by Gideon, John
It had to be Jeremy. The boy had come and tampered with his mother’s body. There could be no other explanation. Corpses don’t move around by themselves, and they certainly don’t become—
Don’t even think it! Some things are just too—
Pregnant.
Mitch’s heart thundered in his chest like a kettledrum, and he knew that he could not wait another minute to dispose of Lorna Trosper’s stinking remains. If Jeremy were to tell the authorities what he had seen here, then they had better not find anything incriminating when they came searching. With a little luck, the cops would think that the boy was still brain-sick, and they would leave Mitch alone with his other miseries.
He set aside the flashlight and bent low to lift her off the bed, trying to remember where he’d last seen the rusting old shovel that had once leaned against his rear stoop, covered with spiderwebs, apparently left years ago by the previous tenants. Cringing against the smell, he slipped an arm underneath her neck, telling himself that he would burn the shirt he was wearing after finishing the chore of burying Lorna, for it would be stained with mold and slime.
The corpse opened her eyes.
As though to protest the move.
As though to warn Mitch Nistler away.
He let her drop back onto the bed. He ran, his mouth agape in terror. Out of the stinking bedroom. Down the rickety stairs and out the living-room door into the night rain, screaming from the depths of his soul.
15
Conditioned to the urgency of a ringing telephone, Carl’s body moved without need of mental commands. He followed the sound out of the bedroom and into the hallway, and from there to the living room, where his eyes finally opened fully.
The ringing stopped.
Jeremy stood next to the telephone, which sat on the heavy oaken end table that Hannie Hazel ford had lent, holding the handset to his ear.
“Good morning, Dr. Craslowe,” answered the boy in his smooth, cultured voice. He had apparently gotten up some time ago, for he was fully dressed in corduroy jeans and a Seattle Seahawks’ jersey with the number ten on both the front and back. “Yes, of course he’s here. I’ll get him.”
Jeremy smiled cheerily and pushed the handset toward his father, who was clothed only in his boxer shorts, still fighting off sleep.
“It’s Dr. Craslowe, Dad. He would like a word with you.” Carl padded over to the table and took the phone. How did he know it was Craslowe? Carl wondered, feeling goosefleshy in the chill morning air. Jeremy had answered the telephone as though he knew who was calling.
“This is Carl Trosper,” he muttered in his sleep-heavy voice, glancing at his Rolex. Seven in the fucking a.m.; not even light yet. He wrestled away images of jetliners, airline attendants, and maddening lines at airport check-in counters—images that just eight hours earlier had been real—and forced himself to concentrate on the voice in the telephone.
“Mr. Trosper, this is Hadrian Craslowe. Please forgive my calling at this appalling hour. I felt as though I should talk to you as soon as possible.”
“It’s okay, Doctor. What can I do for you?”
“Naturally, I want to know how things are with you and your son. I only just spoke with Jeremy, and he certainly sounded all right, but I thought it best to talk to you.”
“Everything seems to be under control,” said Carl. Jeremy appeared at his side with a thick terrycloth robe, having fetched it from his father’s closet like a loving son. Carl wriggled into it and smiled his thanks to the boy, who quickly pocketed his hands in his jeans and smiled back. “I wasn’t able to catch a direct flight from D.C., so I didn’t get into town until after midnight,” Carl told Craslowe. “I rented a car and went straight to the police station to pick up Jeremy.”
“And how was he?”
“Sound asleep in Stu Bromton’s holding cell. He certainly wasn’t hurting for company: Both Lindsay and Stu were there with him, drinking coffee and trying to make conversation.” Carl had been gratified and pleasantly surprised to find his former sister-in-law on the scene, and more than a little touched by this expression of her concern. He had been truly surprised, however, to see old Hannie Hazelford in the parking lot of City Hall, hunched over the wheel of her red Jaguar, waiting in the dark for God only knew what. He had toyed with the idea of approaching her with apologies for whatever involvement Jeremy might have had in her recent troubles but decided to put off the chore until he had gotten a decent night’s sleep and could talk like a sane man.
“I myself saw Miss Moreland earlier in the day,” said Craslowe. “She seems to feel a genuine love for Jeremy. Is she there now? She mentioned that she had something she wanted to discuss with me.”
“I offered to put her up in the spare room, but she was anxious to get back to Seattle,” Carl answered. “I expect she’ll check in later today.” He hoped she would.
“Did the police chief have any more news regarding the charges against Jeremy?”
“Not much. He did venture a guess, though, that the county would decline to prosecute, given the past records of the guys who implicated him. I’m no criminal lawyer, but I’d say he’s right. Both have a history of alcohol and drug abuse, and if you ask me, their testimony isn’t worth much.”
Carl left unsaid the fact that Stu had insisted on showing him the videotapes of Kirk Tanner’s and Jason Hagstad’s interrogations. Unnerving as the tapes had been, Carl could not believe their tales about Jeremy’s strange powers or the control he was able to exert over them. Clearly they had been under the influence of drugs at the time of their interrogations, despite what their blood tests had shown.
“Mr. Trosper, I should very much like to see the boy—today, if at all possible,” said the doctor. “As you know, he was unable to keep his appointment with me yesterday. Undoubtedly he has suffered considerable stress during the past several days, and I think it best if I have a look at him.”
That sounded reasonable, so Carl agreed, and they set a date for nine o’clock.
“You needn’t stay here during the therapy session,” added Craslowe, “for we may not finish until noon or so. I’m sure you’ll understand that I want to be very thorough, given the circumstances.”
“Of course,” said Carl. “I have some errands to run anyway.”
So, at the stroke of nine o’clock on Saturday morning, February 22, 1986, Carl Trosper dropped his son at Whiteleather Place. Father and son parted on the best of terms, their faces full of hopeful smiles.
Some errands to run.
A million things to do at nine o’clock on a foggy, drizzly Saturday morning in Greely’s Cove, Washington, U.S. of A. People to see, places to go, money to spend.
Except that Carl could not think of a single thing that needed doing as he drove his rented Chevrolet away from Whiteleather Place, other than the urgent task of escaping the hulking mansion with its dead and dying trees, its sagging timbers and rusting gate. Whiteleather Place was a sepulcher of forgotten boyhood secrets, not a comfortable place. In another age its halls had resounded with the joyful sounds of little boys’ games—his own laughter, and Renzy Dawkins’s and Stu Bromton’s. But now silence reigned. Silence and shadow. And the verity of Renzy’s parents’ suicides. Not a comfortable place at all.
He drove back toward town on Sockeye Drive and missed the turn onto Frontage Street, so thick was the fog. He turned south at the next intersection, cursing, intending to round the block in order to head home for some much-needed sleep. But a street sign caught his eye, and he slowed to a crawl. This was Marina Street, which led downhill to a little spit of land that jutted into the water. At the end of the street lay Greely’s Cove Marina, where Renzy lived aboard his yacht.
On impulse, Carl drove on, feeling a need to see his old friend, even at the cost of rousting him out of the sack. Renzy had never been known for his early risings, especially on weekends.
The street descended past a huddle of low shops and houses to a gravel parking lot. At one end of the lot was a
corroding aluminum shed, warped so badly by time and wind that its yawning door would not close. Inside was Renzy’s most prized possession, other than his yacht: a 1954 Buick Roadmaster convertible, a ruthlessly green classic with leather upholstery and chrome-spoked wheels. Carl parked next to the shed, zipped up his nylon jacket against the chill, and made his way toward the water.
Blanketed in cottony fog, the marina materialized around him like an ill-remembered dream. A dozen long docks clung to tall, pitch-blackened pilings that loomed out of the lapping water like giant toothpicks. Bobbing in the slips were perhaps seventy pleasure boats of every description.
He ambled up and down the docks until he found a boat that could belong to no one but Renzy Dawkins: a majestic forty-two-foot Hinckley sloop with Kestrel stenciled across her stem. Carl scanned the graceful craft with a sailor’s loving eyes. Kestrel was visual poetry, even at rest in her slip. She had powerful lines meant to rhyme with winds and tides and currents. Her deck was custom-laid teak, whitened by sun and salt. A gleaming chrome helm wheel stood on its post in her cockpit, inviting a helmsman’s caress. With her mainsail neatly stacked on her boom under bright blue canvas, her halyards and sheets coiled into figure eights and tied with hanging knots, and her genoa tightly furled on her headstay, she seemed only to be sleeping.
Carl stepped over the lifelines, swung onto the deck, and knocked on the teak boards that covered the companion way. To his surprise, the boards immediately lifted away, revealing Renzy Dawkins’s smiling face.
“Will wonders never end!” said Carl, reaching down into the companion way to shake Renzy’s hand. “I would’ve bet a hundred beans that you were still in the fart sack, sleeping off a hangover.”
“Well, if it isn’t the Bushman, back from the decadent East! Come on down, damn it. You’re right about the hangover, by the way. I was just in the process of fixing it. I’d be happy to fix yours, too, if you’ve got one.”
Renzy had called Carl “the Bushman” ever since their high-school days, when Carl—the head photographer for the school newspaper—had perfected the technique of photographing female cheerleaders at the very instant when they were kicking their highest, capturing on film glimpses of their “bushes” around the edges of their satin panties.
“No hangover today, but I’ll take some of that coffee I smell,” said Carl, thumping down the companionway ladder into the teak- and cherry-paneled saloon.
Renzy ducked into the galley and poured a mug of black coffee, which he laced heavily with Courvoisier. He handed the mug to Carl, who was lowering himself into a settee.
“Zounds!” exclaimed Carl after taking a sip. “What did you do—throw a shot of coffee into the cognac?”
“Shut up and drink it,” ordered Renzy, sitting down opposite his visitor. “Good for the glands. Puts hair on your man-thing.”
At just under six feet tall, Renzy Dawkins was slightly shorter than Carl and nearly the opposite in complexion. His long hair was thick and coarse and nearly black, combed straight from his high forehead. His green eyes attested to his mother’s “black Irish” heritage, as did the heavy stubble that gave his angular jaw a bluish look. His face was permanently wind-browned from many days at sea, and his hands—which seemed always to be in motion, either torturing a hank of rope in the practice of nautical knots or rolling burnt-out cigarette butts into little balls that he eventually flicked away—had the leathery look of a sailor’s. He wore a dark red sweater of raw wool over tacky beige trousers and frayed leather Topsiders.
“This is some boat, my friend,” said Carl, taking another jolt of the spiked coffee and glancing around the elegant saloon. Adorning the glossy teak bulkheads was a collection of ancient ferrotypes, all with nautical subjects: old schooners and clippers under billowy sail, long-dead skippers and traders, panoramic views of nineteenth-century harbors. “If I had something like this—not to mention your money—I’d be out on the blue water somewhere, probably heading for Papeete or Bora Bora.”
Renzy laughed loudly then grew abruptly silent a moment. “No, you wouldn’t, Bush,” he said. “You’d be right here in Greely’s Cove, same as I am, same as you are right now.” Then: “Speaking of money...” He jumped up from his seat and went to the navigation station, where he pulled open a drawer and fumbled through books of charts, compasses, and grease pencils. He returned with an envelope, which he tossed into Carl’s lap.
“It’s all there—seven hundred and fifty dollars, cash-money. Old Subarus just aren’t worth a grand anymore, Bush.”
During Carl’s absence in Washington, D.C., Renzy had handled the sale of Lorna’s old station wagon, the one in which she had killed herself. Carl had been glad to have his help in the matter, for he doubted that he could ever have brought himself to touch the car, much less drive it.
“Thanks, Renzy. I’ll drive into Seattle next week and put this down on another car. I can’t drive a rental forever, I guess. Anyway, I appreciate your help with this thing.”
“No sweat, amigo. Sign this title transfer and drop it in the mail to Olympia, and you’re all set. I’m just sorry I couldn’t get the grand you wanted. Hey, what do you say we have a little toast?”
“I’ve already had breakfast.”
“Not that kind of toast, ass-breath. This kind.” Renzy held his coffee cup in the air. “To new beginnings!”
“To new beginnings!” said Carl, raising his cup.
They both drank. And Renzy refilled Carl’s cup.
“Since you’ve already had breakfast,” he said, “I won’t offer you any. You wouldn’t like what’s on the menu. I’m sure.” He had returned from the galley with a giant bag of Whoppers malted milk balls, which he began to crunch down vigorously after taking his seat.
“Very nutritious,” said Carl, snickering.
They bantered for another half-hour, catching up on old times, remembering past faces and places and friends and enemies. They had not really gotten an opportunity to talk since Lorna’s memorial gathering in the park.
“So what have you been doing with yourself for the past six years?” Carl wanted to know. “I’ve only gotten vague details from Stu, and you yourself really didn’t tell me much before I left for D.C. What has your life been like?”
“Very good lately. I’ve been doing what I do best—nothing. Oh, I’ve done some offshore sailboat racing, a lot of cruising—both on and off the water.” He threw a lewd wink at Carl. “Tried my hand at teaching philosophy in a community college in California, but it didn’t work out. Even wrote a pornographic western novel that nobody wants to publish. In short, I haven’t contributed much to the world recently.”
“Well, you’re probably wondering why in the hell I’m here at this ungodly hour,” said Carl, feeling warm with the glow of cognac and liking it. “Would you believe that I just needed a little good, old-fashioned friendship?”
Renzy smiled and popped a Whopper into his mouth. “That’s what I’m here for. I may not be good for much, these days, but if it’s good, old-fashioned friendship you’re after, I’m your man.”
“It’s about Jeremy,” said Carl.
“I’m not surprised.”
“I just dropped him at Dr. Craslowe’s. Have you heard the latest?”
Indeed, Renzy had. The story of Jeremy’s arrest and his alleged involvement in the harassment of Hannie Hazelford had spread throughout the village like wildfire. But Carl’s revelations about Jeremy’s treatment of his grandmother seemed to take Renzy completely by surprise. Carl recounted to him what Lindsay had revealed in the wee hours of that very morning in the station house of the Greely’s Cove Police Department: the collection of stray animals, the nighttime escapes from the house on Second Avenue, the verbal abuse, the “mind-reading,” the incantations and the array of mysterious books in the boy’s room.
Most troubling to Carl were Jeremy’s sudden and complete changes of personality. With Nora he was a little hellion, and with Lindsay or Stu a sullen mope. But with Carl he was che
erful and considerate, a loving son.
Kirk Tanner and Jason Hagstad had described him during their police interrogations as a kind of mesmerist who could plant urgent desires and schemes in their minds.
“You should’ve seen those guys on the videotapes,” said Carl of Tanner and Hagstad. “Scared shitless, both of them. Whenever Stu asked them to describe exactly how Jeremy forced them to do what they did to Hannie, they started sweating bullets. Their faces turned white, they started shaking and blathering about spells and spirits...
“But you said yourself they were on drugs, right?”
“The cops gave them blood tests, which were negative.”
“Hell, that doesn’t prove anything. If they’re chronic crack users, their brains are full of bruises, and they can be totally wigged even if they don’t have it in their blood. Trust me. Bush: I know about these things. Crack is cocaine, and cocaine can eat up your mind, make you see and feel things that aren’t there.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling myself,” said Carl. “And that’s what I intend to tell the prosecutor if he presses the case against Jeremy.”
“Good man.”
“Did you notice anything wrong with Jeremy when you were with him?”
“He seemed perfectly normal to me. His attitude was downright sunny, in fact.”
Carl got up to stretch his legs and wandered around the wood-paneled saloon of the boat, absently eyeing the brassframed pictures that hung on the bulkheads. One, a ferrotype hazy with age, wrinkled and cracked here and there beneath its protective glass, was a portrait of two men. On the left was a grizzled seaman dressed in the dark, bunchy uniform of a ship’s captain. On the right was a taller man with a long face, wearing a somber suit and thick, steel-framed spectacles that exaggerated his watery eyes. Something about the taller man’s face disturbed Carl, though he could not say what it was. He leaned close to the bulkhead and studied the picture closely. “Who’s this?” he asked Renzy. “Looks kind of familiar.” Renzy’s mood seemed to darken just a little, as though a cloud had scuttered over the sun, except that the sun was irrelevant here in the saloon of the Kestrel.
