Swift to Chase

by Laird Barron

  Minerva bayed. She gathered her sleek, killing bulk and hurtled across the yard and into the woods. I patted the hilt of the knife and followed. One last glance over my shoulder — Jack laughed and his laugh became the roar of a storm. He loomed above the top of the ruined house and his black horns eclipsed the white sun.

  Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle

  1. Anchorage, Alaska. Autumn, 1979. (I’m going to kill you all):

  Lucius’s orgasm transcended earthquakes and other localized apocalypses — a blue sun on the far side of the universe intoned, HEADS WILL ROLL! The blue sun went supernova and immolated a good chunk of a galaxy and the top of her skull. She gave her legs a minute to quit shaking and went hunting for her clothes.

  Her lover, young hapless Esteban, lay spread-eagle across the mattress like he’d gotten flattened by a truck. He didn’t even bitch that Lucius was screwing and booking. He groaned and covered his eyes with his left arm.

  “Ribbon of Darkness,” unspooled mournful and timeless over the cheap AM radio. The Magnificent Seven assembled for a class photo on the wall above a bureau even more hard-bitten than them or the Wild Bunch. Lucius pulled on her stockings, dress, then the knee high go-go boots and leather jacket with Black Flag’s four-bar flag hand-stitched between the shoulders. Lucius loved the bad boys as Panic and now they were even better.

  She lit a cigarette (Player No. 6, no substitutes) and checked her watch. The watch was a high school sophomore graduation present to herself swiped from a tourist-trap gift shop during a summer trip to Washington State a couple years back. A real watch with a quartz face, stainless steel butt plate (water-resistant to 50 meters!), and a band of interlocking metal links you could wrap around a snow tire. Not the prissy filament-thin chain some girls wore on their delicate widdle wrists. The kind of timepiece construction foremen and steely-nerved execs strapped on the way gladiators did it up with iron bracers and spiked cestuses. Backhand a fool in the chops with this baby and he or she would go down, minus teeth. The glass already had a chip. She couldn’t remember how it happened.

  Save your life one day, Dad said when he examined the watch. Dad: King of foreshadowing. His wedding ring had kept his finger attached after a piebald stallion chomped it in his horse-breaking days of yore. Keen on serendipity and Jim Beam, was Dad.

  Gods help her if she needed more saving in this short life. She’d almost bought the farm during that WA State vacation. The disaster at Tomahawk Park killed how many kids? Seven? Nine? An explosion? A collapsed structure? Poison gas? It slipped her mind now as the psychic wounds healed. The school counselor had spoken of survivor’s guilt and compartmentalization. Have some pills of forgetting, the woman said. Move on, kid.

  Lucius finished the cigarette. She slid on five rings — three costume gemstones on her right hand; a mood ring and a silver death’s head on the left. She scooped her clutch (black vinyl with a small bronze clasp of a bald eagle descending, talons out) and strode through the doorway without saying goodbye. I don’t say goodbye, ever, she’d told Esteban when they first knocked boots (which occurred during that fateful trip to Tomahawk Park). Especially to you.

  She stashed a switchblade in her purse alongside the compact and black cherry lipstick. The switchblade recently belonged to a gangster wannabe, ass-slapping hick, of which all too many bred in fetid Alaskan backwaters. The hick didn’t come around town much since prom. The gemstone dents and death’s head tattoos on his greasy face were possibly permanent.

  “Hi, Mrs. Mace,” she said to Esteban’s mom as they passed on the stairs.

  “Hello, dear.” The older woman wore a kimono with a red heron stitched on the breast. Her hair was bound in green curlers at half past ten PM. “I miss anything?”

  “Not a damned thing.”

  “His father’s son. How’s your mother?”

  “A-Okay, ma’am.” Lucius didn’t speak to her parents anymore. They didn’t appear to notice.

  Meanwhile:

  Finally dark enough.

  Butch Tooms slumped low in the backseat of the stolen Pontiac. Nobody ever looks in the backseat until it’s too late. He wore his mother’s thigh-high silk stocking over his face. He twisted its mate into a garrote. Motown drained the car battery. Friday Night Countdown.

  Across the way, Lucius Lochinvar exited the Mace house and walked into the gloom toward Northern Lights Boulevard. She tromped along, mouth set, stern as hell, arms swinging like she was on her weekend job as roller derby enforcer Scara Fawcett at the Hippodrome North. Tough little broad. He evaluated her the way a cobra assesses a mongoose. Kill now, kill later, or avoid entirely? He decided to kill her next week at the party. Easier to keep the bodies in one pile, right?

  Those undulating hips stirred his ambition. If the death gods were with him he’d get his freak on, too. After he’d let the air out of her tires, for safety’s sake.

  The Jackson 5 came on the radio to agree. XYZ, baby! OneTwoThree, baby!

  Somewhere, Sometime (WA State, many years after the events of ’77 &’79):

  It was a fifteen-minute drive from Odd Fellows cemetery into the foothills on the fringe of Capitol National Park. Fifteen minutes with the pedal to the floor and no traffic.

  Dr. Erika Bakker Shunn beat Jimmy Flank to his cabin by a nose. He wished he could say the visit was a surprise, except it was far too late for that. Self-delusion was out of his market. Self-preservation looked shaky too.

  After a third go-round with the grieving widow, Jimmy was an enervated wreck, ready to cry uncle, to call it a day. Thank everything unholy, now the formalities were complete, Mrs. Shunn was briskly business.

  “So, you’ll help me.” Her tone suggested she expected Jimmy to kill someone. The arch-conspirator’s whisper. Her nails drew Aztec dimples on his graying chest. He felt relief that since her husband was dead, whatever she wanted couldn’t be that bad. Right?

  She’d brought him a list of names on a dirty piece of memo paper. Five of them were familiar to varying degrees —Toshi Ryoko, Howard Campbell, Louis Plimpton, Lucius Mace, and Harrison J. Ryoko and Campbell were famous zoologists; Louis Plimpton was another dead rich scientist who treated his profession like the world’s most vital hobby — he’d been a rival of Linwood’s in the bug field. Plimpton smoked himself in 1980. Lucius Mace (formerly Lochinvar) dated his best friend in high school. Lucius popped out three kids and ran for the hills, abandoning them and her husband. Last, but not least, Jimmy had also known Harrison J during their teen years in Alaska. Weird kid. Nobody called him Harrison or Harry; ever Smiling J. Worked for NASA in some deep earth research site studying cosmic rays.

  Why were these names collected by an antisocial scientist whose best friend was a jar of formaldehyde? If I help her it won’t be from guilt. I won’t do it because I owed Linwood a damned thing. Linwood Shunn, being a rich kid from Olympia, of course he married a rich girl from the hometown. Dr. Erika Bakker-Shunn, psychiatrist of renown, her claim to fame owed to the fact she’d had three quarters of the Hollywood A-list on her couch — one way or another. A sly one, the missus. An Amherst product (Ph.D. in clinical psychiatry) with the fangs to match.

  “You brought the tapes?” Sweat burned his eyes. You bet she did. No chance she’d risk holding his interest for the trip to town, the ubiquitous distractions of his trade. She’d have brought the hook with her. Her kind didn’t miss a trick.

  “Oh, yes! They’re in the car.” That was all she needed. She gilded her decaying splendor in Jimmy’s robe and flounced from the cabin. The door banged in her wake, let in a chilly draft. Marty Robbins was crooning about devil women on the transistor radio and that was damned apropos.

  A filthy canvas sea bag leaned in the corner, opposite the sliding glass door of the shoebox terrace. Woods and more woods out there. The cabin was otherwise barren except for a toothbrush and an electric razor in the bathroom, some food items in the cupboards. Dirty dishes, bottles. Mice.

  Jimmy blinked at watermarks in the rafters. “God
damn it, Linwood. Why’d you do this to me?” He wanted a cigarette, a drink, preferably in the tropics. The cabin was an icebox. He pulled the army blanket to his neck and groaned.

  Linwood Shunn’s mortal remains lined the bottom of a ceramic urn in the trunk of his loving wife’s ’69 Mustang. Dead, but not out of the picture. Not out of Jimmy’s hair from the size of it. As a part-time private eye, a man met his share of cranks and eccentrics. Linwood Shunn had taken the cake, a first class head-job with a trophy case full of degrees and a ritzy pedigree he seldom admitted because it embarrassed him to no end. He’d also been, as recently as last week, one of North America’s preeminent entomologists, whatever use that was in the grand scheme.

  In Jimmy’s opinion, entomologist was a creepy vocation. Why would a man born to old money waste so much precious time pulling wings off flies? The Bug Man, is what everyone called the late Dr. Shunn. Cockroach Lover. A radical professor with Evergreen College, until they axed him for eccentric behavior, alcoholism, and derogatory comments regarding the dean. Eccentric kook or not, his work ethic and ambition put the rest of the faculty to shame. Nothing short of the eventual coronary conclusion could’ve derailed Shunn’s gusto for research — a dozen companies courted his services. As a trust fund hippie, money was never a real consideration. He always had an iron in the fire, always came up roses.

  Jimmy and the doctor first met when Linwood was looking for a rough and tumble character to perpetrate some deeds on the shady side of the law. He hired Jimmy to follow his sweet, younger wife around, see if she was cheating on him — it was damned hard to track her movements, what with her Beverly Hills practice and their homes in Mexico, California, Long Island, and Tumwater.

  Had she cheated on her crazy, dry as bones, ant-loving husband? Dumb question — Erika had been taking ski lessons in July, for God’s sake, buzzing about the strapping person of a super Swedish beefcake, an ex-Olympic slalom champion named Hans Zwick. Hans had the goods — blond as a Norse god, steely-eyed and a codpiece to rival a blue-ribbon zucchini. Hell, doc, I’d bang him myself if I had a shot!

  Jimmy and his trusty roll of incriminating film — pictures that captured Hans glorying in the company of a brutal-looking transvestite on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue — convinced Hans to fly home early lest he lose his corporate sponsorship from a chopstick manufacturer. All was well with the world once more. The Shunn marriage skidded a bit, but didn’t quite crash through the guardrail. At least she hadn’t seemed to take it personally. Not that a man could ever be certain what was going on upstairs with a woman like Erika Shunn. Linwood’s reaction proved more alarming because Jimmy earned himself a friend for life — for better or worse. The good professor called him two or three times a week, begged to ride along on stakeouts, and showed up in biker bars tossing around Jimmy’s name. He behaved as if the detective’s cachet at the Brotherhood Tavern was equal to a country club membership.

  Erika returned with a cardboard box. She shoved a mass of Jimmy’s papers and empty beer cans aside to make a home on the table for her exhibit. “Jesus, it’s freezing in here! Can’t you get the heat going?”

  “Propane’s out. My truck has a great heater, if you want to sit in there a spell.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Keys are in my pants. Have a ball.”

  She gave him a look and began rummaging; unpacked an antiquated tape recorder approximately the size of a car battery, and a stack of number ten envelopes. The envelopes were slathered with Linwood’s cryptic handwriting. They bulged with cassettes, photographs, and press clippings. She quickly segregated the envelopes into jagged piles.

  “He gave me this stuff a couple months ago. Tried to be casual about it an’ all — but, hell, not many people were more obvious than poor Linwood. He knew this was coming.”

  “Told me the bum ticker ran in the family.”

  “No — that’s —” She grimaced and resumed sorting with a kind of manic intensity. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

  “No?” He needed a drink, all right.

  Her eyes gleamed perilously. “Linwood wasn’t too organized. This is kind of a bitch.”

  “Sorry.” Jimmy shrugged on a shirt and glanced around for his pants. Pants on, feet turning alabaster against the grimy floorboards, he found his least filthy glass amongst its brethren in the wasteland kitchenette, dumped in a lethal dose of vodka and muttered, “Cheers.”

  “God. He wanted me to keep this crap under my bed. After he left, I put it in my fire safe. But I didn’t think…I had no idea at the time. He told me if anything ever happened to him, anything suspicious, I was to hand everything over to you, that you’d figure it out and do whatever needed to be done. Linwood was such an eccentric I never thought it really meant anything.” She spilled a batch of cassettes. She closed her eyes and hummed a faint, disjointed tune.

  Jimmy pressed a fresh drink into her hand. He collected the fallen articles while she downed the liquor and swayed in place. “What’s on the tapes?” he said, to make conversation. Her closed eyes and dreamy expression were getting to him.

  “Um, bugs. Bug noises. Put one in — try the, not that one, the other one. Yeah. Wait, don’t play it yet. Gimme a minute to collect myself.”

  “Bugs,” he said. “Shocker there. I thought maybe some rambling about government plots, an extortion racket. A confession to embezzling from the Evergreen College marijuana party fund. Good stuff.”

  “Listen to me, Jimmy. People are watching my house. A couple suits followed me around one day.” Erika looked at him and held out her glass until he filled it again. “Maybe cops. Maybe Feds. Maybe some kind of Nobel Mafia. They’re spooky, whoever they are.”

  Jimmy parted the drapes over the sink, checked the environs. Shadows crept from the undeveloped wilderness beyond the rude cul-de-sac. There was the Mustang and his modest Toyota pickup. The lake lurked somewhere farther on. “When was this?”

  “Uh — last week. The day after Linwood dropped dead.”

  “The FBI agents, or whomever. Did you get their names or see badges?”

  “No. Cold-blooded is what they were. Black suits, black hats, sunglasses. Stood around like they had curtain rods up the ass. I felt compelled to speak to them. It was weird.”

  He clicked on a reading lamp, began peering at the newspaper clippings and photos. Mostly stories about scientific conferences, ant swarms, and planet-killing comets. “So…what was the conversational gambit?”

  She sipped her drink and winced as the vodka hit bottom. “The suits wanted to know the last time I’d seen Lucius Lochinvar or Harrison J. I’m unaware who the hell Lochinvar or J are supposed to be. Friends of Linwood? Enemies? We’ve got terrorists blowing apart skyscrapers and they’re investigating my husband for suspicion of…I dunno quite what. Okay, ready?” She laughed shrilly and forced down the play button on the recorder.

  After about fifteen seconds of listening to bug noises, Jimmy said, “What in the hell am I hearing?”

  “Beetles. A whole bunch of beetles. Linwood told me insects are acting strange — ant supercolonies, bee die-offs…said it has something to do with a solar alignment affecting electromagnetic fields. Planet X…”

  “I don’t like that. At all.” He disliked it because it didn’t sound like cicadas. Hissing, warbling, and alien trilling mixed with female screams. The orchestra pit at the Devil’s concert. Jimmy’s teeth were on edge. A memory partially surfaced. Waterslides, a bonfire, shadows cavorting beneath the stars, and those screams…He blinked rapidly and glimpsed a man in a black hat and blacker shades, and another man, younger and heavier, covered in blood. Whatever happened to Butch Tooms, anyway? I haven’t thought of that bastard since 1979…

  “Creepy, huh? They’re harmless, though.”

  “Sure they are.” He cut the tape in mid screech. “I’ve got a headache and that shit isn’t helping.”

  “Well?”

  “I dunno. If the government is involved I don’t think I want to be
. No offense. Hell, Linwood’s gone. My opinion? Cover your ass; be a patriot — hand this stuff over. It’s no use to you.”

  “It’s not your opinion I’m buying, Jimmy.”

  “Well, it’s the only offer on the table.”

  “All I’m asking—”

  “I know what you’re asking.”

  “And it isn’t really about me, sweetie. He wanted it to be you. I dunno why. Silly bastard worshipped you, called you the real deal. A man’s man.”

  “Yeah? Well, he didn’t know much.”

  “What — too much trouble for you to nose around and ask a few questions? I can understand, really. It must be difficult to tear yourself away from your little palace.” Her cheeks were flushed. She stared at him for a long moment, mouth set at a hard angle. “I can provide an incentive.”

  “I’m retired.” Half true. His license recently lapsed and he hadn’t taken a job in nine months. He was also forty-two years old. Practically good enough for senior citizen rates at the movies.

  Erika nodded and retrieved a checkbook from her leather purse. She filled in an immodest sum, signed it with a spiky flourish. “C’mon, Jimmy. Talk to Linwood’s colleagues.”

  Jimmy tried not to stare at the check, its obscene number, but it grabbed him by the face and refused to let go. What were you up to, Linwood, old chap? Were you always more than what you seemed? The possibility gained weight even as he turned it over in his mind. “I knew J — we called him Smiling J.”

  “It truly is a small world. Linwood probably took that into consideration. Why else would he want me to hire you?”

  “You haven’t hired me…”

  Five days later, Jimmy lay in a shallow grave in the hills north of Olympia. He stared sightlessly as Smiling J shoveled dirt over his face. The evening sun pulsed crimson and cold and blue around the edges.