Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

Dr. Bell approached. “Please tell me you didn’t steal it from a funeral home again.”

“Nope. He’s just some guy. Passing through town.”

“What happened to him?” Bell asked.

“I think he choked on something.”

“What does that mean?”

Eddie laughed. “Let’s just say he had trouble breathing.”

Dugan and Travis scoured the town for Eddie’s car. A visit to his house and then a quick stop by his momma’s place turned up nothing. They then zig-zagged all over but saw no sign of the car. As they circled the county road on the edge of town, Dugan said, “Not sure where else to look.”

“What about there?” Travis said. He pointed up the hillside toward Dr. Bell’s mansion.

Dugan glanced that way. Eddie’s car sat near the barn behind and to the left of the house. “Good eyes.”

“Damn fine police work’s what it was.” Travis smiled.

“What the hell’s he doing at Dr. Bell’s place?”

“Don’t know. But that’s Antoine’s car up there, too.”

“Antoine Briscoe?”

“The one and only,” Travis said.

Antoine was no stranger to Dugan. He’d arrested him more than once. Drinking and fighting mostly.

“Interesting group of folks,” Dugan said.

“That’d be my assessment.”

Dugan slowed, turned up the drive. “Maybe we should go have ourselves a chat.”

He parked near the left front of the house, out of any sightline from the barn, and stepped out. He opened up the back door, grabbed his twelve-gauge LC Smith double-barreled shotgun. He cracked it open, saw the two 4–0 buckshot shells inside, and snapped it closed.

“You think you’ll need that?” Travis asked.

“Can’t hurt to have it.”

With the stranger’s body stretched out on the table, Dr. Bell cut away the clothing and began his examination. Head to foot. Eddie watched, wondering just what the hell he was doing. Bell seemed to focus on the dead guy’s neck. Finally, he straightened and looked at the cousins.

“This man didn’t choke. He was strangled.”

“So?” Eddie asked.

“So? That’s all you have to say?” Bell’s face reddened, his jaw pulsed.

“You wanted fresh ones. We got you one. And it ain’t even been embalmed or nothing.”

Eddie felt the heat from Bell’s glare.

“It’s one thing to dig up dead bodies, even steal them from funeral homes, but this? Are you two mentally defective?”

Antoine’s gun appeared, leveled at the cousins. Eddie took a step back, raising his hands.

“I was you, I’d put that gun down.”

The voice came from behind him. Eddie whirled around. Sheriff Dugan and his sidekick Travis Sutton stood in the doorway, Dugan’s double-barrel aimed at the group.

“Set it on the floor, Antoine,” Dugan said. “And give it a kick over this way.”

Antoine did, the gun skittering across the floor. Travis picked it up.

Dugan’s gaze swept the room, the four men, the corpse, the stacked cases of Dr. Bell’s Tonic. He gave a slow nod. “Looks like we all’re gonna need to engage in some sort of discussion.”

“I can explain,” Bell said.

“Got my ears on,” Dugan said.

Bell stood there, silently. Seemed to Eddie that he was figuring what to say. Probably running through his options but not finding a good one. Neither could Eddie. Not one that would explain away the dead guy on the table and all the bones and jars of tissue and organs waiting to be dealt with.

“What’s the matter?” Travis asked. “Cat got your tongue?”

Bell sighed, then spelled it out. The corpse, the tonics, the entire operation.

Dugan’s gaze hardened, but as Bell went on his face seemed to relax. When Bell finished his story, Dugan gave a slight nod, did a spin around the table, along the shelves, examining everything.

“And this is how you make all your money?” Dugan asked.

Bell nodded.

“How much we talking here?”

Bell shrugged. “You’ve seen my home.” He waved a hand. “And the Caddy I drive.”

Dugan propped the shotgun over one arm, the muzzle angled at the floor. “Why don’t we go inside, grab some coffee, and you tell me more about how all this works?”

George Talent is going to do it tonight. He’s sick of waiting, fretting for the right moment. The right words. Tonight is the night, dammit! Indeed, he says those words, “Tonight is the night, is the night, is the night,” in his native New England accent, to his own ruby face and Santa-round nose and salt-n-pepper beard, right out-loud to himself in the rearview mirror of his Richard’s Mountain company truck — the white one with the double cab, the one with chains on great snow tires. Well, the whole fleet has chains in this kind of blizzard.

Settled in his intentions, George turns off the crackly news, coming in on wonky radio waves tonight, given the weather. After the dread peddlers were done with their blizzard forecasts and dire warnings, as if a typical blizzard isn’t just another groundhog’s night in Vermont, a hyper-boy newscaster pitched high on another trauma going on in the mountain region: some weird-ass brutal murders. The newscaster even named what all presumed was a serial killer, “The Spine Ripper,” based on the common style of the kills.

Flippin’ psychos, more of ’em as time goes on and growing sicker , George thinks. It’s the damn internet giving crazy ideas. But who cares, got nothing to do with me. Tonight is the night, no matter what.

George cranks off the ignition, pushes open the driver’s door, and slides out. Standing in the open door, given the fast snow infiltrating his cab, he works quick to shove his keys with the Strand Bookstore keychain deep in his cavernous man-jean’s pocket. He next grabs his camo-print Duck Hunters’ Guild wallet from the center cubby and shoves it in an even-deeper butt pocket. He nods deference to an important book of brown leather he leaves in the center cubby, adjacent to his sheathed hunting knife.

“I do love you, Lady, but time’s moving on. It has to be tonight. You’ll always, always be my girl. Tonight is the night,” he says to the book.

Before back-stepping in the snow to shut his door, he checks the mini clock embedded in the dashboard. Noting it’s 12:05 a.m., he resolves that his work day has near begun, shuts the door, and presses “lock” on the universal fob that works on all vehicles in the Richard’s Mountain fleet of trucks. As he walks to tonight’s first destination, he, like a carefree child, rakes four fingers through the snow-plastered decal on the side of his truck. Four thick lines now etch the decal’s snow-capped peaks and evergreen base and Richard’s Mountain in luscious red script on the top curve, and 99 trails, 99 dreams, 99 ways to fall in love on the bottom curve.

It’s true midnight now, meaning it’s time for breakfast or a mid-drinking snack in the townie/mountain staff bar: Malforson’s Bar & Grill. “Grill” being quite a euphemism, since there is no grill and only two items are on the flippin’ menu.

But whatever, whatever , it’ll do. Always has.

George makes his way towards the bar, which most passersby fail to see from this curvy mountain road. Set in a depression of land, only one story, and near-surrounded by snowy pines, it could be, on dark nights — especially stormy nights like tonight — just a roadside shadow. Up close, it appears as a cozy troll cottage baked of gingerbread, with its brown shingles, smoking chimney, and low-hung windows with drifts of snow in each pane. Amber battery candles sit on the sill of each window, firmly cementing the joint as one Santa’s more jaded elves might frequent after a long night of making tinker toys and bobsleds.