Greely's Cove (15 page)

“I see you’re headed out for a nightcap,” said Bonnie Willis as her boss passed the dispatcher’s cage. Bonnie, his one genuine ally in Greely’s Cove, knew the meaning of the civvies.

“Yeah, to Liquid Larry’s, I guess. I don’t want to run into any of the city fathers.”

“Good choice. You won’t catch any of them in
that
place. What should I say if Judy calls?”

“Tell her the truth. If she doesn’t like it, she can go home to Daddy.”

Liquid Larry’s was quiet, even for a Sunday night. A handful of patrons leaned against the bar, chatting, drowsing, or watching
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
on the color set that hung from the ceiling. Three or four others had clustered around the giant fish tank that stood against a far wall, oohing and ahhing and
Jesus-Christ
-ing over Liquid’s prized fixture, an Oscar fish named Hammerstein. For one dollar, a patron could buy a live goldfish from the swarm that Liquid kept in a separate tank. The patron was then entitled to toss the goldfish into Hammerstein’s tank, upon which the Oscar fish—a rotund, brownish predator the size of a man’s two fists—would corner the terrified goldfish and wolf it down without ceremony. The bloody spectacle had great appeal to many of Liquid’s regulars, and Hammerstein seemed forever hungry.

Stu slid onto a stool at the deserted end of the bar and ordered an Oly, which Liquid served in a frosted mug. Behind the bar were display cards of Bic disposable lighters, Bromo Seltzer packets, and air fresheners for the car. Sausages floated in huge cloudy jars, pickled eggs in clear ones. Lighted scenes of rippling waterfalls and dancing streams advertised Rainier and Olympia beer, while a less artful sign hawked chances in the Washington State lottery.

After draining his beer in three long slugs, Stu ordered another and contemplated having one of Liquid’s infamous gut-bombs, a huge cheeseburger laden with mushrooms and fried onions. But he decided that he wasn’t really hungry enough, which was strange, since he’d not eaten all day.

He resisted glancing up when the front door swung open, meaning to disregard the figure that sidled over and took the stool next to him. But the voice that ordered a beer could not be ignored. It belonged to Carl Trosper.

Stu swung around on his stool, grinning wearily. “This guy’s money is no good, Liquid. Whatever he wants, I’m buying.”

“Whatever you say, Sonny Butch,” intoned the barkeep, placing a mug before Carl with professional reverence.

“Now, don’t try to tell me,” said Stu, leaning close to his old pal, “that you just
happened
to wander into this place.”

“Okay, I won’t,” said Carl, sipping foam that stuck to his mustache, “because I didn’t. I was getting a little antsy, so I called your house, and Judy said you were at the station. Then I called the station and your dispatcher said you were out on patrol. When I left my name and number, she said,
welllll,
maybe the boss would want me to know where he
really
is, since I’m the long-lost buddy he always talks so much about.

But I had to promise to buy her dinner if I ever spilled the beans that you were drinking alone at Liquid Larry’s on a Sunday night. And that’s the God’s truth, Officer.” He held up his right palm in solemn oath. “So how did things go today?”

Stu hung his head and shook it. “Not worth a damn. I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Carl wiped the foam from his mustache, seemingly at a loss for an answer. A question instead: “Do you believe in miracles, Stu?”

“I don’t know if I do or not. A year ago I would’ve said no. These days I’m not sure there’s anything I don’t believe in. Why?”

“Today I saw one, or at least the effects of one.”

“You mean Jeremy?”

Carl nodded. “Lorna had written about his progress with this Dr. Craslowe, and naturally I was anxious to see for myself. But honest to God, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw today.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. His progress has been pretty mind-boggling, all right.”

“I’m still in a state of shock. I spent the whole afternoon with him,and I still can’t make my hands quit shaking. Look.” Carl held out his hand, and, sure enough, it trembled slightly.

“Don’t worry, it’s probably just exhaustion. All you need is a good night’s sleep. By the way, where’s Jeremy now?”

At home, Carl explained. With Aunt Lindsay and Gramma Nora. Sleeping the sleep of the innocent, while his father’s out getting drunk with an old buddy. Carl related how Hannie Hazelford had outfitted the whole house not only with furniture to replace that which had to be discarded but also with kitchenware and groceries. How a dozen of Lorna’s grieving friends had rolled up their sleeves and transformed the pigsty at 116 Second Avenue into a presentable home. How Lindsay Moreland had already made arrangements for Lorna’s cremation and memorial service, and how he himself felt thoroughly useless.

“Lindsay and Nora are staying at the house?” asked Stu. “They’re using the room that used to be Lorna’s studio,” said Carl. “Hannie sent over a big double bed to put in there.”

“How’s the kid taking all this?”

“Fine—and I mean really
fine.
He seems totally unaffected, almost serene, and in a way, I think that’s what’s been bothering me. Maybe I’d feel better if I saw a little pain in his face. Anyway, Lindsay had an appointment this afternoon with Craslowe, but he called and asked to postpone it until tomorrow. I plan to tag along and ask some questions.”

“So what happens after you’ve wrapped things up here—I mean, after the funeral and everything? What happens to Jeremy?”

Carl stared a moment at his old friend. Finally: “Stu, I’m moving back to Greely’s Cove. Jeremy’s going to live with me, and I plan to try my hand at practicing real law again.”

Stu’s mouth dropped open, and he nearly spilled his beer. “Are you serious? Tell me this is a joke.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” answered Carl, smiling gently.

Stu took a long, deep breath and fixed his friend with a rebuking stare. “What in the hell do you want to do that for? You’ve got everything in the world going for you! You’ve gotten out of this fuck-stick town, you’ve
succeeded
—”

“That depends on how you define ‘success.’”

“You’re my definition, old stud. I mean, look at you: Rolex watch, two-hundred-dollar sweater, big job in Washington, D.C. Hell, you probably spend more on haircuts than I do on groceries.”

“Yeah, but I also run myself ragged. I babysit self-important assholes who call themselves congressmen or congressional candidates. I write things for them to say, because most of them have never had an original thought in their lives. And every three months or so, I change women, just like I change the oil in my Porsche, even though I rarely have time to drive it. On top of all that, I drink too damn much.”

“Sounds like heaven to me,” said Stu, incurring a sad chuckle from his friend. “You’ve done everything you said you’d do when you left this shit-heap town. You’ve gotten what you wanted. Why throw it away now?”

“For Christ’s sake, I became a lawyer because I wanted to help people. When the call from Washington came, I thought, ‘Wow! Here’s a chance to help people by the millions, not just in ones and twos.’ What a joke
that
was. I was a lot happier helping people in ones and twos right here in Greely’s Cove, and damn it, I want to do it again.”

Stu Bromton drained his glass and bowed his head a moment, looking almost prayerful as he thought. When he looked up again, his broad face was full of worry.

“I won’t fault you for wanting to make a new beginning. I worry, though, about whether you’ve given it enough thought.”

“Well, don’t. I’ve been thinking along these lines for a long time. Lorna’s death was just the catalyst that got me moving.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m off my knob, old stud, but is there any way I might convince you to make your new start somewhere else?”

“Somewhere else? You mean somewhere other than Greely’s Cove?”

Stu nodded.

“I really don’t think so,” said Carl. “I want Jeremy to be near Dr. Craslowe until his therapy’s finished. Besides, I’m known here. I used to practice here. People knew my family.” He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. “Why would you want me to go somewhere else?”

Stu had trouble getting the words out. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. Carl watched with morbid fascination as his friend worked up the courage to answer.

“It’s just that things aren’t so good here anymore,” Stu said at length. “There’s something bad here, Carl. I haven’t figured out what it is, and maybe I never will.”

“You’re talking about the disappearances, right?”

“The disappearances are part of it. But there’s something
else
.”

“You’re losing me.”

“I don’t know how to put this, and I hope you won’t think I’m ready for the silly hatch—”

“I won’t. You know me better than that.”

“Okay, I’ll blurt it right out: There’s
evil
here. I can feel it. Sometimes I even think I can see it, sort of hanging in the air like it’s not quite invisible. It does things to people, throws the normal rhythm of life out of whack. There’s a kind of deadness in the atmosphere that wasn’t here before. If I were you, I’d take my kid and get out of town, honest to God I would.”

“I lied: You’re ready for the silly hatch.”

Despite himself, Stu laughed. “Get serious, would you?” he pleaded. “I’m worried about you moving back here, damn it. Greely’s Cove isn’t a healthy place these days.”

“I’m sorry, Hippo,” said Carl, clapping a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you. But I think you’re starting to feel the stress of these damn disappearances, which is only natural. My God, it’s been happening for—what?—eight months. You’re entitled to get a little silly.” Carl’s tone became that of the amateur shrink—he considered himself a good one. “You want to solve the problem, but the problem isn’t cooperating. You’re frustrated, you’re tired. What you need to do is recognize that the problem won’t last forever, that it’ll go away someday. It really will, Stu. Whoever’s doing these terrible things will make a mistake, and you or some other cop will nail him. At the very least, the guy will get scared and move somewhere else. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and the bastard will suffer a fit of guilt and blow his own brains out.”

“But I told you, it’s not just the disappearances. There are
other
things.”

“What other things?”

Stu Bromton stared into space a moment, worrying that he was about to betray an incurable lunacy. He glanced around to make certain that Liquid Larry was out of earshot, that another patron had not worked his way toward this end of the bar. Then he started to talk, keeping his voice low, his eyes averted from Carl’s.

He talked about the
other
things, and Carl didn’t laugh.

Encircled in the silent aura of pedestal floor lamps, Mitch Nistler labored over the corpse of Lorna Trosper. Except it wasn’t really labor. His hands moved with a deftness he had never known before, as though he had spent his entire life mastering the skills of embalming. The smoothness of his motion, the certainty of his next move, and the precision with which he handled the instruments—all seemed beyond his normal capabilities.

This was not labor, or scarcely even work. This was love. Occasionally, while watching his hands dance through the process of injecting embalming solution into Lorna’s arteries, he would verge on asking himself
Just what the hell am I doing?
But the question never quite formed, because the
hunger
banished it before it could become a complete thought. Always the
hunger:
cresting and breaking whenever any part of his old self began to stir, surging forth from that dark well in his mind, consuming and controlling him.

From that dark mental well came not only skill and dexterity and hunger but also knowledge. He wondered how he knew that the sacred profession of embalming, for example, began with the Egyptians in 6000 B.C., and how it came to be that he—Mitch Nistler, of Greely’s Cove, Washington, twice-convicted petty drug pusher and menial servant of old Matt Kronmiller—could feel a kinship with the priests of the dog-headed god Anubis, the Divine Embalmer.

Kinship
he felt, as though his soul had once lived in the body of a great practitioner of Anubis’s art, as though he himself had launched countless human spirits on the 3,000-year “circle of necessity,” completion of which allowed those spirits to return to their mummified remains and ascend into the eternal realm of the gods. Could it be that he actually remembered such things, that he had been one of Anubis’s priests, that through some unknowable magic his own soul had broken out of the circle to survive an extra score of centuries?

Who owns Mitch Nistler?

He watched his hands as they finished the tasks of arterial injection, as they prepared the fluid for the next phase—cavity injection. The fluid must be an astringent, fast-acting preservative with a high formaldehyde content, augmented with phenyl, tanning agents, and odor suppressors. This he would inject into the body cavity to preserve the organs and give natural shape to the torso. After all, Lorna had given up so
much
—nearly a gallon of her blood to the flush receptor (virtually all of it), as well as the contents of all her major organs to the trocar and aspirator. The time had come to put something back
.formaldehyde,
the great preserver, the acridsmelling stuff of embalming fluid, pumped in with motorized force through a trocar hole in the tummy.

Oh, the beauty of it.

When that was done, Mitch Nistler snapped off the injector, and its whine descended into nothingness, leaving only the hushed whisper of the ventilation system in its place.

On to the surface applications. Cosmetic dyes like red ponceau and yellow eosin, to banish the grays and blues and chalky whites of death, at least for a while. Humectants and oils to combat postembalming dehydration—sorbitol, dulcitol, glycol, and lanolin. And to counter the horrific chemical smells, perfumes—sassafras, lavender, and the oils of cloves and orange and wintergreen.