David Morrell - The Totem

So that was how they brought him down. Because when all his theorizing had been prolonged and exhausted, after he had put up all his layered explanations, he in time had come to understand his motives. He was fascinated by the dead, in love with them, and all he needed to discover that truth was one late hour's gentle touching of a young girl's lifeless body. He had looked up, and his supervisor had been standing in the doorway, watching him. There was no need for accusations or explanations. No word passed between them, but they both knew what had happened. One week later he resigned, effective when a person could be found to take his place, and without thinking, he went back to his birthplace, Potter's Field. His father had been dead by then, so it was easy to return. He sometimes thought that he had wanted to return since he'd first left the place, except his father would have been there. His credentials had been so impressive that he hadn't required a recommendation from his superior in Philadelphia. He'd asked; the local hospital had hired him.

And here he'd stayed, and here he had been happy. Understanding bred control. He settled in his father's house. He did his job, and he passed the time. He continued drinking but not as much as before. On occasion, he looked at Slaughter's sometimes puffy face and thought that Slaughter ought to cut back on the beer, but really it was he himself who liked the beer, and he at last had found a friend in Slaughter. Because Slaughter's life was his profession, as his own was, and a friendship based on work was something that the medical examiner could handle. People who were good at what they did, who related to you on that basis, seldom disappointed you. And besides, although this was a weakness, he had come to like the man, perhaps in part because he sensed that Slaughter felt that way toward him.

And so he frowned at it. The body of the cat down in the hollow. He stood along the rim and looked down at the mangled head, and it was blown apart, all right. Slaughter's magnum bullet had shattered the skull. There were bits of blood and brain and bone and fur that had been blasted back along the slope behind it. There were insects crawling on those pieces, on the carcass and the bloody skull, flies that clustered buzzing on the blood as well.

When he had parked his car and walked across the dusty field to reach the hollow, he had heard a noise down in there. He'd seen a dog run from the hollow, glancing furtively, its ears back, its tail low, as it had loped away. He had seen a bloody strand of sinew hanging from its mouth, and although he'd have to check the textbooks in his office, he was certain that he'd read somewhere that rabies could be passed on from the meat of tainted animals. He didn't have a gun. He wouldn't know how to use it even if he had one (that had been another block between his father and himself; his father was a hunter; he himself had not been interested). If Slaughter had been here now, the medical examiner would have been eager for Slaughter to shoot the dog. Either that or trap it. But that second way was risky, and the dog might be too clever for them. Better just to shoot it. Never mind who owned it. Never mind that he himself would want a living animal for observation and testing. That dog was a danger. It was running toward the cattle pens, and he was bothered by the damage that the dog could do if rabies were indeed the problem here. Oh, this soon the dog would not develop symptoms, but it certainly could leave the virus if it drank from where the cattle drank, and they would then contract it. He watched as the dog disappeared among the bushes by the cattle pens, as the cattle shifted slightly, brown shapes in a group across there, and he licked his lips and looked up at the summer sun.

It was noon, and he was thirsty, worn down by the heat. He'd left his suit coat in the car, had pulled down his tie and fumbled to open his top shirt button. Now he rolled his sleeves up, and he walked down into the hollow. Every sound he made was vivid to him, the dry sand crunching underneath his shoes-he never wore the cowboy boots so many of the townsfolk wore, his suits still those that he had owned back in the East-and he was positive that he would waste his time by doing tests on what was in a heap before him. There were only bits and hints of brain, and worse, they were contaminated, fly eggs on them now, corruption settling in. The cat had been a large one, black, a massive torn. He could understand why Slaughter had been startled when it suddenly came leaping at him, but he wished that Slaughter had shot it somewhere else besides the head. Well, that couldn't be changed, and for certain, he couldn't leave it here. In case it was contagious, he would have to seal it in a bag and then destroy it.

He waited, thinking, at last climbing back up the slope and crossing through the dust and bushes toward his car at the curb. He opened the trunk and reached in for the kit he always carried with him for emergencies. Lab coat, rubber gloves, a cap and face mask. Once he had them on, the face mask stifling in the mid-day heat, he chose a plastic bag, a pair of forceps, and he returned to the hollow. There, he used the forceps on the bits of bone and brain, dropping all those pieces in the open bag he held.

The process took a half an hour. He made sure that he found them all. Then he went up on the rim and searched among the bushes. When he was satisfied, he used a stick to push the carcass into the bag, put the stick in there as well, and noticed a piece of ragged flesh that had been hidden by the body. When he gripped it with the forceps, setting it inside the bag, he paused to guarantee that he'd been thorough. Sure, the blood that soaked the sand, dry now, rustlike, but he couldn't leave it, and he had to go back to the car again, to get the shovel in the trunk, the lye he always kept there, and fifteen minutes later he was finished, the sand scooped into the bag, the hollow pale with sprinkled lye. He walked back to his car, tied the plastic bag and put it in another bag and then inside the trunk. He put the sack of lye, the shovel, his lab coat and cap and face mask in yet another bag, careful with the gloves he took off, locked the trunk, and didn't know another way he could have done it. He would drive now to the office, go down to the furnace in the basement, and arrange for what he'd gathered to be incinerated.

Abruptly he was conscious of silence. No wind, no cars going by or people talking, no sound over at the cattle pens. Well, Saturday, he thought, there won't be much going on. But he had the odd sensation that he was not alone. Of course, he thought. My rubber gloves, my lab coat, cap, and face mask. I'd have looked like I was from another planet. Sure, the neighborhood is inside, staring past the drapes at me. But when he looked, he saw no movement at any windows, and he did his best to stop his premonition as he got in his car and drove away.

He headed toward the hospital, glancing in his rearview mirror where he saw two men come from the Railhead bar. He saw a woman emerge from a house and get in her car. He thought he saw, reflected dimly, workers from the stockpens walking down the street behind him. It seemed as if the world had once again resumed its motion the instant he left that place, and he was thinking he should get control of his imagination. Keep your mind in order.

Because really this was something that engaged him. If he didn't dare consider all the trouble that was maybe on the verge of breaking out, he found the problem in the abstract quite attractive. He was intrigued the way he once had been in Philadelphia. A riddle to be solved. A secret ready for him to discover. He was driving, glancing at a cat that perched in royal splendor on a porch rail. He was passing a young boy who walked a cocker spaniel. And because the day was hot, he leaned his elbow out the open window, his arm hairs shifting in the wind that the motion of the car made. He was almost startled by the excitement that he was feeling. Ten blocks later, he turned up the driveway toward the parking stalls behind the hospital. He waved to a man from the childrens' ward who drove out past him toward the street. He reached the back and pulled in at his parking space, getting out, his key in hand to open the trunk when something slowed him and then stopped him.