Ecstasy (8 page)

“And besides,” she was saying, “who’s to say that the poor boy didn’t die of natural causes? Perhaps he had some sort of heart
defect, poor thing.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I said. “But in case it
was
drugs, aren’t you worried that other people might be at risk?”

I could tell I was starting to bore her, but she tried to hide it by making her tone even more icky-friendly. “That’s a very
important issue,” she said. “And I’m sure I speak for the entire council when I say that I’d hope that after what happened
this morning, people would have the good sense not to… not to partake of any dangerous substances.”

I wrote that down, partly out of spite.

“Are you going to try to spread some kind of safety message around or something?”

I’d addressed the question to Mrs. Hamill. She immediately turned to the chief with a look that said
that’s your problem.

“We’re already running some flyers,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Flyers?” Somehow, she made it sound like a dirty word.

“Reminding people that if they get caught with controlled substances they’re going to get arrested.”

Hamill looked downright horrified. “Really,” she said, “there’s no need to be so”—she cast about for the right word—“… adversarial,
now is there?”

“Rosemary, drugs are against the law.”

“I realize that,” she said. “But it’s not as if it’s any sort of widespread problem.”

“Are you kidding me? For chrissake, Rosemary, wake up and face reality for once in your life.”

Apparently, the two of them had managed to forget there was a reporter roughly two feet away. Then they remembered.

“The flyers will educate people about the potential dangers of drug consumption,” she said, suddenly sounding like she was
giving a speech to the Revolutionary Daughters of Jaspersburg. “That should more than suffice, don’t you think?”

She didn’t stick around to hear his answer, just favored us both with her “ladies’ club” smile and walked away. That left
me and the chief, a Mutt and Jeff pair if there ever was one—him topping six feet of hirsute machismo, me at five feet three
and all of 120 pounds.

“Chief,” I said, “can I ask you something else?”

“From what I know of reporters, that’s what I’d call a rhetorical question.”

“Is that a yes?”

He looked like he was getting a headache. “If you make it quick.”

“What’s your policy on drugs at Melting Rock?”

He glanced over at the spot where what was left of Shaun Kirtz lay on the encircled grass. “My policy is if you take them,
you’re an idiot.” He shook his head. “And you’re welcome to quote me. But I guess you probably meant the department’s official
policy.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you heard me before. Drugs are illegal.”

“Look, Chief, I don’t mean to be disrespectful or anything, but I’ve been here for the past two days, and, well…A lot of this
stuff seems to be going on pretty much out in the open, but hardly anybody ever gets busted for it.”

“We arrested three people last year for possession with intent to sell.”

“Right, but three out of how many?” He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Again, no disrespect, but it definitely seems
like it’s not in the town’s best interest to bust people. Would you say that’s true?”

“Now you’re putting words in my mouth,” he said, though he didn’t seem particularly annoyed.

“I’m just trying to understand the situation.”

“That makes two of us,” he said. “And that’s off the record.”

The coroner showed up then, and Stilwell looked plenty relieved to see him. He excused himself and went back to the crime
scene, and I stood there for a while wondering why he’d spent so much time talking to me in the first place.

It was pretty obvious that any efforts he made to police Melting Rock were going to be hamstrung by the town, which (as I
mentioned) is deeply in love with all the cash the festival generates. And though I didn’t know a damn thing about the guy,
he struck me as one of those men-of-action types who didn’t take kindly to that sort of thing. Admittedly, my perceptions
might have been colored by the vast hours I spend inside a movie theater. Stilwell, in fact, reminded me of a middle-aged
Burt Reynolds, mustache and all.

Once he left, I realized I was, well, starving. I was headed toward the coffee tent when I passed a pale young woman in a
flowing purple gown, doing some sort of interpretive dance all by her lonesome. I probably should’ve kept walking, but she
seemed vaguely familiar. I stood there and stared in a way that my mother would have told me was impolite. She had her eyes
closed, but after a minute she opened them and stared back at me.

“Wow,” she said. “It’s you.”

Her voice had an oddly deadpan, distinctive singsong inflection, and I definitely recognized it—though from where, I still
had no idea.

“Um…Do I know you?”

She smiled a sad sort of smile.

“You know everybody, man. We all know everybody.”

It was the “man” that jogged my memory. The first (and last) time I’d seen her was a year or so ago, when she and a bunch
of other local psychics had tried to convince the Gabriel police to let them help in the search for a serial killer. The cops,
as you can imagine, had been less than inviting.

“Guinevere, right?” She nodded and kept dancing. I realized she was wearing exactly the same outfit as when we’d met before,
a medieval robe that put her bosom front and center. “You come to Melting Rock a lot?”

“Every year, man. Every year.”

Shocking.
“You like it a lot, huh?”

“I just live for the Rock, man. Just
live
for it.”

“Um… Can I ask you something?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “Knowledge is power.”

“How come you’re dancing when the music hasn’t even started up again yet?”

“I’m reading.” The word’s first syllable came out in a long note:
reeee
-ding.

“Er… Reading what?”

“The air,” she said, arms waving like snakes above her head. “The wind, the sky, the elements. It’s all there.”

“What’s all there?”

“Everything. You just need to know how to listen.”

“Oh. And, uh, what’re you listening for?”

She stopped undulating all of a sudden, dropping her arms and looking at me. The expression on her face was dead serious.
“How many?”

“Huh?”

“That’s what I’m asking. How many?”

“How many what?”

“How many
boys.
How many will there be?”

“You mean—”

“We’ve lost enough already,” she said. “How many more will there be?”

“Look, I know what happened to Shaun Kirtz is terrible. It’s a total tragedy. But what makes you so sure there’d be any others?”

She closed her eyes and recommenced the dance. “I asked the air,” she said, “and it told me there already are.”

A
FTER BEING THOROUGHLY FREAKED OUT
, I went in search of an overpriced bagel from the coffee tent, then did a few more color interviews and checked in with Bill.
Predictably, my story budget had been totally overhauled; he and Marilyn had decided that my coverage was now going to be
All-Shaun-All-the-Time. And although this was considerably more interesting than being on the handmade-sandal beat, it was
also a lot more work.

For starters, they wanted pieces on how Shaun’s friends were coping with his death; on the mood of the festivalgoers in general;
on how the event’s organizers were dealing with the safety issue. And although the print deadline was hours away, they wanted
all this for the Web site ASAP, with continual on-line updates and fleshed-out versions for the paper edition.

Meanwhile, Mad’s duties as a weekend reporter now included pulling together a sidebar on past Melting Rock deaths, of which
I could recall two off the top of my head—one drowning and a heart attack that had felled a fried-dough vendor a few years
back. And yes, dragging Mad into it did feel rather good from a revenge standpoint.

As I raced around the Jaspersburg Fairgrounds trying to cover all this stuff, it definitely seemed to me that the mood of
the place had changed. Maybe it was my imagination, but the music seemed quieter, the dancers shaking their collective booty
with a lot less enthusiasm. Many of the people who’d been running around laughing like hepped-up fools were now engaged in
earnest conversation, and every time I got close enough to eavesdrop, I found they were talking about the same thing. Although,
in the Melting Rock version of telephone, the facts were starting to get wildly distorted.

…And then he, like, had this huge seizure right in the middle of the drum circle, and this one dude just totally fainted.…

… This chick he was with, she’s in the hospital, and they’re pretty sure she’s not gonna make it.…

…I heard he got bit by a spider, like a tarantula or a black widow or something, but now the powers that be are trying to
cover it up so everybody doesn’t get all freaked out.…

…Truth is, he was doing this, like, primitive ceremony, man, but he didn’t know what he was messing with.…

I filed my stories by six, after seeking out Chief Stilwell for another interview and getting the brush-off from one of his
officers on the grounds that he was too busy. Shortly afterward, when I was consoling myself with a potato pancake topped
with sour cream and to hell with the fat, I ran into Dorrie, Billy, and Trish. They’d bought matching ears of roasted corn
on the cob, and though it looked quite tasty, none of them were eating. The ears just sat in the grass in their little paper
boats, a bright yellow flotilla bound for nowhere.

“You guys doing okay?” I asked. They shrugged en masse. “Have you heard anything about Cindy?”

“My dad says she’s not bad,” Trish said. “I guess they took her to the hospital in Gabriel and gave her some tranquilizers
or something. Alan’s with her.”

“That’s good,” I said.

Dorrie rolled her corn with her index finger, then licked the butter off. “They told Shaun’s mom,” she said. “She’s pretty
upset and all.”

I tried to think of something comforting and came up short.

“Hey,” Dorrie said, “can we ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“You mean, do I think you should go home?”

“No, I mean… with Shaun’s mom. What do you think we should do?”

“Oh. I guess…I’m not really sure.”

“But you, like …You’ve done stuff like this before. I mean, my mom says you’re pretty famous in Gabriel.”

“What?”

“I…Uh, I talked to her a little while ago, to say I was okay and everything, and she saw your name on that story you did about
us. She told me, um, about how you’ve had some friends die and all, so we thought maybe…”

She was starting to blush, the redness all the more obvious due to her extreme lack of hair.

“I see.”

All three of them were staring at me like I was supposed to know the secret handshake.

“I guess…” For the second time in as many minutes, I grasped for something profound. Still no go. “When you get the chance,
I don’t know… just tell her you’re sorry.”

They looked vaguely disappointed. Billy compensated by stroking his sideburns. “That’s it?” he said.

“Hell, I don’t know….I guess, maybe…try and figure out when she needs company and when she needs to be left alone, when she
wants to talk about Shaun and when she wants people to shut up about it.”

“Tricky,” Dorrie said, and the other two nodded. Then she picked up her corn and took a bite.

I left them there like that, nibbling on their dinner and contemplating the proper etiquette for dealing with your dead friend’s
mother. And what they didn’t know at the time was this: Inside of twelve hours, two of them would still be pondering the same
question.

But only two of them.

T
o this day, I cannot possibly comprehend why he did it, not really. Some people say he was trying to play chicken with the
universe, others that he actually believed the tarantula story (though, frankly, I think that’s absurd). The most popular
theory was that he was so freaked out about his friend, he desperately needed solace—and being a kid, he didn’t contemplate
the consequences. If you ask me, that last one is the only explanation that comes anywhere close to making sense.

But whatever the reason, at some time past twelve on Friday night, Billy Halpern sat on the highest tier of the Melting Rock
and dropped the same acid that had killed his friend the night before.

And by two
A.M
., he was just as dead.

He was found by a couple who wanted to perform certain intimate acts at the top of the rock—one of the festival’s lesser-known
traditions—and decided the spot was wasted on the sleeping Billy. They tried to wake him, and when he didn’t respond, the
girl shook him harder than she’d meant to. He went tumbling down from tier to tier until he landed on the hard ground, where
he lay so still it was obvious he wasn’t going to move again, ever.

Then she started screaming.

Her cries drew the Jaspersburg cop who had been stationed there overnight by Chief Stilwell, in defiance of both the town
council and the overtime budget. The guy was the force’s rookie—a kid barely eight weeks out of the state academy who, when
I met him the following morning, didn’t seem entirely clear on how to button his uniform shirt.

That this was the first dead body he’d ever seen went without saying; that he threw up would be both a hoary stereotype and
the honest-to-God truth.

Since I was so exhausted after two nights of crummy sleep, it took more than shouting to wake me up; it took the piercing
shriek of an ambulance. Still, I tried very hard to pretend I couldn’t hear it—and when that didn’t work, I tried equally
hard to convince myself I was dreaming. Flunking there as well, I hauled myself up and out of the tent. In what felt like
déjà vu all over again, I fumbled for my glasses and made my way toward the source of the commotion, stomach knotted and notebook
in hand.