Rusty motioned her back. It was all a charade, anyway. He knew it, and guessed Linda did, too. Yet he didn't feel depressed. He had wanted a medical career ever since boyhood, would certainly have been a doctor if he hadn't had to leave school to take care of his parents, and what had driven him as a high school sophomore dissecting frogs and cows' eyes in biology class was what drove him now: simple curiosity. The need to know. And he would know. Maybe not everything, but at least some things.
This is where the dead help the living. Did Linda say that?
Didn't matter. He was sure they would help if they could. "There has been no cosmeticizing of the bodies that I can see, but all four have been embalmed. I don't know if the process has been completed, but I suspect not, because the femoral artery taps are still in place.
"Angela and Dodee--excuse me, Dorothy--have been badly beaten and are well into decomposition. Coggins has also been beaten--savagely, from the look--and is also into decomp, although not as far; the musculature on his face and arms has just begun to sag. Brenda--Brenda Perkins, I mean ..." He trailed off and bent over her.
"Rusty?" Linda asked nervously. "Honey?"
He reached out a gloved hand, thought better of it, removed the glove, and cupped her throat. Then he lifted Brenda's head and felt the grotesquely large knot just below the nape. He eased her head down, then rotated her body onto one hip so he could look at her back and buttocks.
"Jesus," he said.
"Rusty? What?"
For one thing, she's still caked with shit, he thought ... but that wouldn't go on the record. Not even if Randolph or Rennie only listened to the first sixty seconds before crushing the tape under a shoe heel and burning whatever remained. He would not add that detail of her defilement.
But he would remember.
"What?"
He wet his lips and said, "Brenda Perkins shows livor mortis on the buttocks and thighs, indicating she's been dead at least twelve hours, probably more like fourteen. There's significant bruising on both cheeks. They're handprints. There's no doubt in my mind of that. Someone took hold of her face and snapped her head hard to the left, fracturing the atlas and axis cervical vertebrae, C1 and C2. Probably severed her spine as well."
"Oh, Rusty," Linda moaned.
Rusty thumbed up first one of Brenda's eyelids, then the other. He saw what he had feared.
"Bruising to the cheeks and scleral petechiae--bloodspots in the whites of this woman's eyes--suggest death wasn't instantaneous. She was unable to draw breath and asphyxiated. She may or may not have been conscious. We'll hope not. That's all I can tell, unfortunately. The girls--Angela and Dorothy--have been dead the longest. The state of decomposition suggests they were stored in a warm place."
He snapped off the recorder.
"In other words, I see nothing that absolutely exonerates Barbie and nothing we didn't goddam know already."
"What if his hands don't match the bruises on Brenda's face?"
"The marks are too diffuse to be sure. Lin, I feel like the stupidest man on earth."
He rolled the two girls--who should have been cruising the Auburn Mall, pricing earrings, buying clothes at Deb, comparing boyfriends--back into darkness. Then he turned to Brenda.
"Give me a cloth. I saw some stacked beside the sink. They even looked clean, which is sort of a miracle in this pigsty."
"What are you--"
"Just give me a cloth. Better make it two. Wet them."
"Do we have time to--"
"We're going to make time."
Linda watched silently as her husband carefully washed Brenda Perkins's buttocks and the backs of her thighs. When he was done, he flung the dirty rags into the corner, thinking that if the Bowie brothers had been here, he would have stuffed one into Stewart's mouth and the other into fucking Fernald's.
He kissed Brenda on her cool brow and rolled her back into the refrigerated locker. He started to do the same with Coggins, then stopped. The Reverend's face had been given only the most cursory of cleanings; there was still blood in his ears, his nostrils, and grimed into his brow.
"Linda, wet another cloth."
"Honey, it's been almost ten minutes. I love you for showing respect to the dead, but we've got the living to--"
"We may have something here. This wasn't the same kind of beating. I can see that even without ... wet a cloth."
She made no further argument, only wet another cloth, wrung it out, and handed it to him. Then she watched as he cleansed the remaining blood from the dead man's face, working gently but without the love he'd shown Brenda.
She had been no fan of Lester Coggins (who had once claimed on his weekly radio broadcast that kids who went to see Miley Cyrus were risking hell), but what Rusty was uncovering still hurt her heart. "My God, he looks like a scarecrow after a bunch of kids used rocks on it for target practice."
"I told you. Not the same kind of beating. This wasn't done with fists, or even feet."
Linda pointed. "What's that on his temple?"
Rusty didn't answer. Above his mask, his eyes were bright with amazement. Something else, too: understanding, just starting to dawn.
"What is it, Eric? It looks like ... I don't know ... stitches. "
"You bet." His mask bobbed as the mouth beneath it broke into a smile. Not happiness; satisfaction. And of the grimmest kind. "On his forehead, too. See? And his jaw. That one broke his jaw."
"What sort of weapon leaves marks like that?"
"A baseball," Rusty said, rolling the drawer shut. "Not an ordinary one, but one that was gold-plated? Yes. If swung with enough force, I think it could. I think it did. "
He lowered his forehead to hers. Their masks bumped. He looked into her eyes.
"Jim Rennie has one. I saw it on his desk when I went to talk to him about the missing propane. I don't know about the others, but I think we know where Lester Coggins died. And who killed him."
12
After the roof collapsed, Julia couldn't bear to watch anymore. "Come home with me," Rose said. "The guest room is yours as long as you want it."
"Thanks, but no. I need to be by myself now, Rosie. Well, you know ... with Horace. I need to think."
"Where will you stay? Will you be all right?"
"Yes." Not knowing if she would be or not. Her mind seemed okay, thinking processes all in order, but she felt as if someone had given her emotions a big shot of Novocaine. "Maybe I'll come by later."
When Rosie was gone, walking up the other side of the street (and turning to give Julia a final troubled wave), Julia went back to the Prius, ushered Horace into the front seat, then got behind the wheel. She looked for Pete Freeman and Tony Guay and didn't see them anywhere. Maybe Tony had taken Pete up to the hospital to get some salve for his arm. It was a miracle neither of them had been hurt worse. And if she hadn't taken Horace with her when she drove out to see Cox, her dog would have been incinerated along with everything else.
When that thought came, she realized her emotions weren't numb after all, but only hiding. A sound--a kind of keening--began to come from her. Horace pricked up his considerable ears and looked at her anxiously. She tried to stop and couldn't.
Her father's paper.
Her grandfather's paper.
Her great-grandfather's.
Ashes.
She drove down to West Street, and when she came to the abandoned parking lot behind the Globe, she pulled in. She turned off the engine, drew Horace to her, and wept against one furry, muscular shoulder for five minutes. To his credit, Horace bore this patiently.
When she was cried out, she felt better. Calmer. Perhaps it was the calmness of shock, but at least she could think again. And what she thought of was the one remaining bundle of papers in the trunk. She leaned past Horace (who gave her neck a companionable lick) and opened the glove compartment. It was jammed with rick-rack, but she thought somewhere ... just possibly ...
And like a gift from God, there it was. A little plastic box filled with Pus
h Pins, rubber bands, thumbtacks, and paper clips. Rubber bands and paper clips would be no good for what she had in mind, but the tacks and Push Pins ...
"Horace," she said. "Do you want to go walkie-walk?"
Horace barked that he did indeed want to go walkie-walk.
"Good," she said. "So do I."
She got the newspapers, then walked back to Main Street. The Democrat building was now just a blazing heap of rubble with cops pouring on the water (from those oh-so-convenient Indian pumps, she thought, all loaded up and ready to go ). Looking at it hurt Julia's heart--of course it did--but not so badly, now that she had something to do.
She walked down the street with Horace pacing in state beside her, and on every telephone pole she put up a copy of the Democrat 's last issue. The headline--RIOT AND MURDERS AS CRISIS DEEPENS--seemed to glare out in the light of the fire. She wished now she had settled for a single word: BEWARE.
She went on until they were all gone.
13
Across the street, Peter Randolph's walkie-talkie crackled three times: break-break-break. Urgent. Dreading what he might hear, he thumbed the transmit button, and said: "Chief Randolph. Go."
It was Freddy Denton, who, as commanding officer of the night shift, was now the de facto Assistant Chief. "Just got a call from the hospital, Pete. Double murder--"
"WHAT?" Randolph screamed. One of the new officers--Mickey Wardlaw--was gawking at him like a Mongolian ijit at his first county fair.
Denton continued, sounding either calm or smug. If it was the latter, God help him. "--and a suicide. Shooter was that girl who cried rape. Victims were ours, Chief. Roux and DeLesseps."
"You ... are ... SHITTING ME!"
"I sent Rupe and Mel Searles up there," Freddy said. "Bright side, it's all over and we don't have to jug her down in the Coop with Barb--"
"You should've gone yourself, Fred. You're the senior officer."
"Then who'd be on the desk?"
Randolph had no answer for that--it was either too smart or too stupid. He supposed he better get his ass up to Cathy Russell.
I no longer want this job. No. Not even a little bit.
But it was too late now. And with Big Jim to help him, he'd manage. That was the thing to concentrate on; Big Jim would see him through.
Marty Arsenault tapped his shoulder. Randolph almost hauled off and hit him. Arsenault didn't notice; he was looking across the street to where Julia Shumway was walking her dog. Walking her dog and ... what?
Putting up newspapers, that was what. Tacking them to the goddam Christing telephone poles.
"That bitch won't quit," he breathed.
"Want me to go over there and make her quit?" Arsenault asked.
Marty looked eager for the chore, and Randolph almost gave it to him. Then he shook his head. "She'd just start giving you an earful about her damn civil rights. Like she doesn't realize that scaring the holy hell out of everyone isn't exactly in the town's best interest." He shook his head. "Probably she doesn't. She's incredibly ..." There was a word for
what she was, a French word he'd learned in high school. He didn't expect it to come to him, but it did. "Incredibly naive."
"I'll stop her, Chief, I will. What's she gonna do, call her lawyer?"
"Let her have her fun. At least it's keeping her out of our hair. I better go up to the hospital. Denton says the Bushey girl murdered Frank DeLesseps and Georgia Roux. Then killed herself."
"Christ," Marty whispered, his face losing its color. "Is that down to Barbara too, do you think?"
Randolph started to say it wasn't, then reconsidered. His second thought was of the girl's rape accusation. Her suicide gave it a ring of truth, and rumors that Mill police officers could have done such a thing would be bad for department morale, and hence for the town. He didn't need Jim Rennie to tell him that.
"Don't know," he said, "but it's possible."
Marty's eyes were watering, either from smoke or from grief. Maybe both. "Gotta get Big Jim on top of this, Pete."
"I will. Meanwhile"--Randolph nodded toward Julia--"keep an eye on her, and when she finally gets tired and goes away, take all that shit down and toss it where it belongs." He indicated the torch that had been a newspaper office earlier in the day. "Put litter in its place."
Marty snickered. "Roger that, boss."
And that was just what Officer Arsenault did. But not before others in town had taken down a few of the papers for perusal in brighter light--half a dozen, maybe ten. They were passed from hand to hand in the next two or three days, and read until they quite literally fell apart.
14
When Andy got to the hospital, Piper Libby was already there. She was sitting on a bench in the lobby, talking to two girls in the white nylon pants and smock tops of nurses ... although to Andy they seemed far too young to be real nurses. Both had been crying and looked like they might start again soon, but Andy could see Reverend Libby was having a calming effect on them. One thing he'd never had a problem with was judging human emotions. Sometimes he wished he'd been better at the thinking side of things.
Ginny Tomlinson was standing nearby, conversing quietly with an oldish-looking fellow. Both looked dazed and shaken. Ginny saw Andy and came over. The oldish-looking fellow trailed along behind. She introduced him as Thurston Marshall and said he was helping out.
Andy gave the new fellow a big smile and a warm handshake. "Nice to meet you, Thurston. I'm Andy Sanders. First Selectman."
Piper glanced over from the bench and said, "If you were really the First Selectman, Andy, you'd rein in the Second Selectman."
"I understand you've had a hard couple of days," Andy said, still smiling. "We all have."
Piper gave him a look of singular coldness, then asked the girls if they wouldn't like to come down to the caff with her and have tea. "I could sure use a cup," she said.
"I called her after I called you," Ginny said, a little apologetically, after Piper had led the two junior nurses away. "And I called the PD. Got Fred Denton." She wrinkled her nose as people do when they smell something bad.
"Aw, Freddy's a good guy," Andy said earnestly. His heart was in none of this--his heart felt like it was still back on Dale Barbara's bed, planning to drink the poisoned pink water--but the old habits kicked in smoothly, nevertheless. The urge to make things all right, to calm troubled waters, turned out to be like riding a bicycle. "Tell me what happened here."
She did so. Andy listened with surprising calmness, considering he'd known the DeLesseps family all his life and had in high school once taken Georgia Roux's mother on a date (Helen had kissed with her mouth open, which was nice, but had stinky breath, which wasn't). He thought his current emotional flatness had everything to do with knowing that if his phone hadn't rung when it did, he'd be unconscious by now. Maybe dead. A thing like that put the world in perspective.
"Two of our brand-new officers," he said. To himself he sounded like the recording you got when you called a movie theater to get showtimes. "One already badly hurt trying to clean up that supermarket mess. Dear, dear."
"This is probably not the time to say so, but I'm not very fond of your police department," Thurston said. "Although since the officer who actually punched me is now dead, lodging a complaint would be moot."
"Which officer? Frank or the Roux girl?"
"The young man. I recognized him in spite of his ... his mortal disfigurement."
"Frank DeLesseps punched you?" Andy simply didn't believe this. Frankie had delivered his Lewiston Sun for four years and never missed a day. Well, yes, one or two, now that he thought of it, but those had come during big snowstorms. And once he'd had the measles. Or had it been the mumps?
"If that was his name."
"Well gosh ... that's ..." It was what? And did it matter? Did anything? Yet Andy pushed gamely forward. "That's regrettable, sir. We believe in living up to our responsibilities in Chester's Mill. Doing the right thing. It's just that right now we're kind of under the gun.
Circumstances beyond our control, you know."
"I do know," Thurse said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's water over the dam. But sir ... those officers were awfully young. And very out of line." He paused. "The lady I'm with was also assaulted."
Andy just couldn't believe this fellow was telling the truth. Chester's Mill cops didn't hurt people unless they were provoked (severely provoked); that was for the big cities, where folks didn't know how to get along. Of course, he would have said a girl killing two cops and then taking her own life was also the kind of thing that didn't happen in The Mill.
Never mind, Andy thought. He's not just an out-of-towner, he's an outof-stater. Put it down to that.
Ginny said, "Now that you're here, Andy, I'm not sure what you can do. Twitch is taking care of the bodies, and--"
Before she could go on, the door opened. A young woman came in, leading two sleepy-looking children by the hands. The old fellow--Thurston--hugged her while the children, a girl and a boy, looked on. Both of them were barefooted and wearing tee-shirts as nightshirts. The boy's, which came all the way down to his ankles, read PRISONER 9091 and PROPERTY OF SHAWSHANK STATE PRISON. Thurston's daughter and grandchildren, Andy supposed, and that made him miss Claudette and Dodee all over again. He pushed the thought of them away. Ginny had called him for help, and it was clear she needed some herself. Which would no doubt mean listening while she told the whole story again--not for his benefit but for her own. So she could get the truth of it and start making peace with it. Andy didn't mind. Listening was a thing he'd always been good at, and it was better than looking at three dead bodies, one the discarded husk of his old paperboy. Listening was such a simple thing, when you got right down to it, even a moron could listen, but Big Jim had never gotten the hang of it. Big Jim was better at talking. And planning--that, too. They were lucky to have him at a time like this.
As Ginny was winding up her second recitation, a thought came to Andy. Possibly an important one. "Has anyone--"
Thurston returned with the newcomers in tow. "Selectman Sanders--Andy--this is my partner, Carolyn Sturges. And these are the children we're taking care of. Alice and Aidan."