The Bones of Old Carlisle (16 page)

“Sir?” Schaumberg interrupted.
“and colors, and lines, and doing” Demizu continued.
Stapleton grabbed the walkie-talking from Schaumberg and pressed
the talk button.
“Sir, you’re breaking up, a lot of static here,” she said. “We’ve
got one hunch, that the remains might have been deposited at the end
of the driveway, up by the house. Under the trees there. Okay? We’ll
check back when we’ve got better reception. Okay?”
Stapleton switched off the walkie-talkie, stared at it for a
moment with what seemed to be sorrow, and put it back into her hip
pocket. Then she turned to Watell.
“Let’s go,” she said. “To the body.”

Karl Arrowroot was the last to leave the dining room. Despite
himself, he had gotten lost in his own mind, trying to imagine what
had happened here, who had died and what had done the killing. He took
one last look around the room and spotted something he hadn’t noticed
before, a torn brown box with canned food in it and spilled around it.
It looked as if someone had been camping in this room.

He stared at the box for a long moment while ahead of him, doors
creaked back and forth as the rest of the group followed Watell to the
kitchen. He thought about walking over to the box, inspecting its
contents, looking for clues of whose it was, but he didn’t want to be
left alone here. So he followed Bonaventure into the dark, cavernous
hall that led to the kitchen.

Arrowroot wished for more light. As it was, he could barely make
out the shapes of chairs and tables and lamps, dim rectangles on the
walls he knew were pictures, and farther back, a stairway and a little
glow here and there escaping around the edges of doors that were
closed but no longer fit their frames.

Ahead, his comrades were passing into the relative brightness of
the kitchen, and Arrowroot followed them and found them standing in a
circle, staring down at something on the floor.

As unpleasant as it all was, Arrowroot was growing accustomed to
the ritual. He drew in his breath and prepared to look death in the
face again, hoping desperately there would be no recognition.

“Anyone you know, Arrow?” Stapleton asked, and the others parted
for him.
Arrowroot stepped over, looked down and, despite his best
intentions and all the humanity in his heart, he laughed.
“It’s not Robert,” he said. “Nor anyone else I’ve ever had the
pleasure of meeting. But I can tell you that his death seems to have
been an annoyance.”
The remains were male, fully clothed, in the same odd, gray
coverall the dead man with the bashed in head had been wearing. His
body was lying chest down, but his head was face up, his neck
obviously snapped and twisted violently. His arms were at his sides,
legs straight and together.
It was the face that drew Arrowroot’s principle attention. The
deceased was, to put it nicely, rather strange looking. His eyes,
still open, were light gray and set far apart, and his eyebrows were
almost non-existent, just two thin slivers of black. His nose was
broad and flat and his mouth was wide, over a severely receding chin.
His expression was not fear or pain or sorrow, but mere
irritation, as if in his last moments he was asking the person who
killed him to stop horsing around.
Dr. Schaumberg knelt beside the body, and for a moment she looked
like she was going to try to comfort him, or even revive him, but then
she merely picked up his hand and dropped it. It fell with a thud,
bounced and thudded again.
“Death is recent, within two days,” Schaumberg said into her
phone. She felt around the victim’s neck. “Most likely died due to
dislocation or breaking of neck vertebrae, C4, C5, C6.” She peered
around the room. “Evidence of a violent confrontation, two cupboard
doors dislodged.”
She pulled open his mouth and peered in. “Hmmm,” she said,
drawing out her penlight. She shone it around, moved his lower jaw
side to side, peered some more and illuminated some more.
“Okay, done,” she said. “That’s it.”
She stood, pulled off her Army cap and let her dark hair tumble
down to her shoulders, then she looked at Stapleton, as if daring her
to demand further examination.
Stapleton, who had never seemed quite in control to Arrowroot
that day, wasn’t going to argue. She leaned against a table – a big,
rough-hewn wooden affair that probably wasn’t original to the house –
and began summarizing the status of things.
“So, we’ve got four bodies, and evidence of a fifth,” she said,
and she held up four fingers. “One bashed in the head, this individual
with a broken neck.” Stapleton bent two fingers down. “And then two
people who were mutilated, apparently while they were still alive.”
The kitchen windows were small, set high in the walls, and
Arrowroot concluded this room must have been created for pure utility.
The Carlisles nor the Cronicks probably ever ventured into here. It
was strictly for servants, and once the families could no longer
afford the hired help, they probably sold off everything that wasn’t
bolted down and just bought their food ready made from in town.
Certainly it was well-stocked in its day, but today it was a large,
bare room, with a few empty cupboards and an ancient stove. No
cookware, no dishes, and small filmy windows that let in only enough
light to let you get around.
Nevertheless, Stapleton kept on her cap and her sunglasses as she
spoke, looking around the room at the other occupants in turn, and
attempting to make sense of what was becoming increasingly insensible.
“Cranial fractures, broken necks, that’s everyday stuff,”
Stapleton said. “But what about the mutilated ones?”
“Cannibalism,” Schaumberg said simply.
“What?” Stapleton asked.
Schaumberg looked at Arrowroot. “You said the girl in the wedding
dress was obsessed with getting eaten, with cannibalism.”
“I did,” Arrowroot agreed.
“And we find two bodies with large muscle groups torn away,”
Schaumberg recalled. “One body’s liver has been removed. Brains in
both are gone. So maybe it’s a coincidence, but what’s gone are
centers of high protein and high fat. And liver for iron. This is how
you eat if you’re an Olympic athlete. Or special forces.”
“I don’t think this was special forces,” Stapleton said. “That
crossed my mind too, but just too many inconsistencies.”
“Demizu had another theory,” said Bonaventure weakly. He moved
gingerly over to the wooden table, lifted himself up and sat down on
it.
“Uh, yeah, he had some very interesting ideas,” said Stapleton.
“You mean, like the kind he was shouting over the radio?”
Arrowroot asked. “He kind of lost me there, if you want to know the
truth.”
“It’s hard to describe without his whiteboard in front of us,”
Stapleton said. “He was connecting things, finding patterns, drawing
colored lines.”
Arrowroot looked over at Bonaventure and grew alarmed. “Hey, you
doing okay? Hello?”
Bonaventure, still sitting on the table, was doubling up on
himself, bent over so far he looked like he was going to hug his
thighs.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he said, lifting one hand weakly. “Demizu
fixed me up in the, in the tent.”
“The colonel decided it was a dislocated rib,” Schaumberg said
flatly, “so after you and the chief left for the house, he just
snapped it back into place.”
“So he’s got some medical knowledge, then?” Hatfield asked.
“None whatsoever,” said Schaumberg, doing a poor job of hiding
her contempt. “But yeah, he just snapped it into place.” Schaumberg
made a punching motion, and Bonaventure looked up and winced.
“The man knows what he’s doing,” Bonaventure protested, wheezing.
His lips were turning blue, his eyes growing heavy, and he half fell,
half leaned onto his elbow, as if he were about to use the table as a
bed.
“Okay, you’re done for the day,” Stapleton said.
“Go get your stretcher,” she said to the soldier with the camera.
“He needs to go to the clinic, pronto.”
“I can walk,” Bonaventure said, and he hoisted himself upright,
moved slowly off the table and began limping to the kitchen door.
“Both of you, make sure he makes it back to the tent,” Stapleton
instructed. The soldiers nodded and followed Bonaventure through the
kitchen door.
Stapleton grabbed her walkie-talkie and turned it back on.
“Colonel, we’re sending walking wounded to you.”
There was static, and then Demizu’s voice, yodeling brightly.
“Forward operating base 1, remote forward operational operating base
1, come in, come in, do you read me?”
“I said we got walking wounded heading your way,” Stapleton
answered. “Someone needs to get him to the clinic.”
“We’ve got more 10-43s, more 10-43,” said Demizu. “Another body,
another body, do you read me? Facts don’t lie, Major.”
“Come again?” Stapleton inquired.
“Down by the pond, my team’s found another victim, another one
done by the doers. Mutilated, eyes gone, naked, female. The evil is
thick here, thick and fast. But she fits. She fits.”
“Sir,” Stapleton inquired, “is the body in two pieces?”
“Oh no, oh no, that wouldn’t fit at all,” replied Demizu, and his
voice was nearly lost in static. “But her arms have been hacked off.
Both forearms smashed off. And gone somewhere, can’t find ‘em. I’m
still trying to fit that little detail into everything. Gonna make it
work. Red marker. Red marker on a whiteboard. It’s all—”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Stapleton interrupted. “Can you get the
captain back to the clinic?”
There was no answer, so she turned the device off and looked
around the kitchen. Arrowroot imagined that if she took her reflective
sunglasses off, he’d see embarrassment there. Maybe even shame. He
noticed a hissing sound and realized it was raining.
“Finally coming down out there,” Arrowroot observed. “I hope the
colonel can keep himself dry.”
“I don’t hear rain,” Watell said.
“Just listen,” Arrowroot said, and he closed his eyes and lifted
his face to the ceiling.
Then he heard something else, something he wasn’t expecting. Was
he the only one who noticed the steady thump of someone walking? It
came from the floor above, slow and ponderous. Or slow and cautious.
One step after another, somewhere upstairs, over their heads.
Arrowroot opened his eyes and studied the faces around him. Had
they heard it? He saw blank stares, and the plain looks people use
when they don’t care, when they’re just waiting for the next thing to
happen, whatever it is, as long as it isn’t the same thing that’s
happening now. Most people look that way most of the time.
No, Arrowroot concluded, they hadn’t heard whatever it was
upstairs – the footsteps of someone who wasn’t supposed to be there,
or just an old house settling in a very peculiar, rhythmic way. No one
had heard it but him, and now it was over.
Arrowroot put the sound out of his mind and continued speaking.
“You can tell the integrity of a building by how the rain sounds on
it,” he said. “Ugly tin roof, it’s a roar, a beautiful sound. Shingle
roof with no attic, no insulation, it’s a steady racket. Regular house
with an attic and all, it’s a hum. House like this, walls a foot
thick, you might never know it’s coming down until you open the door.
You want to know a building, go inside when it rains, and just
listen.”
“Okay, I think we’re done,” said Stapleton, and she turned to
Schaumberg. “Is your exam complete here?”
“No, it isn’t,” Schaumberg said, “but I’m finished. I’m not doing
any more. Someone needs to take him back to base and look at him
there. I can’t— I’m just not doing it.”
Stapleton took a long, slow look at Schaumberg, clearly trying to
decide what to say next and not coming up with anything. Finally, she
settled on the path of least resistance. “Let’s go back to base,” she
said. “We’ve done enough out here, got a lot to work with. I say we
just get all the bodies to the lab, morgue ‘em up and then Demizu can
work it from his office.”
“I’m good with that,” said Arrowroot, and he was filled with an
unexpected joy. He’d be going back home, leaving all this death and
misery behind for others to deal with. Most importantly, he hadn’t
found Robert, and he wanted to call Danielle and tell her so. Maybe
she would keep talking to him. Robert wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t
around, so Danielle was the closest thing he had to family. Arrowroot
wanted her back in his life, even if she came with Guillaume. Even if
she came with Guillaume and a lot of things that were bitter and
painful and unspeakable. But they’d made it through a night and a
morning, and he’d hugged her, twice. That was a start.
Stapleton pushed back through the door to the great dark hallway,
and everyone followed her in single file, first Schaumberg, then
Hatfield and Arrowroot, and Watell last.
Arrowroot’s assertions about the rain were confirmed once they
reached the dining room. They could see it and hear it through the
windows, and watch as it splashed onto the old dining table.
Somewhere far away, thunder rumbled.
“Let’s wait it out,” said Stapleton. “Probably pass soon. And
I’ve seen enough dead people for one day.”
Arrowroot crossed the dining room and bent over the plain brown
box and the cans he’d seen earlier.
“Looks like someone’s been camping here,” he said, and he picked
up a can of corned beef hash. “Not a real picky eater.”
“That’s evidence,” Stapleton barked. “Please don’t pick up
anything else.”
“Just showing it to you is all,” Arrowroot said.
Stapleton grabbed her walkie-talkie. “Ed, come in.”
“This is field headquarters one!” Demizu announced, his yodeling
voice riven with static. “Come in, forward base, come in! What’s your
20? What’s your 20?”
“We’re gonna stay here until the storm blows over,” Stapleton
told him.
“I knew you would say that,” Demizu replied. “New developments
here. I repeat, new developments here. Worth another red line. A red
line. I said a red line. We have found another body.”
“Roger,” said Stapleton. “Female by the pond. And you’re just
taking that one to the lab, correct? We got one here that needs to go
too, we’re done with the exam. And Captain Bonaventure, has he gone
back to base? Was he doing okay?”
“Nawwwwwww,” said Demizu, stretching out the word. “A new body.
Not the one by the pond. It’s the one you told me to look for. The one
it two pieces under the trees up there. Crew just found it. And I know
how it fits now. I know how it fits!”

Karl Arrowroot looked out the broken windows of the old dining
room, trying to see through the rain to the tent, to Demizu, to what
was happening over there.

A red light flashed on, moved, and turned off, and Arrowroot knew
he was seeing the tail lights of one of the Humvees as it headed back
to base. It probably bore the suffering Bonaventure, maybe a corpse or
two as well. This part of the investigation was winding down, he
thought, but it wasn’t over for him. He was stuck in a house of grisly
memories and strange sounds. And now there was another body, in two
pieces, lying just a few steps away. Another body that he was going to
have to look at.

If it was indeed the body of the person who had died in here, the
corpse had been decomposing for months, at least. Surely there
wouldn’t be more than a skull and some bones left, and he wouldn’t be
able to do anything with that. He wouldn’t even know his own skull, he
realized, if he held it in his hands.

The thought disturbed him so he leaned against the wall, between
a photograph of a family and a painting of a river, and he looked not
through the rain but simply at it, at the way that it fell. Every drop
of rain was an impossible miracle, he reminded himself, an ancient
product of a strange universe where stars turned helium and hydrogen
into oxygen and, eventually, to water. Then his mind wandered back to
Danielle.