Death Notice

by Todd Ritter

  Troy Gunzelman lay inside. He was naked, his skin damp from the few inches of water that had leaked into the coffin. The liquid sloshed around his body, a small tide rising and falling against his chalky flesh.

  Kat reached into the coffin and pressed two fingers against the inside of Troy’s wrist, hoping to feel the faint bump of a pulse. There wasn’t one.

  “He’s dead,” she said.

  In the back of the boat, Carl’s voice rose in prayer.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . .”

  The prayer continued as Kat examined the body. Blood was smeared across Troy’s mouth and chin. Underneath it lay a pattern of thread pinning his lips together. The same thread was on his neck, sewing up the gash where the killer had tried to play mortician.

  “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

  Troy’s eyes were covered by two pennies. In the darkness of the coffin, they resembled empty sockets instead of coins, giving the impression that Troy’s eyes had been removed. Kat aimed the light into the coffin. The beam exposed the blood on Troy’s face, brightening it into crimson Technicolor, and glinted off the two pennies.

  “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Kat repeated.

  Her voice was drowned out by the thunder of fireworks. Apparently, the display’s grand finale was taking place because the sky was aglow with multicolored lights. The rest of the town was clustered under that glow, oblivious to the grim discovery on the lake.

  Kat envied their ignorance. They didn’t know another murder had taken place in Perry Hollow, in exactly the same way as the first. Yet the shock of the situation didn’t the murder the second time. It was worse. Much worse. This time she knew the murder was coming, yet she hadn’t been able to stop it.

  She also knew that Nick Donnelly had been right about the situation from the very start. The killer had a taste for it now. He had a routine. And he wouldn’t stop. Not unless Kat stopped him first.

  SEVENTEEN

  Henry lay in bed, unable to stop thinking about Troy Gunzelman. It was hours after they had found his body in the lake, but the image refused to leave his head. Every time he closed his eyes, he pictured Troy’s lifeless eyes, hidden under the two pennies. The image was unsettling, and it kept sleep from approaching.

  Guilt also kept Henry awake. It wasn’t his fault Troy was dead. The blame for that rested squarely with whoever had killed him. But it was his fault that Troy hadn’t been saved.

  Tossing and turning beneath the covers, Henry thought of all the scenarios in which the quarterback might have lived. If only he had grabbed the fax sooner. If only he had sprinted faster on Main Street. If only he hadn’t argued with Kat before she let him tag along.

  Had they happened, those events could have rescued Troy Gunzelman from the clutches of a killer.

  If only.

  Henry was accustomed to such thinking. It was a constant in the past five years. If only he had consumed one less beer. If only they had waited out the storm instead of plunging into the thick of it. If only they hadn’t left the house in the first place.

  But it was too late to go back and reverse all that, just as he couldn’t relive that night’s events and try harder. What’s done is done, and Henry had to live with the repercussions.

  Flopping onto his side, he checked the clock on the nightstand. It was just past midnight. Many hours of sleeplessness lay between him and dawn. It was going to be a long night.

  When the doorbell rang five minutes later, Henry thought it was Kat Campbell. She probably had the same thoughts of regret he did. Padding out of his bedroom and down the hall, he suspected she wanted to commiserate. Human nature made us want to wallow in bad thoughts with those who shared them.

  But instead of Chief Campbell, Henry opened the door and saw Deana Swan. There was sympathy in her eyes as she said, “I heard about Troy.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Martin told me,” she said. “He said he’ll probably be up all night working on the story.”

  Despite that fact, Henry imagined Martin Swan was having a field day with the news. A town’s football star was murdered. A killer thought to be behind bars actually wasn’t. Another grisly murder had rocked a place more quiet than Mayberry. This was the kind of story most reporters dreamed about.

  “I also heard you were involved. I thought you might like to talk about it.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Henry said, “but there’s nothing to say.”

  “That’s not what your eyes are telling me.”

  Henry tried—and failed—to understand what made Deana tick. She barely knew him, yet she had the bravery to show up at his apartment at midnight checking to see if he was okay. The violation of his privacy should have made him angry. But it didn’t. He really did need some company, and he was touched that Deana hadn’t been afraid to approach him about the murder.

  “So are you up for a walk?” she asked. “The heat’s died down.”

  “Actually,” Henry said, “I could use a drink.”

  Exiting his building, they walked down a deserted Main Street to the Jigsaw. It, too, was empty, yet still open. The bartender poured their drinks with a minimum of small talk and told them to sit anywhere they liked. They went to a corner booth far away from the bar.

  Once seated, Deana raised her glass of red wine, clinking it lightly against Henry’s scotch. “A toast.”

  “What are we toasting?”

  “Your heroism. You tried to help save someone’s life. That was very brave.”

  “Even if I failed?”

  “Yes. Even if you failed.”

  Henry took a gulp of scotch, feeling its burn deep in his chest. Deana took a gentle sip of her wine.

  “So what’s your story?” she asked. “I know you have one.”

  “Maybe I want to know yours. There must be a good reason why you work in a funeral home.”

  “I suspect it’s the same reason you write obituaries.”

  Henry cocked an eyebrow. “Morbid curiosity?”

  “Far from it,” Deana said. “My mother worked there for ages. She was the receptionist for the McNeils, just like I am now. But she did more than that. Because there was no woman in the house to take care of them, she sometimes cooked dinner and offered to clean the living areas. I spent a lot of time there as a girl. In a way, I sort of grew up there.”

  There was sadness in her voice, as if she wanted to talk more but was afraid to. Henry could relate. There was so much he could have told her. He just chose not to.

  “My father died when I was ten and Martin was twelve,” she continued. “He worked at the mill, like everyone in this town, I suppose. One day there was an accident—his second. The first one only left a scar. The second one did a whole lot more damage. I don’t know all the details. Honestly, I don’t want to. I just know that he left for the mill one morning and never came home. It was devastating to all three of us. Martin took it really hard. So did I. I was Daddy’s little girl.”

  Henry didn’t offer his condolences. He had heard too many in his lifetime to know they were meaningless. Having someone tell you they were sorry did nothing to ease your pain. So he said nothing, letting Deana talk uninterrupted.

  “Then my mother died a month after I graduated high school. Art McNeil was wonderful about everything. Because my mother had been so devoted to him, he covered the funeral expenses, which helped out a lot. A week after she was buried, he offered me her old job.”

  “That was very kind of him,” Henry said. “But it sounds to me like you didn’t choose your job. It chose you.”

  “I suppose. It’s just like life, I guess. What we plan to happen and what actually happens never seem to coincide. For example, ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to live in Paris. I even took French in high school to prepare for my new life there. But after my mother d
ied, I realized very quickly that living in Paris would probably never happen.”

  “For me, it was Italy.”

  Henry tried to stop himself, surprised by how easy it was to reveal such information to Deana. But the combination of scotch and exhaustion urged him to reveal more.

  “I was going to live there. Milan. I became fluent in Italian. Studied the food, the wine, the music. I even had an apartment all picked out.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  This time Henry was able to stop himself. Some things were too hard to say, even with the help of booze and sleep deprivation.

  “Something happened,” he said.

  Deana’s gaze flitted to the burn mark and scar. It was quick—a mere glance—but Henry noticed it.

  “Is that when you became an obituary writer? Martin told me you were once a really good reporter.”

  Emphasis on once. Now Henry was just a humble obituary writer, and it suited him fine.

  But a long time ago—a lifetime ago, actually—he had been a great reporter. At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the police beat was one of the paper’s most coveted jobs. And Henry had loved it. He was good at it. He was a star in the newsroom, earning praise and awards in equal measure.

  Then everything changed. His face. His life. His whole reason for living. It all vanished in a split second one night on Interstate 279.

  After the accident, Henry quit his job and moved to Perry Hollow. It wasn’t Milan by any means. But it was remote, which helped when you didn’t want to be found. Plus, it was on the opposite side of the state, where no memories of Gia existed.

  But once he settled in his new town, he discovered that memories of Gia were just as prevalent there as they were in Pittsburgh. That’s when Henry realized thoughts of her would follow him no matter how far he roamed.

  “Now I’m a good obituary writer,” he said. “For most of these people, I’m the author of the last thing to ever be written about them. That’s an important task. I take it seriously, and I try to do it with respect and honesty.”

  “You make it sound so noble.”

  “It is. People are too quick to forget the dead. This society encourages it. You’re supposed to mourn for a bit and then move on. What I do preserves them. Their lives are printed right there on a piece of paper, for anyone to see at any time. I help them not be forgotten.”

  “People don’t forget,” Deana said. “They go about their lives because they need to. They have to work and raise their kids and meet new people. It’s called life, and it doesn’t stop when someone dies. It goes on. Just because you go on doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten those in the past. But at some point you need to let them go.”

  She stared directly into Henry’s eyes, making him wonder if she knew more about his past than she let on. As far as Henry knew, no one in Perry Hollow was aware of what happened to him before he arrived. They only saw the present Henry—dour, dark, disfigured. That’s all he wanted them to see, which is why he remained in the shadows.

  “I like you, Henry,” Deana said quietly. “You seem like a good man, and there aren’t too many of them in this town. Trust me, I’ve looked.”

  She edged toward him, drawing so close that the light, sweet scent of her perfume danced in his nostrils. She was going to kiss him. And Henry, astonishingly, wanted her to.

  The kiss, when it arrived, was a peck on the cheek. Deana then slid her lips down to his own. As they made contact, a jolt of electricity exploded in his brain before zipping directly to his groin. Deana kissed differently than Gia, with more brash fervor than he was accustomed to. Her tongue caressed his own before slipping out of his mouth and running across his upper lip. When it reached his scar, all the excitement Henry felt immediately ceased.

  “We need to stop,” he said as he gently pushed her away.

  The look in Deana’s eyes shifted from arousal to confusion to hurt. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re a wonderful girl. But I’m not ready for this yet.”

  A slight pain pulsed at Henry’s temple. The burn mark, no doubt flushed and flaring. He touched the scar on his face, fingertips tripping over the spot Deana had just kissed.

  “It was only a kiss,” she said. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “That’s the problem. To me, it’s a very big deal.”

  After quickly walking Deana home, Henry returned to his apartment and tried to sleep. But the abrupt—and awkward—end to the night made that difficult. He pictured Troy Gunzelman in the floating casket. He thought of the sad expression on Deana’s face as he broke off their kiss. And he had the dream—not as a whole but in fragments, as if his brain was a television being controlled by an impatient remote.

  When morning arrived, he was just as exhausted as when he had gone to bed. But it was another workday, and he suspected writing Troy’s obituary would be at the top of his agenda.

  Groggily, he got out of bed and followed his morning routine. When he opened the front door to leave, the Perry Hollow Gazette was waiting for him.

  GRIM REAPER STRIKES AGAIN, the headline screamed. Below that, in only slightly smaller letters, it read, FOOTBALL STANDOUT MURDERED, FOUND IN COFFIN.

  The byline belonged to Martin Swan. Back in his reporting days, Henry would have felt a twinge of jealousy about that. But not now. Now, Martin could have all the attention-grabbing stories he wanted. Henry didn’t care.

  He scooped up the paper and tossed it into the trash can next to the door. When he turned around to leave, he noticed something else in the hallway. Something he hadn’t seen since March.

  There was no box this time. No attempt to disguise what it was. Instead, the portable fax machine sat out in the open, the buttons on its front panel making it look like a face. It was smiling at Henry, he was sure of it. Smiling and beckoning him to join the next round of whatever game it was that they were playing.

  EIGHTEEN

  Had she been given the choice, Kat would have picked getting a root canal over holding a press conference. She couldn’t stand the thought of facing all those reporters and their questions. If she could have avoided holding one, she would have. But that wasn’t possible. A son of Perry Hollow was dead—a beloved one at that. When a town’s football hero gets slaughtered, it’s owed a press conference.

  After a meeting with the mayor, the county sheriff, the prosecutor’s office, and the state police, it was decided that Kat should do the talking. She was the face of Perry Hollow, they said, and she knew the most about the case. But Kat couldn’t help feeling like a sacrificial lamb. All of them had thought George Winnick’s killer was behind bars, and no one wanted to break the bad news that he wasn’t. That left Kat to do their dirty work.

  So at 9:00 A.M. sharp, she stood outside the police station and confronted a gauntlet of reporters. It wasn’t just the Gazette that was interested anymore. Media outlets from far outside the county now wanted a piece of the action. As she gave her opening remarks, she saw reporters from The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and practically every TV station in the state.

  “I’ll first go over the details of the case,” she said, “then I’ll open it up to questions.”

  Taking a deep breath, she began.

  “Troy Gunzelman was found dead at approximately nine thirty last night.”

  She read her statement from a sheet of paper Lou had typed a half hour earlier, after Kat heard back from Wallace Noble.

  The autopsy results were similar to George Winnick’s, with a few variations. Instead of merely slicing the carotid artery, the killer had cut the jugular open as well. It was exactly like Bob McNeil had demonstrated—one to let the blood out, one to let the embalming fluid in. The killer again used a mixture of formaldehyde and water, although the solution hadn’t entirely filled Troy’s circulatory system. Apparently, he had been in a hurry.

  “His body was discovered in a homemade coffin floating on Lake Squall. Cause of death was loss of blood. The exact time of death has yet to be determine
d.”

  Kat scanned the crowd as she spoke, immediately picking out Martin Swan. After that morning’s edition, he and the rest of the Gazette staff were firmly on her shit list. Martin had decided to give the killer a nickname in that day’s paper, dubbing him the Grim Reaper.

  Quick to know a good sound bite when they heard one, the television news stations picked it up immediately, using the nickname throughout their morning broadcasts. And as Kat opened the press conference up to questions, she prepared to be bombarded with references to it.

  Several dozen hands shot into the air, attached to reporters already calling out queries. Martin’s was among the highest. Normally, Kat would have picked him first, giving him a home team advantage. But since she was still angry, she pointed to a woman who identified herself as a correspondent from a Philadelphia TV station.

  “Do you think the Grim Reaper is responsible for the deaths of both Troy Gunzelman and George Winnick?”

  Kat nodded solemnly. “There is reason to believe the perpetrator of this crime is the same person responsible for killing George Winnick earlier this year. Both victims died in similar manners.”

  Martin raised his hand higher, stretching it like a brainy third-grader. Kat picked the reporter next to him, a well-scrubbed fellow from CNN.

  “Other than the manner of death,” he said, “is there any link between Troy and George?”

  “Troy spent a summer working on George Winnick’s farm. Besides that, we have no reason to believe they were linked in any other way.”

  Mr. CNN had a follow-up. “Then why these two people?”

  “That’s a good question,” Kat said. “I wish I had an answer.”

  She saw movement at the back of the crowd. Nudging his way between two reporters was a pale-faced man who stood a head taller than everyone else. It was Henry, arriving late to the media circus.

  He had brought a second portable fax machine to the station early that morning. Unlike the first, there was no need to see if it was the same one used to send Troy’s death notice. Clearly, it was. It was the same make and model as the first, and once again, the serial number on the bottom had been scraped away.