Prayer for the Dead (29 page)

Tee began to wonder if he had the right man. He had seen him for but a second, at a distance, in a moving car, wearing a beard. Hatcher would have his ass served on a platter if Tee had pulled him away from a stakeout to chase the wrong man. Surely,
he
won’t come. Tee thought, if he really has Dyce cornered in Waverly. Pray God he’ll know better than to leave the real one behind and come following me. What the hell do I know? I’m the chief of police in
Clamden,
for Christ’s sake.

The road continued straight as a plumb line and the Valiant drove steadily onward at thirty-five miles per hour with Tee four hundred yards behind.

“Unless I’m right, Tee thought. Then I’m a goddamned hero. Maybe Dyce had not recognized him as Tee originally thought and was just going on his merry way, oblivious to the car behind him.

The Valiant seemed to be slowing and Tee eased off the gas. He wished to hell that Becker was here. A mistake wouldn’t ruin his career since he didn’t have a career to ruin anymore. The difference, he knew, was that Becker wouldn’t make a mistake.

It’s about your self-esteem, big guy. Tee thought. You got to learn to think positively about yourself You saw the guy, you recognized him instantly. There wasn’t any doubt then; you didn’t say to yourself, gee, it looks like Dyce. You
knew
it was him. So stick with that, trust yourself. You’re not some local jerk, you’re the goddamned chief of police.

The Valiant turned to the right and vanished for a moment in the intervening swell of corn. Tee reached reactively for his car radio, then realized he didn’t have one. There was no way to let Hatcher know where he was or where he was going—in fact he didn’t know himself. He would just have to play it by ear, watch Dyce come to a stop, then find a telephone. If he had turned here, at least he couldn’t be going far. There was no major highway in this direction. Tee felt pretty sure, just corn and more corn and maybe a house or two.

Tee eased around the corner and saw the Valiant ahead of him, slowing still further, his blinker on. Awfully obliging. Tee thought. The man is such a law-abiding citizen he puts on his blinker on an empty road—except when he decides to boil a few bodies in the kitchen. He’s not quite so law-abiding then. Well, there are laws and there are laws, aren’t there, jug-head? It passed through his mind fleetingly that he himself was not the law here; he had no jurisdiction outside of Clamden, he doubted that he could make an arrest, and if he did, would it violate Dyce’s rights? But then, I’m not making an arrest. I’m just following the guy.

The second turn took Tee deep into the heart of a cornfield with stands of green corn reaching above the car and closing in on either side. It was like driving through a transparent tunnel under an emerald sea. The road was only packed dirt and rutted, a farmer’s access lane, narrow enough that a tractor hauling equipment would brush against the stalks.

With the corn this close. Tee could no longer see the large stone house and barn that he had noticed from the distance, but when the Valiant turned again, he realized that had to be where Dyce was heading. Tee stopped his car and thought. He couldn’t follow by car any longer. If Dyce hadn’t noticed him so far—and apparently he hadn’t—he could hardly miss him if he pulled up into the barnyard. He wasn’t
sure,
but the chances were good that the final turnoff led to the farmhouse or a cul-de-sac. It was too deep in the field to go much farther unless it went all the way across, and even then Dyce would hardly think it just coincidence that another car was tooling through the cornfield. If it was Dyce. Tee tried not to dwell on that possibility.

Or it could run all the way through the field; it could lead to some other access road. Hatcher would like that, too. Follow him to the middle of a cornfield, stop and wait while he drives out the other side and all the way to Canada. Tee felt a sudden intense dislike for Hatcher. The man was an absolute prick, Becker was right about that.

Wishing he could think of something better. Tee got out of the Toyota and walked into the cornfield, two rows deep. He followed the row that ran parallel to the lane and headed toward the path where the Valiant had made its last tum.

Listening first. Tee cautiously peered out from the corn to scan the lane. It ran for thirty yards, then turned left, vanishing once more into the corn. The Valiant was nowhere.

Tee crossed the lane and took to the corn once more, staying parallel to the lane, then turning with it. This is not my line of work. Tee thought. Already his heart was racing and his breath was short, although he’d done nothing but walk a few dozen yards. He felt an uncomfortable tingling on his skin as if he was about to sweat.

I’m scared, he thought. What the hell am I scared of? Being boiled in a pot, that’s what the hell I’m scared of. Isn’t that good enough? He felt for the revolver riding on his hip and pushed off the leather thong that held it in place. He considered drawing the revolver and carrying it at the ready, but then thought, for what? To arrest the wrong man? Ridiculous what embarrassment can do, he thought. So what if you make a mistake and look like an asshole. Don’t you look stupid enough already, creeping through a cornfield? If you want to pull the gun, pull the damn thing. He left it in his holster and bent to peer cautiously once more into the lane.

Seeing just a glimpse of the dull green of the Valiant, he jerked his head back behind the sheltering corn. What now, chief? There was the car, parked at the end of the lane, a few yards away. He could hear noises from the farmhouse, music playing, the noise of a black rapper sounding ludicrously incongruous in a field of corn. Tee tried to calm himself; he could hear little besides the rapper’s voice and the insistent electronic drum above his own breathing. Was the Valiant’s engine still running? Was Dyce parked, or not?

Tee knelt on the soft earth, his backside brushing against the corn as he went down. Be quiet, for Christ’s sake! God, he really wasn’t meant for this kind of thing. Where the hell was Becker with his icewater nerves? Just establish that the car is parked, then get the hell out of here and find a phone. If the engine is still running, he’s not going to stick around and you’ll look like an idiot. Christ, you are an idiot. His sweat glands were working overtime now; he could feel the dampness in his armpits. This is stupid, this is so stupid. Just turn around and run if you feel so scared. No one’s watching. Just hightail it out of here and worry about your dignity later. Staying as low as he could, though not certain why except for some childhood memory of doing what they did in the movies, he eased his eyes toward the edge of the curtain of corn.

I investigate burglaries and refer them to the state police, he thought. I stop suspicious-looking characters who are cruising Clamden neighborhoods. On the holidays I direct traffic so we can hold parades. I don’t even do most of that anymore. I’m the chief now. I have the officers do it. Ten years ago Ralph Smolness swung a chair at me when I answered his wife’s call about domestic violence. That’s
it.
That’s what I do. I don’t play Indian in the cornfield with a maniac who’s going to make soup out of me if I don’t quit bumping into stalks.

The engine of the Valiant was running, the car was vibrating slightly. Dyce was not in the car, at least not in sight. Tee wiped away a drop of sweat that was threatening his eye. The rapper was saying something that sounded like “fug it, fug it.” Probably not. Tee thought. There were still laws, at least in Connecticut, and why in hell was he thinking about that? The music sounded over and over in his head; he couldn’t get the noise out of his mind even when the record ended.

He lifted himself to his knees and heard the corn behind him rustle again. Be
quiet,
he warned himself then realized he hadn’t made the sound just as something hit him hard in the right buttock. Oh, fuck it, he thought. He tried to reach for his gun, but a foot in his back pushed his face in the dirt and another foot stood on his right arm. The lyrics “fug
it,
fug it” were still reverberating in his mind and the beating of his pulse in his ear matched the beat of the drums.

Someone was in grandfather’s house. He couldn’t believe it. Someone was living there. He heard the jungle music, the unrelenting drums, the raucous squeal of guitars, the lyrics that went beyond suggestive to demanding, all of it profaning grandfather’s values and his memory. No, not his memory. Nothing could touch his memory, for that lived within Dyce’s soul. There was a tractor parked by the front porch, someone in overalls sitting on the stone steps, eating, leaning his back against the stone pillar that had once held the porch roof. Behind the man was the porch itself, or what remained, charred by fire. No one was living there. It had been repaired—could not have been without Dyce’s knowledge and permission—so the man blasting the music into the rural air was only there temporarily. Dyce could deal with him, if he had to, when he replenished his supply of PMBL. The last of it had just gone into the cop in the cornfield.

Dyce dragged Tee’s body two rows farther into the corn so that it could not be seen by anyone passing on the road. He walked to Tee’s car and drove it deeply into the field, curving his route so that no one glancing down the entrance furrow could see anything at the end but more corn.

Dyce prepared grandfather’s body as he remembered grandfather having done for his father ten years earlier. The coffin, however, was beyond his talents. Unskilled with saw or hammer, he simply laid the old man’s body on a plank set up on the sawhorses covered by the black tarpaulin. For three days Dyce sat vigil in grandfather’s chair in the darkened living room, and with every hour his faith in grandfather’s religion drained a fraction more until finally, the vigil over, there was none left. His faith in the resurrection was nothing more than a distant hope, his credence in the hellfire and the righteous, whimsical god who fueled it with his wrath dwindled to nothing. But he never lost faith in grandfather himself. If grandfather’s God was wrong, that did not mean grandfather himself was wrong.

On the morning of the fourth day Dyce carried grandfather’s withered body to his bedroom, dressed him in pajamas and laid him to rest under the blankets, The old man had become so frail in his final years it was like carrying a child. It was winter and Dyce had kept the heat off so the decomposition was slight, but the odor, as he cradled the body against his chest, was very strong. Dyce choked back his revulsion and forced himself to breathe deeply. If grandfather stank, then the stench was good and pure.

When all signs indicated that the old man had died peacefully in bed—as indeed he had—Dyce called the authorities and told them he had just returned from a weekend in upstate New York looking at the campus of the college he was to attend in thirteen days and had discovered his grandfather dead. Dyce waited a week after the official funeral before he set fire to the house. He knew he would not return and he could not bear the idea of anyone else living in the home where he and grandfather had loved one another.

The fire department responded more quickly than he had anticipated, saving most of the roof and the attic rafters and a portion of the porch where grandfather had sat and waited and watched for the arrival of his grandson.

It was good enough, Dyce decided. No one could live in the house and there was something comforting about the indestructibility of the stone walls that continued to stand, blackened by smoke but as solid as the earth from which they came. From a distance the house still looked whole and someday, when he had wrested his fortune from the world, Dyce could return to live again in his only inheritance.

The cemetery was empty except for the men digging a fresh grave in Section Three, and they were too far away and preoccupied to pay any attention to him. With one more look around to assure his privacy, Dyce knelt on the grass beside grandfather’s grave. A spider had spun a web from the plastic flowers that sat atop the funerary urn to the ground and the encased carcasses of two victims hung from the threads like roosting bats with their wings enfolded round them. Dyce removed the plastic flowers from the top of the urn, snapping the web, revealing the glass gallon container beneath. He would need all of it this time, he would have to take it with him, so Dyce pulled out the bottle. Dirt and some kind of moss encrusted the bottom of the container so it came up with resistance, and algae was slowly colonizing the unperceptible valleys of the glass surface, but inside the bottle and its plastic lid, which was still untouched by nature’s slow incursions after fifteen years, the liquid PMBL was still as clear as spring water with the faintest touch of blue. Like water from a glacier, Dyce thought. Like drinking water of an earlier age before pollution. Like the water in Canada, maybe. He would find out soon enough.

Holding the bottle to his chest with both arms wrapped around it, Dyce spent a moment alone with grandfather. At first it was hard to concentrate; there were so many things on his mind. They were chasing him and they were so close. He didn’t understand how they could be so close, two of them within an hour— but they were stupid, they were gullible. He had no doubt that he could outwit them. There was only one of them he feared, the companion at the hospital of the cop he had just dealt with—but he wasn’t here and maybe he wasn’t coming. If he did come, Dyce knew what he had to do. He could ignore the others or deal with them as they came along, but that one he would have to kill.

He struggled to put such things out of his mind and to get in touch with grandfather. Eventually the peace settled over him and he could see the old man again, and smell the scent of the plain soap he used to wash his body and his hair. He could feel the gentle prickle of grandfather’s beard touching his cheek, and then the back of his neck as grandfather got behind him. He could hear the rapid panting of grandfather’s breath into his ear, he could feel grandfather pressing against him from behind, pressing and pressing until the panting stopped with a shuddering sigh.