Genesis of Evil (10 page)

Carol Joiner screamed and fainted. Rupert Swan collected himself enough to dash to the wall phone and dial 911.

Jonathon Holloway, the coroner, shook his head and looked up at Gerhart. “This is without a doubt the most horrible thing I’ve seen in my entire life,” he declared. “Christ on a bicycle! What in the world would possess a perfectly healthy kid to stick his head into a vat of boiling oil?”

Gerhart shrugged. “Beats me, but according to everybody there, that’s exactly what happened. Maybe he was on something. The black kid, Rupert, said he glanced up just as this guy was tossing fries out of the cooker onto the floor. Then he yanked out the basket and stuck his head in the oil.” He flipped the sheet over Billy Curran’s face. “Is that girl all right? What’s her name? Joiner?”

“She’ll be fine. Just shook up. Can’t blame her. Must have been a hell of a shock.”

Carol Joiner had come around while they were loading Billy’s body onto a gurney. Everybody in the BurgerBuddee that hadn’t been engaged in throwing up had made a great effort to keep from looking at the horrible thing on the floor. Two employees carried Carol to a corner, propped her up and stood around with paper cups full of water, waiting for her to revive. Holloway had looked her over before leaving with the body.

“I imagine the kid died pretty quick,” Gerhart said.

“Believe me, if it took a half minute it was too long. I would guess the shock simply shut down his entire nervous system. Have you been able to find his family?”

“There’s just his father. He’s a truck driver, but nobody knows who he works for, where he is or when he’s coming home. I’ve left a message on his answering machine and a note on the front door. I also talked to the neighbors and they promised to call me when he shows up. I didn’t tell them what it was about.” Gerhart wiped a hand across his mouth. “I don’t look forward to telling him his son is dead. Especially under these circumstances. If you’re finished with the body, let’s put him in the cooler. I don’t want somebody coming in here and seeing him without any warning.”

Gerhart reached across the table for the salt. “Of all the messes I’ve seen, that one was the worst,” he said.

Virginia grimaced and poured herself some more iced tea. “I don’t want to hear about it,” she said.

“Even if you wanted to, which you never do, I wouldn’t tell you about this one. It’s too horrible.”

“Thank you.” Virginia glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to go.”

“What is it tonight?”

“Hospital auxiliary. I’m introducing our new pediatrician to the hospital volunteers. It’s just in the cafeteria. Probably not more than an hour.”

“You know, if you could figure out how to get paid for all this stuff you’re involved in, I could retire.”

Virginia stood and picked up her purse from the kitchen counter. “But you wouldn’t retire, would you? You love the job too much. Just leave the dishes. I’ll put them in the dishwasher when I get back.”

Gerhart stared after her, wondering where he had gone wrong.

When Don Curran pulled his rig into the lot next to his house two days later, Jerry Baxwell, his neighbor, put down the hedge clippers, walked over to the tractor trailer and spoke quietly to him for a moment.

Don Curran went into the house and called Gerhart. As gently as possible, the Chief of Police explained what had happened to Billy. The silence on the other end of the phone seemed to last forever. When Gerhart failed to get any response from the instrument he hung up and drove quickly to Curran’s house.

Don Curran was still sitting on the floor holding the receiver in his lap when Gerhart looked through the open front door. Curran rocked back and forth and muttered Billy’s name over and over as the tears rolled unchecked down his cheeks. Gerhart took the phone gently from Curran’s hand and called Holloway, who arrived ten minutes later. He gave Curran a shot in the left arm, then he and Gerhart helped the grieving man into bed.

Gerhart went next door and spoke with Jerry Baxwell and his wife. They promised to keep an eye on Curran and call Gerhart immediately if he needed help. Then Gerhart went back to the station to look for Curran’s relatives.

Chapter Ten

September 28, 2004

When the beeping started Delbert Rollins shifted his gaze from the antique car magazine he was reading to his watch. It was 2:00 A.M. Time to make another round. He closed the magazine, cast one last, longing look at the 1934 Dodge pickup truck on the cover and stood to go to work.

As he walked slowly through the mall corridors he thought about “his” truck. He had been after it for the better part of his high school and college years. Now that he was finally going to graduate with a degree in Mechanical Engineering he figured he would make an effort to buy the old 1946 Studebaker pickup. Harmon Zimmer’s father had bought it brand new just after the war. It was still in the Zimmer family. The first time Delbert Rollins got a good look at it, he was nine years old. The old truck was dark green with a brown leather seat and white steering wheel. Delbert, his mouth open, had stood and stared until his father grabbed him by the arm and led him away. The truck still sat in the same shed where it had lived for the past forty-nine years, although nobody drove it anymore. Sometime during the winter of 1968 an Alberta Clipper had screamed into Florida and stayed for two days. It kept the natives indoors in droves and froze the water in the Studebaker’s engine block, cracking it wide open between cylinders three and four. Since the truck was twenty-two years old and they didn’t make Studebakers anymore, Mr. Zimmer just left it in the shed and forgot about it. Delbert, however, hadn’t forgotten it. When he got this last check from the mall security job he was going to go out there and stand flat-footed in front of the screen door until Mr. Zimmer sold him the thing. And then he was going to pull it home, take it apart and…

Delbert stopped in the middle of the mall corridor, frowned slightly and looked around. He could have sworn something had moved just at the edge of his vision. He slowly swung his head from left to right to listen for odd noises, as a finger hovered over the panic button on his belt. The button activated an alarm at the police station, and a red dot on the wall map in the security office would pinpoint his location.

Delbert stood in front of Bonmark’s. All along their outside wall was a series of display cases built into the cement block. The cases were inaccessible from the inside of the store and were serviced from the corridor. As Delbert slowly and carefully scanned the area he saw movement once more, slightly behind and to the right. Delbert spun on his heel.

In one of the display cases stood a tall, slender mannequin wearing a skimpy bikini. Delbert stepped closer to the window. The mannequin smiled down at him and made come hither gestures with her right hand.

Delbert’s mouth dropped open. He took a step backwards, frowned and looked closer at the mannequin. Why, it wasn’t a mannequin at all! Obviously, somebody was playing a joke on him. He cleared his throat, squared his shoulders and stepped purposefully forward to stand directly beneath the slightly elevated display window.

“Okay, whoever you are,” Delbert said in his deepest voice. “I want you to step down out of there right now or I’m calling the police.” He pointed to the floor in front of him. “Right here. Now. Come out of there.”

The mannequin that was a girl continued to smile, twisting this way and that, showing off her slender young body in the bikini which, oddly enough, seemed to cover less and less of her as the seconds flew by.

Delbert shuffled his feet and glanced right and left. “Come on. I said out.”

“Why don’t you come in here with me?” she asked.

“Are you nuts? I couldn’t get in there if I tried. It’s locked. Besides, I’d lose my job. Now come on out. Who the hell are you anyway?” It seemed to Delbert that the temperature had risen at least ten degrees since he had started this ridiculous conversation.

“Just a friend,” she said. “Come on, Delbert. Don’t I look good to you? Or have I made a mistake? Hey, you aren’t gay, are you?”

“Now, just…hold on. Don’t…ahh, shit!”

The girl reached behind her and unhooked her bikini top. It fluttered to the floor like a dying butterfly. Delbert was uncomfortably aware of the ever-increasing tightness of his jeans. Smiling brighter than ever, she hooked a forefinger in each side of her waistband and slid the panties slowly down to her ankles. Then she stepped out of them. Delbert swallowed noisily, looked frantically about once more and shrugged.

“Oh, what the hell,” he said to nobody in particular. Then he reached out and tentatively tugged on the door to the display cabinet. It swung effortlessly open. The girl reached down and took both of his hands in hers.

Delbert Rollins stepped into the display case with the blonde, beautiful and extremely naked young lady.

Ezra Docket pushed his cart ahead of him down the long corridor and hummed something he had heard on the car radio on the way to work. He liked working early in the morning before the mall opened. It sure beat the job he had before he retired. Always somebody around wanting something. Ezra, get this. Ezra, go tell so and so that. Can you take a short lunch, Ezra? I need you to pick something up for Eugene.

Who would have thought that life could be better after sixty-five? But it was. He could slip from of the house before Wanda even thought about getting out of bed. Ezra had wondered for years why her mouth popped open exactly the same time his eyes did every morning. And, Lord, how Ezra hated noise in the morning.

But, this job! This was really something. Ezra thought about where to start work. Maybe the public restrooms next to Bonmark’s. Yep. That would be fine for a change. He liked to vary his routine. It added a bit of spice to the day.

Ezra pushed the cleaning cart around the corner in front of Bonmark’s and stopped dead in his tracks. There was something laying in the corridor in front of one of those funny display windows set into the wall. He stepped around his cart and moved cautiously toward the lump on the floor. It looked like a pile of clothing. The lump was surrounded by something that sparkled in the glare of the ceiling lights. A funny red-brown stain had spread itself around the lump, too. Ezra stopped moving.

And then the two eggs over easy, the bacon, the grits, the toast with jelly and the coffee he had enjoyed for breakfast was suddenly on the floor at his feet.

Ezra Docket staggered backwards a few steps, then turned around and trotted as fast as his sixty-seven-year-old legs would carry him to the pay phones next to the restrooms.

Ezra Docket still stood in the corridor of the mall next to the telephones when Gerhart ran in followed closely by two paramedics and Penton, the mall manager. Fortunately, from Penton’s standpoint, it was far too early for any potential customers to be in the parking lot, therefore the mall’s position was not compromised. At least not yet.

Gerhart Kable and Jonathon Holloway stood and looked down at the body of Delbert Rollins where it lay on the stainless steel table in the autopsy room at the back of Holloway’s practice.

Gerhart waved both hands in the air and sighed loudly. “This is crazy,” he declared.

“Death very often is,” Holloway replied philosophically.

“Not just death in general, damn it, this death. What the hell was this kid doing? He breaks through the glass in a locked display case that holds nothing but a clothing store dummy. He pulls the dummy out of the case on top of him, cutting his wrist and throat in the process—and dies within fifteen feet of a phone. And with a button on his belt that would have had us there within five minutes.” Gerhart walked slow circles in the middle of the floor as he spoke. “Why would he break the window in the first place? You can’t get into the store that way. And why, assuming he did have a reason to break in, did he pull the dummy out on top of him? And why the hell didn’t he call for help? Even if he was doing something illegal, was it worth dying for? Jesus Christ, Holloway, what’s going on?”

Holloway shook his head and pulled the sheet up over Delbert Rollins’ bloodless face. “I ain’t got a clue, pardner,” he said in his best John Wayne voice. Holloway was the only man in town who didn’t know he spoke like that only when he was worried. “After all, pardner, y’all are the Sheriff in this here town. I ain’t.”

“Y’all is plural. I’ve told you that before. There’s only one of me standing here, despite what you may have had to drink last night. Think about what’s happened here in the last week or so. First a dessert chef in the restaurant spikes the mousse with a laxative. We can’t find him. Then the mayor’s kid tries to mug a lady on crutches. Fortunately, she’s tougher than he is. But he’s never been in trouble before in his life. I doubt that he wet his diaper more than once. A few days later, some little girl reports a “pervert”, as she calls it, in the mall. Apparently he hid in a closet grinning at her while he pounded his pud. Then, the Curran boy deep-fries his noggin. Now poor old Delbert, here, decides to try on a bikini and slashes a wrist in the process. This is just nuts!”

Holloway raised a hand as if asking to recite. “I just remembered something. There was this boy they hired to clean up in the food court. Retarded kid, but a good worker. His boss couldn’t say enough about him. One of the girls that works there saw him sitting at a table holding his head and mumbling. She said he kept saying, ‘He’s in my head. Get him out of my head. I don’t want to do that.’ His mom brought him to me. We checked the boy out six ways from Sunday, but couldn’t find anything physically wrong with him. They told me he never pitched a fit like this before. Now he absolutely refuses to go anyplace near the mall. His mom told me they were in the car a few days later and she remembered she needed something from the drugstore. They were only a couple of blocks from the mall so she whipped over there. As soon as the boy saw where she was going, he yanked open the door, jumped out of the moving car and ran off across the street yelling and screaming. Said it took her a half hour to get him back in the car.”