Riverwatch

by Joseph Nassise

His rubber-soled shoes made barely a sound as he circled the body before him, carefully looking it over for any obvious telltale injuries, dictating his findings aloud so the microphone above the table could pick them up for transcription.

  When he thought he’d seen all there was to see, he moved to the tray of instruments that was set up alongside, and picked up a scalpel. The cool metal of the blade glinted sharply in the light.

  "Now, my dead, young friend, " he said to the corpse as he reached out and made the first incision in the slightly rubbery flesh, "let’s see what secrets you’re hiding."

  Three hours later he was finished. When he’d first read the tag, Strickland had expected the post-mortem to be a rather straightforward piece of work. But now that he was finished, he realized that this was anything but a straightforward case. He discovered a number of things that just didn’t make any sense, and while they bothered him, they also sparked his professional curiosity; something that didn’t happen all that often anymore. In over thirty years of forensic medicine, he thought he’d seen it all. The body on the table before him proved him wrong. Determined to get to the bottom of things, he dialed Detective Wilson’s office extension.

  "Hello?"

  "Damon, its Ed. Figured I’d find you there. Don’t you ever go home?"

  Wilson laughed. "Sure, right around the same time you do." The two men had known each other for years, from before Damon had gone off to Chicago. They’d gone to the same high school together, had even dated some of the same women. Their friendship had picked up again once Damon had returned home.

  "What’s up?" Damon asked.

  "I just finished that autopsy on the young fellow you pulled out of that crypt over on the Blake family plot."

  "Halloran. Kyle Halloran."

  Ed grunted. "Yeah, that’s the one. Thought you should know that it wasn’t your everyday, run of the mill experience. Some of the results I got are pretty strange."

  "Strange funny or strange weird?"

  "Strange weird."

  "Like what?" Damon asked. Hell, it was an open and shut case. Witnesses said the guy had been drinking and snorting enough cocaine earlier in the night to flatten an elephant. Too much physical exertion after all that and you ended up in cardiac arrest.

  "Well, for one thing, it wasn’t an overdose that killed him."

  Damon laughed. "Yeah, right. Try telling that to his heart and respiratory system. They’re still trying to figure out what hit them."

  "That’s just it, Damon. The toxicology tests showed high traces of benzoylecganine, so the guy had been doing cocaine earlier that night, enough to send most people straight to the moon. Combine that with a blood alcohol level of 1.8, and you can be damn sure he was as high as a kite when he went. Probably didn’t feel a thing. But it wasn’t the drugs or the booze that killed him." Ed paused, and then said, "He bled to death."

  "What?" Damon asked, shocked.

  "You heard me," Strickland replied. "He bled to death."

  "But that’s not possible, Ed. There were no wounds on the body, and we certainly didn’t find anything to indicate that at the scene. For a guy that size to lose enough blood to kill him, we should have found a lake of the stuff. We didn’t; the place was as dry as a bone."

  "Didn’t you tell me the floor of that tomb was just dirt? Could it have simply seeped into the ground and whoever was at the scene just missed it?"

  "C’mon Ed. My men are better than that. Besides, I’m the one who answered the call. There wasn’t any blood. Nada, nothing, zippo. Catch my drift?"

  Ed sighed. "Yeah, I hear you. It’s been bothering me, too. But it gets worse. I can’t figure out how it happened. There weren’t any wounds on the body, nothing but a fairly shallow cut on the palm of one hand. It probably hurt like hell, and bled a bit, but certainly not enough to kill someone."

  "Shit, Ed, this is not good." Damon shook his head in bewilderment. It sounded like this was going to be one bitch of a headache, and he just didn’t need that right now.

  Then Ed said something else, and it was so weird that Damon thought he hadn’t heard him correctly.

  "Run that one by me again?"

  "I said, this guy didn’t just lose enough blood to kill him, he lost all of it."

  Damon felt goose bumps suddenly rise on his arms. "What do you mean ALL of it?"

  "Just what I said. All of it. You know how it works. Once the heart stops, the blood will normally pool in the lowest portion of the corpse, giving the flesh there a dark purplish coloration. Except, in this case, that didn’t happen. I couldn’t find any evidence of post-mortem lividity anywhere on the body. If you hadn’t told me the position he had been found in, I wouldn’t have been able to figure it out. And when I cut him open, I didn’t even have to drain him. I could have done the whole procedure on my kitchen table and eaten off of it afterwards, he was that clean."

  While listening, Damon had involuntarily stiffened in his seat. Something wasn’t right here; that much was obvious. On some deeper, more primal level, Damon was suddenly certain that things were going to get a lot worse.

  "Hey, Wilson, you there?"

  "Yeah, yeah. I’m here. Got anything else, Ed?"

  "Sorry. That’s it, I’m afraid."

  "Okay, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. And listen, keep this one from the press for awhile, will ya?"

  "Sure thing, Damon. Talk to you soon."

  For the first time in his long career, Edward Strickland found that he didn’t want to be alone with a corpse.

  *** ***

  Damon hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, his gaze resting on the far wall but not really seeing it. His thoughts were elsewhere.

  Bled to death?

  How?

  The whole thing was absurd. The pickaxe they found was several yards away from the corpse. There was no way he could have hurt himself. Even if he had, how do you bleed to death from a cut on the palm of the hand? It just wasn’t possible.

  He thought back to the events of that morning, picturing the scene in his mind. The corpse had been sprawled in that dark, little room at the base of that ugly statue with little evidence anywhere that there had been any kind of confrontation or struggle, no wounds on the body. That was why he’d been so positive that it had been an overdose or a heart attack. All his years of police work had pointed him in that direction.

  Did I miss something?

  He didn’t think he had. The uniforms had used their usual diligence going over the scene once he’d called them in, and he had even stayed behind to supervise. He was positive the job had been done thoroughly and professionally.

  He now had a nagging feeling that he hadn’t seen everything he should have, that he had overlooked something important.

  Damon was a cop who believed in hunches. More than once during the course of a past investigation he’d gotten a feeling about a certain aspect of the case. Nothing more than that, just an impression, a blind, gut reaction completely unfounded in anything he could put into logical facts. He learned to pay attention to them, more often than not discovering that he was right. He knew this was simply his unconscious mind tying things together in a way that his conscious mind had overlooked, and his ‘hunches’ were just its way of telling him to perk up and pay attention.

  Something about the mental image of the crime scene was bothering him; something he couldn’t put his finger on, and so, instead of going home as he’d been about to do before Ed had phoned, he went to his filing cabinets and pulled out the case file. He pulled out the photographs of the crime scene. He stared at each of them slowly in turn, scrutinizing them for something he might have missed.

  The pictures looked the same now as they had then. The cemetery, the tomb, the corpse. Nothing more.

  He picked up the few photos that were solely of the statue itself, staring at the face carved into the stone with a strange mixture of admiration and revulsion. He had to admit it really was a marvelous piece of work, if you happened to like that so
rt of thing, which he didn’t.

  Every little detail was rendered precisely, from the scales that covered the face to the curved claws that extended from the feet. All in all, it was a stunning piece of work.

  Damon just didn’t like it. Remembering how he’d felt beneath its stony gaze made him uncomfortable even now. If he hadn’t know better, he would have sworn the damn thing had been watching him the whole time he was down there. Looking into its eyes in the photographs, that feeling returned. The beast seemed to gaze back at him, the glint of an evil intelligence in its stony orbs.

  Something was there in the pictures, something important that he was overlooking. He just wasn’t seeing it.

  But what?

  Tired and more than a bit frustrated now, he returned the photos to the file and put them away in his drawer. He’d had enough for one day; staring at the photographs for another couple of hours wasn’t going to get him anywhere tonight. It was time to call it quits.

  As he crossed the parking lot to his car, Damon had the uneasy feeling he wasn’t alone.

  He glanced around.

  Beneath the dirty yellow light of the sodium-vapor lamps, nothing stirred.

  The lot was empty.

  He shrugged, dismissing the feeling. Too much work and an overactive imagination, that’s all it was.

  Yet in the back of his mind an image lingered.

  A pair of stone eyes, watching…

  Chapter Ten: A Death in the Night

  "Bring me another piece of that cake, would ya, honey?"

  In the kitchen, Martha Cummings looked out through the interior window that connected to the next room. Her husband George was seated in his favorite recliner in front of the television. Her gaze was full of affection as she took in his slightly overweight body and the little round bald-spot on the top of his head. She shook her head in mock derision at his request, but happily complied with it nonetheless.

  Martha was in her late sixties and quite happy with her lot in life. Time had been good to her. A large, buxom woman, not particularly pretty by today’s standards, but filled with an inordinate amount of kindness, she had married her present husband, after two unsuccessful marriages, at the age of thirty-five. She had a nice home, an affectionate husband, and enough money to keep the two of them happy for the rest of their lives. That was more than most could say, and for that she was thankful.

  Of course, there were her cats, too.

  Martha’s pride and joy, the cats had proven to be an acceptable substitute for her inability to have children. She lavished them with all the care and love and attention she might have given her own children. They were a constant nuisance to her husband, although he was sweetly tolerant for her sake. The felines had free roam of the house. She had lost track of how many of them there actually were, having stopped counting somewhere after sixteen. Originally there had been only five, each with a separate name, but before long she’d given up trying to keep them all straight, referring to them all now simply as Kitty. They didn’t seem to mind and it was much easier that way.

  She brought the cake to her husband, along with a tall glass of milk. "Here you are, dear," she said, giving him a quick peck on his bald spot. He flustered a little at that, being self-conscious about the loss of his hair, but his eyes let her know that it was all right.

  Back in the kitchen she decided to bake an apple pie and was deep into the process when George announced he was going up to bed.

  "Are you going to stay down here all night or will you be joining me?" he asked, a suggestive leer on his face.

  She blushed. Despite their advanced age, the two of them enjoyed a good grope in the dark more than once a week, as if they were a couple of hormone-crazed teenagers. It didn’t matter that nine times out of ten the machinery didn’t work. It was the desire that counted, and lately it seemed to be increasing. It made her feel wickedly sinful to know that her husband still wanted her after all these years, and that alone was worth all the trouble.

  She leered back at him. "I’ll be up in just a few minutes. If you’re still awake when I get there, old timer, maybe we can find something to keep us awake awhile longer." She waved her hands at him. "Now shoo and let me finish or I’ll just sleep on the couch for the night and you won’t get anything."

  George gave her a quick kiss and disappeared up the stairs in a hurry, muttering to himself about domineering women as he went. Martha turned back to her baking.

  Her pace was quicker now than it had been a few moments before.

  Half an hour later, just as she was placing the pie into the refrigerator, where it would stay until she had a chance to slip it into the oven in the morning, she heard a long, thin wail coming from the front yard.

  Martha stopped in mid-motion, bent over in front of the open refrigerator door, pie in hand, her head cocked to one side.

  The house around her was silent, the only sound the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room.

  After a few moments of intent listening, she decided the noise had only been in her mind. A product of the late hour and her restless imagination.

  You’ve been watching too many of those horror films, Martha old girl, she told herself good-naturedly, and slid the pie onto the shelf. She straightened up and closed the fridge, turning back to the sink to get a sponge to wash the counter-tops.

  That was when the scream came again, a high-pitched shriek that reflexively made her pull her head down into the crook of her shoulders in response.

  She took a step towards the window above the sink that overlooked the front yard, but then hesitated, the action uncompleted. What was out there? she thought, frightened, visions of axe-wielding psychopaths swimming through her mind. She suddenly wasn’t certain she wanted to discover the origin of that cry. What if it was just a trick to get her near the window?

  What if I look out, only to find someone looking in?

  As soon as that particular thought crossed her mind, she was struck with the uncanny feeling that someone was out there, watching her.

  Watching.

  And waiting.

  Martha turned and quickly made her way to the staircase, wanting to be anywhere but alone in that room. She intended on going upstairs and waking George. He’d know how to handle the situation. He’d know just what to do.

  She was halfway up the stairs when another cry reached her ears and this time there was no mistaking its animal origin.

  The image of a blood-smeared feline loomed, and in the rush of motherly affection that accompanied it, her fear dissipated.

  One of her babies needed her.

  Boosted by her concern for her feline charges, Martha got herself under control. Go on old girl, she said to herself. March right out there and see what’s going on. No need to stand cowering in the kitchen. After all, when was the last time the police actually had to work to earn their pay in this sleepy little town? The crime rate was so low that the town council had considered tearing down the auxiliary police station to make room for a new supermarket a few months ago, and had only decided against it when a better location was discovered.

  Axe-wielding psychopaths? Not in Harrington Falls.

  Reassured by her logic, Martha calmly crossed to the hall closet, glancing down at her housecoat and slippers as she went. It wouldn’t do to have the neighbors see her snooping around the front lawn like that, so she drew on a long trench coat and searched for her shoes. After a moment, she remembered she’d left them by the bed upstairs. In order to retrieve them, she’d risk waking George.

  "Slippers will just have to do," she said to the pink bunnies on her feet, and wiggled her toes inside their confines, giggling at the thought of how silly she would feel if any of her neighbors caught sight of her.

  She withdrew a broom with a thick wooden handle from the rack on the closet door. Holding it aloft like a baseball bat, she moved to the entryway.

  "Don’t worry, Kitty," she said softly, "Mommy’s on her way."

  *** ***
<
br />   Outside, the beast dropped the cat’s corpse to the ground, then licked the blood from his claws, savoring the bittersweet taste.

  Suddenly, a noise caught his attention.

  He stopped his grooming and peered through the branches. From where he was seated in the large, old elm that dominated the front yard, he had a clear view of the house. He watched as the front door opened and a woman stepped into view on the porch that extended the length of the house. She was holding something long and slender over one shoulder.

  The beast’s eyes widened in anticipation.

  Now that the appetizer was out of the way, the main course rightfully made its appearance.

  Deciding he wanted to have a little fun before indulging himself, the beast slowly lowered himself to the ground.

  In the darkness, Moloch smiled.

  *** ***

  Martha stood on the front porch, peering into the darkness before her. The night was quiet. A soft wind was blowing, rustling the leaves of the nearby trees in a whispering chorus. The moon had set much earlier, and now the darkness around her seemed thick and total.

  She didn’t like it.

  She reached back inside the doorway and flicked the switch to turn on the porch light, but nothing happened. She tried again, with the same result.

  Bulb must have blown, she thought. What a time for it, too! Her thoughts turned to the idea of waking her husband, but she quickly stifled them.

  She could handle this herself.

  "Here, Kitty. Here, Kitty, Kitty," she called softly as she took a few steps farther out onto the deck.

  The old wood beneath her feet groaned weakly.

  "Here, Kitty, Kitty. Come to Momma."

  Only the wind answered her.

  Martha crossed the porch until she stood at the top of the steps. The front lawn spread out before her, a giant carpet of green cloaked in dark shadows.

  The night was oddly silent, the usual symphony of tree frogs and crickets absent. The fact that she could no longer hear that earlier shrieking only served to heighten her anxiety.

  She peered into the gloom ahead of her.