‘Why not now?’
‘There’s no time. You have those calls to make. And I have one more question. Think about it carefully. Do you have any enemies?’
‘No one who qualifies for something like this.’
‘An ex-student, maybe? One with a grudge?’
Matt, who knew exactly to what extent he influenced the lives of his students, laughed politely.
‘Okay,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like it. First that dog shows up on the cemetery gates. Then Ralphie Glick disappears, his brother dies, and Mike Ryerson. Maybe they all tie in somehow. But this… I can’t believe it.’
‘I better call Cody’s home,’ Matt said, getting up. ‘Parkins will be at home.’
‘Call in sick at school, too.’
‘Right.’ Matt laughed without force. ‘It will be my first sick day in three years. A real occasion.’
He went into the living room and began to make his calls, waiting at the end of each number sequence for the bell to prod sleepers awake. Cody’s wife apparently referred him to Cumberland Receiving, for he dialed another number, asked for Cody, and went into his story after a short wait.
He hung up and called into the kitchen: ‘Jimmy will be here in an hour.’
‘Good,’ Ben said. ‘I’m going upstairs.’
‘Don’t touch anything.’
‘No.’
By the time he reached the second-floor landing he could hear Matt on the phone to Parkins Gillespie, answering questions. The words melted into a background murmur as he went down the hall.
That feeling of half-remembered, half-imagined terror washed over him again as he contemplated the door to the guest room. In his mind’s eye he could see himself stepping forward, pushing it open. The room looks larger, seen from a child’s eye view. The body lies as they left it, left arm dangling to the floor, left cheek pressed against the pillow which still shows the fold lines from the linen closet. The eyes suddenly open, and they are filled with blank, animalistic triumph. The door slams shut. The left arm comes up, the hand hooked into a claw, and the lips twist into a vulpine smile that shows incisors grown wondrously long and sharp -
He stepped forward and pushed the door with tented fingers. The lower hinges squeaked slightly.
The body lay as they had left it, left arm fallen, left cheek pressed against the pillowcase -
‘Parkins is coming,’ Matt said from the hallway behind him, and Ben nearly screamed.
5
Ben thought how apt his phrase had been:
Parkins Gillespie arrived first, wearing a green tie set off by a VFW tie tack. There were still sleepy seeds in his eyes. He told them he had notified the county ME.
‘He won’t be out himself, the son of a bitch,’ Parkins said, tucking a Pall Mall into the corner of his seamed mouth, ‘but he’ll send out a deputy and a fella to take pitchers. You touch the cawpse?’
‘His arm fell out of bed,’ Ben said. ‘I tried to put it back, but it wouldn’t stay.’
Parkins looked him up and down and said nothing. Ben thought of the grisly sound the knuckles had made on the hardwood floor of Matt’s guest room and felt a queasy laughter in his belly. He swallowed to keep it there.
Matt led the way upstairs, and Parkins walked around the body several times. ‘Say, you sure he’s dead?’ he asked finally. ‘You tried to wake him up?’
James Cody, MD, arrived next, fresh from a delivery in Cumberland. After the amenities had passed among them (‘Good t’seeya,’ Parkins Gillespie said, and lit a fresh cigarette), Matt led them all upstairs again. Now, if we all only played instruments, Ben thought, we could give the guy a real send-off. He felt the laughter trying to come up his throat again.
Cody turned back the sheet and frowned down at the body for a moment. With a calmness that astounded Ben, Matt Burke said, ‘It reminded me of what you said about the Glick boy, Jimmy.’
‘That was a privileged communication, Mr Burke,’ Jimmy Cody said mildly. ‘If Danny Glick’s folks found out you’d said that, they could sue me.’
‘Would they win?’
‘No, probably not,’ Jimmy said, and sighed.
‘What’s this about the Glick boy?’ Parkins asked, frowning.
‘Nothing,’ Jimmy said. ‘No connection.’ He used his stethoscope, muttered, rolled back an eyelid, and shone a light into the glassy orb beneath.
Ben saw the pupil contract and said quite audibly, ‘Christ!’
‘Interesting reflex, isn’t it?’ Jimmy said. He let the eyelid go and it rolled shut with grotesque slowness, as if the corpse had winked at them. ‘David Prine at Johns Hopkins reports papillary contraction in some cadavers up to nine hours.’
‘Now he’s a scholar,’ Matt said gruffly. ‘Used to pull C’s in Expository Writing.’
