Richard Laymon - Flesh

“This way.”

They followed Steve out of the autopsy room, down the corridor, and into a room, with a dozen refrigerator compartments. He checked the drawer labels, then slid one open. The body that rolled out was covered by a sheet. Jake was grateful for the aroma of Steve’s cigar, though it wasn’t enough to mask the odor of burnt flesh and hair.

“If you’d prefer not to see this,” Steve said, “I think I know what we’re looking for.”

Jake, who had seen the charred corpse hanging out the windshield of the van, wasn’t eager for a close-up view. But he didn’t want to look squeamish in front of Barney, so he kept quiet.

“Let’s see’m,” Barney said.

Steve drew back the sheet. Jake stared at the edge of the aluminum drawer. Though he didn’t focus on the body, he saw it. He saw a black thing vaguely shaped like a human.

“I’ll have to turn him over,” Steve said.

“Manage?” Barney asked, sounding reluctant to help.

“No problem.”

Jake swung his gaze over to Steve and saw that he was wearing surgical gloves. He watched Steve bend over the body. Jake heard papery crumbling sounds. He heard himself groan.

“Guy’s a real flake,” Barney muttered. “Fallin’ apart over ya.”

Steve grinned rigidly around the cigar in his teeth. Lifting and pulling, he wrestled the black lump onto its front. When he finished, the front of his white jacket looked as if someone had rubbed it with charcoal.

“Jake, you were right.”

Jake let his eyes be guided by Steve’s pointing finger to the gray knobs of spinal column laid bare from the nape of the corpse’s neck to midway down its back.

“Looks like the thing was positioned the same as in Smeltzer,” Steve said.

“Only didn’t take a sneaky way out,” Barney added.

“With all this damage, it’s hard to be sure exactly what happened, but it appears that the thing made an emergency exit by splitting open the skin all the way up.”

“Must be awfully strong,” Jake said, “to do that.”

“Yeah,” Barney said. “And to open the van’s backdoor.”

“The impact probably popped the door open,” Jake told him.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I’ll take a mold of this man’s teeth and draw a blood sample,” Steve said, “and make a run over to Marlowe. I’ll call from there and let you know if it’s a match, but I’d be willing to bet on it.”

“Call me at home,” Barney told him. “I got a hot poker game goin’.”

“If this is the guy who killed the woman in Marlowe,” Jake said, “it pretty much clinches our theory.”

“I think we can assume it’s clinched.”

“Yeah,” Barney agreed. “So we got us a snake that gets inta guys an’ turns ’m into cannibals. Y’believe it?”

Jake stepped away from the corpse. He leaned against the wall of drawers, scooted sideways to get a handle out of his back, and folded his arms. “The thing killed on Wednesday. It tried for Celia Jamerson on Thursday afternoon, then started to go for Peggy Smeltzer on Thursday night. That looks like maybe it goes for a new victim daily.”

“Give us this day our daily broad,” Barney said.

“This is Saturday. I wonder if it got someone yesterday.”

“Can’t do it on its own,” Barney said, “or it wouldn’t be climbing inta guys.”

“We’d better check out everyone who was at the restaurant Thursday night, everybody who’s come into contact with Smeltzer’s body.”

“Y’got yourself a job. Get on it. Do whatcha can on yer own, we’ll see where it gets us. Nobody knows but us three, we’ll keep it that way. Folks hear about this thing, they’ll go apeshit. Yer our task force, Jake. Stay on this till we got it nailed. Report t’me.”

“What about Chuck?”

“I’ll reassign him till yer done. I want y’workin alone. That’s the only way we’re gonna keep this quiet.”

“Are you sure we should keep this quiet?” Steve asked. “If people are aware of the danger, they’ll take precautions.”

“They’ll go apeshit. Or they’ll say we got loose screws. Or both.”

“I’m aware of that, but—”

“Keep yer drawers on, Apple. We don’t nail this down in a day or two, we’ll let the whole suck-head world in on it. Okay? Y’can hold a press conference. But let’s take a crack at it before we start tellin’ folks they’re on the fuckin’ menu.”

Alison didn’t know why she was here. She had left the house after lunch and started walking with no destination in mind, just the desire to be alone and to be outside.

The wandering had taken her down Summer Street, to within sight of Evan’s apartment. She was finished with him, but she gazed across the street at his building as if to punish herself. She saw two windows on the second story that belonged to his rooms. The shades were open. Was he inside? Was Tracy Morgan with him? Was he alone and would he see her passing by and come after her?

He didn’t come after her.

Alison had walked on, feeling empty.

Not knowing why, she’d ended up here—in the woods above Clinton Creek. The creek was swollen and rushing. It washed around islands of rock. Occasionally, it carried along tree limbs, casualties of last night’s storm.

Alison made her way carefully down the steep embankment. At the water’s edge, she noticed a familiar, flat-topped rock. During her years in Clinton, especially when she’d been a freshman and an emotional wreck, she had spent a lot of time on this very rock. Standing on it, sitting on it, sometimes with her bare feet in the water. She used to think of it as Solitary Rock. It was where she always came to be alone when she was feeling low.

She had forgotten about it. She had been down here several times over the past few months, had probably seen Solitary Rock and maybe even stood on it without remembering that it used to be so special.

Now she remembered. She stepped onto it and sat down, drawing her knees up and hugging them against her body.

This is nice, she thought. No wonder I used to come here all the time.

She heard a car cross the bridge, a sound much like that of the rushing water. She looked toward the bridge, but it was hidden by trees beyond the bend in the stream. She looked the other way and saw only the stream sluicing around a rocky curve. The slopes on both sides were heavy with bushes and trees. She saw no one, but wondered if there were couples concealed in nooks among the foliage or rocks, making love.

It was just around that bend where she and Evan…

It was a secluded, sunlit pocket with waist-high rocks on both sides and the stream at one end. A dense bramble at the other end sheltered them from anyone who might be looking down the slope. They could’ve been seen from the opposite embankment, but nobody ever went over there. They sat on the blanket that Evan always kept in the trunk of his car. They ate sharp cheddar on crackers and drank white wine from Alison’s bota, squeezing the bag to squirt it into their mouths, into each other’s mouths, laughing when they missed. When her blouse was soaked, she took it off and lay back on the blanket. Evan, kneeling between her legs, spurted the cool wine onto her neck and chest and breasts. It trickled down her skin, tickling. The laughter had stopped. He aimed at her nipples, the thin stream of wine hitting and splashing off one, then the other. Then he licked her. He made a puddle of wine in the hollow of her navel, and as he lapped at that he opened her jeans.

That had been Sunday afternoon. A week ago, tomorrow.

How could things have gone wrong so fast?

Don’t idealize it, she told herself. It had been great—fun and thrilling and then incredible. But not quite right. You only planned on a picnic by the stream. You never intended to have sex with him, not there where anyone could show up and find you at it. But when he soaked your blouse with wine, you knew what he wanted and you went along with it. For Evan, not for yourself. Because you didn’t want to disappoint him. And that is not the best of all possible reasons.