Chet Williamson - Reign

"Don't feel bad," Bill said. "I threw up once already, and I'm afraid I'm working on my second shot."

"Jesus," said Munro, "I know this kid. Harry Ruhl – played football for Kirkland, didn't he?" Bill nodded. "What the hell happened to him?"

"I'm not sure. The guy who found him seems to know something about it, but I couldn't get much out of him. He kept crying."

"Where is he?"

"Down on the second floor in the offices."

Munro steeled himself and examined the body, wincing as he had to step around the pool of blood on the floor and the pitiful chunks of flesh in it.

"You think we oughta be able to pick them up," Bill said. "Goddam awful.”

“Not till the M.E. comes," Munro answered.

"I know."

Munro forced himself to look at the mutilated stomach and groin, noticing the angle in which the knife was placed. "It's like he…” His words trailed off.

"Yeah," Bill said. "Like he carved himself a… " Munro could almost hear the cruder word on Bill's lips, but the policeman pulled it back. "… a vagina."

"Is this supposed to be `pussy boy?’" Munro wondered aloud. The row of bloody letters began at the corpse's left clavicle and went downward along his rib cage, finishing just above the gaping abdominal wound. Munro noticed that the Y of "BOY" trailed down the side. When he examined the fingers of the right hand, he saw that the index and middle fingers were coated with blood.

"I called the state police," Bill said. Munro would have expected that, and suspected that Bill had said it more for conversation than to convey information.

On his way to the offices, Munro passed the Medical Examiner and two state police investigators. The M.E. shook his head and muttered, "Lifestyles of the dead and famous," as he passed Munro. Munro didn't smile. He wondered how funny the M.E. would be when he saw what was waiting for him. Probably wouldn't affect him at all. Most of those guys had cast iron stomachs. Hell, they'd have to, wouldn't they, face to face with messy, violent death day after day? Munro was thankful this kind of thing didn't happen very often in his town. But Christ, this damn theatre -two ugly deaths in nearly as many months. Show people.

In the waiting area of the offices, Munro was amazed to find Abe Kipp crying. Kipp was one of the biggest hardasses in town, and had been, Munro had heard, a real hellion when he was younger, picking fights in bars, mostly with guys smaller than he was, and the years apparently had not mellowed him. Yet here he sat, blubbering like a baby, flanked by Donna Franklin on one side and Hamilton's wife on the other. The young man Munro had seen entering the theatre a few days before Thanksgiving was seated in the corner.

"Mr. Kipp, I'm Chief Munro."

Kipp nodded. "I know… I know you."

"You found the body?"

"I did, yeah, I did… my fault, oh shit, all my fault."

"Your fault?"

"He wouldn'ta done it… not without my teasin' him. I teased him, but it was just jokin', you know? Just a little joke, he was always so scared of everything -"

"Now wait," Munro said sharply. "You mean you think he did this to himself?"

"What, you…” Kipp's eyes widened. "You think… I done it?" The surprise was so openly honest that Munro was instantly certain of the man's innocence, at least as far as wielding the knife went. "I… I just teased him, y'see? Teased him about bein' a.. .” The words seemed to lock in Kipp's throat. “… a pussy boy, that's what I called him. But I didn't do that, oh hell, how could I have done that?"

"I don't know, Mr. Kipp. But you might just as well ask how could anyone have done that to himself."

When the medical examiner was finished, he told Munro that death probably occurred between four-thirty and five-fifteen. "Good thing I got called so fast," he said. "The fresher they are the easier it is to nail down the time." At least, Munro thought, he wasn't smiling any more. "The state boys tell me the prints of the victim are the only ones on the knife."

"You saying it was suicide?"

The M.E. cocked his head. "I know what you're thinking, Munro. Could he have cut himself open, buried the knife in his groin, and then misspelled words in his own blood? The answer, remarkably enough, is yes. He'd be bleeding like a river, but he would have time to do all those things. If he were so compelled. What would compel a man to do such things is beyond my comprehension. That's your job."

"But it's possible."

"Yes, it's possible. Look at the Samurai in Japan – they'd slice themselves open with two cuts, one across and one down. Now they generally had a friend to help finish them off by lopping off their heads, but it wasn't necessary. For all I know, they might have written haiku while bleeding to death, let alone the sad little epitaph our friend there composed."

The interviews with the residents of the theatre were inconclusive. Alibis were abundant, since everyone was with someone else who could account for them. Even Abe Kipp had been seen at frequent enough intervals near the end of the day so that Munro knew he would not have had the time or opportunity to go to the fifth floor, perform that act of butchery, cleanse himself of the blood that must have resulted, and return backstage.

When Munro interviewed Dennis Hamilton, he found him red-eyed and unresponsive. There was no hostility, however, in the perfunctory way Hamilton answered Munro's questions, and Munro could not help but wonder if the man were on drugs, as he had heard so many people in show business were.

But maybe, Munro thought, it was something else. Maybe it was numbness, like psychological novocaine, a protective mask of some sort to guard him from the pain of having another person – maybe just an employee, maybe a friend – die under mysterious circumstances. Still, Munro couldn't get the idea out of his head that Hamilton knew more than he let on.

~* ~

After the police and ambulance left with Harry Ruhl's ruined body, Sid and Curt drove Abe Kipp to Kirkland General Hospital, where he was given a sedative and put to bed in a semi-private room. When they returned to the theatre and Sid checked on Dennis, he found that Robin was in the bedroom, trying, like Abe Kipp, to sleep away the horror. Dennis, however, was wide awake, sitting in the living room with a tall drink in his hand, staring out the window at the darkness.

"Let's go out," he said to Sid. "Let's go to that bar two blocks over." He looked at Sid then, and went on, as though he owed him an explanation. "I don't want to celebrate, Sid. I just want to get away from this place. It seems… terrible tonight. God, poor Harry." He shook his head and stood up. "Let's go, huh?"

There was no reason not to. In all the years Sid had been with him, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times Dennis had too much to drink. Besides, he really wanted a drink himself.

The name of the bar was Riley's, and there were only a few people in it on this Monday night. When Dennis sat at the bar, the bartender recognized him and greeted him by name, then asked what they wanted. Sid had a bourbon, Dennis a scotch.

After a few sips, Dennis said, "I never would have thought it of Harry. He just didn't seem the type."

"Suicidal?"

Dennis nodded. "He always seemed happy, so simple."

"He was simple."

"I don't mean retarded, I mean his wants seemed simple."

"You don't think someone else killed him?"

"Someone else?" He snorted a bitter laugh. "Who, Sid? The building was locked, everybody was accounted for, and even so, which of us could have done something like that? Marvella? Donna? John? Hell, me?" Dennis shook his head. "No, he did it himself. The poor man. Poor dumb man. Couldn't even spell his own suicide note right."

Sid felt very cold. He had seen the body, Dennis had not. "How did you know the words were spelled wrong?"