Gary Brandner - The Brain Eaters

Corey Macklin found him Tuesday morning amid the scattered ashes, scissoring a sheet of UPI copy.

“Got a minute, Doc?” Corey said.

“If it’s important. I’m on a hot lead here, all about the wife of a farmer outside Indianapolis who claims to have been fucked by a creature from outer space.”

“No kidding.”

“Imagine that farmer’s consternation when the offspring resembles the hired hand.”

“Didn’t the Enquirer have that one last month?”

Doc crumpled the copy sheet into a ball and bounced it off the rim of a metal wastebasket. “Damn, scooped again.” He creaked around in the wooden swivel chair to face Corey, dribbling ashes into his lap. “What’s on your mind?”

“Something here I want you to take a look at.” Corey brushed ashes aside to make a clean space on the desk and spread out the stories on Hank Stransky in Milwaukee, DuBois Williamson in New York, and Andrea Keith in Seattle. Next to them he placed the sheet he had prepared with three columns, each headed by the name of one of the victims.

Ingersoll coughed around his cigarette and read rapidly and expertly through the news stories. He scanned Corey’s handwritten notes and looked up. “So?”

“What do you think?”

“I think three seemingly normal people turned inexplicably violent last Friday. Apparently you are trying to find some correlation among the three.”

“Opinion?”

Ingersoll ticked off the notations on Corey’s sheet with a yellow-stained finger. “The two men here, Stransky and Williamson, would seem to have several traits in common. Age, economic level, et cetera. The big variance is in race and geographic location. The woman doesn’t fit the pattern at all. She’s only twenty, different sex, different social environment, and still a different location. The only points common to all three are the date of their seizures, the bizarre nature of their actions, and their own violent deaths.”

“Conclusion?”

“Coincidence.”

“Maybe, but that leaves me with no story.”

“It has been my observation over the years that real life often has disappointing story values.”

“What about the way they died, Doc? Does that suggest anything to you?”

Ingersoll glanced again at the three stories. “Let’s see, you got Williamson run over by a truck, Keith impaled on a shard of plate glass, and your man Stransky dead of cranial hemorrhage, apparently the result of being hit by a pool ball. No direct relation to whatever made them flip out. Why don’t you put it down to ‘these troubled times’ and forget it.”

Corey gathered his material. “Thanks anyway, Doc, but I still think there’s something here.”

Doc lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of his old one. “Have you considered death rays from outer space?”

He started a laugh, which turned into a coughing fit. Corey left him there and returned to his desk. He shoved the three stories and his notes into a manila folder and dropped it into a drawer. He stopped at the bulletin board to scribble his name on the sign-out sheet. He entered his destination as downtown and left the building.

Vic’s Old Milwaukee Tavern was more or less back to normal. The debris from Friday night’s excitement had been swept up, broken pool cues replaced, bloodstains washed away. When Corey Macklin entered, there were only four morning drinkers seated at the bar. Unlike the evening crowd, they were quiet, self-contained, each avoiding the eyes of the others. Vic Metzger, wearing a bandage from elbow to wrist on his left arm, came over as Corey took a stool.

“How’s it going, Vic?”

“Slow. It cost me a bundle when I had to close the place up Saturday. After your story I could have charged admission. Sunday was okay, and last night, but Saturday would have been a bonanza. Everybody wanted to see blood on the floor.” He nodded toward the four silent drinkers. “Now it’s Monday, and nobody cares about Friday’s news.”

“ Sic transit gloria , Vic. How’s the arm?”

Vic worked the fingers of his left hand. “No problem. They kept me in the hospital Saturday when it swelled up and they thought maybe there was an infection. It was okay by the next morning, though, so I came down and opened up for the sightseers.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Could’ve been a lot worse if you hadn’t jumped in. Likely you saved my life. From now on your tab belongs to the house.”

“Well, thanks. In that case, you can give me a beer. Draft.”

“You got it.”

Vic poured an icy glass of beer and set it on the bar in front of Corey. He turned away and sneezed.

“Coming down with a cold?” Corey asked.

“Nah. Had a kind of forty-eight-hour flu, I guess. Aches in the joints, little fever. Got over it, though. Aftereffects, probably. Nerves.”

“I couldn’t blame you after Friday night.”

Vic nodded in silent agreement.

“What do you suppose made Hank Stransky flip out like that?”

“Beats the shit out of me. He was always easygoing in here. Never saw him come close to a fight with anybody. Damned strange.”

“Yeah.”

“The ones I feel sorry for are his wife and kids. I don’t think Hank left them with a whole lot. Usually, something like that happens to a regular, we’d get up a collection. But considering the circumstances …” Vic let a shrug finish the thought.

“I see what you mean.”

“The funeral’s tomorrow morning. I plan to close the place up so I can go. There probably won’t be a lot of friends there to comfort the widow. What happened ain’t her fault.”

“I may stop by, too,” Corey said. “Where’s it going to be?”

“At the Lujack Brothers, over by Harley Street. They do a nice job. It’ll take some real work to fix up Hank, the way he looked.”

“I guess it will.” Corey finished his beer, told Vic to take care of the arm, and left the tavern.

The Lujack Brothers Mortuary was a modest brick building with a white-pillared façade that was supposed to make it look like an antebellum mansion. The effect was largely negated by the bricked-up warehouse next door and the wholesale plumbing supplier across the street.

Corey parked out in front and entered the anteroom through heavy glass doors. He crossed the thick carpet, which was bordered by plastic palmettos, and stopped where an overweight girl sat behind a sliding panel.

“Yes, sir?” The girl gave him a sympathetic smile.

Corey showed his press card, and the smile faded. “I’d like to see Mr. Lujack.”

“Which Mr. Lujack did you have in mind? There are four brothers.”

“Give me whichever one is in charge.”

“That would be Mr. Caspar Lujack. The others are all out of town.”

“Let’s have him.”

The girl picked up a telephone, punched one of the Lucite buttons, and said something Corey could not hear. She apparently received an affirmative answer and pointed to a heavy crimson hanging at the far end of the room. “There’s a hallway behind the drapes. First door on your right.”

Corey followed her directions and walked into a comfortable office furnished in walnut and leather. Caspar Lujack sat behind a carved, deeply polished desk.

The mortician was a small-boned, precise man who wore his hair slicked down with a part that was geometrically straight from forehead to crown. His silk tie was tastefully subdued, and his gray sharkskin suit looked expensive.

“How can I be of service, Mr. Macklin?”

“I’m interested in the Stransky funeral that’s scheduled for tomorrow.”

“You’re a friend of the family?”

“Not exactly.”

“Wait a minute … Macklin. You’re the one who wrote the eyewitness story in the Herald . You were in the tavern when it happened.”