Alex Kava - At The Stroke Of Madness

On the small TV screen she saw Calvin Vargus, her brother’s business partner, standing in front of the petite news reporter. Calvin looked like a plaid railroad tie, solid and stiff and bulky but with a silly boyish grin as if he had discovered some hidden treasure.

Lillian listened to Calvin Vargus describe—although they were getting his bleeped version—how his machine had dug up the barrel out of the rocks.

“I dropped it. Bam! Just like that. And its (bleep) lid sort of popped off when it hit the ground. And (bleep) if it wasn’t a (bleep bleep) dead body.”

Lillian checked the huddled crowd—about a dozen of their regulars—and looked for her brother. Had he come in yet for his daily bear claw and glass of milk? And his opportunity to complain about today’s aches and pains. Sometimes it was his back, other times it was the bursitis in his shoulder or his ultrasensitive stomach. She wondered what he would think about his partner’s discovery.

Finally, she saw Walter Hobbs sipping his milk as he sat at the end of the counter, three empty stools away from the frenzy. Lillian took the long way around and sat on the stool next to him. He glanced at her and went back to his copy of Newsweek opened in front of him, more interested in the headlines about dead Al Qaeda members found a world away than the dead body in their own backyard.

Without looking up at her and without waiting for her question, Walter Hobbs shook his head and mumbled, “Why the hell couldn’t he have stayed away and left that fucking quarry alone?”

Luc Racine felt sick to his stomach. And embarrassed—because the dead body hadn’t made him as nauseated as the TV camera did. He had been fine before they turned the camera on him, before the girl reporter had simply asked him questions. He had been more fascinated by the way her eyes bulged behind the thick glasses. Huge and blue, they reminded him of some exotic fish eyes stuck behind a glass tank. But then the glasses came off and the camera went on and it was pointed right at him, right at him like a high-powered rifle sight.

The girl reporter’s questions came faster now. Already he couldn’t remember her name, though she had just introduced herself to the camera lens. Maybe it was Jennifer … or Jessica … no, it was Jennifer. Maybe. He needed to pay closer attention. He couldn’t think and answer as fast as she could ask. And if he didn’t answer quick enough, would she turn her attention to Calvin again?

“I live right over there,” Luc told her, his arm waving high over his shoulder. “And no, I didn’t smell anything unusual,” he added, almost spitting on her. “Not a thing.” She stared at him instead of asking another question. Oh, crap! He had spit on her. He could see it—a little glistening spot on her forehead. “The trees sorta block this area off.” He waved again in the other direction. Maybe she hadn’t noticed the spit. Why did his arm go up so high? “All this area is very secluded.”

“Very remote,” Calvin said, and Luc glanced at him in time to catch the scowl meant especially for Luc, though hidden from the camera by the girl reporter’s back.

But Calvin’s comment caught her attention and now she was turning in his direction again, reaching the microphone up to him. It was a stretch. Calvin Vargus stood well over six feet. Earlier inside the big earthmoving machine, Luc thought Calvin looked like part of the machine—thick, heavy, strong and durable like a giant chunk of steel. Yeah, a chunk of metal with few defining marks, like a neck or waist.

She looked like a dwarf next to Calvin, practically standing on tiptoes to reach the microphone up to his fleshy lips, but content to give Calvin her full attention now, despite his earlier colorful description of the morning’s discovery. Of course she preferred Calvin’s version, especially since he would only say it and not spray it. Who wouldn’t prefer a giant no-neck to an arm-waving spitter?

Luc watched. What else could he do? He’d had his chance and he blew it. And this wasn’t even his first time. He had been on TV before. Once during the anthrax scare. A woman on his route had gotten sick, and Luc had delivered the letter. For a week they closed down the postal station in Wallingford, tested all facilities and grilled the carriers about precautions they should take. Luc had been interviewed on TV, though he hadn’t been allowed to say much. That woman died. What was her name? How long ago was that? Last year? The year before? Certainly it hadn’t been long enough ago that he couldn’t remember her name.

Now he would be on TV again because some other woman was dead. And he didn’t know her name, either. He looked back. They were a safe distance from the crime-scene tape and the deputy who screamed at them anytime they ventured an inch or two closer. Yet Luc could still see the barrel toppled over, its side dented in. One big chunk of brownstone kept it from rolling down the pile of rocks. A blue plastic tarp now covered her, but he could still see the image of that gray-blue arm flung out of the barrel, protruding halfway, as if the body were trying to crawl out. That was all he had been able to see—all he needed to see—that arm and a hunk of matted hair.

Luc felt a nudge at the back of his leg and, without looking, he reached down for the dog to lick his hand. Only there was no lick. He glanced at Scrapple, who immediately went into his defensive stance, gripping harder on the prize he had brought to show his owner. Another bone. Luc ignored him, and his attention went back to the excitement beyond the trees.

Suddenly, it hit Luc. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He looked back at the dog working his paws to hold his large treat as he chewed on the fleshy end and tried to get his teeth around the perimeter. Luc’s knees went weak.

“Holy crap, Scrapple. Where in the world did you get that?” he said to the Jack Russell, but now everyone around him went silent as they twisted and turned to see.

Luc glanced at the girl reporter and asked, “You think that’s what it looks like?”

Instead of answering—or as if confirming it—she began vomiting on Calvin Vargus’s size-thirteen boots. Her hand went up to block the camera and in between gags she yelled, “Shut it off. For God’s sake, shut off the camera.”

Sheriff Henry Watermeier didn’t need a forensic expert to tell him what he was looking at. The larger bone Luc Racine held out to him had enough tissue to keep the smaller bones attached. And although some of the smaller bones were missing and the flesh was now black and deteriorated, there was no question as to what the Jack Russell terrier had dug up. What Luc Racine held out in shaking hands—his palms faceup as if making an offering—was definitely a human foot.

“Where the hell did he find it?”

“Don’t know,” Luc said, stepping closer, his eyes never leaving Henry’s as if willing himself not to look at the dog’s discovery any more than necessary. “He brought it to me. But I don’t know where he found it.”

Henry waved over one of the mobile-crime guys, a tall, skinny Asian man with a name tag reading “Carl” on his blue uniform. He reminded himself that it wasn’t a bad thing he didn’t know all the mobile-crime guys by name, even if they were from up the road at Meriden’s Police Crime Lab. Just meant the really sick bastards were committing their crimes somewhere outside the boundaries of New Haven County. For the second time today, Henry found himself hoping this sick bastard didn’t seriously fuck up his own retirement plans. He had come this far with a perfect record—no unsolved mysteries during his reign—and he’d sure as hell like to keep it that way.