A few minutes later, the vault was removed from the hole and set on the ground, where it promptly sank into the soft turf. Marvin and Walt worked at removing the vault lid.
Walt stopped and pulled out his phone. “I knew it, I just knew it,” Walt said. “Now what am I going to do?”
Marvin shook his head. “Come on, Walt – let’s get this finished up so we can go home.”
Walt didn’t say anything.
“Walt’s battery,” Marvin said to Phoenix. “It’s probably down to eighteen percent at least.”
Phoenix squinted, held the flashlight up, and pointed it at Walt. “And?”
“Well, Walt here, you see,” Marvin said, “he gets that low-battery syndrome. You know, like the thirty percent of those college kids who skip class and go back to their rooms and recharge their phones? Same for Walt, only he quits work and starts ghosting you – acting like he’s not there. But he’ll be okay when he figures out he can just turn it off.”
Walt put the phone back in his pocket half a minute into his anxiety attack and smiled. The lid came off the vault a few minutes later, and now it was time to take a look at Phillip Mercer.
“Imagine the smell that’s gonna roll out that coffin,” Marvin said. “You know, maybe it’s just me. But I can smell it like wind from the gates of hell’s bathroom itself.”
Walt pulled out a crank tool, inserted it into the end of the coffin, and cranked it. He back away and motioned for Phoenix to open it.
Phoenix rubbed his hands over the top of the coffin, feeling the smoothness in the paint job, the coldness too, of the rain on metal. He’d already taken an inhaler hit, but he thought he’d steel himself against what he was about to see, smell, and touch, so he took another hit of Oblivium.
“You need a bit of this, too?” Marvin asked, holding up a small flask. He removed the lid and took a swallow – home brew, no doubt – sputtering in the cold, wet night air. He handed it to Walt. “It’ll keep you warm on a night like this, but not really because it’s only killing brain cells.”
“No, I’m good,” Phoenix said. He felt with his hands down the side of the casket until they came to the edge of the lid itself, both of his hands meeting together in the center of the casket lid’s crack, right in front of his belt buckle. Then he paused.
“You know, we did this once,” Marvin said, “and as Walt is my witness, the inside of that casket’s lining was as shredded as a puppy’s first newspaper. Seems like the undertaker had neglected to---”
Phoenix got a firm grip under the lid, feeling suddenly dirty about this whole nasty, grave-robbing business, and he started to lift it slowly. When he did, it popped; and he paused.
“He didn’t embalm old Miss Jennings,” Marvin said. “And that’s why we had to dig her up because we had to prove it. And you ain’t never seen a mess like that. I mean, Miss Jennings’ mouth – and she was something like eighty-five – her mouth was wide like a cave, like skin and bones and all, and her dentures were sideways in her mouth just hanging there. But the worst part? She’d clawed her face down to her cheek bones.”
The lid of the coffin felt heavy and unyielding, and Phoenix tried to apply more pressure.
“Dang! So they got the undertaker on first degree murder because that old guy? You know, he had done put a motion-activated camera and a light in that old lady’s coffin. He had planned to come back a couple of days later and retrieve it. He was gonna put it on You Tube and retire.”
Phoenix put his back into it, pulling the lid up with all his might. “And you guys can’t give me a hand here?” Phoenix let go of the casket lid and walked over to Walt. He took the whiskey flask from his hands and took a sip.
Marvin walked over to the casket and called Walt over. “Least we can do since Phoenix here is paying us good money.”
Walt joined his brother, stepping carefully towards the casket, and he and Marvin grabbed the edge of the lid. They pulled with all their might, grunting and moaning, and the lid flew back.
A small explosion rang out, a loud pop, and Marvin and Walt staggered backwards with their hands up near their faces, screaming.
Phoenix jumped, and he aimed the flashlight at Marvin and Walt. Their overalls and their faces were splattered red, as if they had been flayed by shrapnel. Walt coughed, and red ooze came from his mouth. The two brothers staggered backwards screaming, holding their faces, and they fell into the open grave, landing in the soft, wet earth with a thump. Phoenix rushed towards the hole, nearly slipping in the mud, barely stopping himself as he slid to a stop at the edge of the pit.
Marvin and Walt weren’t moving. He turned and looked into the casket seeing only thick white smoke. He held the flashlight with one hand and fanned away the smoke with his other.
The casket was empty.
Empty except for tattered white silk, all of it torn and splattered red.
The sound of sirens broke through the sound of the wind and rain, distinguishable from the hum of the traffic coming from the road behind him. Phoenix turned and looked back towards the road. Blue lights, lots of them, were coming down Thompson Lane from both directions.
He turned off his flashlight and fled into the night.
Chapter 14
It was eight o’clock. The police station, a hub of activity with officers coming on duty and others leaving, was the last place Phoenix wanted to be right now.
He sat in his office chair with his face in a cup of dark, black coffee, his eyes staring into its acidic blackness, listening to the incessant chatter of officers in the hall and the constant clicking of heels on the hard floor. All he wanted right now was a couple of aspirin, but he’d already taken three a couple hours earlier.
Phoenix’s surprise over the events of the previous night hadn’t subsided. He drank a mouthful of coffee, now lukewarm, swished it around in his mouth, and swallowed it with his face contorted. He should’ve used the creamer, or at least the sugar. How hard could it be to read the instructions on the coffee bag, to make a half decent pot of coffee? Two rounded scoops for two cups of coffee, but not twelve scoops for twelve cups. Maybe six scoops. He drained the cup for the caffeine, hating it to the last drop.
Marvin and Walt, dead. Splattered and tattered, bloody and crumpled up in what was supposed to be Phillip Mercer’s resting place.
But the worst part of last night, a night as frightening as it was alarming – probably more alarming – was that Bill the manager might slip up and say something he shouldn’t. He just looked like the kind of guy who would say more than he needed to, the kind of guy who would over-clarify his non-role in the event, but end up giving the police a hundred perfect reasons why Phoenix had been part of it. Law enforcement was going to have a heyday with him.
Phoenix leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and rocked. Worst part of the night? Once again, somebody had set him up. Someone knew he was going to dig up Phillip Mercer, and that person knew he’d be doing it on his own, without observing any of the proper, legal procedures.
Alaia came into Phoenix’s office just as he opened his eyes. She didn’t look pleased; but who would after they’d been stood up? “Phoenix? What did you find last night?” She pulled up a chair and sat down. Her face looked as bitter as the coffee he’d just choked back. He couldn’t tell if it was Alaia or the coffee running through him like a freight train to hell, or to the restroom, or wherever.
“Nothing,” he said. “Went home feeling sick---”
“And I had to take a cab home.”
“The casket was empty.”
“And now Berry Hill police have two perps in custody,” Alaia said. “Does that make you feel better?”
Phoenix leaned forward, and his eyes, tired and red, opened wide. “Are you kidding me? The casket was rigged. It exploded.”
“With a Disperse Red nine aerosol charge,” Alaia said. “Biggest I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Phoenix looked at Alaia and started bouncing his toes under his desk. He looked up at the ceiling and breathed de
eply, trying to think up the next fifty words. He brushed them away, not that they had already gelled and were sitting there jiggling on the tip of this tongue, nor that they’d even floated into his head. He just knew Alaia would have the next piece.
“And right now, those two friends of yours are singing like a couple of mockingbirds,” she said.
Phoenix stared at her, almost guiltily, because he knew she had him. He toyed with the idea that she’d set him up, chased all of the possibilities like a beagle after a rabbit, but she couldn’t have been involved – not with a young son who needed her. It didn’t matter what kind of new paycheck she might get, or that she’d get his office once he’d been arrested. What mattered to her was Darkeem. Phoenix sat up in his chair and laid both of his average-sized hands on the table, noticing the red, Tennessee dirt, but just a bit, under a few of his fingernails.
Not taking his eyes off Alaia he said, “Where is Phillip Mercer?”
Alaia crossed her legs and folded her hands together. “I’m on it. The good news about your little screw up last night---”
“Set up.”
“The good thing about your being set up,” she said, “is that the Berry Hill police are just as interested in the empty casket as you are.”
“It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?” Phoenix said. “It all started with Krystal’s hamburgers four years ago, and I’m still hearing and seeing Krystal’s. Phillip Mercer’s not in the ground, we open his casket, it explodes.”
“Phillip Mercer was never in that casket, which means he’s not dead.”
“Not necessarily,” Phoenix said. “But let’s do some thinking here. If Phillip Mercer is our guy, wouldn’t it have served his purposes better if he remained in the ground, so-to-speak?”
“That’s right.”
“Or, did somebody take the body last week to make it look like Phillip Mercer’s coffin was, after all these years, empty? We can’t rule that out.”
“I’m with you.”
Phoenix stood up and walked over to the window. He looked out across the narrow flower garden that ran between NPD and a tall, three story shopping mall and parking garage, and he ran his hand over the top of his head.
“But I don’t think Dr. Patrick Carson is behind any of this,” Alaia said. “He doesn’t fit the profile. Last night, he introduced five couples who adopted ten of his orphans from one of his homes, and he announced plans for building another nursing home for the destitute elderly. He’s the kind of guy who stops for turtles.”
“Turtles?”
“Yeah, and he got hit once for rescuing one.”
Phoenix turned. “Whoever’s kidnapping people and killing others with the virus is a genius; that much we both know. Now, if a person is a genius, but there isn’t anybody around to see him acting like a genius, is he a genius?”
“You’re saying Phillip Mercer wants to be caught?”
“Don’t they all?”
“You don’t!”
“I’m the exception.”
“Or maybe you’re as dumb as a rock.”
Phoenix came around the side of his desk and pulled the other chair up close to Alaia, angling it a bit. Then he leaned into her, closely, hesitant because he knew he reeked of bad coffee. “Now, Miss Eye-For-Details, why did Phillip Mercer want that casket to explode in my face and mark me with dye?”
“He wanted you to be caught committing a crime – that’s easy.”
“Just like he wanted me to blamed for what happened to June Buckner, Dr. Demachi, and my wife,” Phoenix said.
“And let’s not forget about the rat.”
Phoenix stood up and walked to the other side of the room with his hands clasped behind his back. Then he turned around, pivoting on one foot like a music box dancer. “Phillip Mercer, or Mr. Krystal, called me after we found Dr. Demachi dead in the lab. He wanted me to bring the syringe – the one with my fingerprints on it – to Dr. Cain.”
“I’m following you.”
“And somebody goes over to the lab in the Lutrell building, somebody with two thousand in cash in his wallet, somebody who has no business being on campus, and he gets himself bit by the one rat capable of creating an issue.”
“And Dr. Cain tells the whole story – and now everyone knows you stole potentially self-incriminating evidence from the lab. But they’ve given you a pass because, so far, things have played out that seem to exonerate you as a perp.”
“And today? I mean, last night?” Phoenix asked.
“Phillip Mercer finally got something to stick on you,” Alaia said. “That means you’re---”
“About to lose my badge, my gun, my car, my apartment and my life because I paid two rednecks to dig up an empty coffin, and now they’re spilling the beans on me as we speak.”
“Bingo.”
“But why something so minor, relatively speaking?” Phoenix asked. “I’ll be arrested, I’ll tell them what they want to know, and I’ll probably spend a few days at the county jail. After that, I’ll be on the streets.”
Alaia bit her lower lip and nodded thoughtfully. She moved her shoulders, trying to get comfortable, and said, “If everything up until now has been a setup, and this grave-digging expedition of yours – even though you broke the law – has a plausible explanation, who’s to say this isn’t a prelude to something worse? If you don’t see that, you’re a damn fool, white boy.”
Phoenix didn’t speak, but just sat in place, looking at Alaia, thinking through everything he and she had just discussed. His face was expressionless, and he didn’t blink. After a minute, he got up and spoke. “What’s in your gut – and I want tiny details.” He took a step towards Alaia and stopped.
She shook her head from side to side, slowly and thoughtfully, then she uncrossed her legs and stood up. “Well, you sure ain’t getting out of the short-term mess – so that means you’re going to be in a cell in less than thirty minutes. You can run now and take your chances on the road, in which case I’ll have to tell them you fled, or you can wait here until you’re arrested. Sorry, Phoenix. I don’t know what else to do.”
Phoenix jerked his head towards the door and Alaia, hearing the same thing, turned. If those loud steps coming from the end of the hall, a steady clop-click-clop-click, didn’t belong to Chief Cobb, they didn’t belong to anybody. Behind them, and slightly out of rhythm, came the sound of his white posse. Phoenix reached out and took Alaia’s hand and squeezed it. Then he walked into the hall with her close beside him. “Phillip Mercer – find out what’s going on with this guy. I want to know if he’s dead – I mean, really dead. And I’ll need a place to stay for a few days.”
“Here he comes,” Alaia said, and then she whispered, “Why do I not trust Cobb?”
Chief Cobb, with three other officers behind him, rubbed his cheek and smiled at Phoenix. “Gotta take your badge and your gun.”
“In my office, on the desk,” Phoenix said.
Without wasting another minute, Chief Cobb told Phoenix why he was being arrested, read him his rights, and stepped aside so that another officer could cuff him.
“Take him to the county jail,” Chief Cobb said to the officers. He put his hand on Phoenix’s shoulder, and said, “You know I hate to do this, but I have no choice in the matter. You know that. And this doesn’t mean you’re not coming back to the department – well, actually, it does. But just trust me. Have an open mind.” He paused and looked at Phoenix, nodded, his lips flat, almost pursed, and he motioned for the arresting officers to proceed. And he turned back again. “No matter what happens, trust me.”
Phoenix was on his way to the county prison.
Chapter 15
Phoenix could smell the prison almost before the van pulled into the driveway. Just the sight of it reminded him of the smell of an aircraft carrier he toured as a child, the USS Enterprise, when it came to Fort Lauderdale and docked at Port Everglades. That same smell had also tainted the air in elevators, or in the boys’ restroom back in junior high after sc
hool resumed, shafts and walls freshly painted with something industrial and pungent. He anticipated other smells as well, living smells emanating from the bodies of men, all of those men cooped up together and sweaty, concentrated in tiny places where air didn’t exist. And he chuckled. Ships, elevators, and schools were prisons.
After being processed – some of the guards knew him personally, telling him they felt there must be some mistake and that they’d keep an eye out for him – Phoenix changed into a new, orange jumpsuit. It over fit him by a size or two, but he didn’t complain. He even got a pair of white Ked’s, and those seemed to fit just perfectly.
He’d never been in this part of the prison, where the two story structure towered over him, spacious and open and longer than it was tall; and he looked to the left as he walked. The bars seemed clean, he thought, though black paint could hide a world of dirt. And he could smell other things above the fumes of the painted bars. The floor beneath his feet, gray and hard, also looking freshly painted. It seemed to be level and almost new, without a speck of anything anywhere to distract the eye.
Phoenix looked up and saw the face of a man, an old face, wrinkled and gray-moustached, and he noticed the man’s light blue eyes following him as he walked along. The old inmate’s two hands, knobby and old, held on to two bars; and the man pressed his face in between them. Phoenix, without a smile and without a hint of emotion, nodded at the old man, and the old man nodded back.
“Well, I guess I have somebody to protect me against Bubba,” Phoenix said. “Or maybe that was Bubba, and I just propositioned him.”
The guard led Phoenix to the end of the hall. He stopped and radioed, and someone on the other end of the cell block did as he was asked. The cell door, the last one on the end, opened. The guard looked at Phoenix and smiled through a set of metal braces that would have triggered a terrorist attack alert had he tried to get on an airplane. He stepped into the cell and waved for Phoenix to follow. “Come on in, Detective Malone. Make yourself comfortable.” The young guard moved back towards the cell door and leaned out, perhaps looking for something or someone, then he looked towards the opposite side of the cell block.
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