Forever Man

by Brian Matthews

“I don’t know his name. He’s a new friend of Denny’s.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Tall. Sandy hair. A beard. Except for a scar here.” Maddie traced a line along her left jaw with a trembling finger.

  “What happened when he showed up?”

  “He took Denny and Chet into the back room and closed the door.”

  “How long were they back there?”

  “Well,” Maddie said. “Chet came out a few minutes later, looking relieved. And a little happy. He left. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “And the stranger?”

  “What about him?”

  “Did he stay?”

  “For a little while. Then he left, too.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Jack frowned, “but this sounds like an interrogation. I thought you had your man locked up in jail?”

  “Okay,” Izzy said, exasperated. “Let’s go, Jack. I’m going to call someone to take you into custody.”

  “No.” This came from Vickie Milkins, who worked at the IGA store. The tall redhead stood off to the left with her husband, Walt. “He’s got a point, Izzy. I thought you made an arrest. That you caught the guy responsible for this.”

  “Yes,” Izzy said. “We do have somebody in custody.”

  “Then why aren’t you talking to him?” Vickie continued.

  A murmur of agreement ran through the crowd.

  “Please, Vickie.” Izzy raised her voice slightly. “Everyone. Just because we have a suspect doesn’t mean we stop an investigation. We’re going to be as thorough as possible. That’s part of the job.”

  “I can’t believe Chet Boardman would be involved in this.” The statement came from Celeste Florin, Gene’s waitress from the Lula. “I’ve known him for years. He seems so harmless.”

  “I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation,” said Izzy. “When I know something concrete, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.”

  “You’re going to pin this on Chet, aren’t you?” Denny said bitterly. “That’s why you’re looking for him. You got that damn nigger in jail, but you’re going to let him go and blame Chet for my son’s death.”

  Izzy didn’t like where this was headed. “Okay, this is going to stop right now. I cannot—I will not—discuss the details of this investigation with any of you.”

  “So Chet Boardman is a suspect,” Jack said, smiling again. He’d clearly sensed the shifting mood of the crowd, and it had made him bolder.

  “No, Owens is…our….” Her words trailed off as she recalled Owens’ warning about Kevin Sallinen. “Jack, where’s Kevin?”

  Jack frowned. “Kevin? You mean my son?”

  “Yes, your son. Where is he?”

  “At home, with a neighbor.” His small eyes grew wary. “Why?”

  She didn’t want to say anything more until she understood better what kind of threat Owens posed. “Just do me a favor. Keep an eye on him.”

  “Why?” he repeated, then his eyebrows climbed in alarm. “Is it that Owens guy? Has he been talking about Kevin?”

  Izzy blinked, amazed that he made the connection so quickly.

  The surprise must have registered on her face, because Jack exploded. “You keep him away! Do your goddamn job for a change and keep him away from my boy!”

  “Wait a minute,” Izzy said. “I never said anything about Owens. Don’t go jumping to conclu—”

  “Keep him away!” Jack shouted, the veins in his neck pulsing in synch with his words. “Or I’ll kill him myself!”

  “Jack, seriously,” Izzy said, puzzled at the man’s vehemence. “Owens is sitting in a jail cell. He’s no threat to anyone. Please, calm down.”

  “You better hope he stays locked up.” Jack was practically snarling now. “Because if anything happens to Kevin, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”

  He turned and stormed out of the hall.

  “Chief Morris?”

  She turned and saw J.J. Sallinen standing behind her with Katie at his side. His face was pale. “Is my brother in some kind of danger?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Or your father. No, Kevin’s not in any danger. It’s just…I don’t know, a precaution.”

  “A precaution against what?” he asked.

  She had to get out of this before she dug herself in further. “Look, I’ve some business to take care of. All I’m asking is that you keep your eyes open, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, clearly still confused. “If you say so.”

  Izzy’s eyes found Katie. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

  “Sure,” Katie said. “What about?”

  “Privately?”

  It only took Katie a few seconds. “It’s my mom, isn’t she? She’s drunk again. Where’d you find her this time? Passed out in her car?”

  “J.J., could you give us a moment, please?”

  The boy nodded, kissed Katie on the cheek. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  “How bad is it?” Katie asked after J.J. had left. When Izzy didn’t answer, Katie said, “Oh God, don’t tell me she was driving and hurt someone.”

  Izzy quietly led the girl out of the reception hall, ushered her into an empty office, and gently shut the door on the rest of the world.

  Chapter 15

  Anger seethed through Jack Sallinen. Morris had embarrassed him. Worse, she’d done it in front of everybody. Who was she, the little Be Nothing bitch, to talk to him like that? To get up in his face and threaten him?

  He pushed hard against the hall’s glass door and strode outside. Cool air dampened the flames of his displeasure as he made his way to the parking lot. Cars filled the empty spaces, their windshields glinting in the bright October sun. Heat rose from the tarmac and softened the bite from the chilled air. The warmth pleased him. While never one to mind cold weather, he’d recently found the thought of spending another winter here, buried for months under several feet of snow, repellent. If there were anyone he could trust to run the bank in his absence, he would lounge away the winter in sunnier climates. But the risks were too great: buried deep on his hard drive, hidden under layers of passwords, was his other set of books, the accurate ones, the ones which showed the profitability of the bank was greater than he reported. While the bank examiners wouldn’t be likely to find them, a good businessman knew which risks paid off, and which didn’t. For now, he’d have to be content with keeping his offices warm. Quite warm, in fact. Eighty was ideal.

  He’d passed the first row of cars when he heard his son’s voice calling out.

  J.J. trailed after him, jogging to catch up. There was no sign of his girlfriend. Webber said he’d make sure Katie was pushed out of the picture, but he didn’t say exactly what he’d had planned. Perhaps Morris’s appearance had something to do with it? Jack grunted. He’d certainly enjoy one less nuisance in his life.

  “Hey,” J.J. said when he’d reached Jack. He wore a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “Whatever you want,” Jack snapped. “It can wait until I get home.”

  J.J.’s smile crumbled into a petulant frown. He looked so much like his mother, Jack wanted to slap him.

  “We had a deal,” his son said. “You were going to make me a part of your plans. Well, I think now’s a good time.” He gave Jack a flat stare. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen those photos. I’m sure Chief Morris would love to see them, too. You think you could survive prison?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Jack hissed, glancing around. “Yes, I haven’t forgotten. But right now, there’s nothing for you to do. You’re going to have to be a little more patient.”

  “What about Kevin?” J.J. asked. “I suppose he has something to do with this?”

  “No,” Jack said with barely restrained patience. “Your brother isn’t involved. Morris was just trying to cause trouble.”

  J.J. stared at him. “I know you had Jimmy killed. And Natalie. Somehow, you benefited from their death. You wouldn’t risk so much unless you came out o
n top. Big time.” He pointed to the VFW hall. “But Natalie’s mom? She isn’t going to give up. That means what you’re getting is worth the risk.” J.J.’s lips curled up at the corners. “So I want to know. What’re you up to?”

  Jack scowled. “Not now, and especially not here.” A flash of sunlight caught his eye. He saw a white Silverado turning into the parking lot. “Look, I’ve got to go. You want to help? Keep an eye on that little girlfriend of yours. If anything out of the ordinary happens, call me on my cell. Now get back inside before you’re missed.”

  “She’s busy talking with Chief Morris,” replied J.J.. “Does that have anything to do with what you’re up to?”

  Two quick blasts of a horn got Jack’s attention. Webber had parked near the back of the lot. One arm hung lazily out the window and made that same little “hurry up” gesture.

  Jack stepped close to J.J.. He jabbed a thick finger into his son’s chest—and was surprised when J.J., who topped the scales at 210 lbs, took an unbalanced step back.

  “I don’t know why Morris is here,” he said. “That’s the truth. But if it does have something to do with your girly-friend, remember that whatever happened is your fault. You brought her into this.” Jack snorted. “You think you’re a man? That you can blackmail me? That you can fuck me over the way you did with your mother? Well, there are consequences to everything, though I doubt you have the brains to figure that out. Now get the hell out of here. I’m tired of looking at you.”

  J.J.’s face flushed red. “You’re the one who messed it up with mom. I didn’t have anything to do with it. And what happened in the end? Kevin and I ended up paying the price.” Some of the color drained from his face. “I’ll keep an eye on Katie. But we’re not done here. I expect you to follow through with your part.” He turned and headed back toward the hall.

  Finished with his son, Jack turned his attention to the Silverado. His nerves danced an edgy jitterbug as he crossed the parking lot. His lips pressed into a thin line. Blood rushed in his ears.

  Webber’s arm folded into the cab. Jack saw a flash of light, and the man’s arm emerged with a cigarette wedged between two yellow-stained fingers, the end glowing a soft red, smoke rising in thin wisps until it was caught by the breeze and whisked away.

  “Hello there,” Webber said, grinning. “Don’t you love it when a boy and his dad have one of those tender moments? I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”

  Jacked grabbed the cigarette from Webber’s hand, dropped it, and ground it out with his shoe. “Bad habit you have there. Don’t you know those things can kill you?”

  “That may be,” Webber said evenly, withdrawing another cigarette and lighting it. “Care to tell me why you’re in such a foul mood?”

  “Chet Boardman. Morris is in the hall asking about him.”

  “I’m sure she is.” When Jack raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question, Webber added, “Look, Chet came to me yesterday. Said he’d had second thoughts and wanted out. Said he couldn’t get past this ‘uncomfortable’ feeling he got around me. But see, I worked hard at gathering together our little group. I wasn’t going to let him simply walk away. And I certainly wasn’t going to risk him talking about our plans. So, Mr. Boardman is no longer an issue.”

  “What’d you do? Kill him, too?”

  “Who said he was dead? Besides, killing is a baser impulse of the human condition which I avoid whenever possible.”

  “But didn’t you…?” Jack looked meaningfully back at the hall where the mourners were gathered.

  “You think I did the kid in?” Webber asked, frowning.

  It was Jack’s turn to frown. “Well, with the full moon, and the way he was torn up, I kind of assumed—”

  “What, that I was a werewolf?” Webber laughed. “You’ve been watching too many movies.”

  “Then…?”

  “What’s been causing the ruckus? That’s above your pay grade for now. When I think the time is right, maybe I’ll introduce you to my friend.” After taking another pull on his cigarette, Webber continued. “This is why I do the thinking, Jack. All you need to do is follow my orders. Nothing more.”

  “I don’t follow anyone’s orders.” Jack was angry. Angry at being laughed at, at being wrong, at being humiliated. In a moment of déjà vu, he grabbed the cigarette from Webber’s hand and ground it out. “You’re the one who needs me, not the other way around. How about you come find me when you can show a little more respect?” He turned to leave.

  “We’re not done yet,” Webber said.

  Jack gave him the finger.

  “Don’t make me teach you a lesson.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “No,” Webber said. “I think maybe you should.”

  Jack had gone two steps when the world suddenly thinned. It was as if reality had become two-dimensional: the hall, the cars, the sky and the trees had all flattened, lost their depth. While his eyes told him he was being drawn forcibly into that gap between perceptions, his stomach said otherwise, and the conflicting signals made him nauseous. He stretched out a hand, expecting to hit a solid wall of existence. His fingers felt nothing. Then, like a painting left out in the rain, everything around him began to wash away.

  Reality melted and ran in wide, raw streams. Blue sky and green trees and yellow sun and pale concrete and black asphalt mixed into a foul sludge that hardened into the ground beneath his feet. A darkly red world of stone and shadow began to emerge. Gone was the disturbing, two-dimensional reality he’d just experienced. What had lain hidden behind the landscape of his ordinary world horrified him.

  He stood in a long corridor where walls of sharp rock, craggy and broken, stretched high into the shadows above. The corridor ran before him as far as he could see, lit by a blood-red glow rising from numerous cracks in the stone floor. It was hot here. He was immediately drenched in sweat.

  But it was the smell that hit him like a physical blow. It was the stench of rotting flesh: hot, wet, oily. It filled his nostrils with a putridity so loathsome that his stomach threatened to rebel and empty its contents onto the ground.

  And there was a sound, faint at first, but growing. It was a scuttling, like beetles crawling over old bones. As the noise grew, he could feel them, hideous insects entering him—through his mouth, his nose, his ears, his anus, the tip of his penis—filling him, digging deep under his skin, into his body, biting, chewing….

  The nacreous red glow flared. Jack, hugging his writhing abdomen, could now make out creatures perched among the rocky crags that made up the tunnel’s walls.

  Black among the dark shadows of this hell, numerous shapes—or perhaps misshapes would be a better word—made the nightmare complete. One creature had a hairless, spherical body of suppurating flesh; three arms extending from its midsection, two of which gripped the ledge where it stood while the third pulled at a decaying carcass and stuffed what it could gather into a wide mouth on top of its body. Another resembled a giant starfish clinging to the stone, except where the tentacles met at its central point, a woman’s wretched face—mouth working silently while insane eyes shed tears of blood—had replaced its body. Farther down, two others were locked in a struggle to either kill or mate: one humanoid creature stabbed repeatedly with a long appendage growing from the center of its chest, while the other, which looked like a diseased flower attached to a snake’s body, accepted the demanding thrusts into its floral mouth while sharp teeth rent the flesh from the intruding phallus.

  Jack turned to look behind him. The tunnel continued in the other direction as far as he could see. He wanted to run, to escape from this place. He wanted to—

  The tunnel abruptly disappeared. He was back in the parking lot, under a dome of blue sky. There was no melting this time, just the jarring snap back into his world.

  Jack’s mind reeled. His hands flew to his gut, felt around for some sign that the insects were still inside him. There was nothing—no movement, no gnawing, no scuttli
ng.

  “Jack”

  He spun around, his heart pounding at the top of his throat. Webber sat slumped in his cab, breathing heavily, a slight sheen of sweat on his brow. He looked exhausted, as if he’d tried to move a mountain by pushing it with his hands.

  “Jack,” Webber repeated. His voice was weak, but it was enough to anchor Jack’s mind and keep it from sliding into the abyss. “Come here.”

  Numbly, Jack stumbled over to Webber’s SUV, the harsh scrape of blacktop beneath his shoes oddly reassuring. He stopped next to the cab.

  “Reach into my shirt pocket,” Webber said. “Get a cigarette and put it in my mouth.”

  Jack did.

  “Lighter’s in the same pocket.”

  Jack reached in and removed it. His hand trembled as he spun the striking wheel; it took three tries before the sparks caught. He held the flame under the business end of the cigarette.

  “I can put you there again if I want to,” Webber said, drawing deeply on the cigarette. “And I can leave you there if I need to. Fuck with me again and I’ll do just that. Capisce?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, his mind wailing at the possibility of being marooned in that place. “I capisce.”

  “Good. Now, besides having a bug up your ass about Chet, did you learn anything else from your Chief of Police?”

  “She knows about you now,” Jack said, summarizing the events from the wake.

  “That was inevitable, though I would’ve preferred another day or two of anonymity,” Webber said. “Anything else?”

  “Owens. It sounds like he’s been asking about Kevin.”

  “There we are,” Webber said, his words frustratingly nonchalant. “I think it’s your son. He’s the one this has been about.”

  “But I don’t understand.” Jack struggled with the next words. “Kevin, all he does is draw pictures. He can’t even talk….” His shoulders sagged. “I wanted so much more for him. God knows, I tried.”

  Several months before, Jack had brought Kevin to Dr. Ron Westwood, an autism specialist, to definitively diagnose his son’s condition. That final meeting had been one of the worst days in Jack’s life.