Greely's Cove (13 page)

Mitch’s vision began to blur. The nausea sharpened again, and a ghastly stink flooded his nostrils and throat, seemingly welling up from his own gullet. He staggered against the gurney, jarring Lorna Trosper’s body, flinching from a bolt of pain in his chest.

“Fuck a bald-headed duck, Cannibal must’ve really hurt me!” he wheezed, almost aloud. He righted himself and somehow managed to stand up straight on watery legs. He became aware of the darkness behind his eyes, blacker now than it had ever been, invading the edges of his vision, inflicting appalling glimpses into a deep well within his own brain, a well he had visited under the guidance of a doctor named Hadrian Craslowe. And hidden in that well, secure in its lair of bottomless darkness, was—
something.
Something or someone alive, alien and yet a part of Mitch Nistler.

The stink became a taste now—the same one he had suffered upon waking from yesterday’s hypnosis session with Craslowe. It had gagged him then, had made him want to vomit. But now, vile as it was, the taste had a strangely clarifying effect. He saw things he had never seen before and possibilities that he had never dared contemplate.

Who owns Mitch Nistler
? asked a voice from deep within the well.

Not Corley the Cannibal Strecker. And not Matthew Kronmiller. Not even Hadrian Craslowe.

Who holds the papers on Mitch Nistler?

Even with his newfound clarity he could not answer the question. But he now knew something better. The answer didn’t matter. Just as nothing in Cannibal’s world mattered. And nothing in Kronmiller’s, either.
(Craslowe’s?)
What mattered was the
hunger.

His gaze floated over the dead form of Lorna Trosper and lingered on the cold, gray-white flesh of her face and neck; the bluish hillocks of her breasts with their flaccid, colorless nipples; the pitiable ridges of her rib cage and the sunken depression of her stomach and abdomen.

He stepped back from the gurney, breathing with great, spittle-laden gasps.
God, could I really do it?

He was alone. Kronmiller would not come back, for he was glued to a television set at home, watching golf. The other three employees of the funeral home were family types, jealous of their precious weekends, and none would darken the door of the mortuary until Monday. Until tomorrow.

He had until tomorrow.

Mitch Nistler had assisted Matt Kronmiller in something like 500 embalmings over the course of six years at the Chapel of the Cove. He knew the procedures, the high and low drainage points on a body, the use of instruments like the motorized aspirator, the trocar, and the gravity percolator. He knew how to apply the various hardening compounds, sealers, and preservatives that embalmers use to guarantee a reasonable “viewing life” for a corpse. And he prided himself on his skill with the cosmetic dyes, humectants, and perfumes that render a corpse presentable, if not beautiful. Though he lacked formal training, he considered himself a good embalmer. He knew that he could make Lorna Trosper physically beautiful again.

But first things first.

A “cremation” must take place. The cremation of an empty casket. And the packing of ashes into the “suitable vessel” that Lindsay Moreland had chosen from Kronmiller’s impressive selection.

No one would ever know the difference.

Mitch Nistler would have his woman, and she would give him what no living woman ever had.

By noon Carl Trosper was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. He and sixty other volunteers had spent more than three hours tramping through the thick undergrowth astride Bond Road, beating back the rain-heavy branches of sword fern and birch and pine, slogging through dank patches of tawny grass and climbing gingerly over fallen logs oozy with moss. They had scoured the ground for the smallest clue to Teri Zolten’s fate: a scrap of clothing, a piece of jewelry, a billfold, or (God forbid) a bloody fragment of Teri herself. Pressing ever deeper into the woods they had filled the swirling, foggy morning with their voices, calling out Teri’s name in the withering hope that she was near enough and well enough to hear. The voices that had sailed higher than all others, echoed most strongly and desperately through the tangle of trees and brush, had belonged to Sandy and Ken Zolten.

Shortly after noon Carl left the search party, thoroughly dispirited. He caught a ride back to the Old Schooner, where he went to the room that Teri had rented him the night before. After shedding his soaking clothes and taking a hot shower, he dressed in khaki slacks and a heavy Norwegian sweater, then went down to the parking lot and got into his rented car for the short drive to 116 Second Avenue.

The journey gave him little time to reacclimatize himself to his own private troubles, and too soon he was turning into the driveway of the little white bungalow that he and Lorna had bought just one week after their marriage. Too soon he was climbing the steps of the shaded front porch and pressing the doorbell button, hearing footfalls coming to answer. As the door opened he glanced around and noticed that among the cars parked out front was a flaming-red Jaguar.

Lindsay Moreland ushered him in without mentioning his abrupt departure from The Coffee Shoppe, though, her blue eyes glinted with assurance that their dealings were far from over. To Carl’s surprise, the little house was abuzz with activity. Lorna’s friends—a handful of watercolor artists, a poet or two, some neighbors—had turned up to help with the chores of cleaning and packing.

She shepherded him through the whirl of activity and introduced him stiffly to each one, raising her voice to be heard above the noise of a vacuum cleaner. Carl received condolences and warm handshakes, heard how much they would all miss Lorna, was promised help with any problem or chore that he might confront. They all seemed eager to show their love for the woman he had left more than eight years earlier.

Notable among the band of housecleaners was Hannabeth Hazelford. In place of her orange slicker and flowing silk scarves, she wore a blue jumpsuit and rubber gloves, but she still sported ridiculously heavy makeup and the blond Dolly Parton wig, which now sagged low on her forehead, slightly askew. She greeted him in her melodious British clip and shook his hand firmly, leaving cleanser suds in his palm.

“I do hope you’re not put off that I organized this gathering,” she said to Carl, blinking her luminous, turquoise eyes. “I knew that Lorna’s closest friends would want to do
something
to help, if only to scrub the floors and carry out the rubbish. It certainly was not our intention to intrude into your hour of grief.”

Carl gave a thin smile and glanced around at the busy people who manned mops, dust rags, buckets of suds, and scrub brushes. “I’m very grateful, Miss Hazelford—”

“Tut-tut, you’ve done it again! It’s
Hannie.
At my age a woman requires no reminder that she’s a dried-up old spinster.”

Carl saw Lindsay Moreland roll her eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Hannie. What you’re doing is really very nice. I appreciate it.”

His former mother-in-law, Nora Moreland, came into the living room from the kitchen, wearing a bandanna around her head and a flowery apron spattered with soap suds. She made straight for Carl and, to his astonishment, hugged him hard.

“It’s good to see you, Carl,” she said with a slight quaver. “Lindsay tells me you plan to move back here and that you want Jeremy to live with you. Under the circumstances, I think you’re doing the right thing.”

“Mother,” interrupted Lindsay, “the issue is far from settled.”

Carl sensed a budding alliance with Nora, a woman he had never cottoned to. Nora had not deemed him a good match for her daughter because of his middle-class roots. Carl had thought her uppity and elitist, a country-club bitch who was preoccupied with scaling the higher reaches of Seattle’s social scene. But now she was hugging him with genuine warmth and shared sorrow, reaching out to him through the bars of old animosities. Maybe he had been wrong about her. Perhaps she had changed. Or perhaps
he
had changed.

“Thank you, Nora,” he answered, incurring a dark stare from Lindsay. “Having your support means a lot.”

“No doubt you want to see your son,” said Nora. “We gave him the job of cleaning his room, but he’s probably finished by now.” She nodded toward the short hallway that offered access to the bedrooms, the bath, Lorna’s studio. One of the doors was closed: Jeremy’s.

“How is he?” asked Carl, suddenly jittery about coming face-to-face with the issue of his own loins. “How’s he taking all this?”

“Remarkably well, I’d say,” said Lindsay. “In a way, Lorna’s death may be a blessing for him.”

“
Lindsay!
For the love of God, how can you say such a thing?” Nora was horrified by her daughter’s remark. “How can losing his mother be a blessing to a thirteen-year-old boy?”

“You saw the condition of this place, Mother,” said Lindsay. “It must have been hell living here. Lorna must have slowly lost all control of herself—changed into another person. She was never the world’s best housekeeper, but my God, she cared about her furniture, her paintings....”

“She was obviously very
ill,
” said Nora, near tears.

“That’s exactly my point, Mother. Jeremy watched her become someone he didn’t know, someone who chopped up chairs and gouged holes in the walls. She even defaced her own paintings.”

Carl’s eyes darted around the room: There were holes in the plaster, as though made with a hammer, and pieces of dismembered chairs and tables stacked here and there, ready to be carted away. The sofa bed that had always stood near the picture window, now in the arms of two men who were easing it out the front door under Hannie’s supervision, was a tatter of frenzied slashing, its stuffing leaking through its wounds in gobs. Heaped in the corners of every room were Glad bags jammed with refuse—much of it organic, judging from the ripe odor that hung amid the scents of cleanser and room deodorant. And stacked in low columns were the empty earthen pots that had housed Lorna’s beloved plants—her artillery ferns, philodendrons, umbrella plants, the “green babies” she had nursed with unswerving devotion and even named, now yellowed and brittle and stuffed into cardboard boxes for disposal.

But most obscene, most heartbreaking, were the
paintings
: frames broken, glass smashed, paper ripped and defiled in a seemingly purposeful way.

“God, what would drive somebody to this?” breathed Carl, shaking his head, leaving unsaid his belief that Lorna could not have wreaked such travesties, especially upon the paintings.

“The same thing that drives a person to suicide,” answered Lindsay with a hint of reproach in her voice. “My sister got sick, and her life became a hell. This
house
became a hell. That’s what I meant when I said that maybe Lorna’s death is a blessing for Jeremy: Their hell is finally over. At least we can be thankful for that much.”

Hannie Hazelford interrupted with word that a neighbor had offered his pickup truck for hauling the slaughtered furniture to the county landfill, and she had authorized the job. The house would be virtually bereft of anything to sit on, sleep on, eat on. But not to worry: Hannie owned a shed full of perfectly serviceable furniture—surplus from the much larger house she had owned “out East” before moving to her comfortable Tudor-style cottage in Greely’s Cove. She had ordered transport of the furniture from the shed to here, to be used as long as needed.

“Miss Haz—I mean
Hannie
, that’s really generous of you,” said Carl, intending to protest so lavish a favor, “but I couldn’t let you—”

“Nonsense!” Hannie declared, assuming the ramrod posture that evinced British authority, the conquest of Hindu kingdoms, the victory at Trafalgar. “It’s all oak—old but very sturdy, just the thing to stand up to whatever punishment a teenaged boy can dish out, I daresay. And quite presentable, too. You can’t very well eat off the floor, now can you?”

“I guess not,” allowed Carl, feeling foolish in the role of the taker of charity. “But I’ll send it back to you as soon I’ve brought in some furniture of our own.”

“Very well, then,” said Hannie. “Let’s get on with it. We’ve still much to do, much to do.”

Yes,
thought Carl,
much to do.

Like quitting his job in Washington, D.C., and shipping his household goods west.

Like mucking through the process of probating Lorna’s will (assuming she had bothered to write one), arranging to buy this house from the estate and disposing of her other property, what little there was.

Like setting up a law practice and starting a whole new life—or would it be a variation on an old life, one lost and terribly missed? Much to do indeed.

But the very next thing that needed doing involved walking a few steps from the living room into the short hallway and knocking on a closed door.
Jeremy’s
door. Carl wondered why his guts were churning.

Lorna Trosper’s body lay on the embalming table, damp and bluish under fluorescent lights. Mitch Nistler had lovingly bathed it, had gently lathered away the filth of its owner’s neglect and the scum of the early stages of putrefaction. All odor had disappeared, save the clean smells of soap and shampoo.

He stood back from the table a moment and gazed upon her, liking what he saw, liking even more what he felt: a clarity that he had never known before, a sharpness of mind that seemed almost alien, a hungry sense of purpose that had completely eclipsed his native hesitancy. He knew exactly the order of the tasks ahead without even pausing to think through the process. For the first time in his life, he would work quickly and nimbly, using and relishing his new power over himself.

He went purposefully to the cabinets that lined the walls of the preparation room and gathered the instruments and supplies he would need during the embalming process. Bulb syringe, tubing, scalpels, trocars, cotton, hair dryer, many others, which he laid out on a rolling tray. He readied the percolator and the aspirator. He turned on the ventilation system with its overhead fan, covering the hush of the old funeral home with a low thrumming. He retired to the adjacent dressing room, where he assembled hairbrushes, combs, manicure set, cosmetics, and perfumes.