Chapter Eleven

 

 

“Where’d you find him?” The words burned his throat, the thought tormented his brain.

The sheriff glanced at Maggie, then answered Brax. “The gorge.” He pointed off to his right. “The chickens found him. They were out there dirt biking.”

“On a Wednesday?” Brax didn’t know why he bothered to ask.

“Chloe gives ’em Tuesdays and Wednesdays off,” Teesdale explained. “He musta fallen from one of the trails up above. Lots of bat caves and stuff in that area.”

“He was really out splunking,” Maggie whispered.

“Honey, why don’t you let me talk to the sheriff for a minute?” Brax tried to steer her from the front door, but her feet remained secured like a rock.

“How long was he there?” she asked.

Brax’s heart broke.

The sheriff twisted his hat into a misshapen mass. “Yesterday. Morning. I think.” He looked at Brax, helpless, silently asking for guidance.

Brax had none to give, but he briefly shook his head. The less said in front of Maggie, the better. He had questions, but the answers could wait. Maggie’s feelings were more important now. “Give me your card. I’ll call you.”

Teesdale stuck his hand in his khakis’ front pocket, then the back. Finally he found the small stack in his shirt pocket and peeled one off.

Brax reached around Maggie and shut the door as the sheriff walked away.

“I’m tired,” she said, staring at the floor. “I think I’ll take a nap.”

“Yeah, yeah, good idea, sweetheart.”

He hadn’t a clue what was a good or a bad idea, hadn’t a clue what to do for her. He’d handled grief so many times, he’d have called himself an expert, but he’d never figured on handling Maggie’s. When his father died, he’d grieved, they’d all grieved together—Mom, Maggie, and him, comforted one another. But this was in a class of its own.

Sudden, unexpected death always was.

 

* * * * *

 

He can fall off the edge of the earth and die for all I care.

Maggie curled into a ball beneath the covers, making herself as tiny, as unnoticeable as possible.

Tyler had left her alone in her room. He couldn’t stand to be near her. How could she blame him, even if he was her brother? What kind of wife told her husband to drop dead? She covered her ears, but the words wouldn’t go away. How many times had she said it when she got so angry her thoughts spewed out like Linda Blair spitting pea soup in The Exorcist? Oh God, oh God. She didn’t even have the excuse that she was possessed. She didn’t have any excuse. She was a terrible, horrible wife. Like a woman on one of those detective shows who fed her husband antifreeze.

Drop dead, Carl!

Her last words to him. When he’d crawled out of bed the morning after, she’d pretended to be asleep, hadn’t even opened her eyes. Hadn’t taken one last look or said one last thing. Something nice. Something sweet.

Something to remedy Drop dead, Carl!

And he had dropped dead. Just like she told him to.

Her belly cramped. She curled around the pain, nursed it. She’d had nothing more than coffee since the tea party. The caffeine ate a hole in the lining of her stomach. Good, good. Penance. Payback. What kind of wife? Oh God, what kind of wife?

I’m gonna kill him.

Throw his parts down his goddamn outhouse holes.

I’m gonna Bobbitize him.

I’m gonna stuff his tiny little dick down the garbage disposal and grind it up so they won’t be able to sew it back on.

She pulled the pillow over her head, but she couldn’t shut out the words. Her own words, her own horrible, terrible, unforgivable words. Oh God.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.

The pillow snuffed out her breath for a moment, but then she found she could drag in air through the cotton fibers. She pressed the pillow tight over her mouth, but still she could breathe. Mashing both fists against the cotton covering her mouth and nose, she finally got what she wanted. She couldn’t breathe. If felt so good in a panicky, unreal sort of way.

You’re a bad, bad woman, Maggie Felman. May God forgive you.

She deserved to die.

Her legs started to move as if they didn’t even belong to her. Her feet rub-rub-rubbed against each other, then they twitched back and forth on the sheet, faster, faster, as if trying to run away. Her head tipped down, her mouth opened, and a tiny inhale of hot air filled her lungs. Then her hands tossed the pillow aside, and she gasped and gasped.

God, she hadn’t even been able to hold herself down for five seconds. She couldn’t even stick it out until her lungs hurt and she saw spots before her eyes. Isn’t that what happened?

Had Carl been in pain? She didn’t want to think about it, but she couldn’t squeeze her brain shut any more than she could hold a pillow over her face until she suffocated. Hear no evil and see no evil were easy. All you had to do was shut your eyes and cover your ears. Thinking no evil was harder. And speak no evil? She should have learned to shut her mouth a long time ago.

But Carl knew she was a drama queen. A forty-two-year-old drama queen. He knew she screamed and shouted and said all sorts of things she didn’t mean. Why, once, when her dad was dying of cancer and she’d gotten mad at him about...something, she’d told him to drop dead. Her cheeks had caught on fire and that surrealistic I-can’t-believe-I-just-said-that feeling almost made her heart seize up. She couldn’t picture the look on his face or in his eyes anymore. She’d blocked it out.

“I didn’t mean it, Daddy. I didn’t mean it.” She couldn’t remember why she’d gotten mad. Everyone knew you weren’t supposed to get mad at people who were dying. What could have made her so angry that she’d forgotten his disease for that split second?

The episode should have cured her. Normal people would have taken their medicine, and never done the like again. But she’d never been normal, and she hadn’t been cured. Diarrhea mouth, Carl called her. But Carl knew that, and he knew she didn’t mean all that stuff.

He loved her anyway. He wasn’t leaving her. He was out looking for caves when it happened. It. The unthinkable.

Was there such a thing as karma? Like maybe because she’d said it so many times—because she’d said it to her father who was dying—the cosmos or God or whoever was out there decided she needed to learn a lesson, so they tipped Carl into the gorge.

She grabbed the pillow she’d tossed aside and clasped it to her chest. Fingernails biting into her palms, she hugged that pillow as tight as tight could be.

Why did she do these things? Why did she say them? Why did she get so angry?

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.” She chanted under her breath, over and over, as if that could make the impossible possible. Like maybe if she said it enough, the cosmos and karma and God would bring Carl back. And she’d never ever tell him to drop dead again. She’d never say it to anyone, not another living soul. Not even a dead one.

Her thoughts stopped whirling around and around. She looked at the ceiling.

“I promise I’ll never say it again.”

The house was very quiet, as if it were listening, waiting. She held her breath. In the afternoon, the wind sometimes picked up. The old antenna on the roof—the one Carl kept saying he would take down since they got satellite—usually creaked. Back and forth, back and forth. Today it was eerily silent.

“I promise, I promise.” She crossed her heart.

There were always noises in the desert, yet today, there was nothing. As silent as a tomb.

She sat up, leaning back on her hands. Her wrists hurt, the angle awkward.

“Please, God.”

The clock had stopped ticking. Carl found it at an old junk shop, and he liked it better because it lacked a snooze button. She remembered him winding it yesterday morning as he sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes closed, she could almost hear the whir of the springs as he cranked. It should have been good for a week. But the clock had stopped.

She scrambled to the edge of the bed, reached down, grabbed her slippers, and yanked them on.

The clock had stopped ticking. It was a sign.

“Tyler,” she called, yanking open the bedroom door.

It was a sign. God had listened.

The man they found in the gorge wasn’t Carl.

 

* * * * *

 

Simone watered her cacti. They said you weren’t supposed to water cacti, but sometimes guilt overwhelmed her and she gave them a little drink. Especially on hot, dusty afternoons like this.

She’d tried writing, but her erotic fantasies seemed to have dried up. She’d been reminded of the story she’d sent Carl. She’d surfed the Internet for a while, but found nothing more entertaining than the enticing detail that Lindsay Lohan had worn blue panties under white slacks and the thong showed right through. That was the headliner on her service provider’s home page, which was above “Coed’s kidnapping caught on tape” and “Son decapitates mother with sword.” Jeez.

She didn’t hold out much hope that kidnapping and murder would headline above the color of a actress’s panties any time soon.

Simone had learned about blue underwear and white pants when she was nine and Johnny Bremerton told everyone to check out her butt. Her mother had not been pleased. Suffice it to say, Simone never wore blue underwear again.

The color combo would undoubtedly become a new fashion fad just as it was cool for girls to show their bra straps. And it would still headline over murder and mayhem.

Her watering done, Simone cranked off the faucet and curled the hose beneath it. Behind her, something creaked. Creak, creak. The hair on her arms rose. Bent over as she was, her bottom felt exposed in the short jean skirt. She whirled, crouching like an action figure in a fight-to-the-death battle, and shrieked.

Jason Lafoote sat in her rocking lawn chair. Creak, creak. Forearms stretched along the armrest, he rocked, watching her with hooded eyes.

“How do you always manage to sneak up on me like that?” Her breath rate dropped back to normal. Almost.

“I didn’t sneak. You just didn’t hear me over the conversation you were having with yourself.”

“You can leave now. I’d rather talk to myself.”

“I came by to offer my condolences.” Jason rose from the chair, though its rock continued for a few moments more.

She eyed him warily. He had something up his sleeve if the lip curl and that smug look in his sneaky eyes meant anything. “Condolences for what?”

“Why, the loss of Carl Felman, of course.”

God. Carl had run away. Maggie must have found a note. Or something. How did Jason know so quickly? And why did he see fit to bring her the news personally? “I’m sure it’s all a mistake. He’ll be back.”

“Not unless he’s Lazarus rising from the dead.” The man couldn’t help sounding tricky and smarmy.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard?”

Prickles of unease raced up and down her arms. In the hot afternoon sun, a sweat broke out on her upper lip. “Heard what?” Her voice cracked in the middle.

He rushed to her side, putting a hand on her arm as if he thought she might faint.

She jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Oh Simone, I’m so sorry, I thought you knew. I thought everyone knew.”

She didn’t want to know. It wasn’t true. “Know what?” she whispered.

“They found Carl’s body out in a gorge somewhere. He fell. He’s dead.”

“No.” She bent over, clutched her stomach, felt the hot dog she’d eaten for lunch rise up into her throat.

He stroked her back. She hated it, but she didn’t have the strength to throw him off. No, no, no. Not Carl. Goldstone was safe. Nobody got hurt in Goldstone. “There’s a mistake.”

“I heard it from the sheriff.”

“There’s got to be a mistake,” she said again, a whisper to herself, a plea to some higher power.

“I’m sorry, Simone. I didn’t think. I shouldn’t have told you like that.”

She hated him for doing it. “I have to see Maggie.”

“I’ll drive you over.”

She stood and backed away from him, almost tripping off the edge of the patio. “Go away.”

“But Simone, I’ve thought it through. I’m going to dedicate a wing of the hotel to Carl. The Felman wing. And—”

She slashed her arms in the air, shouted at him. “Shut up about the hotel. Nobody cares about the hotel. There isn’t going to be any hotel.”

“But Simone, please, I want to help you.”

“Go away.” She drew in a deep breath. “Go. Away.”

Then she shoved past him into the house, slamming the sliding door and locking it as she ran to answer the ringing phone.

At first, Simone couldn’t find the cordless. Then she dived between the couch cushions from where the sound emanated, grabbing the phone with both hands and holding it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Simone.”

“Oh God, Brax. It’s not true, is it? Tell me it’s not true.”

After a long sigh, he said, “Come over. Maggie needs me to do some things for her, but I’m not leaving her here alone.”

Oh God, it was true. If it wasn’t, he would have asked her what she meant. “But how? What happened? I don’t understand.”

“I’ll tell you when you get here. And Simone, bring Della with you. The more friends Maggie has with her now, the better.”

He hung up. She clutched the phone to her ear another minute, an eternity. She wanted to cry, she had from the moment that awful man had thrown out his Lazarus allusion. She’d had five minutes to get used to the idea.

She never would. Carl couldn’t be dead. The image was so frighteningly...forever. Like marriage was supposed to be. Till death do us part.

God, she had to get to Maggie right away.

 

* * * * *

 

Brax had called Teesdale, forcing Maggie to listen on the extension as the sheriff said he’d done the ID of Carl’s body himself, and no, there was no doubt in his mind that the chickens had found Carl and none other.

Maggie wouldn’t believe. Guilt drove her insistence.

She’d said some shitty things about Carl, today and last night. She’d also said some shitty things to Carl. She hadn’t cried as she’d told Brax, in fact, she’d sat backbone straight, as if the confession were penance.

Now she wanted to prove it wasn’t Carl they’d found.

Brax couldn’t allow her to ID Carl. He’d promised to go himself, to do it for her. She’d agreed. But he’d needed someone to make sure Maggie stayed put. The heart-stopping thought that she’d follow him forced his phone call to Simone. He wanted Della for added pressure. Simone might prove to be a softie, but Della would stand steadfast.

“Do not let her leave the house” was his last command before he headed out to Goldstone’s county buildings. The stricken look on Simone’s face was too much to bear.

Teesdale met him in the front office, a four-by-four, white-walled square with an opening behind which the dispatcher took 911 emergencies, service calls, and otherwise acted as the sheriff’s administrative aide.

“This isn’t necessary.”

Brax put up his hand. “It is.”

“It’s a bitch when the next of kin doesn’t want to accept what’s happened. Usually guilt or hoping for a miracle.”

“It’s neither.” It was both, but he didn’t like Teesdale’s notion that he could talk to Brax as if he were just another cop. Goddammit, at this point, he was next of kin. “Let’s review the case.” First. He didn’t relish getting down to the details after he’d seen Carl.

Teesdale turned, led the way to his office, took a seat behind a desk cluttered with a mess of files and disorganized piles of paper, and indicated the spare chair for Brax. The letters had long since worn off his grimed keyboard, and greasy fingerprints on the computer monitor obscured anything that might have been visible from Brax’s vantage point on the other side of the desk.

“You know most of it,” Teesdale began. “Hard to say until the medical examiner takes a look, but I’d venture he’d been there along the lines of twenty-four hours.”

Despite having no training as a doctor, there were signs a cop picked up from experience. Brax didn’t ask for clarification. He’d see for himself soon enough. “Your most likely scenario?”

“Lost his balance and fell. Even from the bottom where we found him, you could see skid marks down the side. It’s not a straight fall, but it’s steep and rocky as hell.”

“Speculation on cause of death?”

“Don’t like to speculate.”

Brax understood, as much as it sounded like a cover-your-ass comment. “Fair enough. You want to tell me about the truck?”

Teesdale shrugged noncommittally. “I was getting to that.”

“Luckily everyone in town knows about your finding Carl’s truck or I might not have heard that detail.” He doubted Teesdale would have bothered to tell him about it otherwise. A guy with a vaguely familiar face had given Brax the tidbit when he’d paused at the stop sign on the other side of the highway.

“You’d have asked.”

Teesdale was right about that. But Brax didn’t like the impression that the man wasn’t forthcoming. “Where exactly did you find it?”

“Bottom of the trailhead just south of town. Lots of hiking trails up into those hills. You’d be amazed how pretty it is in the spring. First time we ever lost a hiker, though.”

Brax realized he hadn’t driven out far enough last night. He’d been looking for Carl’s truck parked in a floozy’s driveway, as Maggie had suggested.

“Think he was dead before he hit the bottom?” Could he have saved him if he hadn’t assumed Carl was plundering a neighbor’s wife instead of sniffing wildflowers.

Christ, he could not, absolutely would not go back to tell Maggie that Carl had taken hours to die, all alone, at the bottom of some godforsaken gorge.

“Can’t speculate,” Teesdale said again.

No more of an answer than Brax expected, but a piss-poor one anyway. He put his hand on his knees and shoved to his feet. “Let’s do it. Where’s your morgue?”

Teesdale quirked his mouth. “We don’t have a morgue here. Hell, Goldstone doesn’t have a hospital, not even a clinic, let alone a morgue. We have to take him up to Bullhead.”

“You should have told me. I would have met you there.”

Teesdale spread his hands. “He’s not there yet.”

“If he’s not in the morgue in Bullhead, then where the hell is he?”

The sheriff shrugged. “The basement.”

Brax pointed down without saying a word.

“Yeah. ’Bout the coldest place we have around here.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Hey, we aren’t some big city department with all the frills, bells and whistles like some sheriffs are used to.”

“I haven’t got a morgue in my facility, but I still wouldn’t store bodies in my basement.” Christ, it was almost laughable, would have been for sure if it wasn’t Carl lying down there.

“They’re coming tonight.”

“So why did you move him out of the gorge?” For that matter, what the hell had they transported him in? Surely not the back of a department cruiser. Worse, what evidence had they destroyed in the process?

Whoa. This was no murder investigation.

“Critters,” Teesdale said as he led Brax through the jail proper. Six cells, all empty except for the pungent aroma of a heavy disinfectant which failed to expunge the underlying scent of urine. Brax hated to admit it, but though his department and budget were most likely multiple times the size of Teesdale’s, he couldn’t rid his own facility of the smell despite the king’s ransom in county funds he’d authorized for disinfectants and cleaning crews.

And he was dwelling on the prevalent fragrance to avoid dwelling on the critter comment.

Brax could only pray that Maggie was right and Carl wasn’t in Teesdale’s basement. How the hell was he supposed to bring up the subject of critters with her?

The sheriff started down a rickety set of curving metal stairs that shook under his feet. Brax followed, the winding effect and the subtle shake enough to make a drunk queasy. The only light that followed them down came from the eight-foot-high windows from the floor above.

“You sure you want to do this?”

“She’s my sister.”

“Yeah.” Teesdale pulled on a string hanging above his head.

The body lay on a metal workbench against the back wall. A blue sheet draped the man-size shape, hanging down the side of the bench.

“Okay, stand out of the light. I’m only gonna uncover one side.”

“I can’t tell from a look at one side, Teesdale.”

“I’m telling you, the other side isn’t going to help you identify him.”

Brax had seen his share of horrific sights. Carl could be no worse. “Pull it back all the way. My sister is counting on a decent identification.”

Sometimes those horrific things happened to people he knew. He remembered the last time, his friend, the sound of that autopsy buzz saw, or whatever Hyram had called it. He should remember, he’d heard the name more than once, but he didn’t.

He could not explain to Maggie why they’d have to subject Carl’s body to that indignity. Then again, Nevada laws and regulations might be different. Maybe he could get Teesdale to forgo the autopsy in this case since it was clearly an accident.

“Holy shit.”

Teesdale had pulled back the sheet while he’d been thinking.

“Critters,” the sheriff said again.

“Christ.” They’d made fast work of the left side of Carl’s face, yet the right remained completely intact. Like a Thanksgiving turkey where you’d carved the left breast and saved the right one for tomorrow night’s dinner.

Only critters weren’t so neat about it. Nor had they picked him clean.

Brax drew in a breath, more to ease the ache in his chest than for the air itself. Though there was evidence of skin sloughing, the body hadn’t reached putrefaction stage, and the smell was still manageable, perhaps because Carl had been out in the open instead of a hot, humid place. Desert air was dry.

If you didn’t look at the left side of his face, you could almost think he was...

Not in a million years did Carl look as if he was sleeping. The dead just didn’t look as if they were sleeping, no matter how many times you saw that on TV or read it in a book. Or heard it in a mortuary. They looked dead. Even without the ravaged half face. Slack jaw and drooping facial muscles robbed the body of every last ounce of humanity. They also smelled dead, even before decomposition set in. A body lost control of all muscles. A body had to be cleaned up.

“I gotta go.”

“Need a bucket, Braxton?” It wasn’t said unkindly, but with the knowledge that when tragedy happened to someone close, when the victim was family, it didn’t matter how many goddamn times you’d seen death. Distance changed perception.

He still didn’t need a bucket.

“I’ll call you about the arrangements. We need to talk about whether an autopsy’s actually necessary.”

“Oh, it’s necessary,” Teesdale said, bristling.

Brax realized he hadn’t phrased it correctly. Maybe he should have begged Teesdale not to put Maggie through it, though forgoing autopsy warred with his cop sensibilities. A cop always wanted to rule out foul play. Things set better with an M.E.’s rubber stamp.

Teesdale held up his hand before Brax could reword. “And it’s my call.” He pointed to his badge. “See that? Little lettering? County Coroner?”

As a brother, Brax knew he should fight for his sister, spare her the pain of knowing her husband’s body would be dissected like a frog in biology class. As a cop, he knew he should look more closely, ease Carl’s head to the side, peruse the wounds on both the skull and other areas of the body. He’d let himself be caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Brotherly duty or cop common sense?

For the moment, neither choice mattered.

Right now, one person consumed him. Maggie. Duty to his sister dictated he tell her that an open casket service would be a bad idea. He could almost handle that task. It was the other fact tearing his chest open.

The last words Maggie had said to her husband would forever be Drop dead.