Ash Wednesday

by Chet Williamson

  Shit, it could be that easy. After all, Merridale was still a town in self-imposed quarantine, so you didn't have drifters. Great. So that left, what, only 8,000 suspects? And the way Marie Snyder gossiped, there were any number of people with possible motives. The venomous old bitch had spread rumors true or false about half the people in town over the years. Maybe, he'd supposed at first, somebody finally had had enough. It was one way to close that thin-lipped, hard-lined mouth.

  But the killer hadn't closed it, had he (or she)? That mouth was opened for good now, hanging over the edge of the counter where she'd counted what must have been millions of coins in change over the decades. He confessed to himself that he wasn't sorry to see her go, but he was damned if that was going to let him turn a blind eye toward this investigation. This was his town, and he loved it, and he owed it something, just like it owed him his fifteen hundred a month.

  So he sat and watched Charlie Chan bump into his Number One Son in the shadows and thought some more about that day when Fred Hibbs had nearly battered down the door of the police station.

  Kaylor hadn't arrived yet, and Del Franklin, who'd been stuck with night duty that week, had called him. When Kaylor arrived at the newsstand, Fred Hibbs was standing outside on the sidewalk, afraid to go back in. Kaylor left him there and went in to talk to Del, who, to Kaylor's indignation, hadn't searched the place. They went through it together, hands on holstered guns, but found no one. Del proudly pointed out that it looked as if someone had gone through the apartment opening and closing drawers, a situation Kaylor had noticed right away. While they waited for the state police to arrive, Del mentioned how cold the shop was. "Go down and put some coal on," Kaylor said. "I don't think she'll care one way or the other."

  Del Franklin made his way to the cellar, grabbed the coal shovel, and began to toss the coal into the wheezy old furnace. When the coals were burning well, Del continued to add more. Gonna be here a long time, he thought. The coal bin was dark, so he didn't see the envelope, now blackened with coal dust, until he flung the shovelful of coal that held it into the furnace's mouth.

  He heard it hit before he saw it, then watched as it ignited far more quickly than the coal, burning with a bright, yellow flame in brilliant contrast to the tamely glowing red lumps. What the hell? Del thought. What was that? Something, apparently, that didn't belong in a coal bin. He frowned, wondering if he should say anything to Chief Kaylor, but decided not to. Just piss him off that I wasn't more careful, he told himself. Besides, what's done's done. He couldn't reach in and snatch out whatever it was, and who could tell now what it ever had been? Probably, he thought, just some paper the old lady kept handy to start the fire when it died out.

  So he shut the furnace door, and left Marie Snyder's perfect hiding place, going upstairs to share in the warmth of ten thousand burning dollars.

  The investigation proved to be a dead end. There were no Charlie Chan-type clues, no telltale cigarette butts, or buttons torn off the killer's coat by the victim, or crumpled slips of paper with the murderer's handwriting. Even the forensic specialists found nothing. Hairs, pieces of thread, tiny bits of flesh under the victim's nails—all were absent. "I thought you guys were supposed to be able to tell something about the killer," Kaylor told a forensics man later over the phone. "After all, they got that guy in Atlanta with pieces of fiber, didn't they?"

  "It wasn't just that," the man, a clerkish type named Rogers, replied. "They couldn't have got him on that alone. Besides, they had all the money and equipment they needed. We don't."

  "So it's what? A question of economics?"

  "All the money in the world won't buy clues that aren't there, Chief." The "chief" was slurred deprecatingly. "So you got nothing."

  "That's the size of it."

  "Where the hell's Craig Kennedy when you need him?”

  “What?"

  "Nothing. Thinking out loud."

  Kaylor began to think silently as well. He questioned dozens of people who had known Marie Snyder, and those who only frequented her store. "Did you notice anything different about her lately?”

  “Had she mentioned anything or anybody in a peculiar manner?”

  “Did she do anything peculiar?" He'd spent over an hour talking with John Grubb, the tight-fisted pensioner who occasionally tended the newsstand and helped Marie with the heavy work. He denied noticing any recent changes in her, except for one small thing.

  "She always argues with me when I got split time—I mean, like if I got a spare five or ten or twenty minutes. I always got a full half hour out of her for it—that was the deal—but she always groused about it. The Sunday before she died, though, she didn't. I thought that was queer."

  Kaylor thought it was queer too. It might have been an indication that she'd gotten some extra money from someone somewhere, which might make robbery the motive. But it also might have been only an indication that she was full of Pastor Craven's Christmas spirit sermon. Even if it was a clue, there was nothing to support it. Marie Snyder's bank account showed no deviation from the norm, and no secret caches of cash, gold coins, or green stamps were discovered when the apartment was searched.

  So the police, to Frank Kaylor's extreme dismay, remained ignorant, Marie Snyder remained dead, and the killer remained undiscovered, for it would be incorrect to say that he was unknown, since Clyde Thornton was still easily the most conspicuous man in Merridale.

  The first week after Marie Snyder's killing was torturous for Thornton. Not a minute passed in which he did not listen for the sound of a police car growling up the driveway. Every phone call was, in his imagination, from Chief Kaylor asking him if he wouldn't mind coming down to the station to answer a few questions. Thornton did his minimal work, filled out his reports, wrote up the required psychosocial profiles, but every second he expected to feel a steely hand close on his shoulder, to hear the rough click of a handcuff at his wrist.

  The Wednesday evening town meeting was the worst. There he sat at the head table, Tom Markley on one side, Frank Kaylor on the other, Pastor Craven two chairs down. The first topic of discussion, of course, had been Marie Snyder's murder. No, Kaylor had answered, there were no leads at this point and he couldn't say when they might have a suspect, and Markley had said that he felt confident that between the facilities of the state police and the inside information that their own town force was gleaning there would be an arrest before too long, and Craven had added that it was terribly, terribly tragic that in a place where death was at everyone's right hand, someone should add even more death. If this person, he went on, would like to come forth and turn himself in, or if he wanted to contact Craven anonymously, Craven would be more than willing to give whatever help he could. We are all God's children, he said, and he will comfort us no matter what our transgressions.

  Thornton had actually shifted in his chair then, preparatory to rising, but he caught himself in time. It was the fear and apprehension that tormented him more than any guilt that he felt, and Craven's words of comfort, his soft, deep, soothing voice, the promise of rest, had almost brought Thornton to his feet in a public confession, like some tired sinner brought to Jesus under a canvas roof and over a sawdust floor, lured by promises of peace and a ripe ambience of agape. But a face in the mass of townspeople had shifted to his own face at that second, and the eyes of a woman he did not know by name looked into his. It was, for all he knew, one of those random movements of the head, nothing more, but his fancy saw coldness in it, the hardness of a town toward a man who takes one of their own, and the look stopped him, saved him from his own confession, and he held his fear within.

  But as the days lengthened into weeks, the fear receded. In its place there grew a quiet triumph, a sense that he had done it all correctly and would not be discovered. Time, place, method—nothing had been linked to him. He remembered reading that most arrests were made within forty-eight hours of the crime. After that, the perpetrator's odds were better and better that he'd get away with whatever it was he'
d done. And now, at the beginning of February, the killing was almost six weeks behind him. He no longer flinched when the phone rang, and had not peered backward over his shoulder for quite a while.

  He would not, however, have entered the newsstand under any circumstance, and did not even drive past it, taking side streets and alleyways rather than pass by its green-blinded windows. He bought his papers and magazines, as did nearly all of Marie Snyder's former patrons, at the Turkey Hill Mini-Mart on Oak Street. The selection was minimal, but at least the clerks were living.

  In time, Clyde Thornton forgot the fear that Marie Snyder and her knowledge had caused him. It was almost natural that Thornton, all his life nothing but an unheralded petty bureaucrat in a faceless bureau, should come to think of his now-meteoric course as inspired by something beyond his understanding. Everything that had happened here had been for the best—at least his best. He was known nationwide, he was receiving large amounts of money for doing next to nothing (and that was only the beginning—after all this was over he could make a mint on the speaker circuit, he was sure of it), and the only thing that had stood in his way was gone, gotten rid of forever.

  And he had gotten rid of it, neatly, tidily, the only evidence a blue half ghost that could say nothing. And though Clyde Thornton had not believed in a God since his tenth birthday, he was now beginning to believe very strongly in a destiny of his own making, and to slowly see himself as something more than one of the poor, blind fools who walked the streets of sad, chilly Merridale.

  I am meant for something more, Clyde Thornton thought as he carefully took his money and even more carefully disposed of it. I am meant for greatness, he thought as in the cocktail lounges he took his pick of the lonely ladies who were so hungry to fuck fame.

  And how much more? he wondered. He was what, forty-two? Not too old to do big things, was it? He was known, he had charisma, he had trust, and soon he would have money as well. Politics? He had already proven he could lead. The people in Merridale thought he could walk on water. He had their trust and their respect. It still amazed him how quickly they'd turned to him, leaving their own mayor in the lurch.

  He grinned as he remembered Tom Markley's wife after the town meeting just a week ago, the two of them suddenly alone in the lobby. She had made it damn plain what she wanted, and he'd almost been ready to take her up on it when he thought it might be getting a little too close to home. Divorcees and single women (and all right, maybe an occasional married one, very discreetly) were one thing, but the mayor's wife was another. Besides, she was older, nearly fifty, he guessed (though a damn solid fifty), and he could do better. But if Markley became any more of a prick than he already was, well, maybe he'd still consider it. Hell, Clyde Thornton could have whatever he wanted.

  ~*~

  "Whatever he wants, y'know? Livin' out there in that big house. I bet your ass he's got orgies out there." Fred Hibbs popped the tab on a can of Rolling Rock and took a swig. The top of the can reeked of cigarette smoke that had accumulated from weeks of sitting in the Anchor's cooler, but Fred didn't seem to mind.

  Eddie Karl did, and he poured his beer into a glass with "America-200 Years of Glory 1776-1976" etched crudely on the side, leaned his chair back, and propped his shoes on the edge of his kitchen table. "He don't have no orgies," he said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Nobody's never had no orgies in Merridale. It's in the town code. If you have an orgy, you get hit by lightning.”

  “Bullshit," said Fred Hibbs.

  "You ever read the town code?"

  "Well, maybe he don't have orgies, but I bet he fucks a lot of women."

  "Nothin' about that in the town code," Eddie said. "I even heard he's fuckin' Mim Markley."

  "Now that's bullshit."

  "Why? You think she wouldn't?"

  "No, I think maybe she would. Women're damn funny when it comes to doin' it and who they'll do it with." Eddie stuck out his lower lip and balanced the salt shaker on top of the pepper shaker. "I don't think he'd do it."

  "Thornton?"

  "Uh-huh. Besides, I got spies. They'd tell me if Mim was screwin' around."

  "What spies?"

  "Ned Phillips for one. He's right near Markley's."

  Fred screwed up his face and pushed his chair back from the table. "I'm gonna watch TV."

  "Ned'd know."

  "News is on." Fred stood up and moved toward the living room.

  Eddie looked at Fred's retreating form. "You don't think Ned would know, do ya?"

  "Ned is dead, goddammit!" Fred shouted, twisting around. "He's dead! Now how the hell is he gonna tell you anything?”

  “Well, you could humor me," said Eddie, standing up.

  "You're supposed to humor us loonies, y'know?"

  "I tried to humor you, you old fart, but you kept at me! Now can we just forget it and go in and watch the dumbass news?"

  "Can't tonight."

  "Why not?"

  "I got a date."

  "What in hell are you talkin' about?"

  "I'm takin' Harriet Viner to the movies, if it's any of your business."

  "Aw, shit." Fred shook his head in frustration. Harriet Viner had died in a rest home ten years before, and the town's sole movie theater had closed its doors for good in 1974. "I'm gonna watch the news." He walked into the dimly lit living room, turned the switch on the old Emerson, and committed his bulk to the tired cushions of the highbacked davenport.

  "Ain'tcha gonna wish me a good time?" asked Eddie, standing in the doorway.

  "Have a good time."

  "Goin' to the Anchor after the movie. If I ain't home tonight, you'll know I got lucky. Or maybe I'll bring her back here.”

  Fred Hibbs swallowed heavily, closed his eyes, and kept them closed until he heard the front door open and shut. When he looked, Eddie was gone.

  It's nice here, Fred thought. It is nice here. There were no ghosts—nowhere in the house and none in the small backyard. There, garages encroached upon the property, hiding any distant blue forms from view, so that when you stood outside the back door, it was as though you were in Merridale before the phenomenon had taken place. From the front of the house, which looked out onto the street, the forms were visible, but they kept the front shades drawn. Fred Hibbs spent nearly all his time in the house, going out only to cash his Social Security check, or to have breakfast at the Hitching Post or to help Eddie with the grocery shopping. It was not an unpleasant prison. The house, though small from the outside, used its space wisely. It was a frame two-story building built at the turn of the century. Though its front door was less than six feet from the sidewalk on Market Street, it was in the southern, less busy section of town, where the residential atmosphere was broken only occasionally by a convenience store or gas station. The rooms, devoid of a woman's touch for decades, were nonetheless cozy and comfortable, the walls dark, the furniture old and friendly. Fred had been amazed by the great quantity of books that, jammed into homemade bookcases of every conceivable size and shape, filled each corner of each room. Hardcovers from the twenties shared shelf space with eighties paperbacks, the smaller books stuffed above and beside the hardbacks as though used for packing. One cellar room held a profusion of magazines, from a stack of 1932 Argosy, to fifties' Popular Mechanics, to last year's Susquehanna.

  "Jesus, Eddie," said Fred when he first saw them. "I didn't know you read so much."

  "Gotta do somethin' when you're a single man. Whatta you do with your time?"

  Fred had shrugged. "Watch TV a lot, I guess."

  "Well, I got one. Don't watch much myself, though I liked that Charlie's Angels show. And Milton Berle. Not much worth watching now."

  "How come you keep all these?"

  "The books? I keep 'em long enough I forget I read 'em, so it's like readin' a new book. But don't worry, there ain't too many of 'em in your room." And there weren't just one small bookcase by the bed, filled mostly with Executioner and Nick Carter—Killmaster novels. Fred tried
to read one, but the word-by-word effort he had to put forth was not worth it, and he put it aside after three chapters, thankful that the television worked.

  To Fred's surprise, he had gotten along well with Eddie for the first few weeks. They cooked and ate together, watched TV (Eddie discovered that he liked the Star Trek reruns Fred tuned in), played cards (gin was the favorite, Eddie winning most of the time), and drank on Saturday nights. They'd start with a few beers at Ted's Place, a small neighborhood bar a few blocks away, and then wend their way back to Eddie's, where they would 'split a six-pack of Rolling Rock. Fred Hibbs was a Schmidt's drinker, but Eddie protested that Schmidt's made him fart.

  Five beers each over a two-hour period never made either of them drunk, but it did slip them into a garrulous camaraderie, the ease of which later extended into their comparatively sober moments. At such times, Eddie seemed to forget his half promise not to be cozy with the dead when Fred was around. Lounging with his feet up on the shabby elephant-foot ottoman, Eddie would launch into a narrative of whom he had run into that day, both dead and alive. Fred would feel his stomach churn the way it did when he'd had to go into the kitchen of his own house, and he'd try to change the subject. But Eddie would be nonplussed, rambling on about Clete Wilkins or Rouamie Hack, and how goddamn good they looked for their age, until Fred would finally get mad and call Eddie a loony and Eddie would laugh and tell Fred to sit down, sit down, and then start to talk about something else.

  It had been getting worse, though, in the last week or two. It was bad enough when Fred walked the streets with Eddie, and Eddie would call out a greeting to a dim, blue shape or, even more absurdly, stop and chat with empty air. But lately Eddie had taken to talking to the dead in his own house (their house, Fred thought). As yet he had not done it in front of Fred, but Fred had heard him from another room and, at first thinking there was someone in the house, had gone to see who was there. But it was only Eddie, Eddie alone, who snapped his mouth shut in midword and glared at Fred as though irked at having been interrupted.