Flesh Wounds, page 13
“I never killed anyone else before.”
“But you could, couldn’t you? I mean, I saw what you did, Curtis. You killed poor Belu—Belinda. I could turn you in.” She batted her eyes, an incredibly transparent gesture. “You could take care of this problem for me, and I could forget all about what I saw last night.”
“Yeah, I could do it.” He smiled and reached out to run a hand down the length of her bare arm. “But I’m going to want something besides your silence in return.”
She drew back. “Cory’s right there, Curtis.”
His eyes narrowed and he glanced at the car and the impotent gleaming of the cigarette. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about Cory.” But he hadn’t. Not for one minute.
“So, you’ll do it?”
He smiled. “Leave everything to me.”
“At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman...”
–Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Gaffed
Pete knew the TOUCHDOWN! game was rigged. Still, he smiled and handed over another dollar when the carny made such a fuss over his initial forty yard advance.
“Hot damn!” the carny exclaimed. “In one play you covered nearly half the field. You’re gonna win that giant panda; I know it.” He took the proffered dollar bill and made it disappear. His fingers were incredibly long, the type a genetically engineered pick-pocket might have, tipped with scabrous nails gnawed to the quick. The carny ran those protracted digits through his greasy red hair, then twisted at his waxed mustache. Pete hesitated to take the six greasy marbles from him, but he’d already paid for another roll and the TOUCHDOWN! booth was the perfect observation post.
“Name’s Red Robins,” the carny volunteered. “Day after day I sit here and wish someone would clean out the greedy bastards that own this place. Tonight I think you’re gonna do it!”
It was Pete’s first trip to this carnival. Some of the rides were part of a growing amusement park and were therefore permanent, like the roller coaster CYCLONE, a newer model, all tubular metal and supple curves, but the midway came and went according to the schedules of the nomadic carnies.
Pete had spent so much time at carnivals the last few years that he could spot all the crooked games. This midway was no different. He’d watched the SPILL THE MILK game just long enough to mark which of the three milk bottles was weighted. When the operator demonstrated how easy it was to knock over the little pyramid, the weighted bottle went on top. For the customers, it went on the bottom. A child could see how they’d gaffed the STRING PULL. The strings tied to valuable prizes were doubled back in the carny’s hand. No one would ever win the Sony Walkman, the cordless telephone, or the Timex watch. The PLATE PITCH and RING TOSS were standards at any midway. In PLATE PITCH, prizes hanging from the rafters kept players from getting the necessary arch on their coins, and a big sign clearly stated that throwing more than one coin at a time was against the rules (by stacking coins it’s possible to dampen the bounce when they hit the plate). RING TOSS didn’t require any special tricks: the FBI’s gambling unit had researched the game years ago and reported that from any distance more than six inches away, the rings bounced off the bottle necks. Only a fool paid money to try from six feet.
Pete tossed the marbles and they rattled across the wooden tray like desiccated bones in a coffin, settling at last in colorful, numbered holes. The carny began to snatch them up, adding aloud as he went.
“Forty-seven!” Red called out and indicated a nearby sign. “That’s our daily bonus! This is incredible; now you’re playing for two prizes! Along with the panda, you could win this CD player!”
Pete didn’t bother to point out that the real total was forty-six. For the moment, the carny was cheating in Pete’s favor.
Red consulted the score card. “A forty-seven’s good for ten yards! That puts you on the fifty yard line.”
It was all incredibly, tediously predictable. Down to the carny pointing out another sign, ONE DOLLAR PER PRIZE. He explained that Pete would have to pay two dollars per play since he was now playing for two prizes.
The big lights over the midway came on as the sun dipped below the ferris wheel. A country western band was getting started in the field beyond the TILT-A-WHIRL. The evening breeze wafted pastry, caramel apple, and cotton candy smells across the acre of rides and booths. It was the carnival’s last night in Huntsville; tomorrow they’d pack it up and move on to the next town in their circuit. They’d be back next October—or another troupe just like them would be.
It’d been raining the last few days, with more predicted for tonight, and there wasn’t much of a turn-out. The CYCLONE was just now making its first run of the evening. Pete turned so he could watch it scream past.
The carny tapped him on the shoulder. “You’re not gonna quit on the fifty yard line with only a two dollar investment, are ya?”
The CYCLONE car hit the corkscrew. Pete shivered uncontrollably as the screams of the passengers reached him.
A couple walked by, the young man cradling a stuffed giraffe. Despite a slight chill in the air, the buxom brunette wore sandals, tube top, and cut-off jeans. The name Kelly was stitched on her back pocket. She hung on the arm of her beau as if to draw the heat from his body, her breasts pressed against his elbow, her face turned up to admire the giraffe.
“I love you,” she told him, audaciously loud, enough so that Pete could hear her from thirty feet away. The man stooped and kissed her, his free hand playfully brushing one of her breasts.
Pete fancied that he could smell her cinnamon hair.
He was surprised to see the giraffe. On this, the last night of the carnival, it was unusual to see anyone winning the bigger prizes. Coveted prizes are won the first few nights for advertisement. Throughout the rest of a carnival’s engagement most prizes won come from the so-called hanky panks, those booths where the prize is worth significantly less than the amount paid to play. And of course on the last day of an engagement where they’d lost revenue to rain, the carnies would be out to maximize their profit.
Trembling, Pete watched as the couple made their way to the roller coaster. The line of cars was just coming to a halt. In a moment, passengers would disembark out one side while new riders poured in from the other.
“You playing or not? I got other customers waiting.”
In fact, there were only a few onlookers; no one stood by ready to throw away their money. They were waiting to see how Pete faired.
Pete handed the carny a five. When the carny handed back three ones as change, Pete left them on the counter. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Nasty cut,” the carny observed, pointing to the jagged laceration on the back of Pete’s left hand.
“It’s nothing.”
“Looks painful. What’s that, metal filings? You ought to wash it before it gets infected.”
Pete tossed the marbles and Red added up the score, fairly this time. Thirty-two. Good for five yards. Without asking, the carny swept up two of the bills on the counter and passed Pete the marbles.
The couple boarded the CYCLONE, the giraffe’s head towering sentry-like between them. The operator dropped the safety bar, gave it a jerk to verify it had locked, and moved on to the next car.
The marbles rattled to a halt in their separate holes. Eighteen. Red counted it as nineteen—it was important at this point, with only a dollar on the counter, to keep the fish on the line. Red knew how to work his mark. Nineteen gave Pete another twelve yards. His marker advanced to the sixty-seven yard line.
“Only thirty-three yards to go,” Red advised.
Pete fished out another five and laid it beside his remaining greenback. When Red made change, Pete left it on the counter, ensuring that his next three rolls would gain him very little yardage. Not that Red would be cheating. All the frequent totals equated to small yardage on the score card. Red only cheated in the customer’s favor, just enough to set the hook. Among the carnies, this was referred to as the razzle dazzle.
The CYCLONE operator dropped down the last safety bar and moved to the control panel.
“Where’s the little lady?” Red asked. He’d obviously noticed Pete’s wedding band when he spotted the cut.
“Resting,” Pete answered, and that was true enough.
“She’ll sure be pleased when you bring home that CD player.”
The CYCLONE pulled out and began its first steep climb, rattling and clanking up the inclined track like farm machinery drug to slaughter.
Pete tossed out the marbles. Thirty-two again. Five more yards. The serpentine fingers snatched up two bucks and the marbles were passed back across the counter.
He heard her laugh as the car reached the pinnacle, high above the park and its floodlights. Odd that he could pick that one voice out of so many others. A second later the roller coaster spilled over the top and hurtled towards Earth, its passengers screaming, her scream lost among the others. He could see her though. Her hair gleamed red in the fading sunlight as it whipped out behind the fleeting car.
Pete scattered the marbles. Fourteen. Three yards. The carny swiped the remaining bills from the counter top.
As a child, he’d loved the carnival rides. As a teenager, carnivals had been a sure bet with his dates. When he married...
“What’s the little lady’s name?” Red asked.
Sandy.
“Sandy, have you got my wallet?”
“No, should I?”
“Oh shit! I left it on the dashboard,” Pete exclaimed. “I’ve got to go get it; it’s lying out in plain sight.” The attendant moved to drop the safety bar across their laps, but Pete waved him off, “I’m getting out.”
“Suit yourself, pal, but we got a no refund policy—”
“Fine. Just let me out.”
“What about our ride?” Sandy pouted. They’d been scouting out and riding new roller coasters together since
high school.
Pete gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek. “You go ahead; no need in wasting both our tickets. I’ll be back in time for the next ride.”
From two cars back, Aaron and his date wanted to know what was going on. “Wallet,” Pete yelled as he ran for the parking lot. “Enjoy the ride!”
The CYCLONE shrieked past, flying towards the corkscrew on wings of steel. The brunette’s head was thrown back, her teeth incredibly white in the bright floodlights.
“This time...” Pete mumbled.
The cars hit the corkscrew, following the gracefully twisting rail through the elongated spiral.
“What’s that?” Red asked, leaning out across the counter. “Couldn’t hear you over the—OH MY GOD!”
There was a metallic shriek and the cars were suddenly airborne, the railway beneath them spinning free in several tubular fragments. Pete saw the girl in the ticket booth scream, her voice melding with those of hundreds of terrified onlookers, just before the cars plowed through the booth, crushing the little wood and glass building like it was a house of cards. The girl working the booth was killed instantly as the lead car impacted with her head.
The cars hit the ground, spinning and tumbling, arms and legs of passengers flailing. Bodies tumbled free, scattering like dolls across the park. Flesh and bone yielded, shredding and snapping in the chaos. Blood sprayed, falling like rain on the scarred ground where the cars had passed.
She was slung free, skipping across the ground like a stone on a placid lake. She came to rest against the WHEEL OF $FORTUNE$ booth, tube top down around her waist, both sandals gone, her hair caked to her face with blood.
Pete ran, scattering the bright marbles in the grass about his feet. Midway to her, he came upon the body of a man clutching a stuffed giraffe. The giraffe appeared none the worse for having taken the fall, damaged only where the man’s hand had gripped so tight that stuffing was spilling from the neck. The man was folded in half, his legs unnaturally twisted beneath him. One side of his face was gone, exposing bone and brain matter. From his open mouth came a wet mewling sound, like a cat held underwater.
Pete hesitated long enough to make sure the man was beyond hope. “Aaron,” he whispered, inches from the dying man’s contorted face, “best friend.” He touched the ragged edge of bone where the skull gaped, tested the warm viscosity of blood between his fingertips. “I don’t think you’ll sleep with another man’s wife again.”
Then he went to her side, knelt and rolled her over, choked at the sight of her. “Sandy?”
Her jaw was shattered, hanging loose to expose an airway clogged red. A hole in the side of her head was leaking copious amounts of blood out on the grass. She had no pulse.
Pete pulled off his windbreaker and used it to cover her nakedness. He held her and wept.
Afterwards, Pete sat in his car and scrubbed at his hands with a rag. They would not come clean.
Ambulance lights played across the carnival grounds, spilling briefly across his windshield. The dirty glass gleamed crimson in the flashing light as if clotted with a sheen of blood. Sirens wailed in the night as more emergency vehicles arrived.
He pulled a pale blue flyer from his shirt pocket and carefully unfolded it on his lap. In the next wash of red light, he reread it to be sure of the date and location:
BIG TOP CARNIVAL!
FOUR NIGHTS ONLY. OCTOBER 21-24
CHATTANOOGA NATIONAL MILITARY PARK
CHATTANOOGA, TN
He opened the glove box. Inside lay the hacksaw, its blade coated with fine metallic dust. He touched the cool blade, remembering how he’d slipped last night. He’d have to be more careful in Chattanooga.
In Chattanooga he’d make sure she didn’t cheat on him again...
He started the car and pulled out on the access road leading to Highway 72.
What’ll the Neighbors Think?
I would have ignored the doorbell, same as I’d ignored the phone for the last four days, but the persistent chimes made it impossible to write. What one needs, I thought as I got up from my desk, is an answering machine for the friggin’ door. Think of all the salesmen, Girl Scout cookies, political candidates, and charities one could avoid. A simple machine, motion-sensitive and proximity-triggered, so that as a caller reached for the buzzer it announced, “I’m sorry, but the homeowner is presently unable to come to the door. Please leave your business card under the welcome mat with all the others.” The catch, of course, being that I don’t own a welcome mat.
Do they make a mat that says, Piss off!?
Through the peephole, I spotted two policemen and my next door neighbor.
“That’s him,” said the neighbor, pointing an accusing finger as soon as I opened the door. Hannah Kingsington had outdone herself for her visitors in blue: silver hair neatly coifed, gold earrings the size of golf balls, makeup thick enough to satisfy any televangelist’s wife, rouge, lipstick, red dress and hose. The works. She looked like a prostitute who should have retired about ten years ago, but was now making a living servicing some retirement home. Prostitution, of course, wasn’t her game. She was the quintessential nosey neighbor.
“Mr Cooper?” asked the taller of the two cops, opening his notepad. “Stephen Cooper?”
“That’s right,” I answered. “What can I help you with?”
“You can start by telling them what you did with your wife!” shouted Hannah Kingsington.
The second cop took her by the arm and pulled her back from the doorway. “Mrs. Kingsington, you’re going to have to step back and let us ask the questions. We’ve taken your statement. There’s no need for you to be here.”
“Doris Cooper was my friend!” Hannah retorted, stomping her foot. “I’m not going anywhere until you make that monster tell you what he’s done with her.”
In truth, Doris had probably spoken to Hannah three times in the ten years we’d been neighbors. Once about gardening. Once about what I did for a living. And once when Hannah Kingsington had asked us to pay half the cost of the stockade fence she’d had put up between our houses.
The taller cop seemed ambivalent to the melodrama unfolding behind his back. He grinned sheepishly. “You’re that writer fella, aren’t ya?”
Funny how often it’s asked in exactly those same words.
“Yes. What’s this all about?”
The grin vanished and he screwed on his serious, inquisitor face. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr Cooper. Mind if we step inside?”
“Yes, I do. I’m very busy, Officer—” I scanned his name tag. “—Officer Thompson. Behind a deadline. Agent calling me every five minutes. Pressure from my publisher and all that.” My best, one-confidant-to-another tone: “I’m sure you can understand.”
“Of course, but—”
“So if we could really make this quick, I could get back to work.”
“Certainly, Mr Cooper. We just need to know, sir, uh... where is your wife?”
“Bastard murdered her,” spit Hannah Kingsington. “You’ve seen the kinda’ trash he writes. He probably cut her open, stuffed her full of rocks, and threw her in a lake, just like in that story he wrote.”
“Thunder of the Water,” I volunteered. “And it was Niagara Falls, not a lake.”
Officer Thompson glared at Hannah. “Mrs. Kingsington, please remain quiet and let us conduct our investigation.”
“He’s sick, I tell you. He probably buried her out back so he could dig her up and rape her every so often.” Thompson arched an eyebrow.
“The Night was Kind to Loretta,” I explained. “And I’d need some peat moss to make it work.”
“Where is your wife?” Thompson asked again. “Gone to visit relatives.”
“Relatives?”
“Her sister, I believe. In Mississippi.”
“I’ll need her name and phone number.”
“She might be staying at her mother’s.”
“Which is it?” asked the cop.
I scratched at my beard and scuffled my feet. “Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure, Officer Thompson. See, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing; that’s why Mrs. Kingsington doesn’t know anything about it, and—”
