Tom Keegan had looked Carver up and down and then handed the detective the firearm he’d used to blow several large holes in the dead man they’d both helped execute. “Get out of here, Carver. I never saw you. You were stuck in traffic.”
Carver took the extra weapon and shoved it in his pocket. He left the scene very quietly and drove exactly seven and one half miles before he stopped, wiped down both weapons, and then dropped them off a bridge that led toward D.C.
By the time he got back to the scene, the news crews were swarming and the bodies had been photographed from every possible direction. He had been standing in the rain for a full five minutes and watching everything before dispatch told him to get his ass down to the Medical Examiner’s office in order to possibly ID Booker.
He left the scene and drove carefully, his heart pounding hard enough to make him wonder if his ribs could survive the sustained beating.
There was a very real chance that he’d just gotten away with murder. Only time would tell. There was news camera footage for the police to go over with a fine-toothed comb, and there would likely be a lot of eyewitness reports as well. In the meantime, his bags were still packed and he had a body to identify.
Michael had to wait for Booker’s body to be delivered before he could attempt to identify it. While he waited, he listened to the stories that were already growing in fits and whispers. Jenkins had killed the clown, according to several eyewitnesses. It had been a shootout between the two of them, old west style, and in the end, it had been a draw. For all the world, that seemed to be the most prevalent rumor, and while the coroner’s office would certainly make a lie of the situation in due time it was as good a tale as anyone was likely to hear and a lot more pleasant than the truth of the matter.
Warren Anderson was the Medical Examiner on duty when Michael was called back to make his identification. The step was merely a formality, as the fingers had likely already been printed and the set of prints was probably already working its way through AFIS to find a match.
Still, Michael felt a certain morbid sense of curiosity about the situation. He wanted to look at the man he’d murdered. He wanted to mark the face that had just bought the right to haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. It seemed only proper to get the details right from the beginning.
Warren looked uncomfortable as he nodded his head and rolled out the body.
“Not a pretty one, Warren?”
“Mike, you have no idea.”
He swallowed the guilt that tried to rear up and strike at that comment. “So enlighten me.”
The white cover over the body was pulled back, and Carver got his first close look at the body of his murder victim.
John Booker, Marco Demillio, or whatever his name really was, was very obviously dead. His throat was mostly blown out, and Michael could see the stainless steel table under the man through the holes in his overcoat and the body beneath.
His face was untouched, unmarked despite the numerous shots. Death had taken the look of surprise from the man’s face, but the features were still obscured beneath the thick white makeup. Carver slipped a glove onto his hand and reached out, touching one closed eyelid. He opened the eye and stared at the cold, blue eye that looked back.
For a second he thought the pupil dilated and suppressed a shiver.
Then he ran his hand over the face and shivered again. “Jesus.” The marks on the clown’s face were indentations, deep cuts that had healed a long time ago by the feel of it. He could slide his fingertips a quarter of an inch into the grooves hacked into the otherwise smooth skin around the eyes and the mouth, forming the shapes that distinguished the clown from all the rest of his ilk.
“Jesus Christ.”
Warren coughed into his hand. “Is that your man, Booker?”
“I think so, but these scars…”
“The sort of thing that would stick out, wouldn’t you think?”
“Yeah, and I don’t remember seeing them before.”
Warren moved closer and ran his own fingers over the deep marks around the cadaver’s mouth. “Don’t be too surprised. These days you can hide almost anything with make up.”
“No shit?”
“Well, look at the man. Who would have known the skin you’re looking at was his regular flesh tone.”
“Excuse me?” Carver’s skin tried to crawl away.
“These colors are permanent. Either John Booker was a very inventive albino or he deliberately had his skin bleached of all pigmentation.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I guess it must be, we’re looking at it.”
Michael had seen enough. “Near as I can tell when you consider the disfigurements, that is, in fact, John Booker, also known as Marco DeMillio according to his fingerprints.”
Warren looked at him for a long moment and nodded. “Thank you, detective. I’ll have a full report done in a few hours, I expect.”
Carver stared long and hard at the corpse and shook his head. “No rush. I don’t think I’m in a hurry to know anything else about his guy.”
If the medical examiner thought that answer was unusual, he didn’t say anything.
Carver had only been gone a few moments when Warren’s assistant, Taylor, came in. Taylor was young, good looking and for reasons no one really understood, morbidly curious about everything. Warren considered that a plus. The odds were good a few of the women who dated the kid probably thought otherwise.
Taylor looked the cadaver over for a few moments, his eyes fixed on the odd disfigurements and then, while Warren prepared for the autopsy itself, his assistant started removing clothing from the body.
“The color goes all the way down.” Taylor’s voice held an unsettling amount of excitement at the notion.
“We’ll get to that. In the meantime, please make sure you check the contents of the clothes for any possible contraband or evidence.”
Taylor looked like he wanted to make a comment about knowing how to do his job, but he wised up before he could get himself in any trouble. Curiosity was indeed a plus in the field of forensics but that didn’t mean talking about your discoveries would win any bonus points.
When the man was done removing and cataloguing the personal affects, Warren looked down at the body. True enough, the white color ran the entire length of the body and all of the body hairs seemed to be the same dark blue. The wounds were made all the more startling by the difference in color between the flesh and the bloody insides.
Warren reached to turn on the recorder to document all of the pertinent information for later transcription. Neither he nor Taylor would have the time to finish the report until later in the day and both of them had atrocious handwriting.
His hand struck the “record” button at the same time that the white hand covered his fingers and pressed the “stop” button.
Warren turned toward Taylor, annoyed that the man would even consider pulling pranks.
Instead he looked into the face of the dead clown, who was smiling at him.
“No, Doc. No record of this, please. Things have already gotten messy enough.” He spoke as he held Taylor off the ground. The clown was sitting up on the examination table, his wounds abundant and obvious, his hand clenched tightly around Taylor’s throat. Warren’s assistant had turned a deep shade of red that spoke of how little blood was flowing to his head. He stared desperately at the medical examiner, perhaps hoping that he could somehow make the nightmare go away.
Warren Anderson let out a very loud scream as the clown reached for him. The sound was cut short by the fingers that caught his throat and squeezed until something in his trachea collapsed.
“Shhhhh, Doc,” Rufo whispered softly. “We don’t want to have to kill everyone in the building, do we?”
The eyes that regarded him were a light, cold blue, but nowhere near as frigid as the smile that parted blood red lips and bared perfect teeth.
Warren got to see the teeth closely around the same time he r
ealized he could no longer breathe. He was just starting to panic when the clown opened his mouth and lunged, biting through his cheek and lips and pulling back a thick wedge of flesh.
The meat and muscle he consumed worked quickly, repairing the deep trauma his body had sustained as he was shot again and again. He ate quickly, but not quickly enough for Warren Anderson, who had the misfortune of being alive for most of what was done to him.
When he was done with the man in charge, he moved on to the young assistant. By the time he started feasting he was mostly healed and feeling more himself.
He dropped the young man on the ground and stood up, reaching for his neatly folded clothes.
At his feet, Taylor whimpered, far too gone to even scream any longer.
“Do you know that bastard shot me?” The clown looked down at him. “And not just once; I mean, you saw the bullet holes. He shot me a lot. You’d think there were rules against cops just shooting a man. I’d dropped my weapons and everything.”
The pants and shirt were too bloody to be saved, so he took Taylor’s clothes from his twitching, ruined body. The shirt was once again too ruined, but the pants seemed to fit him well enough.
“I think his name is Carver. Gonna have to remember that. No way am I letting him just kill me like that without suffering the consequences….” He was mostly talking to himself, but he looked at Taylor as he spoke, just for the companionship. “Used to be there were certain rules for policemen, you know? I mean, I’m a monster, that’s a given, but him? He’s supposed to protect and serve.”
The coat had several layers of cloth and they’d soaked up some of the worst blood trails, still, in the long run it was too far gone to keep. He sighed and headed for the door marked OFFICE and there he found another coat as well as a nice hat. Neither of the men he’d left behind would need them.
***
She was alive. Not just living, but alive in a way she had never imagined possible. The auditorium was filled to capacity and Tia danced, moving with ease through steps that had already become part of her being. She told a story with her body, lived the motions rather than merely making them, and in the process she finally understood the simple beauty of the story.
There was heroism and tragedy alike for the characters, but in the end there was a sad sort of redemption and a funeral beauty to the tale.
When she was done, Tia stood with the other players and looked out into the audience, surprised by the explosive applause that fairly shook the building around them.
Leslie’s applause was the loudest. She stood in full costume, ready to step out on stage if she was needed, but never made a move toward the performance area. Instead she jumped up and down and clapped her hands together furiously, smiling as bright a smile as Tia had ever seen in her life. Seeing her did wonders for Tia’s heart, but her nerves never became a problem. In the long run it was the dance that mattered, the performance. She never lost her place despite her fears, and it was a wonderful, magical feeling.
Front and center in the audience sat a gathering of people who almost gave off an aura of power. They were the people who came up with the concepts, who did the hiring and firing and, in the long run, who signed the checks that paid all of the bills. They were the Board, and they were all powerful in the world of the Carnivale de Fantastique.
And they were applauding as loudly as anyone else in the audience. Tia could have wept tears of joy for that simple fact.
She stepped off the stage after the curtain closed for the third time, and the people around her exchanged hugs and back clappings and she was included. Every one of them knew it was her first time on a live stage and every one of them seemed to congratulate her. It was a wonderful feeling, made even better because it seemed the first time some of them had been willing to make her welcome.
Leslie hugged her furiously and kissed her cheek and then fairly ran her to the dressing room. Before Tia could ask what was happening, Leslie started explaining.
“They loved the show, and they want to meet you. The Board. Not just you, of course, all of us, but you have to be ready, because this is the big time stuff. If they like us enough, we get invited back for next year, so we want to make our good impressions now.”
“What?”
“I’m babbling. Just get all prettied up. Come on, hurry, because if the Board likes your stuff enough, you don’t even have to go through all the auditions again. That’s what happened with Elizabeth Montenegro. She never had to audition again, she just got the lead, so let’s go impress us some big wigs.”
Tia hugged her friend tightly, feeling the girl’s heart beat next to her own and feeling, for just the briefest moment, like kissing her friend as deeply as she would a lover. It was more than physical, though that attraction was part of it. Leslie had gone so far beyond merely being a friend to her. The girl had guided her through every step of the entire process and been there again and again. Tia could hardly believe she’d have managed to get even as far as she had if the girl had set out to make her look like anything but a star. Leslie was her hero, pure and simple.
And when Leslie kissed her on the lips, she did not pull back. It was only the two of them in the dressing room, both of them still in their costumes, covered in Spandex and sequins and shiny foil capes that rustled and tinkled with every move they made and oh, how the sounds mingled as the kiss exploded into something more.
Tia’s hands moved on their own, exploring the wonderful sleek curves and planes of Leslie’s body and she felt her heart thud even faster in her chest as Leslie’s hands slid over her stomach, up to her chest and then around her back. They kissed a second time with much more deliberate heat.
And the best night of Tia’s life got more wonderful than she would have ever expected and a great deal more complicated as well.
***
The cast was a delight, just as the board members had expected. Of particular interest were the two new leads, both the initial replacement for Montenegro and the girl who was now working as the stand in. They were both late for the cast party, both looked a little shell-shocked and both also looked guilty as sin.
In their times each member of the board had been a performer. They could guess what was going on and most of them were right on the money. None of which mattered as long as the show continued on schedule without any added drama or negative news stories.
They’d come into town ostensibly to show their support for the recently dead, and that was as good a story as any. In truth, they had come to discuss certain matters with Todd Westingham, and that matter had now gotten out of hand in the extreme.
Todd Westingham was dead and most of the board couldn’t decide whether or not that was a good thing. Adam Salinger had a firm opinion on the matter, but it was best to keep that opinion to himself until the rest of the board voiced their beliefs.
Adam stared at the carpet in front of him, trying to read his future in the patterns that had been woven into the fibers. There was no pattern to discern as far as he could tell and if things kept going poorly, there might not be a future worth noticing.
His phone rang as he was looking at the two girls who played Ramona.
“Hello?” the number was local, but not one he recognized.
“Helluva show you guys put on tonight.” The voice was cheerful.
“Thanks, we do our best.” He had no clue who he was talking to, but it didn’t do to alienate strangers, especially if they were with the press.
“Fatima, though, the belly dancer? Not right for the part. Belly dancers should have a little meat on their bones.” Adam couldn’t have agreed less. He liked dancers: their bodies were pure muscle and every movement seemed enhanced when a dancer was moving over him. And he always preferred that the girls do the work.
“We’ll take that into consideration. How can I help you Mister…?” He kept the edge out of his voice though it wasn’t easy. The last thing he wanted or needed in his life was another backseat producer. They already had plenty of
those in the form of investors.
“My name is Cecil Phelps. You can call me Rufo.”
“Well, what can I do for you, ‘Rufo’?”
“Here’s the thing. My grandniece used to work for you. Last year I think it was. Her name was Meaghan Phelps. Does that name ring a bell?”
Did the name ring a bell? Of course it did. That was one of the reasons they were down here in the first place.
“No, I can’t say that it does. But the Carnivale employs a great many people, Mr. Phelps, and I simply don’t know all the names.”
“Oh, I think you’d remember her. She was quite lovely, played one of the Infernal Dancers in the last show.”
“No, sorry. I got nothing.” Lies, lies, lies. He remembered her very well, both when she was alive and when they had to clean up the mess at the end of the show. She had been a beautiful girl, and an asset to the show. He still regretted what happened.
“Well, she disappeared after one of the shows last year and never turned up. Is she starting to ring any bells now?”
“Mister Phelps, any insurance claims you would like to make can be handled through the insurance companies that handle our benefits packages. Any attempts at a lawsuit should be handled by reaching our attorneys, who are on record and can be reached at their offices. Aside from that, what else can I do for you?” His annoyance was growing. There were people he wanted to get to know better, wanted to mingle with, and the imbecile on the phone was making that very, very challenging.
“Todd Westingham assured me that you were the man I wanted to speak to about where, exactly, my grandniece’s body could be found.”
He’d read the phrase “my blood ran cold” on several occasions, but it never seemed like a real possibility until that moment. His heart seemed to slow, his mouth tasted coppery, his vision faded for a moment and by God, his blood felt like it had suddenly frozen in his veins even as it pushed through his body.
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