The Bones of Old Carlisle (29 page)

“Two of our dogs have been taken,” Scotty said.
“You mean disappeared?” Arrowroot asked. “Maybe animal control
got ‘em. You called over there?”
“No, not disappeared,” Scotty said. “Killed. In the woods. They
cry out, we come to them. They are killed. Very strange killed. Eyes
gone.” His voice was shaking and a tear ran down his cheek. “Eyes
gone. All sliced open. A terrible person did this. Terrible.”
“Oh, God,” Arrowroot said. “And this happened today?”
“No,” said Scotty. “It happened since a week. A week ago and five
day ago. In the First Acre.”

Karl Arrowroot and Susan Schaumberg returned to his truck in
silence. As soon as he was seated, he grabbed his phone and found two
texts from Danielle. The first said simply “No.” In other words, no,
she wasn’t going to hold off on her plan to avenge Robert’s death. Her
second text offered slightly more information. “It goes down at 8:30
tonight, my apartment. Don’t be late!”

Arrowroot crossed his arms on the steering wheel and pressed his
forehead against them. “There’s just more going on than a normal
person can process,” he lamented. “I swear I was planning to make this
a pleasant evening.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else,” Schaumberg replied.
“I really mean that. Can I hear from you tomorrow? You know, about
everything that’s going on?”

“Text me when you want to know something,” Arrowroot said, easing
his truck out of the library parking lot. “And if I don’t answer back,
I’ve been arrested. Or maybe Mr. Smiley’s people got me.”

“I really hope that doesn’t happen,” she said, and she grabbed
Arrowroot’s arm and squeezed it. “Please let me know if you need any
help. I don’t know what I can do, but I’m not working tomorrow. And
you know I live just around the corner.”

“Seriously,” Arrowroot said. “I don’t know if Smiley’s just a
crazy liar. But if he’s, you know, extraterrestrial and all, I’m sure
we haven’t impressed his kind too much. This whole place might go up
in smoke tomorrow morning. Been a good ride, though. Four and a half
billion years of amazing stuff. And I can think of a lot of worse ways
to have spent my last evening.”

Schaumberg was silent as Arrowroot pulled up beside her car,
waiting in the dark behind City Hall.
“Now here’s the plan,” Arrowroot said, opening his door. “If we
see any big roaches, I’ll lie down and you run for your car.”
“Heligaux needs its mayor,” Schaumberg asserted as she exited the
truck, “more than it needs a family doctor.”
“Mayors are a dime a dozen,” Arrowroot retorted. He was just
going to hug her but she lifted her face, grabbed his shoulders and
kissed him, brief and hard, and then turned toward her car as if she
were embarrassed.
“I think it’s safe,” Arrowroot said, trying not to sound too
surprised. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
He waited until her car’s taillights disappeared behind the shops
at the edge of the Promenade, and then he climbed into his truck, shut
the door and thought.
There was passion in that kiss, he told himself, and the nerves
of his face, his lips and arms continued to replay the strange,
wondrous sensations that go with being shown affection by another
human being. For the first time in months, or half a year, or probably
longer than that, he saw himself as Dr. Schaumberg apparently saw him,
as an attractive being, as a romantic being. It was a notion that to
him was as unexpected as anything else that had happened that day.
Or maybe he was seeing what he wanted to see. He went through the
evening in his head and realized that it had all been farce, that what
had seemed natural, necessary and even admirable was all chaos and
failure, a perspective impossible to grasp until it was finished.
He’d taken an attractive, professional woman out on a first date
to eat Mexican food on the ground. He launched into one of his
monologues, about Mars, of all things. Was he trying to impress her?
Prove to her he wasn’t stupid? He’d taken phone calls. He’d made phone
calls. He’d rolled his window down and offered a friendly greeting and
a table cloth – a tablecloth! – to men hauling a headless cow carcass
through Traxie.
Traxie, he said to himself. It’s where you were born and raised,
and it’s where you’ll always be from. And, no matter where you end up,
it’s where you’ll die. You might have fooled the voters of Heligaux,
but you’ll never fool the likes of Dr. Susan Schaumberg.
He imagined crossing paths with her in the grocery store six
months from now, and he’d smile and wish her well, and all the while,
the most important thing between them would go unspoken, that they
could never be close, not really, because of where he was from and
what it had made him into.
And yet, something was stirring. Something had been awakened that
had long been asleep in him. He thought about Tamani and turned on his
truck, and it occurred to him that whatever revenge plot Danielle had
worked out, Tamani was most likely going to be involved, whether she
wanted to be or not. He hoped he’d be seeing her again, and that the
circumstances wouldn’t be too unfortunate.
He headed over to Danielle’s apartment. It was after 8:30, so he
was going to be late.
Her apartment complex, built at the edge of Traxie, was laid out
in a remarkably uncreative way, a collection of plain, two-story
rectangular buildings arranged at right angles. Four two-bedroom
apartments on the first floor of every building. Four more of the same
on the second floor.
He pulled up to Danielle’s building, turned off his truck and
looked at his phone.
“I’m in my car,” she had written him. “I have something to show
you.”
Arrowroot looked around and quickly spotted Danielle. She’d
turned on her interior lights and was waving to him from her old
Honda, parked about a half dozen spaces away. He stepped over and
walked up to the window on her side of the car, but she waved him
impatiently to the other side and mouthed the words “Get in.”
“What are you planning?” Arrowroot said as soon as he opened the
door.
“Shhh,” she said. “Sit down, shut the door.”
He complied and she handed him a stack of papers and a
flashlight. “Adele’s made a friend,” she said. “Read it.”
Danielle had printed out a series of messages from the last few
days between Tamani and Aaron Mailor, the soldier that had killed
Robert. At first it was innocent, Tamani just introducing herself as
Adele, saying she spotted his name on Facebook and asking if he knew
anyone named Melissa Mailor, as that was the name of someone who might
know what had become of her parents.
Mailor had tried to be helpful but had no information to offer.
But he was obviously intrigued by this woman, and soon the exchange
turned flirty. They traded pictures, Adele revealed where she lived
and complained about being lonely and about not being able to find men
who liked what she liked.
From there, the conversation took a darker turn. Adele said she
fantasized about being raped by a stranger, and asked if he could play
that role.
Mailor clearly had misgivings, and there was some argument back
and forth about whether this kind of thing was healthy or safe, but
the aching loneliness of his life came through in his writing. He’d
had a live-in girlfriend, he admitted, and she’d taken advantage of
him and then moved out, leaving him with a lot of debt and bitterness.
In the end, he agreed to fulfill her fantasy, but only if they
could go out to dinner afterwards. They set their tryst for that
evening, at 8:30, and then the messages ended.
Arrowroot turned off the flashlight and looked at Danielle’s
silhouette in the darkness.
“Okay, I’m lost,” Arrowroot confessed. “How is Tamani hooking up
with this kid gonna get revenge for what he did to Robert? And how the
hell did you get into her email?”
“I didn’t get into her email,” Danielle said. “I wrote the emails
for her. She has no idea.”
A sense of undefinable dread crept over Arrowroot, but he was
still confused.
“So you pretend to be Tamani and set up a date with this fella,”
Arrowroot said. “When does the revenge part start up?”
“Oh, it’s already well underway,” Danielle said. “I didn’t tell
you the best part.”
“Let me hear it,” Arrowroot said.
“Adele said she—“ Danielle began.
“Meaning you,” Arrowroot interrupted.
“Adele said she wanted him to attack her in her bed, with a
knife, while she was sleeping,” Danielle said. “She goes to bed when I
go to bed. So I turned in early tonight, asked her to do the same. So
she’s sound asleep when that bastard creeps into her bedroom and tries
to rape her at knifepoint. She’ll make quick work of him. Oh, and for
good measure, I told her there’s a guy running around raping women in
our neighborhood, using a knife. Pretty tidy work, overall.”
Arrowroot could hear her palms rubbing together and knew she was
brushing her hands off symbolically.
“He’s up there now?” he asked.
“Walked up about 5 minutes ago,” Danielle said with a dry laugh.
“I watched him from here. It was all I could do to keep from getting
out and killing him myself.”
“Oh no, oh no,” Arrowroot moaned, opening the car door.
“Where are you going?” Danielle demanded.
“To stop it!” Arrowroot shouted.
“Whatever’s going to happen has already happened,” Danielle said
icily. “I knew you didn’t have the courage. I knew you’d want to stop
it. That’s why I didn’t tell you until now.”
“They’ve already charged him!” Arrowroot screamed as he ran
toward his daughter’s apartment. He hopped up the stairs two at a
time, arrived at her door and pounded with all his might, completely
undeterred by the possibility that he was about to come face-to-face
with something either horrific or dangerous or both: A wounded, knifewielding soldier. A terrifically enraged, extremely strong woman.
Maybe a corpse. Maybe two.
“Tamani!” he cried, then corrected himself. “Adele! Are you in
there? Adele?”
He heard muffled voices, perhaps one gender or both, perhaps
surprised or angry or merely questioning. Then there was laughter, and
a man opened the door.
He was shortish, with a mustache, dark eyebrows and thinning
hair. He smiled quizzically at Arrowroot and waved him in.
“Hi, Karl, what are you doing here?” asked Tamani. She was
sitting on a couch, wearing a long t-shirt that Arrowroot recognized
as one of Danielle’s.
“Aaron Mailor,” the man said nervously, putting out his hand. “Do
you live here?”
Arrowroot, ignoring Mailor’s hand, looked carefully at Tamani,
and then back at Mailor. He was only briefly relieved to find that no
one had died or been hurt. Immediately, his relief turned to rage
toward the man who killed his son. Here he was, the bastard, laughing,
apparently enjoying himself with a woman who was supposed to kill him.
Robert would never laugh again, never be with a woman again.
“I don’t live here,” Arrowroot said coldly. “My name is Karl
Arrowroot. Do you recognize me?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Mailor said, and he looked at Tamani.
“He’s the mayor of this town,” Tamani said. “He can help you with
things.”
“My son was Robert Arrowroot,” Arrowroot said. “Do you recognize
that name?”
“Still drawing a blank,” Mailor said, and he smiled unsteadily
“Robert Arrowroot is the boy you killed,” Arrowroot said,
forcibly controlling a set of overwhelming emotions. “Last fall. I was
his father. Comin’ back to you yet?”
“Yow,” Mailor said. “I’m Aaron Mailor, okay?” He put his hands up
and backed away from Arrowroot until he reached the couch, where he
sat down next to Tamani. “I don’t even know Howie, okay?”
“Who?” Arrowroot asked.
“Howie Sampson, the guy who killed— uh, the guy they charged with
it, the suspect,” Mailor said. “The guy they charged with it, anyway.
I don’t have any idea if he did it. I don’t know him. I don’t know
him.”
“Howie Sampson,” Arrowroot repeated, rolling the name around in
his head as if he’d uncover some meaning if he said it enough. “Howie
Sampson.”
Karl Arrowroot didn’t know it, but his mind had for the moment
reached its practical limit for processing information, reaching
conclusions and solving problems. This new data was simply more than
his brain could work with, and he stood and stared at the man for a
very awkward 30 seconds.
“Karl?” Tamani asked. “Karl, are you okay? Do you need to sit
down?”
Arrowroot continued to stare, so Mailor spoke next. “I’m gonna
head out,” he said to Tamani. “Really sorry about the
miscommunication, please tell your roommate not to do that shit.”
Mailor turned to Arrowroot. “Very sorry. I don’t know anything about
the case. I don’t even know Howie, except by reputation.”
Keeping his eyes on Arrowroot, the soldier sidled to the door and
opened it.
Arrowroot finally spoke: “Howie Trappe, really? You’re not
bullshitting me?”
“Check with the Army,” Mailor said. “Criminal Investigation
folks, they’ll give you the paperwork, I think. Just ask.”
The door closed and Arrowroot walked to the window to observe the
proceedings, feeling a slight discomfort but nothing more for what
might be about to happen.
Mailor was walking briskly as he crossed the parking lot toward
his truck.
Just as he reached it, Danielle burst from her car, screamed and
gave chase. Mailor jumped into his vehicle, started it in an instant
and backed out. For a moment, it looked as though Mailor was going to
back over Danielle, but he hit the brakes at the last moment and she
screamed and leapt out of the way.
Danielle was no match for the soldier, whose reflexes were
attuned to aerial combat, and he quickly shifted into drive and sped
off as she ran after him, giving up only after he had reached the main
road and vanished in a squealing cloud of acrid tire smoke.
Danielle, a black figure standing under the outermost ring of her
apartment complex’s harsh parking lot lights, watched the truck
disappear, and then she looked around, gestured furiously with her
arms, and turned and ran, emitting intermittent screams of rage or
possibly terror as she returned to her apartment. As she ran, two
shadows kept pace with her, each growing, shortening and fading as the
light fixtures that created them neared and then fell away.
Arrowroot heard her thumping up the stairs and opened the door.
She stormed in and screamed again. Seeing her father and Tamani alive
and apparently unharmed only seemed to calm her for a few moments.
“Why’d you let him go?” she screamed at Tamani. “Why didn’t you
kill him?”
Tamani’s eyes opened slightly wider, but she remained otherwise
composed. “It was wrong to do what you did,” she said.
“Get out of here!” Danielle screamed. “You fucking whore, leave!”
Tamani stood, moving toward Arrowroot uncertainly.
“Did you fuck him?” Danielle asked. “Is that why you didn’t kill
him? Because you needed another lay?”
“He didn’t do it,” Arrowroot said. “Said it was, uh, Howie
Sampson. Howie Sampson. But either way, there’s been charges filed.
Charges filed! Let the Army handle it.”
“They’re not going to handle it!” Danielle exclaimed. “He did it,
and they’re not going to handle it. He killed Robert. I know it was
him, and you let him get away and she fucked him. Didn’t waste any
time, either, did you?”
“For what it’s worth,” said Arrowroot, “they were just talking
when I showed up.”
Danielle turned to Tamani and opened her mouth to scream more
accusations, but then she paused. Tamani had fallen back on the couch,
her eyes wide open, staring at nothing, her mouth slowly moving,
without sound.
“Tamani?” Arrowroot said. “Tamani?”