Tom Piccirilli: The Fever Kill

Crease had spent seven years carting his father home from barrooms and whorehouses, picking him out of the alleys and gutters and carrying him on his back through the frigid streets of Hangtree. The old ladies who woke before dawn would tsk loudly on their porches or smile with all the small cruelty they felt they deserved to pass back to the world. Edwards and the deputies would pace their cruisers alongside and follow mile after mile while Crease struggled beneath his father's weight. The cops would keep their dome lights on so he could see their eyes, the way they grinned. Crease didn't know who he wanted to kill more, them or his father or himself.

Sometimes Edwards would be waiting far ahead on the corner, his handsome features lit by a street lamp or the flare of a match from lighting a cigar. His golden curls drifting in the breeze, pale blue eyes burning. He'd wait until Crease would almost reach him, and then he'd get in the cruiser and fade down a side street, leaving the butt of his cigar still glowing.

This had been going on for so long that Crease had come to expect it, and accepted it as part of a now common, familiar pain he was meant to endure.

Sometimes he would carry his father past the Groell place, old lady Virginny silhouetted by diffuse orange light in one window, the sharply-defined shape of her granddaughter Ellie in another. The two of them in different corners of the house, staring out at the darkness, waiting. For him or some other distraction or promise to come creeping up the road.

That last night-with the wintry Vermont wind slicing down out of the north hills, the blunt roar in the trees masking his grunts as he strained to get them home-Crease felt the old man begin to sob against his back.

The tears ran against Crease's neck and into his hair, steaming against his heated skin. His heart battered his chest, pulse snapping so hard in his throat that he thought the veins would burst. It would be an answer. His brow ran with feverish sweat and colors seeped at the edges of his vision.

"I didn't do it," his father mewled.

"I know that."

"The girl, Mary. What happened to her, it wasn't me."

Crease thought, If I hear this one more time I'll go insane. It may have already happened. I might have gone over the rim. How could you tell if you were on the edge or if you'd already slid over it? He might be at the bottom looking up.

"You're the only one who believes me, son."

"That doesn't matter."

"I'm sorry I brought this on you."

"None of it's your doing."

"Let me down, I gotta puke."

It was a sign of courtesy. His father had never given him a warning before. He sat the old man down on the corner propped against a mailbox and watched him throw up in the street. His father was trembling and gagging so badly that Crease began to feel as if he was doing the same. The awful noises carried on the wind and wafted through chimneys and beneath drafty doors and no one would come outside for a while. In a way, Crease was thankful.

His father slumped back, breathing thickly, an ex-pression of panic crossing his bloated face. His chin was speckled with red foam. His eyes flitted and finally cleared. His gaze was alert but grew more and more desolate as it settled on Crease.

"I did it," his father said.

"What?"

"I think I shot her. I probably did." His father vomited again. "I never admitted it out loud before, even to myself. But I'm telling you the truth. It's time."

Crease looked and saw blood in the street.

This was it, his old man was giving his confession, right here on the curb. Crease knew he should run. He wouldn't want to hear whatever came next. Maybe he hadn't gone over the rim, maybe he was teetering. If he listened he knew he'd fall.

But even though his hips were half-turned, as if he might make a sprint for the safety of shadows, he just couldn't take that first step.

"What?" His voice sounded nothing like him, and it made him whirl to face a stranger behind him who wasn't there. "Tell me again. What did you do?"

His father didn't have much time left. Crease could see it now, how hard the man had to work to take his next breath. The blood was still coming, leaking from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth now. But he was more focused than he'd been in years. The man finally coming to some kind of an understanding, a reckoning with himself when it was too late to do any good.

"So long ago I hardly remember."

"It was seven years ago. You remember. Mom had just died. You remember it all. Tell me."

"I was waiting at the abandoned mill. Waiting to do the trade, the way the kidnappers wanted. But I opened the satchel. I'm sorry, son, I couldn't help it. Fifteen grand, we could've gotten out of this town. It wasn't much but it was enough to start over…" The old man beginning to falter, even now, unable to face his own actions.

Crease was seventeen. The voice-his voice now-was about a thousand years older, full of dust and ash. "Did you kidnap the little girl?"

"No, no, son."

"Who did?"

"I never found out. I searched, but I never found out." His father took a phlegm-filled breath, the blood spilling over his lips. "The only reason Edwards knew what happened is because they planned to do the same thing. I gave orders I was to be the only one there, but he was waiting, back in the woods, watching. I took out the bundles of cash and hid them in the mill. Then I sat and waited. From about noon on. Four hours, five, maybe six. It was sundown before I heard someone prowling. Probably Edwards. He must've got antsy, waiting like that, screened by the trees. Must've thought the switch had already been made and wanted to check. The door opened and I saw someone silhouetted in the sunset. I spotted the gun in his hand. We fired together. Wasn't until we started yelling that we recognized each other. By the time we straightened ourselves out, the girl was dead."

I'm being killed here, gutted, and my own father is doing it. "How?"

"She'd been there in the mill, walking around." The man's eyes filled with a furious anguish and Crease knew his father had to die now, he could never come back from this admission. "Holding a teddy bear, you see? Mary was holding her teddy bear. They'd let her go."

"Why would they do that before picking up the satchel?"

"They must've found the money I hid. They were watching. They must've been there the whole time. I don't know. But it was gone, I never even got it. Edwards ran while the girl was dying. I called it in."

All of this for fifteen grand. It didn't seem like very much, not even in Hangtree.

"You were drunk. You fell asleep."

"I don't know, maybe I did, I suppose I did."

"Which one of you shot Mary Burke?"

"I don't know, I honestly don't know." His father's words came slower, weighted by emotion. "She was shot once, and the bullet was. .. was…"

Crease already knew. The bullet was unrecognizable. It had gone around and around in her small body, fragmenting. He had to lean against the mailbox to keep from going over. There was blood in the street everywhere he looked.

Crease asked with his dead voice, "Did you shoot the girl on purpose?"

"No, it was an accident. It might not have been me. Maybe it was Edwards."

"Why didn't you tell anyone that?"

His father's breathing grew more ragged, the stink of his death drifting off him. Crease knew it was on him now too, this smell, and it would never go away. The old man kept pawing at Crease's leg, wanting him to get closer. Crease kneeled beside him, thinking, I should've run. Why didn't I run?

His father clawed for Crease's hand. "Nobody would've believed it. He'd just started out as deputy. Handsome as he is, golden hair, pretty boy. His parents well-to-do. Nobody'd believe my word over his."