The_Amazing_Mr._Howard (4 page)

After leaving Killgood’s office, he had contacted Stephanie’s parents. When asked about Johnny Depp, her mother’s eyes grew big and blood rushed into her cheeks. “Johnny Depp is Stephanie’s favorite actor,” she said. “Why do you ask?” He had considered lying rather than admit the information came from Mr. Howard. As expected, when he explained, both of her parents became excited. “Can he help us?” Mr. Coldstone asked. Upon hearing Mr. Howard wanted to see personal items belonging to Stephanie, they tore out of the foyer like teenagers on a scavenger hunt.

Alone in their mansion, he looked around the grand façade they had so carefully constructed. The rich paintings on the wall suggested culture. The polished marble floor implied a status he’d never enjoy. His twenty plus years on the job taught him to see past the window dressing. Mr. Coldstone inherited several thousand acres from his grandfather. Oil and gas deposits gave him money. The advice of a good broker turned him into a wealthy man. Without a bit of luck, he’d probably be living in a doublewide trailer with a wife like Doris.

They rushed down the stairs. Mr. Coldstone carried a box. He held it out. “Some of Stephanie’s things.”

“Thanks,” he had said, even though he didn’t mean it. Working with Mr. Howard was like having hemorrhoids he couldn’t scratch.

On the drive home, he rummaged through the box. Inside he found a pink, fuzzy sweater, a stuffed panda bear, and a sketch book. He lifted the sweater and noticed a pair of white panties stuck to the wool. He held up the panties. What was that stain in the crotch? After checking to make certain no one watched, he pressed the panties against his nose and breathed in a faint metallic odor. Blood. He brought the panties down to his lap. His fingers worked the silky material like a pottery maker molding clay as he imagined her wearing the panties. His breathing became rapid. His penis tingled with the arrival of blood. He tossed the panties back inside the box and wiped sweat from his brow.
What in the hell is happening to me?
The smell of Stephanie’s blood remained strong in his mind all the way to his house.

Willard opened the Internet on his computer, fingers rushing to type in the address of a search engine. He pulled up the webpage for the college. “Let’s see what I can find out about you,” he said, clicking on a link to the facility bios. He scrolled down the list until spotting the name “Mr. Howard, professor of ancient mythology.” Opening the bio, he leaned close to the monitor and read:

Mr. Howard has been a member of the staff since 1990. He has a PhD in History, Applied Human Sciences, and Cognitive Psychology.

He leaned back in the chair. “That’s it? Come on, there has to be more information. This prick has to have a first name. Where did he earn his degrees?” He next tried searching “Howard professor.” Nothing came back. He typed in, “Howard psychic.” Still nothing. He sighed and tried one more time. “Mr. Howard psychic detective.” A link appeared to an article from the Baltimore Sun dated July 1988. The title of the article was, “The Amazing Mr. Howard.”

“Yeah right.” He opened the link and started to read.

College Professor Helps Solve Murder Mysteries

Six months ago, nineteen-year-old prostitute Janet Harking vanished from Baltimore’s waterfront park. Despite a massive search conducted by the local police with the assistance of hundreds of volunteers, no trace of Harking was found until now. Thanks to Mr. Howard, a professor of History at The University of Maryland, police were able to recover Harking’s body on Saturday from a grave in the woods near Sharpsburg. According to an anonymous source in the Baltimore Police Department, Mr. Howard told authorities that he experienced recurring dreams of a Civil War battle and saw Harking in those dreams. When Mr. Howard, who is a Civil War history buff, saw Burnside’s Bridge in a dream, he recognized the location as the Antietam Battlefield. It was here that the Union Army commanded by General McClellan drove back the Army of Northern Virginia commanded by General Robert E. Lee on September 17, 1862. Later visions helped Mr. Howard pinpoint the exact location where Harking’s body was discovered. According to the source, Mr. Howard has helped the police on several murder investigations in the past. When contacted, Mr. Howard had no comment.

Willard pulled on his bottom lip as he thought.
So, he has a history of helping the cops in Baltimore, but nothing shows up in Colorado, and he’s been here over twenty years.
He would need to contact the Baltimore homicide unit.
I also need to press Killgood about his experience dealing with Mr. Howard. Psychic detective my ass. There’s something strange about this son of a bitch.

More laughter carried from the kitchen. He stared at the closed office door and sighed. The world was shrinking around him. He felt connected to no one and nothing. Why did Doris have to let herself get so heavy? What happened to the woman he married? She’d become a stranger to him. A fat Goldilocks who ate all the porridge and still wanted more. He had stopped attending police functions because other detectives joked about Doris behind his back. How could he ever hope to advance in his career with a wife that looked like a beached whale? Lord knows he’d tried to help her lose weight. He’d spent a fortune on diet books. Looking at Doris, he saw his roly-poly Mama tending the hogs, Mississippi mud painting the hem of her dress mahogany, sweat beading across her wide face. After a while, it became hard to tell person from hog. “Sooie, Sooie, little pigs.” He slithered into the cellar, down in the shadows, hands over his ears to block her voice.
Make yourself small enough and soon no one will notice you’re gone.

Digging into his pocket, he retrieved the panties. Holding them out of sight, he massaged the crotch.
I’m pretty sure it was blood I smelled. Maybe not. Could be an important clue to the investigation. I don’t want to overlook anything.
He eyed the door and brought the panties to his nose.

Mr. Howard drove east, the lights of the city fading in his rearview mirror. From time to time, he stole glances at Stephanie, who sat in the passenger seat staring out the window. She was quiet as he passed through farm towns whose single traffic lights flashed a yellow warning—the buildings dark and sidewalks empty. As he drove away from the last town, the sky deepened and countless stars flamed overhead. A waxing moon painted the surrounding fields a soft gray. The hum of the tires floated through the open van window. Warm air carried the stench of manure.

Stephanie turned to look at him. “I’ve been on this road with my family.”

“Oh, when was that?”

“Back when I was…” Her words faded in the wind whistling through the open windows and her attention returned to the passing scenery.

She shimmered in the pale glow cast by the van’s instrument panel. A ghostly hue settled around her. He longed to apologize for all he had done and was going to do to her.

After driving a little over an hour, he arrived at the exit for the grasslands. He drove north, past the entrance sign. Steel rattled as the van traveled over a cattle guard. He made a mental note of the cattle guard. The road ran straight and flat. He cut the headlights and the passage became a black smudge.

“Have we arrived?”

He gripped the steering wheel so hard his fingers ached. “Yes, we are here.”

Mr. Howard spotted a lone cottonwood tree. It marked the location he’d chosen on his previous excursion into the area. He stopped the van and jotted notes in his journal. Welcome sign, cattle guard, barbed wire fence, cottonwood tree.

“What are you writing in your book?” she asked.

“Information for the police.”

“About me?”

He shut off the engine and looked out the window, unable to meet her gaze. Without answering, he exited and walked to the back of the van. Opening the door, he reached inside to grab the zippered plastic bag. With a grunt, he hoisted the bag onto a shoulder and lumbered toward the tree. His shoulder ached as the weight of the bag settled. He pushed through an opening cut in the fence.

At the tree, he eased the bag onto the ground and returned to the van for a shovel. On his preceding visit to the park, he prepared the spot by digging a hole. Since then, the dirt on top had baked into a crusty layer. Beyond this, the earth remained soft and easy to turn with the shovel. The moon slipped low on the horizon as if creeping closer to spy on his activity. In the distance, a coyote howled. Sweat bubbled across his back as he dug. Muscles burned with each thrust of the shovel. By the time he finished digging the hole, his damp shirt clung to his shoulders, and a deep ache took root in his bones.

Mr. Howard knelt beside the bag. He unzipped it and pulled the plastic aside. Moonlight washed over Stephanie’s face. In a fairy tale, this would be the part where he leaned over to kiss her awake, but this was no fairy tale. No kiss could stir Stephanie from her deathly slumber. He bowed his head. Tears welled in his eyes and he tried to massage them away without success.

Her spirit moved alongside him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Do you think I was beautiful?”

He nodded. “You were a most beautiful girl, yes, and I am heartless and cruel. You are a giver of life and I take it away. One day, Stephanie, I will burn in hell for my crimes, of this I am certain.” He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “You did not deserve this fate.”

Moonlight revealed bruises on her neck. He remembered her soft skin compressed beneath his fingers, her body writhing in agony as she struggled to survive. He rocked back and forth, hugging himself, a soft groan rising from his throat.

“If I was not such a coward, I would take my own life to spare the innocent their pain, but I am afraid, yes, I am most definitely afraid. The door to Heaven is locked for me and rightfully so. Damn you, Lenhard.”

A scene came alive inside his mind, a memory from his distant past. Vienna was a city of rats then, a filthy shit hole. No sewers, garbage piled in heaps everywhere, a place of religious intolerance hidden behind crumbling medieval walls, where a dozen languages were heard on the streets—German, Italian, French, Spanish, Hebrew and more. His home was in The Regensburg Hof at Lugeck in the Inner City, with a view of the Danube and a private courtyard where his wife, Sophie, spent her afternoons reading. He’d been married a number of years and fathered four children who had children of their own. His shipping business made him a wealthy man, and now in his later years, he had much to be thankful for. When the Black Death arrived, cries of agony and desperation filled the air both day and night. One man drank blood from a recently decapitated head hoping it would protect him. Others drank the urine of plague victims for the same purpose. Across the city, church bells rang constantly in the belief the movement of air would disperse the infection. The bells performed a strange requiem to remind people what had been lost and to warn them of the suffering still to come.

He kept his family secure behind locked doors. This failed to save them and one by one they succumbed to the disease. First his oldest daughter, Romy, followed by his youngest son, Franz, and daughter Heidi, who held him in her gaze as if expecting him to save her. Sophie was the last to die, silent beneath her sheets, her body like a piece of fruit left to rot in the sun. He wanted to cry when her eyes closed to the world, but his own body had already began to decay and he had nothing left to give.

Fever, yes, his body on fire as if tied to a burning pyre. The Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity carted him to their hospital. Doctors administered an emetic, some kind of thick brown syrup that made him vomit into a pail. They drained his blood in order to balance the “humors” inside his body. Nothing worked. He grew weaker by the hour, the world around him turning to shadow. Night arrived. He tried to focus on the moon shining through the window, but his vision became clouded. It was then his oldest son, Lenhard, appeared next to his bed, body pale, lips as red as cherries. How could this be? Word from his fellow priests at St. Stephens was that Lenhard had the plague. He should be dead. “Are you a ghost?”

Lenhard shook his head. “I have been given a second chance and now I will give it to you, Father. Because of me you shall live on.” Lenhard knelt beside the bed and used a dagger to open a vein in his arm. Black blood seeped from the wound. Lenhard brought his arm to his father’s mouth.

“Drink this and live.” It took but a moment for Lenhard to complete the task. He stood with a smile, bowed his head, and walked toward the doorway, vanishing in the shadows.
What did Lenhard do to me?
This question weighed on his mind throughout the night and he could not sleep.

He rolled in the sheets, a fire igniting inside his chest and spreading across every nerve. An invisible hand gripped his heart and squeezed. Sweat erupted from his pores and pooled beneath him. Dawn arrived with sunlight streaming through the tall windows. A ray beamed down upon him. A thousand needles pricked his flesh. The light, he had to escape the light.

Scrambling out of bed, he stumbled from the ward, oblivious to the suffering around him. Inside the dark basement, he curled into a ball of insignificance, safe from the burning sun. Time inched forward, slowed by overpowering hunger that twisted inside his gut like worms in a corpse. And then he calmed, his body still, the heat in his body fading to a winter’s chill.

He ventured into the night. The clang of church bells vibrated through his brain.
Dong-dong-dong.
Hands clasped against over his ears, he staggered onward. Passing clouds obscured the light of the moon, but he saw the world as if a blazing sun shined upon it. His hunger intensified, ripping and tearing at his insides. He spotted a man asleep on the riverbank. An old drunkard whose alcohol-laced breath charged the cool night air. Murder was wrong; he knew this, but having spilt blood before, it came more easily for him. He fell upon the man, fangs ripping apart his neck before he could scream. Warm blood flooded his palate and his pain subsided. He was alive, and yet, a part of him had died. The part created by God—his humanity.