blood on his right sock. I’d guess, from the degree of coagulation of his ankle wound, that the thing got into him only minutes prior to his death.”
“And it left his body after his death? How do you know that?”
“Again, the amount of bleeding. Very little in the areas that it chewed through on the way out.”
“Fuckin’ Twilight Zone,” Barney said.
“So what do you make of it?” Jake asked.
“I couldn’t say.”
“We’re talking, here,” Jake said, “about a guy who blew off his wife’s head and started to eat her. And you’re saying that, before he went at her, this snake-thing burrowed up his leg and bit him in the brain?”
“That’s sure the way it appears.”
“And after I shot him, it took off.”
“Didn’t see it, did ya?” Barney asked.
“I didn’t stick around long. I took a quick look through the restaurant to make sure there wasn’t a third person, then I headed back to my car to call in. I must’ve been gone close to fifteen minutes. I guess that gave it time to get out.”
“Th
e poop-chute express,” Barney said.
“It might still be in the restaurant,” Jake said.
“I already searched around here,” Steve said, “and the van that brought him in. Didn’t want that thing sneaking up on me.”
Barney sidestepped, reached over, pinched a leg of Steve’s white trousers and lifted. “I already checked that, myself,” Steve said. He raised both cuffs above his socks.
Barney crouched for a close look, then turned to Jake. “How ’bout you?”
“I took three showers after—”
“So y’got hygiene. Lift your pants.”
Jake drew them up to his knees. Barney squatted beside him, took a long look, then slid Jake’s socks down around his ankles.
“Okay, so now we know you guys aren’t gonna start munchin’ on me.”
Jake nodded. “So I’m not the only one who thinks this snake-thing made Smeltzer go haywire.”
“It don’t make sense, but it makes sense.”
“I’m afraid I have to agree,” Steve said. “It sounds mad but the possibility is certainly there…some kind of creature that sustains itself through a symbiotic relationship with its human host. A parasite. But it doesn’t simply take its nourishment from its host, it somehow controls his eating habits.”
Barney smirked. “Less Smeltzer was in the habit a’ eatin’ his wife.”
“So we’re talking,” Jake said, “about a snakelike creature that burrows into a person, takes control of his mind, and compels him to eat human flesh. That is what we’re talking about here, right?”
“Can’t be,” Barney said. “Last time I looked I wasn’t nuts.”
“If there’s another way to interpret this situation,” Steve said, “I’d be more than eager to hear it.”
“Yeah. You guys are figments a’ my fuckin’ nightmare.”
“Neither of you, I take it, has ever heard of a similar situation.”
“You gotta be kiddin’.”
“I’ve heard of cannibalism,” Jake said, “but never anything about a snake or whatever that gets inside you and turns you into one.”
“Gentlemen, I think we’ve got a situation.” Steve slipped a fresh cigar from a pocket of his white jacket, stripped off its wrapper, and bit off its end. He spat the wad of leaf into the table gutter. He licked the whole cigar. Then he poked it into his mouth and lit up.
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