The Bones of Old Carlisle (15 page)

“Oh, God, I hope not,” Arrowroot said. “I’m just not sure how
much more of this I can take.”
“Well—“ began Hatfield.
“Don’t say it!” Arrowroot interrupted. “We’re way beyond ‘I told
you so.’ No one could look at all we’ve seen and not rather be
watching a football game.”
“Murder’s murder,” said Hatfield, and he shifted on the wall
where they were sitting and rested his elbow on his thigh. “I’ve
worked a few scenes, and they always get under your skin. Even if the
body’s been there two months, you feel for ‘em, you wonder what they
felt, if it hurt, who’s missing ‘em.”
“C’mon now,” Arrowroot countered, “this is a whole new degree of
murder, even if you’re used to it. That girl and that boy, you know,
with their eyes—“
“Yeah, yeah,” Hatfield said abruptly, putting up his hand as if
the topic of the conversation were floating through the air and he was
going to bat it away.
“So tell me,” Hatfield said after a pause.
“Huh?”
“You were about to finish that story, about the people who used
to live here, the Cronicks, I think. What happened the night the Army
took their place?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s the best part of the whole story,” Arrowroot
said. “So, they take their crazy uncle or cousin or whatever down to
Heligaux to get him checked in—“
“Yeah, you mentioned that part,” Hatfield said.
“Hospital says no, we don’t want his ass in here,” Arrowroot
continued, ignoring the interruption. “But finally they let him—“
“Yup, yup,” Hatfield interjected impatiently.
“So finally they dump him off, then they turn around and head
back home, and they find tanks and Army trucks or whatnot, blocking
the path, and some Army fella’s saying ‘Thanks so much for your
property, it’s ours now, so get movin’.’”
“Uh huh, uh huh.”
“And then, here’s the best part,” Arrowroot continued. “So the
family turns their cars around. Just turns ‘em around. Must have been
two cars at least, ‘cause I think it was about seven or eight of them
now. So they turn the cars around and head on back to Heligaux, back
to the hospital. And guess what they do then?”
“I’m all ears,” Hatfield promised.
“They checked all of their crazy asses into the same hospital!
Into the same hospital where they just dumped off their sideways
cousin! Every one of ‘em, must have been eight or nine at least. And
the hospital –“ Arrowroot slapped his leg and laughed, completely
forgetting Watell’s admonition to be quiet. “And the hospital took ‘em
all in. All 10 of them or whatever. Just took ‘em in!”
Hatfield smiled. “That’s some kind of story,” he said. “Think
it’s true?”
“Hell yeah it’s true,” said Arrowroot. “Most of them were there
for years. A few got out, but Sarah Cronick – now, she was a Carlisle
by birth, married into the Cronick family – Sarah Cronick never left.
She died in the hospital, when I was about 13. It was in the papers
when she died, nice lady by all accounts, her head just wangled off
for some reason at a certain age.”
“Are there any still around?” Hatfield asked, but he was losing
interest. He drew out his phone and started poking at it.
“There are,” said Arrowroot. “Distant family, anyway. A second
cousin works for the town, got some other folks around. No one you’ve
heard of, probably. But anyway, you want to know the moral of the
story?”
“Not everything that happens has a moral,” Hatfield asserted.
“Well this one does,” insisted Arrowroot. “The moral is you wake
up in the nicest home in the valley, with beautiful things all around
you, things your ancestors spent all their lives to make and earn and
leave for you, and then that night, literally that very same night,
you go to bed in a bare little room at the loony bucket.”
“Hmph.”
Two raindrops in quick succession struck Arrowroot’s shoulder,
and he looked up and noticed that the clouds seemed to have dropped a
notch, now appearing close enough to touch. The wind kicked up, pushed
through the trees, and their tops moved slowly back and forth with a
hiss and then were still.
When the noise of the leaves had stopped, Arrowroot heard a sort
of singing coming from the direction of the tent. He looked over and
spotted an entourage of military personnel headed his way.
“Oh, damn, here they come,” Arrowroot said.
Demizu led the way, producing a steady stream of undecipherable
yodels as he directed his flock back to the Carlisle home. Watell and
the two blond soldiers walked immediately behind him, and then came
Stapleton, Bonaventure and Dr. Schaumberg.
Demizu stopped in front of the barn and turned and addressed
them. His words were inaudible, but he waved his hands and pointed his
fingers as if giving them instructions.
Then he pointed to the Carlisle home and shouted “fly!” As his
colleagues headed toward the mansion, he offered further
encouragement, flapping his arms like wings as he issued a sort of
bird cackle. Satisfied that they were following his instructions,
Demizu turned and strode quickly back to the tent while the rest of
the soldiers moved slowly in the other direction.
No one was smiling when they reached Arrowroot and Hatfield.
“What’s this?” Arrowroot asked them.
“Found another body in the house,” Watell confirmed. “We gotta
look at it here.”
“Why here?” Arrowroot asked.
“He says the tent’s full,” Watell said, pointing toward Demizu
with his thumb. “You can come in, there’s nothing alive in here.”
“I thought you saw a face in the window,” Arrowroot said.
“I did,” Watell replied. “But we been all over, upstairs and
downstairs, no one there. Whatever I saw before, it was a ghost.”
Schaumberg snorted, possibly unintentionally, and Watell looked
at her with an air of patient superiority. “I know ghosts, Ma’am,” he
said. “I’ve chased a few out of places. Like a ghostbuster. I swear,
like a ghostbuster.”
Watell stood beside the front door of the Carlisle house and held
his arm out, as if welcoming everyone in. “Don’t believe me, that’s
okay,” he said. “Just don’t ask me to be in here alone.”
Trying not to trample the soldiers before him, Arrowroot headed
in. The door was wide enough that they were able to file in two at a
time, and soon everyone stood blinking in the dim front room of House
Carlisle.
It was as Arrowroot had expected. The air was dusty and permeated
with the distinct scent of mold and old things. The furniture was a
combination of the grand and the banal, a worn leather couch next to a
small wooden table that looked glued together. There was a collection
of velveteen drawing room chairs and an elaborately carved preacher’s
bench resting on a cheap, faded red throw rug that looked like
something straight out of Traxie. The walls were lined with pictures,
mostly generic landscapes, but there were some family pictures – color
portraits and photographs in black and white – that Arrowroot longed
to study, if not take with him. These were the Carlisles, and the
Cronicks as well, most likely, and these sequestered walls might be
the only place in the world many of these faces could be seen anymore.
“Where’s the body?” Schaumberg asked.
“Back here,” Watell said, adding reassuringly, “This one’s in
much better shape, in case the last few were bothering you at all,
Ma’am.”
Watell looked at Schaumberg for a moment, as if expecting her to
thank him for his concern, but she looked away and responded only with
a terse, “Let’s go then. You lead the way.”
Watell motioned everyone to follow him, and he pushed open a door
to the right and passed through.
This had been the dining room, and it was a grand space in its
day, but that day was long gone. There was a cobweb-strewn chandelier,
a dust-caked table large enough to seat two dozen people, shoved
against the far wall under the broken windows, and cracked leather
chairs scattered about, some against the table, some toppled here and
there.
Arrowroot looked at the floor and the walls and knew immediately
that something terrible had happened here. A ragged puddle of blood
and what seemed to be pieces of flesh lay at the edge of the room,
blobs of black gore in sharp relief against the once-elegant
hardwoods. Random spots of blood dotted the walls and the glass doors
of a China cabinet. The walls and ceiling had been gouged here and
there, as if someone with a claw hammer had bounced around the room
like a pinball, ripping at everything he neared.
“Where’s the body?” Arrowroot demanded, adding with a shudder, “I
thought you said the new one wasn’t all that banged up?”
“Next room,” said Watell. “We’re not sure what happened in here.
Body’s in the kitchen.”
“Well damn, someone sure died in here!” Arrowroot insisted.
“We’re just finding bodies,” Watell countered. “No body, no
finding.”
“We’re gonna look here first,” Schaumberg said. “This is
potentially relevant.”
Watell shrugged and Schaumberg knelt beside the largest stain on
the floor, her phone back on to record her observations.
“Large bloodstain, including fragmentary innards,” Schaumberg
began. “And damage to the room, including shattered windows. Most
likely a single explosion, possibly from ordnance deployed from
outside.”
Schaumberg stood, backed up and pointed to smears of blood
extending from the central stain in either direction.
“Explosion seems to have severed the victim,” she said.
“Immediately after, both sections were dragged some distance. One
section seems to have been moved about three feet. The other section—“
Schaumberg paused as she stared at the blood smear, which continued
across the room, fading into a few thin, parallel black lines that
passed through the door and into the home’s entry room. “The other
section moved, possibly under its own power, about 15 feet and into an
adjoining room.”
“Ghost,” said Watell reverently.
Schaumberg snorted. “No,” she said, “just nerves, or panic, or
pain, or most likely all three.”
“You mean, both halves went for a stroll after they got split
up?” Arrowroot asked, and he leaned against the wall and looked down,
focusing on a part of the floor that was not stained, trying not to
imagine what had happened here.
“I’m not sure,” Schaumberg replied. “The upper body can function
consciously for some amount of time, seconds at least, without the
lower half. But if the other half were legs, I doubt random kicking
could have moved them like this.”
Watell made a ghostly sound until Schaumberg, who was on one knee
near the leg smear, glared up at him.
“Gotta be an RPG,” he said. “I mean, that killed him. That’s
short for rocket-propelled grenade. Stray fire. Friendly fire. I bet
it happened a while ago. It’s like a hunch.”
“This doesn’t look fresh,” she agreed. “The blood is cracked,
like it’s been drying for weeks, or maybe months. This might be
completely independent of whatever happened here in the last few
days.”
“I got an idea, sort of a possible thing,” said Watell. “You know
how you said they, like, they dumped people out the door when they
were dead? You know, who ever been living here?”
“Yes, I did say that,” Schaumberg acknowledged coldly.
“Well, they come in to live here, they find my man here in two
pieces, they take him out,” Watell continued. “You know?”
“That’s valid,” Schaumberg said.
“So they don’t take him that far, but further than the front
door, since he been dead some time, he’s all gnarly. So I’d look maybe
at the end of the driveway, where it goes off to the right. This is a
hunch. Some trees there where you might leave my man.”
“Okay,” said Stapleton. “I’ll tell Demizu.”
“Could it have happened decades ago?” Arrowroot asked. “Even 70
years? Because some things happened here way back—“
“No,” Schaumberg interrupted, “I’m not an expert but I wouldn’t
think so.” She brushed the blood with her gloved fingertips.
“Eventually this is going to turn to powder, but that hasn’t happened
yet.” She turned to the soldier with the camera. “Can you get a couple
of pictures? Close ups and some of the whole room.”
He unslung his camera and snapped a quick series of images.
“What’s the best way to reach Demizu?” Schaumberg asked.
“He wanted us to use walkie-talkies,” Stapleton replied, and she
drew one forth from her hip pocket and handed it over. “Push the red
button, there.”
“Hello?” Schaumberg said, tentatively.
“Is this remote base one?” Demizu yodeled enthusiastically.
“We’re at the house,” Schaumberg answered, frowning.
“Roger,” Demizu answered. “Remote base one, remote base one, this
is base core. Do you read me? Over.”
“Yeah,” Schaumberg said, and she bit her lip and looked up at the
ceiling.
“Remote base one, remote base one, what’s your 10-43?” Demizu
asked, his voice crackling.
“I don’t know,” Schaumberg replied. “What’s a 10-43?”
“What’s your data, what’s your information?” Demizu clarified.
“We’ve got evidence of another death, possibly months ago, or
longer,” Schaumberg said. “But no body.”
“But but but but but,” Demizu protested, his voice at his highest
pitch, and Arrowroot couldn’t tell if he were trying to be funny or
was truly distressed. “No body in that house? What about the body they
reported? What about that body? Did it just – Did it just
up and walk
away?”
“We’re going to see it next,” said Schaumberg. “We’re not in that
room yet. We’re in another room. Tell your patrol there may be a body
somewhere, somewhere in this vicinity, that’s been severed at the
midsection.”
“Severed at the midsection?” Demizu thundered, his voice
crackling. “How am I going to fit that in?”
“Come again?” Schaumberg inquired.
“With all due respect, Major,” Demizu began, “a split corpse
simply will not work within my modalities.”
“Sir, I’m not sure I follow,” Schaumberg replied, and she scowled
at the device in her hand.
“It’s simple, really,” Demizu explained, and Arrowroot could hear
in his voice a subtle slurring, the flattening of certain vowels that
indicated the middle stage of inebriation. “There are bodies, and
faces in windows, and buildings, and bodies. There are the doers, and
the ones done to, and the places of doing. I’ve got a map, back here
at base core. The whiteboard. . . The whiteboard. . . With colors for
the doing and the doers and the done, and colors for the rules of the
doing – which are emerging. The colors are speaking. Lines, and
letters, and colors. They are speaking. I—”