Blue Stew (Second Edition) (10 page)

“I thought it’d be funny.”

It was the kind of thing that Nigel had grown to expect Walter to say. It was becoming less and less true, here, though: Walter was eager to ask Officer Corey about the investigation.

Melisa pulled in at ten-past.

They said hello after Walter hopped into the front seat. As Melisa pulled away, she asked him how his day had been, Walter said it’d been fine, and then the rest of the drive was comprised of large blocks of awkward silence. Even Walter—usually immune to such social awkwardness—felt the faint tingling of real discomfort, and he found himself often focusing on the pleasant, clean smell of Melisa’s nice, new car.

The Corey’s house had been completed only five years ago—an infant in the scheme of the old town—but it was trying it’s hardest to fit in, fashioned to mimic an old colonial New England house. It was big, white, and boxy, with tall windows allowing light into tall rooms, and large doors leading out onto a wraparound porch.

Melisa pulled into the horseshoe driveway. They walked in silence along a neat stone walkway, between an assortment of well-groomed bushes around the house’s parameter, and up through the front door.

As Walter, per instruction, turned and slipped off his shoes near the door, Officer Corey’s voice greeted him from behind.

“Good, you’re here. We can eat. I’m
starving
.”

Walter turned back just in time to catch Officer Corey’s outstretched hand and shake it.

“Good to see you again, Mister Corey.”

“Yes, and much better circumstances this time, I’ll say.”

“Definitely.”

Tom Corey gestured for Walter to follow him into the house, in the direction Melisa had just gone, towards a scrumptious, savory smell. Walter, walking behind Officer Corey, idly marveled at how much more personable someone can seem when not in uniform.

“Melisa has got her signature meatloaf keeping warm in the oven, all ready to go.”

“Smells amazing,” said Walter as they went through a wide entranceway into a spacious—if somewhat barren—dining room.

“Here, sit,” said Officer Corey, pulling out a chair near one of the tall windows, which were enabling the light of a low sun to warm the room.

Walter sat and then so did Officer Corey. Moments later, Melisa came in and filled their plates with large, steaming servings of meatloaf and potatoes and gravy.

“Wow. If I knew
this
is how I’d be punished for ignoring a police officer’s instructions and sneaking off after him as he corners a homicidal lunatic, I’d have done it
years
ago.”

Melisa, taking her seat across from Walter, chuckled uncomfortably. Walter wished he hadn’t said anything.

“This is not about that,” Officer Corey said. “I’m still not happy about that. But, you went through a lot. You saw much worse than anyone should ever have to see. How are you getting along?”

Walter said convincingly—because it was true—“Honestly, as good as always.”

Officer Corey might’ve winced before he said, “Good.”

Officer Corey loaded his mouth with an impressive forkful of meatloaf. Once he managed to overpower it and bring it down, he turned to his wife, “Thank you, Mel. This is
just
what I needed after a long day.”

The opportunity came sooner than Walter had expected, and—with the most offhand tone he could muster—he pounced, “Long day? Anything doing with the investigation?”

Officer Corey nodded, “Yes, in fact.”

“Anything new?”

“Well,” and Officer Corey, never one to beat around the bush (or concern himself with big city terms like “due process” when it came to official criminal investigations), explained promptly what they had found earlier that day in the unused hayfield.

Walter eagerly tackled every detail and extracted Officer Corey’s best speculation. More succinctly than he had for Eugene, Officer Corey found himself outlining his new best theory, in which Sutherland had been the unlucky host of the final act of a suicide cult of before-now unprecedented lunacy. He said, with a glimmer of pride, how the detectives had responded favorably to his new theory, once they themselves had combed over the surprisingly innocuous ground zero and found no indication of coercion or physical struggle.

“Were there any traces of drugs in or around the cars?” Walter asked, before Officer Corey had even touched on this aspect of the theory.

“Yes. Well, no, not
there
, but the detectives said that the results of the blood work they were having done came back, and that there appeared to be some kind of . . .
painkiller
mixture in all their systems.”

“From the bottle you found in the Jeep?”

“That’s not clear.”

Walter was on the verge of saying something to the effect of, “I can’t imagine doing shit like that on downers,” but then didn’t, and instead he just nodded. It would be too obvious, he felt, that the sentiment came from first-hand experience.

It was true, at any rate. Every time Walter had had a chance to pop painkillers, he would invariably become something of a delirious slug—far removed from a rampaging madman. Alternately, if Officer Corey had said that they’d found heavy doses of a methamphetamine mixture in their systems, that probably would’ve sealed the deal in Walter’s head right there; convinced him of the validity of this new suicide cult theory.

As it was, at the end of the dinner, Walter left with some sense of a missing link, though he had zero idea what that link could be.

T
he next day, Walter couldn’t decide if his nagging discontent with Officer Corey’s theoretical scenario was real or just a subconscious invention. He was aware of his bias: Walter did not want the intrigue of the wild night to dry up anytime soon, and a sound explanation that initiated no further investigation
was
his worst-case scenario.

Walter hadn’t thought about it, not yet, but the truth was he had not drank a single alcoholic beverage or ingested any illicit substances—or generally done anything too reckless—since the fateful night. The thrill of the mystery had provided an adequate—if supremely unlikely—diversion from his usual methods of escaping his deep mental ruts.

Like most novice addicts, Walter was in denial of many things, one of them being that he’d been avoiding returning to his dreary abode, owing to the temptations he had stored in his fridge and, especially, in a Ziploc bag under his bedside drawer. Unfortunately, that day at work, Walter kept thinking about the path Officer Corey had started laying out, leading towards a clean resolution . . . which would allow the night, before too long, to fade into the background . . . The notion had Walter thinking, maybe it
was
getting to be time for him to return home . . . This notion was met with a mixture of dark yearning and nausea.

With these inklings of his normal, old life creeping back over him, it might not come as a surprise that Walter would try to invent kinks in the narrative that Officer Corey was pushing, to drag out the powerful mystery.

While Walter was unloading a heavy crate of fresh corn into the appropriate section of the local produce aisle, a man joined him in the otherwise empty aisle. He started walking towards Walter, a basket of groceries in hand, inspecting the fruit and vegetables on display.

Walter didn’t acknowledge the man—not beyond being aware of him in his peripheral vision—until he spoke, “
Those
look tasty.”

Walter looked up. The face that stared back at him was pale, frail, and lacking in expressive features, surrounded by long, unkempt brown hair. On the man’s left cheek there were three deep, narrow scars. A sudden mental flash to the man in the Jeep had Walter flinch: these facial marks obviously weren’t as fresh or as plentiful, but there still was something eerily
familiar
about them.

Walter now responded, “Yeah.”

“Didn’t your mom ever tell you it’s not polite to stare?”

It took Walter another dumb second to realize how conspicuously he had been ogling the man’s scars.

“Oh. I’m sorry. Sometimes I just don’t know what I’m doing . . .”

“You and everyone else, friend.”

Walter frowned as the man grabbed two corncobs and then moved on.

Five minutes later, Walter caught Kall Chansky on a down moment managing a checkout aisle.

“Hey Kall—who was the dude with the gnarly scars a minute ago?”

“Timothy Glass?”

“That was
Timothy?
Man, I guess I haven’t seen him in a while,” even as he spoke, his brain was already whirring. If Walter remembered right, Timothy had a house a mile from Paul Stanley’s, across the river. He was a notable outsider in Sutherland’s close-knit community . . . supposedly he had a PHD in some scientific field . . . Walter seemed to think that it was from Harvard or some other high-profile school . . . And . . . wasn’t
he
the man whose wife had died when her car had rolled on some black ice, only a month or so after they’d moved into town?

“He’s the one whose wife died in that accident a few winters ago, right?”

Kall nodded somberly, “Yep. Moved out of Boston to start a new life with her, and then . . .
bam
. A life down the crapper. ”

“
Damn
. Do you know what happened to his face?”

“Said while he was trying to pull a tangle out of his new gas-powered line-cutter. Not sure how he managed to get it to rev with the business end in his face . . . also don’t know why he didn’t try to get it stitched up properly so it doesn’t scar like that.” Kall laughed, “I made him promise that he’d bring the cutter to me next time if he has any trouble with it, free of charge.”

“That’s nice of you,” Walter said, distracted.

It certainly was an odd explanation, even though he
had
heard of all sorts of freak accidents with farm machinery throughout his country life. Still, Walter’s imagination was too active at the time to appreciate this truth, and so, when he went back to work, images of Timothy’s and Victim Number One’s faces kept bouncing off of each other in his head.

There
were
similarities on a superficial level, and Walter, while stacking hay bales for most of the afternoon, worked hard to connect them beyond that.

His best theory was that Timothy had originally been
part
of the masochistic suicide cult—perhaps he had even nominated the field near his house as the site of their final act?—but he had gotten cold feet after only three slashes. Walter liked the idea, and so he polished the scenario in his head, intending to share his thoughts with Officer Corey the next time he saw him.

He would see Officer Corey that night, in fact, for unrelated reasons.

Henry swung by to pick Walter up sometime past four.

“Where am I taking you?”

The intrigue had been reignited in Walter—by manual force, maybe—and the thought of returning to his place now made him sick more than anything.

“I guess for another night I’ll stay with Nigel, if that’s still easier for you. I’ll have to figure things out with the insurance over the weekend, and get a new car somehow . . .”

•   •   •

Walter was on the toilet when he heard the phone ring in Nigel’s kitchen.

He heard Nigel plod down the hall past the bathroom door and pick up the phone.