The Death Agreement (8 page)

The suddenness of his opinion hit
me like a punch to the stomach. Fists balled, I jumped up and
sneered.

Alan Goodtime raised his hands,
palms out, and took a step back. "Relax, my boy. I'd like to be
friends."

"Who the fuck are you to say
something like that?" My face twitched from a pure hatred I
suddenly felt for the man. "Leave right now or I'll have you thrown
out."

He grinned, pulled out an old
pocket watch, and stared at it. "My, my, won't ya look at the
time?" He said, taking another step back. "I must be going now.
Have to get back to my shop. Busy, busy, busy, you know how it is.
Truly a pleasure to meet you, Jon."

He shuffled over to the exit but
paused a moment to sign the registry. "You'll let me know if you
find it, I hope? I am counting on you."

"Find what?" I asked, but Alan
Goodtime had already turned away. He quickly left the parlor,
slamming the front door behind him.

"Mr. Hardesty?" I called
out.

Stepping from his office, he said.
"Yes, Mr. Randon?"

"Did you see that man, by
chance?"

"I heard him come in and leave,
but no sir, I did not see him. May I ask why?"

"He just…I don't know. Sorry to
bother you."

Hardesty nodded. "I did warn you,"
he said and returned to his office.

I walked over the registry. The
signature read: Alan Goodtime. A thick envelope sat on top with my
name scrawled across it. As I ripped it open, my heart pounded in
my chest. I pulled out what I had thought was some kind of
folded-up sympathy card, but it was a familiar pamphlet that looked
like it had been printed in the seventies.

I unfolded it and read the full
message written in a large, yellow, groovy font: Don't Pack Pain
Away. Don't Let It Meld. Don't Let It Grow.

Below the headline, a smiling man
held out a cardboard box kept together by red packing tape, only
the flaps were open. I remembered them being closed before. My eyes
lingered on the man's toothy smile. At first glance it had looked
like happiness or relief on his face, but the longer I stared, the
more convinced I became that his expression was actually one of
madness and terror.

Suddenly I realized I was holding
my cell, and with a shaky finger, dialed Yang's number.

"Detective," I said, walking back
over to the casket, "do you have Taylor's computer?"

"I was just about to call
you."

"Do you have Taylor's computer?" I
asked again.

"Of course. It's in the evidence
locker."

"I'm assuming you had your tech
guys search it."

Yang paused for a moment before
asking, "What's going on?"

"I'm also assuming you have a
report on all his internet activity."

"Yeah, of course. Tell me where
you are."

"I'm at my best friend's funeral,
but you should know that, damn it. A police car has been following
me for days. Now shut up and listen. My final assumption is you
didn't find anything you thought was important, but I'd say it's
because you didn't know what you were looking for. Have another
look. See if there's anything about someone named Alan Goodtime. He
was just here and I think you might want to talk to
him."

"I'll check into it, but right now
I'm coming to pick you up."

"Not necessary. I'm
fine."

"No, it is necessary."

"Yeah? It sounds like you got
something to tell me, and I think you know me well enough by now to
realize I can't stand waiting on information."

"I'm breaking every rule we have,
you realize that?"

"Yeah, you're a cop, so par for
the course, right?"

"Don't be an asshole. I just spoke
to the medical examiner. He finally got the bodies sorted." Yang
took a deep breath. "Pieces are missing."

"What do you mean
pieces are missing?
"

"Well, Mr. Taylor's leg is still
missing. I had assumed the police found it in the pond with the
rest of the…parts."

I looked down at Taylor's body,
the bottom of the casket covered up to his waist. He still had that
same knowing smirk.

I shook my head and whispered,
"Why did you do it?"

"What?" Yang asked.

I cleared my throat.
"Nothing…sorry. Yang, we'll have to talk here. I can't abandon my
vigil."

"The rules?"

"Yes. I need to attend his funeral
until it's over."

***

Sometime later, Yang walked
through the parlor doors.

"I don't know about you," he said
and held up a large brown paper bag, "but I could use a drink."
Then he sat next to me and used his wedding ring to pop the caps
off of two beers.

"How bad is it?" I
asked.

"We've never seen anything like
this before. None of the pieces fit together. I can say that you're
officially off the suspect list. At least for now."

"Is that so?"

"Timelines don't match. We've got
hospital staff claiming to have seen you on campus." He reached for
a bag by his side. "You hungry? I brought a few
burgers."

"No, the beers will be
fine."

"Suit yourself." Yang reached into
the brown bag and pulled out a cheeseburger. He unwrapped it and
took a bite. "Tell me about this guy, Goodtime. I saw that he
signed the register."

"Not much to tell, really." I
pressed the bottle to my lips and finished off the second beer. "He
showed up and said he knew Jesse. Did you find anything on
him?"

"I did actually. Well, found a few
people listed with that name. I'm going to look over the records
tonight. Thanks for the tip. Taylor's computer might help now that
I have a lead."

"So, Yang, why are you
here?"

"I still want you to help me
figure this out."

"I've been trying."

"Yeah, but I think we've been
ignoring the elephant in the room for far too long. At first we had
our sights on you. We had a theory that you cut off his leg because
you felt that he was somehow responsible for what happened to you
in Afghanistan."

"That's bullshit."

"The staff members at the hospital
claimed you were angry, more than most. Some even said you were
vindictive. You scared them."

"Maybe I did." I sighed. "So did a
lot of other guys. You don't know what it's like being in that
place, in that situation. It does something to you."

"That's exactly what I'm saying. I
don't know. You do. Let me put it another way. While the department
was convinced that you were involved, you were convinced someone
else was involved. No one asked the right question: Why would your
friend sever his own leg? I've seen crazy, Jon. This is well
beyond, trust me."

"It's true," I said. "I don't want
to admit he did it to himself."

Yang nodded. "When the medical
examiner figured out his leg wasn't the only part missing, I was
able to see it from another angle. It isn't about what we know or
what we have found. It's about the missing parts. This case has a
lot of missing parts, and I doubt we'll ever solve it."

"Speaking of missing parts," I
said, taking another beer from Yang. "What's missing?"

"I'm sorry, I can't tell you. We
never thought we'd find them all anyway. It's a big pond, too big
to search it all, but we now know those parts aren't
there."

"How so?"

"I can't say."

"Damn it."

"I know."

Yang and I both looked up at
Taylor's body. The service would be ending soon and there was one
last thing left I needed to do.

I stood up. "I agreed to say a few
words. Another part of the agreement we had."

Yang nodded. "Would you like me to
go?"

"Only if you want."

Yang sat still. I mouthed the
words
thank you
as I walked to the podium. I looked out at the room and did
my best to pretend it was filled with grieving people, those who
had known Jesse Taylor, those who had loved him.

My imagination failed me. Only
Detective Yang sat alone in the empty room, his head bowed, his
hands folded neatly in his lap.

In my jacket pocket, my copy of
The Death Agreement contained the eulogy I had written for Taylor
months before his death. The words were heartfelt and truthful,
just as we both had planned them to be.

Standing there in the cold funeral
home, the body of my friend resting next to me, having fallen so
far from the man I cared about…it would have been an insult to read
those words. Even if the only ears to hear were Yang's and my own,
those words were wrong. So I needed to say something else,
something which was just as true.

I cleared my throat and spoke:
"Taylor and I used to joke about dying young. It isn't funny
anymore."

I stepped down and walked out the
door, leaving Yang alone with Taylor's corpse.

SECTION V - SHARE FINAL
WORDS

I lit a cigarette and
walked into the alley between Hardesty's Funeral Home and a small
flower shop named Maria's Memories. Discarded decorations and dead
bouquets were piled high in an overfilled dumpster. Dead stems from
dozens of funerals were stuck to the outside of the trash bin. The
flower petals, once so vibrant, littered the ground, brown and
decaying. I nearly gagged from the sweet stench.

There was still so much to
do.

I removed The Death Agreement from
my jacket and stared at it, looking through the words more so than
looking at them. The first four sections were complete, but I
couldn't continue on to the next part—share final words.

There hadn't been any witnesses to
interview, though if I'm being honest, I suppose I should say there
hadn't been any survivors. And there wasn't any audio, video, or a
suicide note. Jesse hadn't left any record of his final moment,
nothing I could use at all.

We had planned for that
possibility. Inside that section, we had written a short message
for the other person to use in conjunction with the last known
spoken words.

As far as I knew, Taylor's last
spoken words were in the voice message he had left about not seeing
me:
"I saw everyone but you…"

I wondered if I was supposed to
record a meaningless phrase like that as his final words, knowing
that if I didn't keep my word, I would end up tormenting myself for
the rest of my life. Worse, I knew if the situation were reversed,
Taylor would have never given up on me. It wouldn't have mattered
to him if I had gone crazy and murdered half a dozen
people.

His copy of The Death Agreement
hadn't been on him, it hadn't been in his car, and it hadn't been
in the house either.

"Where the hell did you stash it,
Jesse?"

I took a drag off the cigarette
and held it in until the smoke burned my lungs. I thought about the
voicemail again. I had no idea who he did see, why didn't see me,
or where he was when he saw everyone. So many questions and so very
few answers.

The cigarette slipped from my
fingers as a sudden disturbing thought took hold. Taylor's exact
words and cadence were: "Saw everyone…but you."

"My god," I whispered. He
had
sawed
off his
leg and cut up his family. I wondered if he had wanted to kill
everyone except me. Maybe he had tried telling me that I was
safe.

The idea should've terrified me,
but somehow I found the possible revelation more interesting than
frightening. My mind had been numbed to the whole ordeal, as if I
knew there were still worse things to discover, as if Jesse Taylor
had begun dissecting my soul from beyond the grave.

I ran back inside the funeral
home, but Yang had already left. As I turned toward the exit, I
picked up the faint, sweet-burnt odor that hung in the air and
realized Taylor's body had also disappeared from the room. It was a
smell I remembered very well. It was the smell of burning
flesh.