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Chief Lumpy Doolan's squad car dipped to the left as he removed himself as gracefully as possible. Looking down, he noticed a shiny spot on his St. Isidore Police Department shirt where the steering wheel had been rubbing his belly.
Once again, Lumpy heard in his mind's ear Dr. Laura Champion reminding him that, "yes, Chief Doolan, you are officially obese," as she pointed to a wall poster. That pissed him off. The chief could read. There was no reason to remind him again, that the ratio of his body's height to its weight put him in the category of obese, at least according to the federal government.
"Like those marathon runners look so damn healthy," Doolan had growled around his second Wendy's bacon cheeseburger of that day's lunch hour.
Doolan's Number-Two, his second-in-command, Captain Lucy Zumiez shook her head and suppressed a smile.
"Lumpy is Lumpy," was what most of St. Isidore was fond of saying. Zumiez didn’t say it aloud, but she thought it. And, while Zumiez picked at her salad, she looked at Lumpy's shoulders.
The chief's shoulders and back were broad enough to be used as a screen for St. Isidore's Summer Movies In the Park on Saturday nights, if the town's portable display screen ever failed.
His physique was also strong enough to bear the weight of St. Isidore's problems which were numerous. After all, it was a small city whose only claim to fame was a place called The Suicide Forest: Where The World Comes To Die.
"You could also hit this guy with a table and not hurt him," Lucy told her father before being promoted off street patrol.
"And lots of people come to the Forest to kill," Lumpy told Zumiez after they had forged a slight bond of trust. That had been a couple of years ago.
Lately, Chief Doolan had shared, with his Number-Two, some of the weirder and even sick tales of what had gone on inside the Forest.
"So, it's haunted?" Captain Zumiez asked, again over a lunch of cheeseburgers with her boss.
"Well, I don't think 'haunted' is the right word," Lumpy said with mayonnaise dripping out of the corner of his mouth.
Zumiez touched the corner of her mouth with a napkin, hoping Lumpy would take the hint. As usual, he whiffed on subtlety, like the old-time baseball player Mendoza standing like a house by the side of the road looking at a called third strike.
"When you say something is 'haunted' it's like you mean the ghosts or spirits don't belong there. It's the same as saying the Living belong there, but the Dead don't,” the Chief said.
Capt. Zumiez restrained herself from wiping the mayo off her boss's mouth. She looked down at her salad and said, "So what you're saying is it's more like the Forest belongs to the Dead, and the Living don't belong there?"
"Yes, Captain Zumiez. That is just what I mean," Lumpy said as he took a napkin and wiped the mayo from his mouth with a flourish and a pinkie in the air, making the point that he'd known it was there all along.
Zumiez thought about that conversation again while she stood outside Glasscock Funeral Home waiting for Lumpy. Her skin had been crawling the past couple of days like she was that guy in the movie “Alien” waiting for the ugliest creature in the world to split her ribs and fly out of her chest.
At this moment, it was all Zumiez could do to keep the messenger of evil tidings under control. "It could be the End Days are here," she muttered under her breath, watching Lumpy try to get out of his car without tipping the vehicle over.
"How strong is Lumpy going to be this time?" she thought as he lumbered over to her post.
"Give me the bad news first," he said.
"Easy. It's all bad news, Chief," she said.
Chief Doolan didn't respond. He waited. As confident as Capt. Zumiez was, as sure as she was about keeping her job and maybe someday becoming chief, Lumpy could make her feel like a rooking with his stare.
"Okay," Zumiez gulped as she regained her composure. "We've got one corpse and one hearse missing. They're both gone."
"That's it?"
Now it was Zumiez's turn to be quiet and stare.
"Suspects? Anyone see anything?" Chief Doolan said, gesturing to the crowd in the funeral home's parking lot with a sweep of his arm.
"Yes and yes."
"Well, that isn't too much of a shock considering this crowd. Tell me more, Captain Zumiez."
"You really want to know."
"Straight answers, Captain, please. I am an old man. My doctor tells me if I don't put down the cheeseburgers I may not have much time left."
"Okay. Here it is," Zumiez said. "I've got three people who saw the hearse being driven off and they can all identify the perp who was driving it."
"Excellent. Who's our bad guy?"
Again, Zumiez waited. Lumpy took off his police chief's hat with is gold braid on the brim and ran his fingers through his thick grey hair.
Lumpy looked into the sun, blinked, held his hat in both hands in front of him, kind of a parade rest position, and raised his eyebrows as he looked Zumiez in the eye.
He waited.
She spoke.
"The corpse."
"The what?"
"The corpse, what?
"Was driving, Chief. The corpse, the missing body, the stiff, the dead guy; he was behind the wheel.
"Oh for the love of...." Chief Doolan said. "And do we know the name of this dead perp?"
"Yeah," Zumiez said, staying remarkably calm considering what she had just told Doolan.
"And?" said an increasing frustrated Chief Lumpy Doolan.
"The dead guy driving the hearse was Buck, the guy whose bungee cord broke on the Red Run River a couple of days ago."
"That's it?"
"One more thing."
"Of course. What?"
"We've got three more citizens who called 9-1-1 to tell us a Glasscock Funeral Home hearse was driving on South DeVos downtown."
"Our corpse behind the wheel?"
"Nope."
"So who was driving?"
"Nobody."
Lumpy Doolan, St. Isidore's finest, nearly crumbled. He put his head in his hands and almost wept.
He looked back up at his Number-Two, Captain Lucy Zumiez, and said, "I've always been afraid something like this would happen."
"Like what?"
"Like this."
"And this is?"
"They've found a way out of the Forest."