Charnel House (15 page)

An hour later, Garraty felt like he had been talking for a lifetime. His throat hurt like hell, and he was ready for a nap. Funny, all things considered.

The story had poured from him like vodka from a fresh bottle. Garraty told them everything, the words draining the pus from him more effectively than a surgeon’s scalpel ever could. When he got to the part about the boy’s return from the dead he ignored the looks they shared over him. He knew how he sounded. Batshit insane. And he just didn’t give a good goddamn anymore. Let them think what they wanted, he knew the truth. The lawmen interjected questions from time to time, but Dr. Redman remained silent through it all with an unreadable expression on his face.

“That’s quite a tale,” Sheriff Langston said. About ten minutes into the story, he’d retrieved the vinyl chair by the door and taken a seat. The whole time Garraty spoke, he had listened without interrupting. Now he leaned back and crossed his arms, resting them on his belly. “Haven’t had any missing children reported since Andy Burnett’s little girl back in April, and all she did was sneak out to see a concert over in Huntsville with her friends.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Sheriff,” Garraty said. “Maybe he wasn’t from around here.”

“Maybe. But what was he doing out so late, and up there of all places?”

“Don’t know. I just know he was.”

“Why are we dancing around the obvious here?” Frank snapped. He glared at Garraty through slits. “You claim that this boy you allegedly murdered came back from the dead and has been trying to kill you.”

Sheriff Langston regarded Garraty, considering.

“I know how it sounds, but—”

“I don’t think you do, Mr. Garraty,” Frank said. “Mullins here and the doctor were both in the room the last time you were ‘attacked’ and neither of them saw or heard a dead boy. They saw
you
, carving away at yourself with the knife you took from Dr. Redman. The knife the paramedics found with you at your trailer!”

The man was leaning over Garraty now, a sneer curling one corner of his mouth. He gripped the bed rail so tightly his knuckles were starting to turn white.

“You think I don’t realize I sound crazy?” Garraty cried. “I heard them. ‘Stop hurting yourself!’ ‘Put down the knife!’ I’m telling you what I saw, and what happened to me. I’m
not
crazy, goddammit. The boy was there!”

He wanted to punch the bastard in his smug fucking face, to feel the guy’s nose mash under his fist and see the spray of hot blood dot his uniform. Oh, he’d love that shit just
fine
, even if it bought him a ride on the TASER train. But what he did was concentrate on getting his emotions in check.
Don’t give them another reason to think you’re a lunatic. That’s what he wants.
Gradually, his breathing slowed, as did his heart. None of the lawmen spoke.

“You need to relax, Mr. Garraty,” Dr. Redman said. “Sheriff, we’re walking on thin ice here. I won’t stand by while he has another... break.”

Garraty ignored him. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he told the investigator. “What I don’t understand is why. I’m trying to make things easier here.”

“You’re wasting our time,” Frank muttered.

“Mr. Garraty,” Sheriff Langston said, in what he probably thought was a soothing tone. To Garraty his voice sounded like a foghorn. “Surely you can appreciate my position. The things you’re describing just aren’t possible.”

“Not to mention we didn’t find any evidence of a body up on Hickory Hill,” Deputy Mullins added.

“Sheriff, I think it’s time to wrap this up. You’re just agitating my patient now,” Dr. Redman said. Then, to Garraty, “I’ll have the nurse bring you something to help you sleep.”

“I’ve had enough goddamn sleep!” Garraty said. Almost shouted. He struggled to sit up. “You don’t want to believe me? Fine, take me to the Barlowe house. I’ll
prove
it. I’ll show you where he’s buried!”

Frank leaned in even further, the look on his face transforming into something more elemental, predatory.
Gotcha
, that look said.

We’ll see who got who, fuckface.

“Don’t be silly, Joe,” Dr. Redman said. “You’re in no shape.”

“Hold on a second there, doc,” Sheriff Langston said. “This is a criminal investigation.”

“And it will still be one when Mr. Garraty has recovered a little more. If there’s a body buried under that house, it’s hardly going anywhere, is it?”

The investigator hooked a finger at Garraty and sneered, “If you believe him, it’s already been all over the damn place.”

Garraty bit his lip and ignored the jab. “I feel up to it, Dr. Redman. Really.”

Dr. Redman looked at Garraty for a long time without speaking. Finally, he said, “Sheriff, can I speak with you in the hall?”

Garraty heard the men outside, arguing about him in low voices. Words like
psychotic break
and
persecution complex
. They thought he was crazy. Well, at least the doctor did. He wasn’t sure about the lawmen. His experience was that cops tend to see everything in pure black and white. There were the good guys, and there were the bad guys.
And right now I’m the bad guy.
That might be enough to get him out of here. He harbored no doubts that if he had to spend another night in the hospital, he’d have another visitor, this one even more unwelcome than the law.

Frank stood just outside the door, where Garraty could see him. From time to time during the conversation he looked in, resting his hostile gaze on Garraty. A smirk twitched at the corners of his mouth.
We’ll see who has the last laugh, assface.
Mullins maintained his position at the end of the bed, hands clasped behind his back, his placid eyes regarding something out the window.

There was a change in the tone of the conversation in the hall. Garraty couldn’t make out the words, but Dr. Redman seemed quieter. Subdued, almost. Sheriff Langston sounded placating and apologetic. The smirk on the investigator’s face crept all the way out of hiding, and the gleam returned to his eyes. He looked very pleased with himself, Garraty thought.

Dr. Redman led the two lawmen back into the room. “Mr. Garraty, against my better judgment I’ve agreed to let you leave the hospital long enough to go to this Barlowe house, if that’s what you want, with one caveat: that you return here as soon as you’ve... located the body, to heal properly. You may be restrained at that time if the sheriff believes you to be a flight risk. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Garraty said.

“Are you
sure
you want to do this, Joe?” Dr. Redman pleaded with Garraty with his eyes.
Tell me you don’t want to
, those eyes said.
Just say the word and I
’
ll make them leave so you can recover.

“I don’t want to do it, doc. I have to.”

Investigator Frank looked like he wanted to dance a little jig right there at the end of the bed.

Dr. Redman sighed and reached for the tablet in his pocket. “I’ll have a nurse come in to disconnect the IV tube and remove your catheter.”

“Doc?”

The doctor looked up from the screen.

“Are my wife and kids waiting to see me?”

The sag in the other man’s shoulders answered the question for Garraty before his lips did.

An hour later Garraty rode in the passenger seat of a white Ford Interceptor with the words
MORGAN COUNTY SHERIFF
emblazoned in gold letters down the sides, his cuffed hands resting in his lap. Sheriff Langston drove in silence, but from time to time Garraty caught him glancing over surreptitiously. He knew the look, and what it said.
Joe Garraty
’
s done flipped his egg sunny side down.
A college football talk show played softly on the radio. The host was convinced the Crimson Tide had a good chance of rolling to another national championship this year. Funny, Garraty thought, because they’d barely finished spring training.
Whatever floats your boat, guys.

In the back, Deputy Mullins glared morosely out his window at the passing view. Garraty wondered if he was thinking about ruining another pair of pants. At least he had pants to wear. Garraty’s clothes were long gone due to the condition they’d been in when he arrived at the hospital. The tissue-thin johnny he wore now rode high on his thigh, exposing his bony white knees and healing wounds to the world. Chief Inspector Frank sat directly behind Garraty. Garraty could feel his eyes on the back of his head. The mocking condescension rolled off him in cold waves, filling the vehicle’s interior. Garraty tried to ignore this and instead focused on the brown expanse of the Tennessee River as the truck left Decatur, sparkling in the midday sun like a galaxy of stars. Soon enough the Interceptor began to slow as they reached the entrance to the River Bend trailer park.

“Mine’s in the back,” Garraty offered, when Sheriff Langston made the turn onto the narrow lane.

“We know,” Frank said. He’d dialed back the smirks and sneers a little, and Garraty was grateful. Maybe he was starting to show a little humility.

The vehicle came to a stop in front of his trailer. Jesus, the place looked like a dump in the light of day, with no beer to take the edge off its ugliness. In another time he might have blamed Tina for the squalor, for kicking him out of his house and forcing him to come to a place like this, but he knew that would just be one more lie in a years-long list. He had no one to blame but himself.
Shitty time to start telling the truth, when it’s just going to get you killed down in Atmore.
The sheriff opened the door and helped Garraty out of the back seat. The sun beat down on his back mercilessly, and the humidity was like a wet towel draped over him. Christ. July and August were going to be unbearable. A far cry from the night not even three weeks ago, when he’d wished for a jacket.

“Always knew you were bad news, Joe Garraty!”

He’d recognize the voice anywhere. It might have sounded pretty and feminine years ago, but now it was rough, raspy from years of chain-smoking cigarettes. Garraty turned to look across the road. The old woman sat in her customary spot on her stoop, paperback in one hand and a fresh cigarette in the other. A glass of iced tea sweated on the plastic table next to her.
Jesus, it’s like she hasn’t even moved.

She took a drag from her smoke and blew twin plumes of silver from her nostrils, regarding him the way one might regard a melted piece of chewing gum stuck on the sole of a shoe. “You rape that little boy a’fore you killed him, you pervert?”

Frank snickered.

“Christ,” Garraty said. “I gotta put up with this shit?”

“Ignore her, Mr. Garraty,” Sheriff Langston advised.

Garraty hobbled up the walkway in his johnny, the deputy gripping him by one elbow. His legs throbbed where he’d been stabbed, making each step an exercise in pain control. He hoped the bitch across the street was getting an eyeful of his pasty ass, which she was free to pucker up and kiss. The tiny yard needed to be cut. The Johnson grass was practically up to their knees. Garraty felt the heads bumping against his bare legs as they approached the makeshift stairs, the tiny black seeds falling into his hospital slippers.

“That the car you hit the boy with?” the sheriff asked, jerking a thumb toward the Prius.

“Yeah. Front right bumper.”

Frank walked to the car and made a big show of examining it.
Keep it up, buddy. Just wait.

A piece of yellow paper fluttered against the front door of the trailer, held to the thin aluminum with a piece of masking tape. Across the top, in heavy red letters were the words
NOTICE TO VACATE
. Sheriff Langston reached for the knob and pushed the door open. Luis must have already been by to unlock it for them.
Didn’t want to hang around and see me this time,
esse
?
The heat of shame rose in Garraty’s face.

He stood at the top of the steps for a moment, resting. God, he was tired. The hairs on his neck prickled when he looked into the dim room. Was the boy in there again, just waiting for him? His hands trembled, and he didn’t know if it was from fear or being in a coma or his desire for the vodka in the kitchen. Maybe all three. Maybe none of them. Balling his hands into fists, he stepped across the threshold.

The air in the trailer was a tapestry of scents, none of them pleasant. Old blood, thick and coppery, overlaying the cloying smells of dried vomit and stale beer. Garraty’s stomach did a slow roll as he stepped into the front room. The place was hot as fuck, and buzzing with somnolent blackflies. He hit the light switch next to the door but nothing happened. Great. The remains of the coffee table lay scattered across the floor as he remembered, dotted with crusty maroon droplets. On the far wall, the smears of his blood painted a hellish question mark on the wall.

“Mr. Garraty, if you’ll hold out your hands, I’ll remove the cuffs,” Sheriff Langston said. “Make it a little easier for you to get dressed.”

When his wrists were free Garraty stretched his arms a couple of times. It seemed like everything had gone tight while he was out. Lying in a hospital bed for two weeks did that to you. He shuffled down the hallway toward his bedroom, Mullins following close behind. As he passed the kitchen he glanced in. A scattering of utensils and trash and dried blood littered the floor, and over by the sink the crusted puddle of vomit crawled with flies. No dead boy, no paring knife. No small footprints in the blood or vomit. No evidence at all. Garraty wanted to lunge across the room and rip open the freezer, get a little of the vodka in him so he could think clearly again, maybe reevaluate his situation. Was the kid not making an appearance because of his confession... or because he’d never existed?

He shook his head.
Crazy thinking.
The boy was as real as he was, no matter what they tried to tell him, no matter what proof did or didn’t exist. He had the wounds to prove it. Had felt the satisfying connection when he kicked the boy.
Ghosts aren’t solid, my man, so fuck you very much to all the naysayers.
His legs went rubbery at his bedroom doorway and he had to grab onto the facing for support. The room seemed to cant crazily to one side, then the other. Garraty closed his eyes and willed the dizziness away. He wondered briefly if Dr. Redman had been right. Maybe it was too soon for him to be gallivanting around the countryside in search of a dead body.

“You okay?”

“Gimme a second,” Garraty said. “Just a little tired.”

He took a deep breath and reeled across the room to his dresser, where he scavenged for a decent pair of underwear and some socks in the top drawer. He pitched those onto the unmade bed and then went to the closet for a golf shirt and a pair of jeans.

Mullins stood in the hallway with his back to the door while Garraty dressed. A large sweat stain darkened his shirt between his shoulder blades. Its shape reminded Garraty of another, slumped and lurking in the darkness. He shivered. Not even Tanner Frank’s cousin had gone under that damnable house
twice.

There’s still time to get out of this. They don’t believe you. If you change your tune they’ll take you back to the hospital. Do your time there, let Redman think he’s healed you. Healed your
mind.
Then you can get the fuck out of here, with or without Tina and the kids. Start over somewhere. Down south, at the Mercedes plant, maybe. Or out of the state completely.

Behind him, the closet door unlatched, snickety-click. The low cricketlike
reeeee
of the hinges as it swung open carried Garraty back under the house, when he’d heard the door overhead opening and the unseen thing thump-scraping its way across the room above. He didn’t look back, because he didn’t want to see what was coming out. It wouldn’t hurt him, as long as he did what it wanted. Would it?

“All set,” he told the deputy, flashing a lopsided smile.

Passing the kitchen the second time, the vodka sang to him from the freezer its sweet song of forgetfulness. He longed to dart in there and free it from its prison, to twist the cap off with a practiced flick of his thumb and tip his head back, filling his mouth with the only thing that could quell the fear that roiled his stomach. Mullins clapped one hand on his shoulder, perhaps sensing something. The goddamn man was on him like a tick.

Sheriff Langston had gone back outside—not that Garraty could blame anyone for wanting to get out of that place—and now stooped next to Frank by the Prius. The two were at the front end, looking at something. The sheriff’s shirt had pulled out of his pants in the back and hung limp over the wide expanse of his ass, damp with his sweat. Songbirds chirped happily somewhere nearby, and if it weren’t for the heap of shit he were in, Garraty thought this might be a nice June day despite the heat.

The sheriff stood up when he heard Garraty and the deputy on the trailer steps, using the hood of the car to help pull himself. “Mr. Garraty, could you come over here for a minute?”

Across the street, the old woman draped her paperback across one skinny leg and picked up the pack of cigarettes lying on the table next to her. She stuck it between her pale lips and brought the lighter to her mouth, watching them the whole time. Wonderful. Garraty walked over to the car, trying not to look back at his neighbor. Waiting for her to caw something at him like the crow she was.

“Look here, Mr. Garraty,” the sheriff said, pointing at the front bumper. “This is where you hit the boy, right?”

The bumper in question had a light coating of dirt and grime. Dried dead bugs dotted its surface, but otherwise the soft blue—the guy at the dealership had called it Seaside Pearl, like the extra fancy name for the color added value—covering was unmarred. No cracks or dents, no broken headlight, and no blood. Nada.

“I must have cleaned it up during my blackout,” Garraty said. But had he? Maybe. He couldn’t remember shit about those four missing days. The projector in his mind whirred to life, and he saw himself down at the Quickie Wash in Belleville proper, feeding quarters into the machine and scrubbing the car down with the rotating brush. That had to be it. It was a wonder no one had called the cops on him.

“Mr. Garraty, that bumper ain’t been cleaned in ages,” Sheriff Langston said. He licked his index finger and ran it across the bumper. When he held it up, the skin was gray-black, and the spot where he’d swiped the car gleamed in the afternoon sun.

“Is there something you want to tell us?” Frank asked. The smirk was back full force, and Garraty wanted to drive a fist through it. Knock it all the way back to the river.

“Just take me up to the goddamn house,” he said.
And then we’ll see who’s smirking.

Garraty held out his hands for the cuffs.