Unearthed, p.5
Unearthed, page 5
part #4 of Southern Watch Series
The guy looked chastised, ready to give up the argument. It didn’t always happen that way, but apparently he wasn’t entirely without sense.
“I want shots,” Erin said to him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be drinking,” he said, suddenly uncertain.
Erin went from drunken happy to burning resentment in two seconds. “Oh, fuck you,” she said, and her two drinking buddies sauntered off. Lauren got the feeling they wouldn’t be back until she was gone. Buzzkill. Erin slumped against the table, crossing her arms and putting her head on her forearms. “What the hell do you want from me? Other than to piss all over my evening off?”
“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” Lauren said, drawing Erin’s eyes out from behind a forearm covered in light-blond hair. “On a weekday.”
“What do you want?” Erin asked again, still peering up at her.
Lauren leaned in, checking to make sure the guys were out of earshot. They were at the bar, talking to the surly bartender. “I want to talk about demons,” she said in a low whisper.
“Well, I don’t,” Erin said, sitting up suddenly. Her slack manner had vanished, replaced by a tension that flowed to her arms, held at an odd angle, like she was trying to appear at ease while desperately uncomfortable. “I think we’ve had all the conversations we need to have about those … things.”
Lauren blinked. “You got run off the road in a chase with demons—”
“I got ran off the road because I was trying to help a guy I thought was my boyfriend,” she said, lips returning to a thin, unamused line in pauses between words, “and people I thought were my friends. Since then, my life has pretty much turned to shit, and those guys—they’re all persons …” She paused, befuddled. “People? Peoples,” she finally decided, “of interest in an ongoing investigation. Haven’t heard from any of them. Demons? I don’t care about demons, real or imagined or fairy tale or whatever. And I damned sure don’t want to waste my time talking about them.”
Lauren felt the need to take in a smoky breath. The air hung with the reek of cigarette. This reaction hadn’t been entirely unpredictable; she’d watched Erin get surlier and surlier during her recovery as she’d waited for someone other than her family to visit. This bitterness, this total rejection? This was new. “I can understand you being a little raw, but you know damned well that Arch and, uh—” What the hell was the cowboy’s name? “—Henderson—?”
“Hendricks,” Erin said then looked disgusted she’d let that much slip.
“Hendricks,” Lauren said, nodding, “they had to run. Reeve was on ’em, and they couldn’t prove squat. But Reeve’s asking the wrong questions. God only knows what that idiot is thinking. I saw what happened at the festival. I’ve been looking into what we know about the things that have happened around here, the quiet rumors circulating around town. The MacGruder disappearance, the families on Crosser Street—”
“I don’t care,” Erin said, shaking her head, eyes half-closed, “I don’t—I just don’t care. Whatever you want with this thing, just … leave me out of it, okay? I’m a deputy now, I’m on patrol, away from the desk—I got what I wanted.” She didn’t sound convinced. “I don’t need … I don’t need some idiot in a hat and coat with delusions messing things up for me.” She glanced at the warehouse guys, and Lauren followed her gaze. “I could get laid tonight if I wanted. It’d be decent, too. I’ve had Terry before, and he’s not bad. A little over-enthusiastic sometimes, but—”
“I don’t need to hear this,” Lauren said, turning her gaze back to Erin. It had been longer than she could remember, and it wasn’t likely to change anytime soon given she was presently obsessed with what was going on in this town, not with what was lingering down some guy’s pants. “Things are happening here. Things that matter. People are dying, and no one but your friends even know what’s going on.”
“They’re not my friends,” Erin said, back to sullen.
“Okay.” Lauren knew when she was beat, and this was a moment for it. The girl didn’t want to listen to reason, didn’t care if Calhoun County was going to hell all around her. Lauren smoothed her lab coat as she stood, knowing the smell of cigarettes was going to follow her out of the bar and all the way home. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
“Administering prostate exams and penicillin down at the free clinic?” Erin asked, giggling a little as she said it.
“Nice,” Lauren said, giving her a tight smile that was anything but joyful. “Grow the fuck up,” she added as a parting shot and headed for the door, ready to leave the gloom of the darkened bar behind her.
“Sounds like code for ‘get old,’” Erin fired at her back. “And I say no thanks to that. I don’t want to get old.” Lauren caught a glimpse of her in a mirrored beer sign as she paused at the door. “Unlike some people.”
Lauren just listened to that comment ring in her ears under the low-playing country song and shoved her way out the door. She was right; the smoky smell did follow her all the way into the car. And she sat there for a while and cursed it, cursed Erin Harris, cursed the town that seemed to be falling apart around her, but mostly she cursed her complete feeling of helplessness to do anything at all about it.
*
Brian Longholt lived in his parents’ basement at age twenty-three, and he did not give a fuck what anybody thought about it. He had completed a philosophy degree from Brown in the old-standard four years, had learned a lot, and spent a lot of time doing fun shit, and now he was back in his hometown of Midian not doing nearly as fun shit as before, and that was fine, too. This was just a step in the process, a little bump along the path.
Besides, being in Midian had its own rewards. Not nearly as much snow as Providence, a longer summer, and not a lot of responsibility. His parents left him alone for their own reasons, and that was fine by Brian, except when his mother dropped in once a day or so to harangue him into some kind of action. She’d done that a lot more lately, now that his sister and her husband had vanished off the grid in a cloud of suspicion.
He’d thought maybe that whole thing would result in a loosening of some of the restrictions his mom tried to place on him, but no luck in that department. That was fine, too, though. It just meant that he had to make sure the bathroom door was locked before he lit up. Not that his mother would follow him in there, but it wouldn’t pay to take the chance. His father would kill him. Even if Alison, the presumptive heir-ess apparent, was out of the picture, getting caught toking up in his parents’ house was still a fast way to get disowned.
He lit his first of the day and watched smoke curl off the joint, the end flaring as he huddled on his toilet. He was lucky that he had a connection with a guy a couple towns over, because the weed business had dried up in Midian after Krauther and McGuire had left town. He held in a breath, let it seep out over his lips. He exhaled and watched the smoke drift straight up into the vent fan he’d installed after moving in. He was no handyman, but his dad had taught him a few things, and this one was heavy duty.
He heard footsteps outside his door seconds before the first knock fell. For a second he started to panic, then remembered that everything incriminating was in here with him. “Uhh … yeah?”
“I’m heading out for a while, Brian,” his father’s voice came through the door. He’d probably knocked on his room door first, then, not getting an answer, decided to let himself in, Brian concluded, pinching the still-smoking joint between his fingers.
“Okay,” Brian said, not really sure what to say to that. “You asking permission?”
There was a small silence. “No, I’m not asking permission. I’m being courteous enough to tell you I’m going.” His dad was not a man who took much in the way of shit from any direction, especially not from what he perceived was a downward one. “If you could exercise the same courtesy to me, that’d be appreciated.” His dad pronounced it with a thick Tennessee accent, something Brian had shed about five minutes after getting to Brown and realizing it was a detriment rather than an asset.
“Will do,” Brian said, taking a toke and hold it in. Whoooo. That was good. He listened until he heard his father’s footsteps retreat from his room over the whirring of the fan overhead. He’d sorta expected more, but sorta didn’t. Ever since Alison had disappeared, his dad hadn’t been quite the same.
Brian had been at the Summer Lights Festival that night—a carnival by any other name—and he’d caught a few of the rumors swirling around, but only secondhand. He didn’t really have any friends left in town. The few people he gave a shit about had left and never come back, which is what he wished he could have done. Moved to NYC and not come back but for holidays, like he saw his buddies who’d graduated and had jobs doing. They’d blow in around the week before Christmas and be gone before New Year’s. Squeeze in a ski trip or a vacation to the Bahamas to wash the cancerous dust of Midian off their feet before going back to work.
Fuck that. Well, fuck the work part of that. Brian had glimpsed the life of menial labor and decided against it. He’d worked in a mailroom, been a lackey for some idiot in cubicle somewhere, doing meaningless shit from nine to five, or even later. He’d even spent some time in truck driving school, figuring the romantic existence of a long-haul trucker, running over the open road without a boss or interference might be the ticket. It hadn’t been. After all that, he’d decided that smoking weed in his parents’ basement was—stereotype aside—a hell of a lot more interesting than kowtowing to some corporate jagoff who wanted to tell him when to piss and when to eat, or sitting on his ass in a truck cab for an ungodly number of hours. Money was a transitory thing, after all, and life was short, and that just wasn’t a tradeoff he was willing to make.
Not like Alison. Brian stared at the door as he let the ash fall from his joint down into the shower tub next to him. He’d wash it out later. Alison had been different. Smart, but more book smart than anything. Kind of spacy in life. Her husband had grounded her, a real salt-of-the-earth man. Brian had thought Arch was all right. Not a deep thinker—not the kind of guy who’d go for a philosophy degree—but a good guy. Watching Arch curse at the sheriff at the Summer Lights Festival from across the crowd had dropped Brian’s jaw.
Almost as much as watching that cowboy in the black coat climb the Ferris wheel.
He’d watched his dad and sister help that guy out of the house the night before, barely able to walk. Brian inhaled, letting the smoke wash over him. The cowboy had got into some shit at the festival, and it was obvious to anyone with eyes to see that Arch was involved somehow.
Something was going on in Midian. Brian let a puff sail out between his lips, and a cloud spun its way upward toward the vent fan. He wasn’t sure how much he really wanted to know about it, but he knew something was going on. And it’d take a much dumber mind than his—so, pretty much the whole town—not to know his dad was doing something that put him into it somehow.
But what was he gonna do about it? He stared at his joint, not even close to finished. So he probably wouldn’t be doing much of anything right now. But wouldn’t it be kinda nice to know something that other people didn’t know? Other than the works of René Descartes?
Yeah. That might just be fun. He took another toke and settled back, figuring out how best to approach this. Everyone needed a hobby.
*
Reeve walked into Casey Meacham’s shop on a whim. It was out on Route 32, south of town, a little out of his way but not much. He couldn’t decide whether he was appropriately responding to Pike’s asshole maneuver or just going out of the way to be an asshole himself, and he found he didn’t much care.
The shop was dark, an old corrugated metal building behind a farmhouse, with the sign out on the highway beckoning him in. TAXIDERMY, it said simply. No need for any other name; everyone in Calhoun County knew Casey Meacham.
When Reeve came in, it rang a little bell. There was a small counter with a few skulls on display, all cleaned to the bone, white bone with nothing but a mirror for their background. He picked out a fox and a rodent on his own, but struggled with a couple of the others. They weren’t labeled.
“Helloooooooo,” Casey Meacham said as he stepped out from behind a curtain. He was wearing jeans that looked like he’d gone rolling around in wet clay, grey stains all over the front. He had a thin beard that grew in funny places, patchy around the cheeks but heavy on the chin. He had a chemical smell about him, sharp and unpleasant.
Reeve just stared at him, bass in hand, fishy aroma pervading the store. “Casey, the word hello’s got one damned ‘o’ in it, not twenty.”
Casey grinned, uneven teeth showing under that patchy beard. “Why would you ever limit yourself to just one ‘o’?”
Reeve stared at him, trying to ferret out the meaning on that one. Casey was in his thirties if Reeve recalled, but the man was so damned grungy it was hard to tell. “Got something for you. I’d like it stuffed and mounted.”
Casey took a swaggering step up to the counter. “Well, go on then, lay your thang down. Don’t just stand there with your dick in your hand.”
Reeve cocked an eyebrow at him. This was the shit you had to put up with for working with Casey Meacham. The trade-off for the best taxidermist in the county. He put the bass on the counter with a wet plop.
“I never understood that phrase,” Casey said, leaning over the fish and giving it a look. “‘Standing there with your dick in your hand.’”
Reeve stared at him. “It means … uh … sitting there useless.”
“Yeah, but I don’t get it,” Casey said, looking up at him. “Why is it a bad thing to be standing there with your own dick in your hand? Sounds like a fun time to me.” He cracked a grin.
“Jesus,” Reeve said. “The bass, please.”
“I’ll get it taken care of for you,” Casey said, standing up straight. “Come on back here a minute, though, I got something to show you.” He turned on his heel and disappeared back behind the curtain, gesturing with a hand for Reeve to join him.
“God save me from it being his dick in his hand.” Reeve stared at the bass on the glass countertop for a moment, pondering whether he should leave right then, and then remembered the only thing waiting for him back at the office was County Administrator Pike. With a shrug, he walked around the counter and stepped behind the curtain into a darkened room that ran about thirty feet straight.
On either side of the room were terrariums with lights. Reeve could see Casey standing a few feet away, looking into one of the terrariums at face level. Reeve did a quick estimate. There had to be twenty or thirty of the glass enclosures in here, and all of them looked to be occupied by something, at least.
“Dermestid beetles,” Casey said, tapping the glass of the terrarium he was looking at. He glanced back at Reeve, face and beard partially lit by the lamps glowing from within the glass enclosures. “You ever heard of them?”
“Yeah, actually,” Reeve said, stepping closer to the nearest terrarium. It was filled about an inch of the way with sand, and a small animal skull was resting atop it. The skull was positively swarmed by beetles, little dark bugs that seemed to be crawling all over the remaining bits of skin on the carcass. “They use ’em in crime scene investigations for corpses that have been dead a while. Helps ’em figure out the time or day of death sometimes.” He glanced over at Casey, whose face was glowing with pride. “What do you got ’em for?”
“For European-style mounts, that’s what,” Casey said, puffing out his chest. “See, my brethren across the pond can’t get the chemicals for preserving an animal very easily, so they have these beetles, see, and use ’em to clean the animal off and just mount the skull. Takes up less space because there’s no neck.”
Reeve raised an eyebrow at him. “You think people in Calhoun County are gonna give up their wall mounts, you’re a crazy fuck, Casey. People live for the season around here. That shit may fly over in Germany or England or wherever, places where they’ve got queens and shit, but this is the South. We kill animals, we put them on the wall and brag to our damned friends about the day we got ’em. It’s like you don’t know us at all.”
“Okay, you don’t do this for your best trophy, that’s true,” Casey said, “anymore than you leave your best girl home on a Saturday night.” Reeve doubted Casey knew much about any girl, let alone enough to have a best one. “But you know, for your lesser kills—or maybe a varmint, squirrels, raccoons, whatever—this is perfect. People been bringing me things like cow skulls, a fox—you saw that one out under the counter? I think this is gonna catch on.”
Reeve stared back at the bugs picking over the skull. Looked like what it was—pests devouring whatever meat they could lay pincers on. “If you say so. I just don’t see it, I guess.”
“That’s okay,” Casey said. “I am a man of vision. Pretty soon I’m gonna have a line out the door for these, and I’m gonna have to get me some more beetles. It’s gonna be an empire, Sheriff. A damned empire.”
Reeve cast him a look. “All right then, Ozymandias. Better this than methamphetamine, I guess.” He nodded back toward the door. “I can show myself out, if you need a moment alone with your … bugs.”
“Oh, very funny,” Casey said, shaking his head. “I can see you have doubts about the future success of my endeavors. Well, I can respect that.” He stuck out a hand, which Reeve reluctantly shook. “I will give you a call as soon as I get your bass taken care of. I’ll get started on the skin mount today, but it’ll be weeks.”
“That’s fine. Much obliged,” Reeve said. He paused on the way out the door to look at the beetles crawling all over the skull of something bigger, maybe that cow Casey had mentioned. Hard to believe so many little animals could do that much damage. They hadn’t killed the beast, but they were sure picking over the bones now. It made him feel a little sick, and he hurried out past the curtain and tried not to dwell on it anymore after that.
*
