Here Comes the Corpse

by Mark Richard Zubro

  The kid yanked his arm away. I wanted to belt him one.

  Donny had squirmed during all these revelations, especially the bit about suicide. I couldn’t tell if it was discomfort at the truth—unlikely as that seemed—or because of guilt for lying. Or because he didn’t want his parents to know secrets about him. Or simple unease in the face of such raw emotion, or what. The kid was a liar and had told us some whoppers. It didn’t take a team of psychiatrists to figure out something was seriously wrong here. With each new bit of information that Scott had revealed, the boy seemed to sink further into himself. I suppose the parents could have been lying, but at that moment I was in their corner.

  Cynthia asked, “Donny, what are you afraid of?”

  The kid was trapped in his lies, but his teenage defiance trumped any fear or common sense. He stood up and shouted, “Fuck you all!” and stormed from the room.

  We four adults looked at each other for several moments.

  Finally, Cynthia said, “I don’t know why he would tell such lies.”

  “Why would he come to you?” Hiram asked.

  Scott said, “If the gay stuff was true, it would make some sense.”

  “I swear,” Cynthia said, “we never caught him having sex with a girl or a boy. We have no reason to lie to you about that.”

  Scott said, “Then I’m not sure what’s going on. Did he imagine we wouldn’t talk to you about the accusations and claims he made? I guess based on how often we’ve talked in the past, maybe it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.”

  I said, “He may have convinced himself of anything. Teenagers have odd delusions about their powers of persuasion, their invulnerability, and the belief that the response of the universe to their often inept machinations will be benign.”

  Scott said, “Tom teaches teenagers. He knows them pretty well.”

  “There’s more to the story than what Scott has told you. Things have happened up here.” I told them about the murder at the wedding, and Donny’s possible involvement. “The police want to talk to him. He refused to speak unless you were present. The police were waiting for you to get here.”

  “Murder!” Hiram exclaimed.

  “They don’t think he did it?” Cynthia asked.

  Scott said, “You need to decide how truthful a kid you think he is. Certainly I can’t think of any motivation for him to kill Ethan Gahain.”

  I said, “Maybe you should ask him without us present.”

  They decided to try having a conference with just the three of them. Scott and I returned to the kitchen. The kid had found time to wolf down the rest of his omelette and leave his dirty dish and utensils on the table. “Now what?” Scott asked.

  I said, “We let them settle this themselves. They go talk to the cops. We go to St. Louis. Todd said he would talk to the cops. We’re not suspects, and it’s only a few hours down the road. I’ve already got the week off. We certainly can’t go on our honeymoon with Ethan dead. I want to go to the wake and the funeral.”

  The intercom beeped again. Scott said, “This place is turning into Grand Central Station.”

  I said, “We’ve had one of the most reported murders since O.J.’s wife. It’s gonna be nuts for a while.” We hadn’t been inundated with calls from reporters because we have an answering service screen all of our calls.

  This time it was Jack Miller, the private investigator. We let him up. He wore the exact same outfit as yesterday. Today’s T-shirt in full light looked newly ironed. We talked in the living room. His eyes roved over the view, the trophies, and the stuffed Eyores. The notion I got was that he wasn’t being impressed, but that when he entered any room, he was always totally aware of his surroundings. He made no comment about what he saw.

  Miller said, “My sources in the police department say you’ve got a kid who may know something about the murder.”

  “We only told them that around two hours ago. You must have good sources.”

  “They’re excellent. I can give you some information if you’re willing to share what the kid told you.”

  “If your sources are so good,” I asked, “why didn’t they tell you what he told us? For that matter, why didn’t the police pay more attention to you?”

  “I didn’t say that I was best friends with people in the department. The regular detectives on this investigation would check me out, I’m sure, but otherwise they wouldn’t have the faintest notion of who I am. I have connections that give me information. They know about the kid, but not what he said.”

  Scott said, “It’s my nephew Donny. We’re not sure how much of his story is true.”

  “I’ll take my chances. I’m willing to give you what I’ve got. I talked to Josh Durst again. I told him about Ethan’s death. He was pretty shook. He told me some more. He claimed he was Ethan Gahain’s Web master and business partner. According to what he told me just a few minutes ago, Ethan Gahain was up to his neck in shady if not downright illegal activities. Mr. Durst says he was in charge of the nakedathletes jack-off tapes. Their main Web site hints about other sites, but there are no links. He claimed he didn’t know about any others. The impression he left with me is that they must have had really kinky sexual stuff.”

  “Which isn’t illegal,” I said.

  “It is in some jurisdictions depending on the kink.”

  I know in some jurisdictions anything but the missionary position is still illegal. Not enough people are aware of the number of states with those silly sodomy laws still on the books.

  Scott said, “Legal or not, was it a motive for murder?”

  Miller said, “Right now, I don’t know. They could have been into all kinds of stuff: pirated books, tapes, and movies.”

  “Kiddie porn?” Scott asked.

  “The Web site had none of that.”

  I asked, “Are you sure Cormac’s not in Chicago? Maybe he followed Ethan and killed him. Maybe your source is the killer.”

  “At this point anything is possible,” Miller said. “Cormac could also be in Tahiti on vacation.”

  I told him what Donny had told us.

  When I finished, Miller asked, “You think he’s lying?”

  I shrugged. “It would be nice to assume he isn’t, but I don’t trust him.”

  Miller got up to leave. He said, “Let’s keep in touch.” We all agreed to do so. He left.

  We went to pack for the trip to St. Louis. We only needed overnight bags so it took but a few minutes to throw a toothbrush, deodorant, and a change of clothes together. All this time we’d heard no sounds from the guest room where Hiram, Cynthia, and Donny were talking. I was nearly done packing when I heard slamming doors and shouts. In the hall I saw the results of fractured domestic tranquillity. Donny was kicking a wall, leaving scuff marks and at least one dent so far. His father stood five feet away and glowered. I heard sobs coming from inside the guest room.

  The kid bashed the wall several more times.

  I said, “Doesn’t that hurt your foot?”

  He gave one more extra-hard kick that produced another nasty dent. He squealed, “Ouch!” He tried to put weight on that foot. As toe touched the floor, he gave a loud yelp. He rested the foot on his heel. He spoke through clenched teeth. “I won’t talk to the cops.” He felt the need to repeat this numerous times.

  Hiram strode over to us and said, “How do we get hold of the police?”

  The detectives were called. Two uniformed cops showed up a few minutes later to escort the three of them to the nearest police station. Scott told his brother and sister-in-law that we would probably be leaving. He told them they were welcome to stay in the penthouse, but they refused our hospitality. They would stay at the Hotel Chicago.

  Along with his limp, Donny managed a monumental sulk from living room to elevator. He had completely refused treatment for his foot. By the time they left, Hiram had turned less red, and Cynthia had stopped crying.

  Before we left, our lawyer called. Todd said the police didn’t care for the idea
of our leaving town, but that they weren’t going to stop us.

  Downstairs in my SUV, I said, “Did you really trust them to stay in our home without us around?”

  “Hiram’s my brother. He may not like the fact that I’m gay, but he’s still my brother. He and his family need help. He may or may not be grateful, but letting them stay would be the least I could do. Making the offer was the right thing to do.”

  We picked up the Sunday editions of the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times before we hit the expressway. Each had an article about the murder, the Sun Times doing its best to be more lurid. The articles were long on gossip, sensation, and speculation but short on any information that would lead to an arrest.

  We took Lake Shore Drive to the Stevenson Expressway at its beginning at McCormick Place and headed southwest to St. Louis.

  10

  The scenery was fantastic. I stayed awake on the drive far longer than usual to enjoy it. Ultimately, I grabbed my nap pillow and snuggled down to some serious snoozing.

  I awoke around Springfield. As far as I’m concerned, two of the most important reasons for existence are chocolate and napping. I can devour enormous quantities of the first, and I excel at the second. Always go with your strength, I say. I work out diligently so I can continue to indulge the former. We even keep pillows in both cars so I can luxuriate in the latter.

  I’ve napped through some of the most spectacular scenery in America. I figure the view is always pretty much going to be there, but a nap is a fleeting thing, needing to be nurtured and taken advantage of whenever the opportunity presents itself.

  The only two things more important than chocolate and naps are Scott and sex. My love for him wins by a wide margin, but sex is right up there.

  We arrived before six. We crossed the Mississippi River on the Poplar Street Bridge and took US 40 West. The bridge and the upper level of this highway give a spectacular view of the Arch and the St. Louis skyline. We exited at Kingshighway and took it north to Lindell Boulevard. Forest Park on our left, scene of the 1904 World’s Fair, rivals Central Park in New York as an ocean of green among urban sprawl. Our destination was Westmoreland Place, one of the gate-guarded streets between Kingshighway and Euclid, north of Lindell.

  Ethan’s parents had given us the key and the secret code to get past the security devices. Parking on St. Louis’s west end can be difficult at best, but within the gated street there was plenty of space. Ethan’s home was a three-story, brick, rectangular block. The sun was setting. Lights shone in a few homes. Ethan’s was dark. The evergreen trees, two on each side of the path to the door, had seen at least fifty years of growth. The lawn was well tended. The shutters were painted brightly white.

  I unlocked the front door, and we stepped inside. I flipped the light switch on the right-hand wall. A small lamp on an antique rolltop desk lit up. We were in an extensive foyer. Very pale pink rose wallpaper matched the wine-dark, rosepatterned square of carpet that covered the middle of the floor. A hat stand in one corner, a working fireplace in a wall to the right, a closed door painted black straight ahead of us. A horsehair sofa that looked brand-new. A stairway next to it leading up to the right and a landing and more stairs. To the left was a set of closed double doors.

  Scott said, “It feels funny walking into a dead person’s home.” A collection of knickknacks sat on the fireplace mantel. A tiny brown, plastic football was among a bunch of other kids’ things: toy trucks, a small rag doll, a pink Nerf ball, tiny plastic cars.

  I walked over and touched the little football. I felt a small tear start down my cheek.

  “What’s wrong?” Scott asked.

  “I remember this from the night he and I made love for the first time. It was on his dresser. It was the last thing I remember looking at before I closed my eyes as we kissed. It was the first time I kissed anybody.”

  “There’s probably lots of little brown, plastic footballs. Are you sure it’s this one?”

  I turned it over and looked at the bottom. Ethan and I had scratched our initials into the bottom. They were still there. I held it out to Scott. “I’m surprised he kept this all these years. Him being dead is like losing a piece of childhood I can’t get back again.” I gently squeezed the small plastic ellipsoid. “It’s not the value of the piece involved, it’s the depth of the memory.”

  Scott took my hand and squeezed it. He murmured, “If you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to.”

  “I’ll be okay. I’m not sure I hope we do or don’t find something that explains why he was killed. A lot of me would rather have the memory of him from when we were in love with nothing in between. I’m afraid whatever we discover will tarnish his memory.”

  “I thought you were pretty much angry about what happened.”

  “It did end badly. That part couldn’t have been worse, but the beginning couldn’t have been better.”

  “Unfortunately, the murder is going to taint his memory forever,” Scott said. “What we find could make it worse.”

  I sighed. “I guess I’d like to know what happened.”

  The entire house was as clean as if a hired maid service had gone through it within the past day or so: no dust and nothing out of place. A narrow hallway opened to a kitchen on the right. A toaster and a coffeemaker on the counter, no dirty dishes. The refrigerator was nearly full. The cupboards had plastic containers, pots, pans, and a large assortment of expensive dishes. A junk drawer crammed, not startlingly, with bits of junk. Under the sink, cleansers. Behind the kitchen, a study. In there on a large desk, from right to left, sat a charge-card machine, a computer keyboard, a monitor, a mouse pad, and a tower underneath with a built-in zip drive.

  I turned on the computer. I’m far less intimidated by them than I used to be, which does not mean I now consider myself an expert. If there was time, I would look through all the programs on the hard drive and on the software. I wondered if we could just take it with us. We had his parents’ permission, but did we need the cops’? The house was quiet as only the homes of the very rich can be. We heard the soft hum of electric appliances. The only movement came from the digital clocks counting minutes. In the study we examined every drawer and folder. We found a mountain of canceled checks, income tax records, family photos.

  Leafing through the pictures, Scott found one of me in a football uniform. I glanced at it. Scott said, “You were very sexy then, too.”

  “That was probably senior year. After they did a team picture, they did individual shots for all the starters. I’m surprised he kept it, but more surprised he even had a copy.”

  “Why would you be surprised he had a copy of this one?”

  “They only gave the photos to our families. The starting team got theirs in the yearbook.” I touched the sides of the picture. “I don’t think this is cut out.”

  In the pictures we looked through, I recognized many from our childhood. A few were from vacations his family and mine had taken together when we were kids.

  We found nothing in the study that gave a clue to his murder or who Michael might have been. The master bedroom had a king-size bed and a matching set of walnut dressers. I found he wore white, cotton boxer shorts. There was no dirty laundry. In the closet, a rack of boring ties, simple suits, one each beige, blue, black, gray, plus slacks, winter coats, shoes, athletic clothes, jockstraps, running shoes, T-shirts.

  We passed through three kids’ rooms. Perhaps for when his various sets of children came to visit. One had twin beds and wallpaper filled with bunnies. The lampshades were all stark blues, whites, and pink. Another room was mounded with dolls, a third crammed with footballs and sports posters.

  In the guest rooms we were more cursory with our inspection. We found only unfilled dressers and empty closets. Attic stairs led to a barren, dust-filled space. The basement yielded a washer and dryer, along with dank and mold and nothing else. Back at the computer I began calling up all the programs on the hard drive. Some I needed a password for and couldn’t get i
nto.

  Scott began examining all the bills: “This year’s seem to be kind of a jumble, but roughly chronological.” We worked silently for an hour. Then Scott said, “I’ve got a series of monthly bills for a public storage facility.”

  “He was paying rent?”

  “No. That would be fifty or a hundred bucks. These have to be mortgage payments.”

  I read over his shoulder. We examined the papers for fifteen minutes.

  “Maybe it was just an investment,” Scott said.

  “I’m not sure. There are paid-for goods that were delivered there, and look.” I held up part of the records. “There’s a block of four of the largest bays in Building K that have no record of payments.”

  “It could mean anything.”

  The address was on Grand Avenue on the south side of the city. “Let’s check this out next,” I said. “I don’t have the expertise to get around those passwords. Let’s take a break and go see this storage space. He certainly didn’t need to rent any more room. This place is immense.”

  11

  Among the bills, Scott had found the key code to get into the storage facility. At the gate he got out and punched in the numbers. The rusted metal barrier jerked and rumbled open. The facility covered several acres. Building K, which, according to the receipts, was reserved for Ethan, was the last one before the property ended at the concrete wall of a vast warehouse. Building K consisted of four of the largest-size bays.

  The weather was in the sixties with overnight temperatures expected in the low fifties. At one point I zipped up my leather jacket to keep out the creeping coolness.

  One of the keys Mrs. Gahain had given us opened the lock. We rolled up the sliding door. A floor-to-ceiling wall of boxes met our view. On the left there were seven-foot-high towers of flat priority-mail video boxes. Next to these were flattened eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch boxes. We inched through a narrow aisle on the right. Behind the first neat piles were mounds of used boxes all jumbled together. I picked one up and looked inside. Empty. We began wading through the mess.