Flowering Judas (16 page)

“Oh, it's you,” he said, standing back and letting Howard and Gregor come inside. “I told you on the telephone. This isn't a very good time. We've got the Mollerton viewing starting up any minute now. I don't know what they're going to think about a police car parked right out front.”

“You should build yourself a parking lot out back,” Howard said.

The fussy little man rolled his eyes. “You know there's no room to build a parking lot out back. There's no room to build a parking lot anywhere. He still thinks we're back in 1950. Or even 1930. Or before that. I don't know.”

“I'm sorry to bother you,” Gregor said. “It's just—”

“Oh, I know what ‘it's just,'” the fussy little man said. “I understand completely. I'm just about beside myself, though. This has been the biggest problem. And of course Charlene has been here. Several times. Last time I had to call Stew to come and get her out. She was howling like a dog, she really was. And of course, we had a wake. We almost always have a wake.”

The fussy little man had been moving while he'd been talking, and he'd brought them to a door in a back hall.

“Charlene is the mother,” Gregor said. “That's right, isn't it?”

“Charlene is definitely the mother,” the fussy little man said. “And of course, we've done all the Morton funerals. I expect we'll go on doing all of them, in spite of the things she said. But she's not completely sane on this subject. She is really not.”

The fussy little man opened the door and turned on a light with a switch at the bottom of the stairs. He started down the steps himself. They followed.

What was at the bottom of the steps was an enormous finished basement, fitted out to serve as an embalmer's studio. Along one wall there were three metal doors that Gregor recognized immediately as belonging to what the police in Philadelphia would probably call meat lockers—cold storage boxes for bodies.

The fussy little man went to the one on the far right and opened the door. Then he put both hands on the end rail and pulled the slab out.

“This has been a problem, let me tell you,” he said. “I've got him as close to freezing as I can get him, and he'll keep, but I've only got the three. You can see that. And I've got business coming in all the time. It's been hard to handle.”

Gregor went to the slab and looked down on the body. He was not a medical examiner, but he knew that purple tinge to the face, and the bugging of the eyes and tongue. The man had been alive when he'd been hanged, or hanged himself.

“He looks much better now than when he came in,” the fussy little man said. “Then—well, you're supposed to be an expert on crime, aren't you, Mr. Demarkian? It's Mr. Demarkian, isn't it? We've all heard about you down here by now. The effects of a hanging recede over time. And of course we can make them recede a lot faster. But Howard said I wasn't supposed to do that. So I just put him in here and let nature run its course.”

“That was probably a good idea,” Gregor said. The body had been left naked except for a pair of briefs. The briefs were not soiled, which meant they must have been put on after death.

“Did you put the briefs on him yourself?” Gregor asked.

“Oh,” the fussy little man said. “Yes, yes I did. It just seemed wrong, somehow, leaving him in there with nothing—I mean with everything. Wasn't I supposed to do that?”

“I don't see why you shouldn't,” Gregor said. “Did somebody keep the clothes he was wearing when he was found?”

“They're in evidence bags down at the station,” Howard said.

Gregor bent over the chest. It was there, and it looked exactly as it had looked in the photograph. The letters were not large, but they were large enough so that they would not be missed, especially with the hair cut away the way it was. And they were bright red. Gregor put his finger down and ran it over the surface of the word
MOM
. Then he stood back and shook his head.

“It's a tattoo,” he said.

“Oh, Chester had tattoos,” the fussy little man said. “He was that kind. Terrible to say it, really, but there it is. The Mortons are probably the most prominent family in this town. They've built that business into a powerhouse. They've got a vacation house in Florida. They're good, hardworking people. But Chester was always Chester. He didn't like home. He didn't like the business. He was always trying to—I don't know what you'd call it. But he had a lot of tattoos. You can see for yourself. And then he had that girl. And that place out at the trailer park.”

“He didn't have any other tattoos on his chest,” Gregor said.

“It was probably too much trouble to keep up with the hair,” Howard Androcoelho said. “God, he's got a lot of hair.”

“And this hair,” Gregor pointed to the
MOM
in red, “was shaved off after he was dead, and the tattoo was put there after death.”

“Really?” the fussy little man said. “How could somebody do that? Doesn't it take hours and hours to put on a tattoo?”

“Depends on the tattoo,” Gregor said. “This is just those three letters, they're not large, they're not fancy, they're all in the same color ink. They're the kind of thing prisoners put on each other, or even themselves. Something like that might take forty-five minutes. It would probably take less, even assuming whoever did it didn't have access to professional tools.”

“But why would anybody put a tattoo on the body after the guy had died?” Howard said. “What would be the point of that?”

“I don't know,” Gregor said.

“Well, whoever did it, didn't know Chester,” the fussy little man said. “Chester would never have had that tattooed on him, anywhere. Chester hated that woman, he really did. The whole bunch of them hate her. And it's not hard to see why.”

3

The fussy little man was named Jason Feldman, and as he stood on the sidewalk outside The Feldman Funeral Home watching Howard Androcoelho get himself back inside his car, he fussed even more.

“We're really not prepared for this kind of thing,” he said to Gregor Demarkian, rubbing his hands together as if he were standing in front of a fire. It was nearly 80 degrees out, and it was already half past one.

“It used to be all right, you know, in my father's time,” he said. “In those days, what did you get that you had to worry about? Hunting accidents? There are a lot fewer of those than you'd think. And they don't amount to much, if you know what I mean. No, what you'd get mostly was the wife beating, and that was terrible, but it wasn't as if they were our clientele anyway. The kind of people who come here either don't beat their wives, or they're very careful not to kill them when they do it.”

“Ah,” Gregor said.

“Well,” Jason Feldman said, “there are the suicides, of course. We have surprising few of those, too. And mostly it's teenagers. That's the terrible thing. Are you going to be here long?”

“I don't know,” Gregor said. “I suppose it will be as long as it takes.”

“This town needs to wake up and see the changes,” Jason Feldman said. “We're not a tiny little burg anymore. Things are going to happen.” He stopped and looked thoughtful. “Not that things didn't happen before,” he said. “I mean—”

It was hot, and Howard Androcoelho was in a rush. Gregor said good-bye and got into the car. Howard had the air conditioner blasting.

“Having an interesting talk?” he said. “Jason could tell you a lot of things. His father could tell you more, but his father's been dead now two or three years. There was a time, this was the only funeral home in the area. You'd have to go clean off to Binghamton to find another one. The Feldmans got all the business.”

“Apparently, there was business they didn't want.”

“Oh,” Howard said, easing the car out into what was definitely downtown traffic. “Yeah, well. We've got an element. Any rural town has got an element. That's the trailer park I was telling you about. The one where Chester Morton had a trailer after he moved out of his mother's house. God, did that cause an explosion. She didn't want him moving out of that house. She doesn't want any of them moving out of that house.”

“Not even when they've married?”

“Well, Suzanne's married. That's the eldest, I think. The girl. She's married, and she and her husband have a house in the next block, and the husband works in the business. I guess there are advantages to that kind of thing if you can stand putting up with it. Guaranteed job. Don't have to worry about unemployment. Don't have to worry about the down payment, either. As long as you're willing to stay tied to the umbilical cord, the money will be sitting there waiting. It would drive me nuts, let me tell you about that.”

Gregor thought about it. “The trailer—didn't you say something about the trailer in the notes you gave me? Isn't the trailer empty, or something?”

“It's empty,” Howard said. “It's been empty ever since Chester disappeared. Charlene pays the rent on it. Keep the home fires burning. Leave a light in the window. Whatever. Just in case he ever came home, she says.”

“Do you know if he went to the trailer on the day he died?”

“Nope,” Howard said, “and in case you're going to ask, yes, we did go over there. There was no sign of anybody having been around.”

“Would he have been able to get in?”

“You mean, did he have a key he didn't have to ask Charlene for?” Howard shrugged. “I don't know. She's got a key, though. I half think she goes over there and just sits in the place, communing with spirits. Or what she thought was spirits. She was that convinced somebody had killed him. But then, I can't really see Charlene spending any time in that trailer park. It's not the kind of thing she'd put up with.”

Gregor was thinking about it some more. “Can we go over and see the place?” he asked. “Would we have to get a warrant? Would Mrs. Morton let us in?”

“Charlene would let us in with bells on,” Howard said, “but maybe she'll be busy. Then we can get her to just give us the key. When do you want to go?”

“What about right now?”

“You mean drive over there right this minute?”

“Something like that. We should stop and call Mrs. Morton, if she's the one we need permission from, and the key—”

“Give me a second,” Howard said.

He punched something on his dashboard, and Gregor suddenly realized that the car was set up to make it possible to dial, talk, and drive all at the same time when Howard Androcoehlo said, “Charlene Morton,” very loudly, and the car was suddenly filled with touch-tone beeps.

“Neat, isn't it,” Howard said.

“More of that stimulus money?”

“Absolutely,” Howard said. “I loved that stimulus money, I really did. It had to go to law enforcement, we used it for law enforcement, but it's not like we needed more cops on the street or more clerks in the office. We even got ourselves a SWAT team, and I don't know what we're ever going to use it for. For terrorists, it's supposed to be. Any terrorist who finds himself in Mattatuck is lost.”

What had been the vague background buzz of a ringing phone suddenly became a voice, a harsh and low voice. “Morton Rubbish Removal,” the voice said.

“Hello, Kay,” Howard said, “this is Howard Androcoelho. Is Charlene around somewhere I can talk to her?”

Gregor took another look at the road. It had moderate traffic. Howard seemed to be able to concentrate on it. Gregor told himself it would be all right—he needed to use Tony for these things; he didn't like the way Howard Androcoelho drove—and took his own cell phone out. He punched Bennis's speed dial number in and waited. He got the answering machine.

“Hey,” he said. Then he wondered why he'd said it. He never said things like “hey.” “Bennis, listen. I suppose you're out doing something with tiles or wallpaper. I've got a problem. Do you think you could find out for me if the New York State Police have some kind of service to provide autopsy help for small towns without their own full-time medical examiners? I don't know what to call this, but I remember Connecticut does it. It's just—we could use some serious forensics up here and I'm not going to get that kind of thing from the town of Mattatuck. Call me back and tell me what you find. And give me an update on old George.”

Gregor slid his phone closed. He saw that Howard Andocoelho was staring at him.

“You want to bring the state police in on this?” he said, incredulous.

“Not really,” Gregor said. “There are some states, Connecticut is one of them, where the state police provide help with things like forensics for towns too small to have their own permanent, full-time systems. I was hoping we could get a qualified pathologist to look at that body and explain a few things to me.”

“And it's not like any doctor couldn't do that?”

“No, any doctor couldn't. I'm not insulting your people here, Mr. Androcoelho, I'm just hoping to get a little expert advice. There are things going on here that don't make any sense to me, starting with that tattoo. It was a small tattoo. Too small to be readily visible—well, not visible. It
was
visible. But you know what I mean. It wasn't the kind of thing that slaps you right in the face.”

“The state police,” Howard said. “If they come in here and do anything, they're going to charge us an arm and a leg. They really are. There's going to be hell to pay.”

“There shouldn't be, if it helps you catch a murderer,” Gregor said. “There shouldn't be even if it helps you establish that this was a suicide and somebody tampered with the body after death.”

“You don't know Mattatuck,” Howard Androcoelho said.

Then he turned down a long paved road called Watertown Avenue, a road that was oddly half-country and half-strip development. There were half-a-dozen fast-food restaurants, the low-slung crumbling brick of the Department of Social Services, three pawnshops, and intermittent overgrown vacant lots, all of them full of automobile parts. The Department of Social Services had a crowd of people in front of it, all of them looking deflated.