Walter drew his head back, making a confused, keep-talking sort of face.
“Yes, poor Tom had only been home for an hour, the sun had already begun to come up, when the next call came in. Paul Stanley had been out walking his sap lines, the ones in the woods behind his house, when he came across the night’s fourth fatality . . . dismembered . . . hanging from a low branch . . . sap lines coiled around his neck . . .”
Walter had enjoyed it too much to note how unnecessary the grisly details had been.
“Fourth? So who was the third?”
“Well, this is how Tom’s been referencing them,” explained Melisa helpfully, like someone relaying a favorite recipe: “After that corpse was found, Tom radioed in all the local police, firefighters, and volunteer first-responders, and he had them sweep the stretch of woods from Paul’s house to Doris’s. A fifth victim was found within an hour. Had his head smashed against an old stone wall, over and over . . .”
Walter didn’t even think to cringe out of civility, “But that’s still only four . . . ?”
“Yes,” Melisa went on, “at that point, seeing how the river ran straight through this hotspot of unthinkable butchery, Tom instructed everyone to operate under the assumption that you in fact had seen a man floating down the river, even though you hadn’t been completely sure. They’re looking for him now, actually: Victim Number Two. Victim Number Three is also the leading suspect.”
Up until now—tired and overwhelmed as he was—Walter had not spared any thought for the man in the river.
“Oh yeah. Wow. I’m afraid to ask . . . have they identified any of the victims yet? Or their killer?”
Melisa lifted her shoulders, “No . . . I’m sorry to say you’re pretty much up to speed at this point, Walter. Tom’s never seen or heard of anything like this.”
“Who has?”
Melisa nodded gravely.
“Poor Tommy . . . I’m afraid he’s going to work himself into the loony bin with this one . . . but how are you? Tom’s supposed to deal with these things. You just had a night of horrific luck.”
“No one’s supposed to deal with these things,” was all Walter said.
Melisa appeared on the verge of protest, but didn’t, “You’re right.”
A country song was subliminally filling the store, coming from a radio on a high shelf beyond the two nearby checkout aisles.
“Anyway,” Melisa started fresh, “I heard you were here. I wanted to extend an invitation for you to come over to our place for dinner. I used to be good friends with your mom.”
Walter—out of a reflex that would have him reject any act of generosity—was about to decline, when he thought about sitting down for dinner with Officer Tom Corey. That would be weird. Also, it would be an opportunity for him to immerse himself in the investigation again, which was another attractive prospect.
“That’s very kind of you. Sure. Tonight?”
“Well, I’m going to guess that if Tommy’s even home for dinner tonight, he will be a corpse himself.” Melisa reacted to her own joke with a quick sniff of distaste, “that’s not funny.”
Walter laughed louder than he should have at the instant joke-retraction.
“But . . . how about a tentative plan for tomorrow night?”
“Sounds great, Melisa.”
This was good, because, although he didn’t know it (this time), Walter already had dinner plans that night.
Henry picked him up sometime after four. As they drove away from the store, Henry relayed—sure to emphasize the second-hand nature of the message—how Nigel had told him that they still had a lot of food leftover from the night before, and thought that they should all get together and have a second go at the group dinner. Walter was still consumed by the content of his conversation with Melisa earlier, so he remained ignorant to what this could easily imply, and he agreed.
• • •
As Walter and Henry watched TV in the living room while Nigel and Jamie prepared the food in the kitchen, there were no loud hints at likely topics of dinner conversation, and so the absentminded Walter remained oblivious.
Walter finally considered what might be happening only when Nigel asked Jamie, while all four of them were seated in the dining area of the kitchen in front of a plateful of rotisserie chicken and a cob of corn, “So I guess no one else is coming, at this point?”
Nigel and Jamie made significant eye contact.
Walter narrowed his own eyes at Nigel.
Why hadn’t he thought of this before?
Jamie said, “Doesn’t matter,” and her anticipatory glare at her boyfriend was as sharp as a needle.
Nigel turned tentatively back towards Walter, who wore an only a slightly less dangerous look.
“Okay, I know a lot has happened,” and here Nigel coughed a most uncomfortable cough, “but it shouldn’t distract us from other real issues. It’s gone far beyond any youthful, stupid experimentation at this point . . . I would know a thing about that. Walter . . . we talk about you . . . we worry about you.”
If he had showed no emotion in response to the heartfelt sentiment, or even if he had indignantly gone on the defensive, at least his reaction would’ve been understandable. Walter’s mind, however, took it all in a very different direction. His eyes had moved over to Jamie’s glare, trained on Nigel as he spoke. He wasn’t able to stop himself from visualizing Jamie, sitting so close to Nigel, having stuck her hand up his ass and working his mouth like a puppet. Only for a second, but nonetheless Walter failed to suppress a horribly-timed grin.
Nigel saw it. His mouth gaped and he dropped his hands to the table, rattling the plates and utensils. He had been put under a huge amount of pressure these past two nights, and this seemed to set him off.
“And that’s just the point of all this,” he spoke with much more conviction now, “how can you think any of this shit is funny? When did you stop caring, Walter?”
“No, I’m sorry, I just . . .” Walter trailed off. Explaining what had happened in his head would not help.
“No. We go out of our way for you, we try to help you, and you start laughing, and—”
“I wasn’t laughing,” Walter clarified.
“Whatever,” said Nigel. “The point still is there: you’ve stopped looking out for yourself . . . you’ve stopped looking out for your friends . . . you’ve stopped looking out for anything that’s not a quick thrill.”
“I still have my job; I still pay my rent,” Walter protested halfheartedly.
Henry chimed in, hoping to cool some of the heat that, out of an unplanned wave of exasperation, Nigel was putting on, “Yes, you do. We’re doing this now because it’s not all bad, and there’s clear hope for things to get better. Nigel might’ve overstated some of that. Did you see how many friends showed up last night? People want you back to being yourself, Walter.”
Walter only shrugged. This again triggered the ire of the high-stressed Nigel.
“You don’t have anything to say to that? I just want you to answer me: You come from a perfectly normal family; your parents only left town when you were already in college. You have many good friends—had many good friends. What made you stop caring?”
Walter fought back the urge to shrug again. He put to words the vague explanation he had been privately operating under for the past few months, “I don’t know, man. Maybe I just got bored with life sooner than most people do? I’ve always been like that with video games, you know. I have no patience. I get halfway through, and then I get bored, and I start fucking around, and I never finish. Maybe that’s just my way?”
“That’s fucked up,” said Henry, having followed the metaphor all the way through.
“That’s bullshit, actually,” Nigel said. “Life is nothing like a video game. How can you even imply that?”
Walter opened and lifted his palms, “Sometimes I can’t see the point in either. Except that video games are usually less tedious . . . and hell, sometimes video games do have a point . . .
”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it,” Henry seemingly had fallen into the good-cop role: he had a much softer edge to his voice than Nigel, which was atypical for both of them. “This does sound like some shit you came up with in your head to justify your act.”
Walter intently and silently started buttering his corn.
Jamie now spoke, seeming emboldened at Walter’s appearance of backing down, “And what about your thing with Stephanie that Nigel told me about? You know, don’t think you’re too much of a man to accept that that really hurt. If you bottle something like that up, it can really sink you.”
“No,” Walter replied quickly and forcefully. “Stephanie started fucking Dave after I stopped caring. I don’t blame her, really.”
“Come on,” pressed Nigel. “You seemed fine before you found out about that shit. You’d been together over a year. You were talking like you were going to marry the damn girl.”
Walter shook his head and looked away, at anything, “Let’s cut out the soap-opera bit, can we? This is not about some college whore; it’s about how I love coke and booze.”
“Maybe Jamie’s getting at something,” Henry disagreed slowly, fleshing out the thought even as he spoke. “Maybe, instead of facing up to things like an adult, you forced yourself to stop caring . . . you made yourself numb, and maybe now the only way for you to feel anything is to do dumb shit?”
Walter was looking up at the birch-wood balcony of a sitting room that overlooked the high-ceilinged kitchen. Walter had always appreciated the house’s interesting use of vertical space.
“Walter. So is ignoring us like a four-year-old your way of agreeing with Henry, then?”
Walter looked back down at Nigel.
“No. It’s not true, I feel stuff. Depression breaks the numbness regularly.”
“Maybe you should see someone, Walter,” suggested Jamie, maybe putting on too compassionate of a voice, closing in on condescension.
“Yeah, really, you’ve obviously got some screws loose in there, because—”
“Because,” Walter cut over Nigel, “because I don’t have a good reason to be this way, right? Because there’s no way a twenty-five-year-old with his head screwed on right can legitimately lose interest in a repetitive, vanilla lifestyle, can he? Because there’s no way a right-minded person would willingly move into life’s fast lane and make some more colorful choices to liven things up, huh?”
“No,” said Nigel flatly. “Because life is boundless and amazing and only someone with a real dysfunction would treat it with such disregard.”
“You know something?” asked Walter dismissively. “You know how some guys at parties, when they’re having a good time, they let out this high, loud cheer? Like: woo!” Walter imitated the high, loud cheer. He sounded like a redneck who’d just roped a calf. Everyone appeared startled. “Before I tried coke, I could never do that right. I would do it too low, too quiet. At best I sounded sarcastic. It’s liberating.”
Henry raised an eyebrow, “And that’s worth the dangers to you?”
Walter turned on Henry, “Dude, I’ve seen your fucking dirt-bike races. There’s no way that shit isn’t as dangerous as my little recreational habits.”
“What I do is awesome; it wouldn’t be the worst way to go out. I don’t think anyone can say, with a straight face, that digging yourself into a miserable chemical hole is anything like that.”
Walter dumped some salt onto his corn and took a big bite out of it. He then proceeded to chew it loudly at his friends, making no effort to keep his lips sealed.
Jamie had had more to add to her previous line of dissection, and she saw a chance then to back things up. “Nigel also told me about your father, Walter; how it took years and years for him to regain himself fully after your mom left. You know, for some types of people, it’s much harder to cope when things don’t go according to the plans in their heads. There’s just no shame in having to rely on others to pull through tough times.”
“Jamie, you seem nice, but you’re describing a little bitch,” Walter spoke through a mouthful of buttery corn-kernels. “I’m actually not a little bitch. This has nothing to do with Stephanie. I was pissed for a while, and then I got over it. Nothing new about any of it. Happens all the time.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with her anymore, sure, but if you opened yourself to her, made yourself fragile . . . that’s the kind of thing that can trigger a downward spiral . . . in the wrong type of person.”
“‘Wrong type of person’? A fragile person?” Walter scoffed and took a long drink of water. “What the fuck do you know, really, Jamie? You watch too many shitty TV shows. Real life shit doesn’t revolve around cliché relationship drama like it does on TV.”
“She knows a lot,” interceded Nigel, putting a defensive hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “A lot more than you, anyway. She studied this type of psychology in college. And pretty much all emotions revolve around our personal relationships, cliché or not.”
“Anyone else gonna eat?” asked Walter blithely before Nigel had finished. “It’s really good.” He bit into some chicken.
“You know, you are a lot like your dad,” Henry intoned thoughtfully, scratching the side of his beard.
“Fragile?”
“Or sensitive, I guess. Doesn’t have to be said like a bad thing.”
“Okay, good,” Walter’s sarcasm could’ve drowned a fish, “I guess we’ve had our breakthrough. I’m a delicate fucking flower vase. Life’s super awesome now. I’ll stop fucking around, I promise. Can we eat?”
They ate. The food was good, but the sour, muddy emotions made everything taste faintly bitter.
• • •
Henry told Walter that if he wanted a ride into work again tomorrow, he’d prefer it if he just spent the night at Nigel’s again, as it was much closer to Kall’s. Walter accepted the suggestion without the courtesy of checking with Nigel first.
Henry and then Jamie left soon after dinner.
Walter, who had grown to thrive in awkward situations, was borderline cheerful in handling Nigel’s attempts at innocuous small-talk as they watched a late-night talk show before bed.
Chapter 5 – Deserted Clues
Work regained much of its usual tedium the next day. Some of Walter’s customers didn’t even say anything about the already infamous previous night, and most who did simply asked if he’d heard of any new developments. But everyone, he found, seemed to be all caught up.
Jaded as he was, though, Walter couldn’t avoid appreciating the sunny, cool, crisp, perfect fall day. Nothing could be better for outdoor labor. As an added bonus, his sore joints had improved significantly overnight—though, Walter’s very fortunate good health had always been something that he took for granted.
It was just past high noon when a white pickup truck crunched along the gravel driveway at the back of the store, coming to a stop in front of Walter. Walter, seated in front of the large opening of the warehouse, kicked himself off of his waiting post of two stacked hay bundles.
He went up to the driver-side window, “What’cha got?”
A pale hand extended through the window and handed him a slip with an order jotted onto it.
“Hi, Walter.”
“Oh! Hi Maddie.”
Madeline Wendell had gone to high school with Walter. They were about as poorly acquainted as two high schoolers from rural Vermont possibly can be—which is to say, they knew each other pretty well. Walter wasn’t sure why, but he always felt caught off-guard when Maddie came by. Maybe it was because he’d grown accustomed to interacting with pretty girls exclusively while wasted at parties—or maybe, after a week or two of dealing with hairy, large-bellied farmer types, a shapely young blonde pulling around to his warehouse was an expectedly jarring thing to have happen.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come last night,” she said, sounding sincere.
Walter stared at her. She had very full lips.
“Come to what,
now?”
“The int—the dinner.” Her cheeks flushed.
An awkward beat. Walter’s eyes widened as comprehension smacked him across the face, “Oh. So Nigel tried to make a thing of it again, and have people over?”
She nodded.
“Don’t worry. No one else came this time . . .”
Maddie appeared disappointed, “A good amount of people came the first time. It was just so last-minute last night . . . and of course the night before had been so strange . . . and horrible . . .”
Walter was distracted by the prominent question of why Maddie had come to the original attempt in the first place. Had Nigel or Jamie awkwardly pressured her into it? Because, they really only chatted when she came to get supplies for her family’s livestock, once or twice a month.
“That’s okay with me. The whole thing was really uncomfortable and misguided, if you ask me.”
Maddie looked at him silently with her large blue eyes, her lips sealed.
Walter hoped—but now wasn’t so sure at her lack of comment—that Maddie hadn’t been to any of the parties he’d attended recently, the ones in which he’d made it plain that the whole thing, in fact, hadn’t been misguided.
Walter held up the order slip. He coughed. “So, chicken feed and chicken scratch . . . light load today?”
“Yeah,” Maddie herself sounded distracted. She, too, coughed, and then said, “I’m still sorry, though. It would’ve been nice just to have dinner with you, really. It still would be nice. We haven’t hung out in so long, Walter . . .”
Walter had to fight to keep the startled confusion clear from his face and voice. “Yeah . . .” he barely staved off a frown. “Here . . . let me get the bags for you.”
He retreated into the cold gloom of the warehouse.
Had Madeline Wendell just implied that she was interested in going on a date with him? Was she aware that he was no longer a standout hockey jock, but instead a lowlife laborer with zero prospects? He noticed that he had started down the wrong aisle; he backtracked and looped around the adjacent one.
Blue Stew (Second Edition) Page 5
