The screen door banged shut behind the man. He didn't have to turn around. He knew who it was. His son, Karl. Had to be. Lyle's wife had left him years back; said she couldn't take anymore of her husband's womanizing and brutality. Took the girl and split. Lyle didn't know where they went. Didn't care either.
Without turning around, the father said, “You sure come in late last night, boy. Morning would be more like it.”
“Big doings in town.” Karl sucked noisily at a mug of coffee. Sounded like a hog at the trough.
“Yeah?” Lyle asked without interest. He seldom went into Holland. Maybe once a year, tops. He did all his shopping over in Wyoming. Bought all his cars and trucks and farm and ranch equipment and supplies outside of Holland. Lyle hated the town of Holland. Hated to hear the name of Holland. Despised Martin Holland. Only thing he liked about Martin Holland was his wife. Fine-lookin', classy woman. Uppity, though. Thought she was better than other folks.
“What's all the big doin's in Holland, boy?”
“The carnival's done come to town.”
The man spun around so fast he startled the boy. The father's eyes were buggy.
“Carnival!”
he shouted the word.
“Yeah. Carnival. Like in rides and stuff. What's the matter with you? You look like you swallowed a bug.”
“Don't get too lippy with me, boy. I can still take you down and don't you forget it.”
The young man smiled at his father and set the coffee mug down on a wooden bench. “Maybe. Maybe not. But it'd be a tussle you'd not soon forget.”
The father leaned up against the porch railing, his eyes taking in the size of his son. Both men were built like bulls, stocky and very strong. Both were quick, tough, and cruel men. Both were bullies.
“Yeah,” the father spoke softly, and with some degree of pride in his voice. “I reckon it would at that.”
Neither father nor son possessed one ounce of anything that could remotely be described as a socially redeeming quality. Certainly nothing of moral value. The father took what he wanted, by any method he felt he could get away with. And so did his son. The father had been forced, on more than one occasion, to buy or threaten or coerce his son out of troubleâjust as his father had done for him. All to protect the good name of the family, of course. Both father and son held women in contempt, something to be used and then discarded. There was not one ounce of compassion in either of them.
“What's the name of this carnival, boy?”
Karl had to think about that some. He had a slight hangover from all the long necks he'd consumed the night before. But it'd been fun on the drive back to the ranch from Holland, trying to run over as many dogs and cats as he could; almost wrecked his truck a couple of times trying to squash them. Wouldn't have made no difference if he had: he had inherited money of his own to buy another one.
“I don't know,” the young man finally said. “Didn't see no name. It's just a carnival.”
The father shook away some very fleshy and enjoyable mental memories from years past. In a pavilion, he and Jim Watson and those two young gals. Then they'd had a good time with Pete and Frank Tressalt and a whole bunch of other folksâdamn near the whole townâhorsewhippin' and shootin' and finally burnin' all them carnival people alive. Other memories filled his head: screaming and running and burning human torches. That'd been pretty damn good fun, and it had covered his and Jim's tracks, too. Them gals had been too scared to open their mouths. As far as them dead people wentâcarnival trash was all they wasâall dead and burned up. Them, and damn near everything and everyone connected with the carnival.
To Lyle's way of thinking, it was just too bad that Martin Holland hadn't burned up with the rest of them. And as far as them carnival people having the insightâas his own daddy had insistedâthat wasn't nothing but a bunch of crap. Nobody had no insight; couldn't nobody see in the past or in the future. They was all burned up and dead and their ashes scattered. And don't no dead person ever come back to this earth.
Lyle had to grin when he thought of that fat lady in that sideshowâwhat was it called? Yeah, a Ten-in-One. Way she bubbled and crackled and popped and sizzled when the flames got all over her and she couldn't carry her fat ass and the fire ate her up. His grin widened when he thought about that stupid-lookin' Dog Man and the way he actually barked as the flames covered him.
Karl looked at his father, the man he admired most in the whole world. “What you grinnin' about?”
“Old times and better days, boy.” The father took a closer look at his son. You sure are all duded up. You got you some little gal in town waitin' for you?”
Karl grinned. “Don't I always?”
“She got a name?”
“Missy Hudson.”
“Ain't she the one who puts out for half the boys in high school?”
“She was. She ain't no more. She's just puttin' out for me, now.”
“How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
“That's young, boy. And you close to legal age. I bailed you out too many times for you to forget that a stiff dick'll get you in trouble quicker than a gun.”
“Her folks'd have to charge half a hundred 'fore they ever got to me.”
“That's a fact.” He punched his son on the arm.
He understood, remembering how he was at his son's age. “I might take me a ride into Holland. Look around some. Is it just a carnival, boy?”
Lyle never read the Holland weekly. And since he took no interest in anything connected with the town, he seldom paid any attention to anything he heard concerning the town of Holland.
“No, dad! It's a big fair. Gonna kick off official next Thursday.”
That rang a mental bell. It kicked off on a Thursday years back, too. Made Lyle sorta feel funny. He shook that off. “A fair,” the man repeated softly, remembering, despite himself, what his daddy had warned him of, over and over, just before he died. But Lyle hadn't paid any attention to it then, and he wasn't going to pay any attention to it now. Lyle didn't believe in that insight business. When you died, you was dead. That was that. “Well, now, don't that beat all? A fair's done come back to Holland.”
* * *
Gary Tressalt began his lonely work on the body of Jimmy Harold. With the cassette/corder running, recording every move of his hands, announcing each cut just before he made it, the tape trapped each word. Gary made one long incision from throat to crotch, then side to side twice, the first cut just under the shoulders, across the chest, and then another cut just above the hips, across the lower abdomen. He peeled the flesh back and then used rib-spreaders to open the boy up wide and lock the cavity open.
The strong smell of flesh filled his nostrils.
The doctor stood and stared in total utter disbelief. He had done autopsies on burn victims before. But they had all been burned through and through. He knew what to expect from that. But this boy's outer skin showed no signs of burns. Inside, every organ: heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, everything had been cooked, and from first glance, cooked from the inside out.
Microwaved, the thought came to him.
Don't be stupid, Gary! he mentally berated himself, careful not to say anything aloud so the tape would catch him. There is a logical explanation for this. Just keep looking, you'll find it.
But the more he cutâand he knew he had to record his findingsâthe more evidence bore out his initial feelings: Jimmy Harold had been baked to death. Cooked. But only on the inside. Not on the outside.
Impossible.
Working swiftly and carefully, with a strange feeling of dread hanging around him, the tape machine running, Gary peeled off the skin from the head and took a small electric saw, opening the skull. Steam hissed odorously from the open skull. The brain had been cooked just like the other organs he had examined.
Gary vocally summed up his findings and tossed a sheet over the body, tucking it in tight and sliding the body back into the cooler. He locked the cooler and placed an official county coroner's seal on the front. He tossed his gown and mask into the hamper and his gloves went into the trash bin. After washing up, he told the young mortician that under no circumstances was the seal on the cooler to be broken.
He drove back to the fairgrounds and went looking for Martin.
In the several hours he'd been gone, the place had filled up with people, workers, mostly, carnival and local. The sounds of sawing and hammering and the clink of wrenches on bolts filled the air as the rides went up and and the booths were assembled.
Martin glanced at him, surprise in his eyes. “You finished quickly, but I'm glad you're back.”
“I think we have problems, Martin. I know I do.”
“We both do.” He told him about the roustabout falling from the top of the ferris wheel.
“And he just got up and walked off!”
“Yes.”
“That's impossible, man!”
“We all saw it, Gary.”
“What'd Nabo do?”
“Nothing. I haven't seen him. The guy just climbed back up on the ferris wheel and went back to work.”
Gary looked up at the huge wheel. “Christ, Martin! ” He pointed. “He fell from there?”
“Yes.”
“That's . . . about five stories.”
“Yes.”
“Mystery on top of mystery. Where are the gals?”
“Over there.” He pointed. “With the kids.”
His wife waved to him and Gary returned the wave. The women were talking with several women who were setting up a Home Ec booth, part of the County Extension program.
“You finished with the boy, Gary?”
“Like I said: problems. I know this is distasteful for you, Martin; but I can't go to that fool Kelson with this, and I don't want to call Deputy Meadows just yet. I want your opinion first.” He shrugged. You're a fully commissioned deputy sheriff, aren't you?”
“Yes. Is it that bad, Gary?”
“Worse than you can imagine. You feel right about leaving the women and kids out here?”
“Oh, sure. Must be several hundred townspeople here.”
“Come on.”
* * *
Martin almost gagged when Gary pulled back the sheet, exposing Jimmy Harold. The organs had been piled into the open cavity. Martin recovered and stared for a moment. “I saw a lot of broken-open bodies in 'Nam, Gary. But their insides didn't look like that!”
Gary dropped it on him. “He's been cooked, Martin. From all indications, cooked from the inside out.”
The two friends stared at each other over the operating table. “Are you serious, Gary?”
“I wish I wasn't, believe that.”
“Could it be, ah, is it possible that the body temperature got so high it did this?”
“No. These organs have been exposed to very intense heat.”
“Then? . . .”
“I don't know. I spoke with the ambulance driver. He neither saw nor heard anything out of the ordinary. The only thing he said was that the boy didn't look strong enough to break his restraints.”
“Audie Meadows or Kelson?”
“You know the answer to that one right off the mark, buddy.”
* * *
Deputy Sheriff Audie Meadows stared at the body for a long moment, finally motioning Gary to cover the body. The deputy was young, only twenty-five, but with eight years experience as a cop. One year as dispatcher on the Holland P.D., one year on city patrol, and then off to the academy. Upon graduation, he joined the county sheriff's department. He was the lone deputy in the area, with hundreds of square miles of territory to cover.
“I, ah, don't know what charges I could bring, Dr. Tressalt,” Audie finally spoke. “Or against who. I'll say this, though: Jimmy Harold was a no-good troublemaker. He won't be missed.”
That rang a bell with Martin. “Is this the boy who terrorized Mrs. Stafford last year?”
“Yes, sir. And the same punk who's vandalized, stolen, and in general been in trouble all his life.”
“I see,” Gary said. “Well, I didn't have any charges in mind, Audie.” He slid the body back into the cooler and shut the door.
It was rare for a town of Holland's size to have a refrigerated holding area for bodies. But since the town was so isolated, it had finally become a necessity.
Audie met the doctor's eyes, a puzzled look on his face. “I don't know what you mean, Doctor.”
“Then I'll try to explain. What do you know about the fire and the killings that happened after an alleged double rape by carnival people here in Holland back in 1954?”
“Probably more than anybody else in town anywhere near my age. But that happened nine years before I was born.”
Both Gary and Martin felt their ages suddenly rear up and slap them in the face. Gary said, “But there would be some records on it down at the sheriff's office in Harrisville, wouldn't there?”
“Not much, I'm afraid. You see, way it was told to me, the state police took over that investigation. They took overâso I'm toldâbecause the sheriff at that time was from Hollandâor this areaâand his own brother was suspected of having something to do with the fire.”
“Jim Watson's brother,” Martin said. “Marshall Watson. Where is he now? Anybody know?”
“He disappeared a long time ago, sir,” Audie informed them. “Several years before your daddy vanished.”
“Then the state police would have all the records on the fire, right?”
“No, sir. They don't. For personal reasons, I wanted some information on that fire a couple of years back. I sent out an inquiry. Seems that most of the important files got misplaced or lost or whatever, probably when the state went to full computer some time back.” The young deputy smiled. “At least that's the story was told to me.”