Steven James - The Knight

He unlatched the metal door that led to the cadavers and felt the sweep of cool air brush across his face, his arms, as he stepped inside. Just a few degrees colder than the mine-cool enough to store the bodies for a few days, not cold enough to freeze them solid.

He was responsible for eight deaths during the last week, or possibly seven, if the priest was still alive, so he recognized several of the bodies in the cold storage area, but he noted their presence without any emotion or even satisfaction. They’d only been characters in the epic story he was telling, nothing more.

Giovanni wheeled the gurney containing the corpse of Travis Nash into the examination and autopsy room and shut the freezer door.

A white sheet covered the corpse and he slid it aside, revealing the naked, clay-like body of the man he’d killed twelve hours ago by what had appeared to everyone to be a heart attack. No autopsy had been ordered.

Giovanni realized that if he were going to stick literally to the plot, he would have needed to find a way to have Travis’s wife dig up his body and slice off his head with a knife, but burial practices had changed quite a bit since the fourteenth century, and, considering Travis’s cremation was scheduled for the following morning, taking his body from the morgue was as close to disinterment as possible.

Since his death earlier in the day, Travis Nash’s blood would have pooled in his body cavity, so there wouldn’t be much of a mess, just a little seepage.

He unzipped his duffel bag, took out the crosscut saw that he’d used on Brigitte and the governor, placed the blade against the cold, bloated neck of Mr. Nash, and set to work.

Giovanni remembered the night his grandmother died.

He could still see her standing in the kitchen, bent over the sink, her frail fingers scrubbing the dishes, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, and her soft, papery voice asking him to please put the glasses in the cupboard next to the plates and if he enjoyed the summer with her and was he ready to go back to his father next Tuesday, and then reminding him not to forget his copy of The Canterbury Tales that he’d been reading all summer because she’d seen it on the porch earlier in the day.

She was wearing a white apron with a picture of a faded bouquet of lilies embroidered on the front, and there were yellow stains of chicken broth beside the flowers from the times she’d wiped her fingers across the apron while she was cooking.

Yes, he remembered it all: the quiet Kansas breeze blowing through the open window above the sink, the sound of crickets chirping in the dewy shadows outside, the smell of his grandmother’s old-lady perfume mixing with the lemon-scented dishwashing liquid, and the fading smell of the chicken dumpling soup that she’d made from scratch for him because it was his favorite.

Yes, and he remembered the knife resting patiently on the counter beside her.

And his grandmother’s voice again, “Please make sure those glasses are dry before you put them away, dear. You know how they’ll just pick up germs if they’re still wet.”

“And did his grandmother yell at the boy? Verbally abuse him?”

“Not to my knowledge, Your Honor.”

“What about his home life with his father? Was he neglected in any way?”

“He appears to have had a normal, stable upbringing, Your Honor. His mother died while giving birth, but there is no sign of physical or mental abuse whatsoever from his other family members.”

The knife handle looked so shiny and smooth and inviting.

He remembered that. And he remembered wrapping his fingers around it and picking it up and feeling its steady, balanced weight.

He rotated it so that the kitchen light could slant and dance along the blade, where it glistened, glistened, glistened, and then lingered for a moment before sliding off the edge and disappearing into the air around him.

The knife felt right at home in his hand.

Yes, he remembered.

And then his grandmother turned and saw him holding it, and she wiped her hands on her apron and asked what he was doing and would he please put down the knife because knives are dangerous and not to be handled carelessly and he should know that, a boy his age.

And he remembered how glad he was that she’d turned around because he hadn’t really wanted to push the knife into her back and this way he could watch her face when it happened.

“Your Honor, the boy is too young to understand his actions. There’s no precedent for a child under fourteen years of age being convicted of first-degree murder. He’s a deeply troubled young man who needs psychological help. He should be offered counseling, not incarceration.”

Everything was clear.

When his grandmother saw that he wasn’t going to put down the knife, she took a hesitant step backward, pressing herself against the sink. She was still holding the dishrag, and soapy water was dripping from it and forming a small uneven puddle at her feet on the checkered linoleum floor.

He remembered that, even after all these years.

Giovanni finished with Travis’s neck and set the blond, curly haired head in a plastic bag, then wrapped it carefully in a large white linen sheet and placed it in the duffel bag.

It took him only a moment to wash up and then change into the doctor’s scrubs he’d brought with him. He stuffed the custodian’s clothes into the duffel, covered the body again, and rolled it into the freezer.

Kelsey would be arriving in less than ten minutes.

Good.

He went to the sink to rinse off the saw and prepare the needle.

For some reason, as Giovanni stepped toward his grandmother, the crickets stopped chirping. Maybe they knew. Maybe somehow they could tell what was about to happen.

His grandmother’s eyes grew large, and then she dropped the dishrag and tried to push him away, but he was strong for his age, stronger than she was, and she didn’t slow him down. Not at all.

Giovanni had cut steak; he knew that cutting meat wasn’t easy, and that his grandmother’s body would have meat on it, that everyone’s does, so he expected that it would be difficult to push the knife into her belly, expected that there would be more resistance, but it was much easier than he thought it would be. Quite easy, as a matter of fact. And pulling it out was even easier than pushing it in because it was slick and shiny with blood and other juices that he didn’t recognize.

She didn’t scream or cry out, just coughed slightly. A moist cough, and she trembled a little, and then leaned more of her weight against the counter beside the sink, and then sank to the floor.

Giovanni bent over her, and every time he pushed the knife in, it became easier and easier, especially after she stopped quivering so much. And it was quieter then too, after she stopped making those awkward sounds in the back of her throat.

Giovanni heard a knock at the morgue’s door, and then, wearing the somber, empathetic expression of a concerned doctor, he opened it and found Kelsey Nash in the hallway.

He told her how sorry he was for her loss and apologized for having to call her in so late like this, but then explained that he needed to ask her a few questions about her husband, now, tonight, before the cremation, because it might help clear up some questions that had come up concerning the circumstances of her husband’s death.

Kelsey wiped away a stray tear but didn’t enter the morgue.

He added that the police feared that Travis might have possibly been murdered, and that once again he was terribly sorry about the whole ordeal, but that this would only take a minute and then no one would be bothering her again.

And at last she stepped hesitantly into the room.

As Giovanni returned the knife to the counter he heard the crickets slowly resume their chirping. And he liked that. Liked that the world outside was still normal, that, really, nothing much had changed.