We didn’t try to turn on lights, of course. There may not have been any electricity anyway, but if there was, we didn’t want to try it. The house had a very bad smell, and we knew that smell, and as soon as we closed the back door, Leonard said, “Aw, hell.”
“Yep,” I said.
We followed the smell trail, which grew stronger as we came to the bedroom we hadn’t gone into last time. There was nothing of Jackie there in view. No pieces of paper with a new address on it. No cryptic messages written in chicken blood on the wall or whatever it is the detectives find in cozy mystery novels.
The bedroom with the stink looked a lot like the bedroom that didn’t stink. There was no furniture. We could see dust circulating in front of the windows without curtains, spinning in the bit of golden glow that came from the backyard light of the house with the fence.
And we could see a body splayed out on the floor.
21
The body was on its back. The mouth and eyes were open, as if the corpse were trying to mime excitement. One hand rested on his thigh, the other arm was thrown wide; one leg had a knee lifted, the other was stretched out with its boot turned to the side. There was blood coming out from under the body. It had made a pool around the man’s head, had dried dark and thick, as if he had lain down in a mass of spilled molasses.
As we neared the body, flies that had found their way in through some crack or another rose up from the corpse with a buzz, out of the body’s mouth and off of its eyes. They were thick enough that the next-door neighbor’s light shining through the window made them momentarily appear like a little black cloud or a misshapen and alien creature. They buzzed up and into one corner of the room and blended with the shadows there.
Nearby, covered in blood, lay Ace’s silly hat, Leonard’s most recent craving.
“Gonna take a flier here,” Leonard said, “and guess this motherfucker is dead.”
We held our noses and I used my free hand to shine the light on him. It was Ace, of course. He had been dead for a while, probably had come back to the house shortly after we left it.
There was more blood near the closet, and it had flowed under the door, and there was a footprint in the blood. It had dried. It was average in size.
I could see a partial footprint, the heel, visible just outside the closed closet door. I gave Leonard my flash, and he held the light on the footprints while I used my cell to snap some photos, though I feared they wouldn’t come out as well as I wanted, the light being weak. I was hoping we might match the print to someone’s boots.
Being careful not to step in the blood, I opened the closet and Leonard shone the light around for me while I took a look. There was nothing there but more bloody prints.
There wasn’t an attic entrance in the closet ceiling. No one had climbed inside the attic through the closet. There was a bit of masking tape dangling from the edge of the door frame inside the closet. The masking tape was painted over the same color as the inside of the closet. I mentioned that to Leonard. It didn’t mean anything to him either.
I made an effort to search Ace’s body without stepping in blood. The odor he put off was terrible. Damn dead folks. I went through his pockets with my nose scrunched up.
“Goddamn hat’s ruined,” Leonard said.
“Yeah. That’s a shame.”
Ace had a wallet with five dollars in it, a package of rubbers, and a picture of three black kids, all boys, with a goat. I figured it was from his childhood. One of the kids looked like the guy Ace would grow up to be, though he appeared a lot happier in the photo than he did now. In fact, everyone in that photo, including the goat, looked pretty content.
The blood on the floor had all come from Ace’s head. Someone had parted his hair with a hatchet. His skull was split down the center to the bridge of his nose, and some of his brain had oozed out like puke. That had been some lick.
In his pockets, I found some lint and thirty-five cents. I put the wallet and the thirty-five cents back, let the lint fend for itself.
I stood up and stepped off a way. That helped a little with the odor. Another minute close to the body and I would have thrown up. I could see from the next-door neighbor’s light that the flies had moved from the corner of the ceiling and had gathered on the windowpane like some kind of decoration.
“Whatever he was looking for,” I said, “he didn’t seem to find it, or if he did, whoever whacked him took it, or maybe afterwards they looked around and found it. Or there was nothing here to begin with.”
“Ace thought there was, and whoever whacked him upside the noggin thought so too,” Leonard said. “Guess they could have come in with him, pretended to be a friend, and took him out. My guess, though, someone sneaked up on him. I mean, hell, someone carrying a fucking ax or hatchet would make a man suspicious, not to mention nervous. You’d pretty quick guess he wasn’t your friend.”
“See the way the sleeves of his shirt are bunched up at the elbows, pulled up on the wrist,” I said. “He may have fought with them, stretching his shirt, or someone grabbed his arms from behind and someone else gave him the death stroke.”
“That is so cute. A detective-type deduction.”
“I thought it was pretty good,” I said. “I mean, wearing long sleeves this time of year doesn’t seem smart, but I won’t get the chance to discuss that with him now.”
“He was stylish-minded,” Leonard said.
“You know, this happens to us a lot. Dead bodies, I mean.”
“Yep. Just lucky, I guess. Long as we’re here, let’s look the place over. Maybe we’ll find a serious clue.”
“That would be too handy,” I said.
“Well, now and then a fart don’t stink too bad,” Leonard said.
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s over your head, Hap. Let it go.”
Leonard had been flashing the light around the bedroom, and now he had the light pooled in a corner. There was something small and dark in the center of the bright pool, up against the wall.
I went over and picked it up.
“So, their hiding place was they put this in a corner of the house?” I said.
I was holding it up now and Leonard had the light on it. It was a thumb drive designed to look like a little man in a tuxedo, but his head was missing.
“I don’t think so,” Leonard said.
He flashed the light around some more, went over to a spot along the wall and picked something else up. He came back and gave it to me. I saw that it was the top of the thumb drive, a man’s head wearing a top hat.
“What I think,” Leonard said, “is Ace did find it, but the guys who killed him didn’t know that. It was taped inside the closet wall with some masking tape, which explains that. But before he found it, it would have blended in pretty good. Whoever gave him the chop came in on him right after he found the drive. They surprised him, and when they hit him—”
“He reflexively tossed his hand out and away went the drive, only they didn’t see that.”
“Another thought is they might have been following Ace, wanted to take him out for some reason we don’t know, didn’t know there was anything to look for. Followed him to the house, killed him, and left. More I think about it, more I like that idea. They didn’t know what he was looking for, didn’t know he had found it, and didn’t care. It was him they wanted, and they got him.”
22
The rain had picked up and the streets were running with water. The rain was silver in the thin light from houses and it was cold as a wet eel as it slipped down my collar.
We walked carefully and quickly to our car, took off our gloves, sat in the car, and gathered our wits, which is a pretty short process most of the time. I turned on the heater for a few moments to cut the chill, and then it was too hot. I turned it off. We continued to sit there.
“I can still smell him,” Leonard said. “I’d rather stick my head face-first into a bucket of horse shit than smell another dead body.”
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I agreed. I knew from experience that even when we were well away from the body, that stench would live inside of our nostrils for a time, and then after that, the memory of the smell would come back to us now and again as if we were still standing in that bedroom, looking down on his body.
We drove around looking for an old-style phone booth to drop a word to the police about the body, but we didn’t find one. In this town, phone booths had gone the way of the magazine stand.
We knew better than to call from our cells, so we finally decided to let the whole thing go for the time being. It wasn’t like Ace was going to have a resurrection if found.
Leonard said, “I don’t want to be insensitive, but fuck Ace. He hit you with a chair.”
“That chair did hurt.”
“I want to let him lay for now, and you know where I want to go.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I certainly do. But there’s no Dairy Queen here.”
“I don’t want ice cream, Hap. Remember the bolt cutters?”
“Oh yeah.”
I cruised us on out to George’s junkyard, and before long we were gliding over the top of the hill, looking down on the yard, which was spotted with booger lights and the rain gave the cars and the flattened stacks of them a kind of shimmer.
We were bold about it. Drove right up to the double gate. Leonard got out with the bolt cutters, snipped the chain that held the gates together, and pushed one of the gates open.
I drove inside and parked the car and stayed inside of it, watched as Leonard walked ahead. That’s when I heard Rex. He was loose in the yard, as George said he would be, barking and growling, raising a ruckus. I could hear him running too, sounded like a herd of elephants stampeding between the cars. There was a stronger light near the gate, and it spilled wide over the ground, and soon Rex appeared in that light. He was demonic-looking, and I could almost imagine him with two more heads, Cerberus, serving as the guardian to the gates of Hell. He was charging right at Leonard.
Leonard bent down on one knee and dropped the cutters and held out both hands, palms down. I reached over and got the pistol out of the glove box and cracked the driver’s door but didn’t get out. I didn’t want to get bit. I had already experienced rabid-squirrel trouble, and I didn’t want to add a savage dog bite to my experiences.
Leonard said, “Rex, good boy,” and I swear to you, that powerful dog quit barking and growling and slowed and came with his tongue hanging out of his wide mouth and ran right into Leonard’s arms. I had never seen anything like it, and with Leonard I’ve seen a lot. He was like the dog whisperer right then. He cooed and talked to the dog and the dog licked his face and swabbed his ears with a tongue that seemed long enough and thick enough to use for a beach towel.
Leonard stood up slowly, bent and patted the dog, went over and opened the back door. Rex jumped in without hesitation. It was like he was making an escape from prison and we were his accomplices.
Rex leaned over the seat and licked me from the back of my neck to the top of my head.
“Yuck,” I said.
Leonard was climbing in on the passenger side with the bolt cutters.
“That was impressive,” I said.
“Learned it from our old friend Veil.”
“I thought you guys hated each other.”
“Only when we see each other. I talk to him on the phone now and again.”
“Really? You guys talk?”
“Yep, that works best. No actual face-to-face contact. He knows dogs. He knows I love them, and I think that’s where we bond. He told me how to make a dog feel safe. A happy dog would have bit me.”
“Thought it was more unlikely a happy dog would bite.”
“A happy dog cares about his master, but an unhappy dog can be swayed.”
“I’m not sure I would have trusted that idea,” I said.
“It may be mostly bullshit when you get right down to it, but he didn’t bite me.”
“Yeah, you got that going for you.”
“Asshole like George, he don’t need to own a dog. Needs to own a coffin with himself in it, his black heart cut out and burned to ashes and poured in a ditch.”
“That’s your justification for dog theft?”
“It’s not theft,” Leonard said. “It’s liberation. Let’s go.”
23
It was still early and there was really no place to go and for the moment nothing to do in Marvel Creek, so I drove us back across the Sabine River Bridge, wheeled us to Tyler and our hotel.
We walked Rex inside with Leonard using his belt like a leash, and Rex came along like he was the hotel manager. The kid behind the desk didn’t say a word. I figured he didn’t want to argue with two rough-looking customers and a pit bull that was possibly the manager.
We sat in our room for a while and didn’t talk much, which wasn’t like us. I always hear how men don’t talk, and maybe that’s true of some, but you normally couldn’t shut me and Leonard up, and right then we had nothing to say, and if we did, no way to say it. The shared experience of finding Ace was enough to hold us for a bit.
Rex climbed up on the bed with Leonard and lay his head in Leonard’s lap. I had some jerky sticks in my bag. I got up and gave a couple of those to Rex. He ate them with about two smacks apiece. When he was finished eating, he looked at me hopefully. I spread my fingers to show him I was all out. He understood and lay his head back in Leonard’s lap. I sat on my bed and watched Leonard stroke Rex’s scarred head. The dog closed its eyes and pretty soon I could hear him snoring.
I don’t know when I came undone from it all, but I finally got up, fixed us more coffee, and got Rex another jerky stick. He was awake by then. I think he heard me rustling in the package that held the jerky. Sleep came second to eating for dogs.
We had our coffee and Rex had his stick, and then we sat around for a while longer and finally started talking.
“What are we going to do with the thumb drive?” Leonard said.
“Stick it in a computer, of course,” I said.
“I’m thinking something hidden like that might not be easy to crack, unless we know the code. We can try just poking it in the computer, but I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. If it isn’t, you know who we need?”
I did. Mercury. He was a computer wizard, among other things. He used to work at the Camp Rapture newspaper, but recently they decided they didn’t need him to do what they’d had him doing, which was transferring all the old records and newspaper articles, which went back about fifty years, to modern computer storage. News and facts had lost prominence to glossy ads and bullshit.
They gave Mercury a party and a plaque and two weeks’ severance pay, and sent him home. He had worked there for a large part of his life, but in the end, it was only a little different than him having wandered in off the streets. That’s company dedication for you.
Mercury worked out of his home now, mostly computer repair and a bit of consulting, but he was still the best there was when it came to deciphering difficult data, and if Leonard was right, we might have some for him to decipher.
It could turn out to be nothing, might contain photos of Jackie in Disney World wearing a Minnie Mouse hat. Maybe just the hat.
We put the thumb drive in Leonard’s overnight bag. Leonard put the belt on Rex again, took him outside for a walk while I waited upstairs. About fifteen minutes later Leonard and Rex came back.
“Manager said something about Rex this time,” Leonard said. “He’s not welcome.”
“Well, shit.”
“Let’s take our bags and go. We’ve been thrown out of better places than this.”
“And frequently.”
The three of us left the hotel. The rain had stopped and the air tasted good and it had a slight chill. As Tyler was much bigger than Marvel Creek, we were able to find an all-night place for coffee fairly easy.
The café had some tables outside, and we could have Rex with us out there. He was still on Leonard’
s belt leash. Rex lay at our feet under the café awning and quivered from time to time in his sleep, made noises that almost sounded like a chuckle. I think he was delighting in his assisted escape from the junkyard, dreaming of better days eating jerky and humping lady dogs.
“I got this feeling maybe there’s something about all this that isn’t what we think it is,” I said. “Like looking in a fun-house mirror and seeing a distorted image. That’s what I think we’re looking at. The distortion.”
“Fair enough,” Leonard said. “Always is a little of that, I suppose. Distortion, I mean.”
“Might be more of it this time than usual,” I said.
That was it for profundity. We sipped coffee. It was the last cup I intended to have for a while. One more and I’d be dancing down the highway juggling my nuts.
There was a surviving phone booth next to the café, and I used it to drop a call to the Marvel Creek Police Department. It had been so long, I had almost forgotten how the damn thing worked. Turned out Eula was not only the receptionist, she was also what served as a dispatcher in a small town like Marvel Creek. Add to that part-time mistress to Delf, and I wondered when she slept. Maybe while she and Delf were having sex.
I tried to disguise my voice by putting my hand over my mouth and talking between my fingers. I don’t know if that did anything at all. I told her there was a dead body in an empty house and gave the address. I told her there was a funny hat there as well, and it wasn’t salvageable. She didn’t seem to recognize my voice and made no comment about the hat.
I bought Rex a hamburger, hold the lettuce and tomato, and he woke up long enough to eat it. We all got in the car and started slowly making our way back to Marvel Creek, Rex sitting behind us, licking the backs of our heads. When we were about halfway to Marvel Creek, Rex lay down, rolled onto his back, and, with his paws in the air, went to sleep.
“Poor baby,” Leonard said, looking over the seat. “Eating that hamburger tired him out.”