Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

There he was, watching the road like a good boy. His lips were moving. I figured he was on the phone, giving Green that activation code, and the names of whichever employees were stupid enough to betray him. But the minutes ticked by and he kept talking. I didn’t think he and Green had a close phone relationship, so that meant it was something else. Every sentence or two he glanced over at the passenger seat, like he was talking to a little person sitting there. I raised my head, angling for a better look.

The passenger seat was still out of view, but I spotted something in the back and didn’t like it at all. It was the duffel bag, the one from the warehouse, the one that looked stuffed with bowling balls. It was carefully strapped in with belts and shoulder straps.

And it was squirming.

My fears about what was inside thickened in the back of my throat. I looked again, hoping I’d see that the things inside were just settling, obeying gravity. But no, it looked more like they were jockeying for position. Trying to get comfortable.

I couldn’t think about that. Not now. The old electric syrup was already bubbling, tingling inside me. I blinked and looked ahead. Bad move. I realized that the shoulder strap for the passenger seat was down, wrapped around whatever Turgeon was chatting with.

Now I was freaking. Muscles twitching, dizzy, images flashing, the works.

I lowered myself so I couldn’t see anything. I tried to calm down, focus on the case. I thought about catching him, saving Nell. It’d work for a minute, then slip away. I had to distract myself, keep busy. How the fuck was I going to do that while clinging to a car doing seventy mph? There was nothing but the road and the mirror.

I had to take another look. I had to know. I peered inside. Turgeon was still talking, but now he looked unhappy, alternately hurt and annoyed. Then, steering with one hand, he leaned over and lifted what was on the passenger seat.

I knew what it was. Of course I did, but, God help me, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to know a damn thing.

Not a little person. A head, nothing else, still living, still thinking. Just the head.

I thought about ducking, at least, or closing my eyes, but I didn’t move fast enough. As he twisted and held it toward the back, I saw it: the head, the fucking head, just the head, only the head.

I snapped my own head down. I closed my eyes, but still saw it. It’d been a fraction of a second, but that was all it took. The image had burned into me, clearer and more colorful than the cover of an old EC horror comic. He hadn’t used the chopper on this one; the neck was unevenly cut, victim of a sloppy ax job. There were thick veins hanging down like tendrils, flaps of gray flesh.

The face was older, old enough to be the psycho’s father. It may have been handsome once. It had a strong, angular structure, the jaw long and bony, the chin a jutting V. The lower lips were partly gone, tear marks in their place, leaving the clenched teeth visible, still whole. The eyes were open, the mouth moving.

I shivered like a kid under a blanket. Now I couldn’t even pretend the duffel bag wasn’t full of them, the souvenirs, the relics, the daddies . And Turgeon meant for me to be one of them.

The syrup bubbled, rolled, grew, pressed against my insides so hard it felt like my flesh would pop and tear. And then, though I could’ve held on until doomsday, I let go.

I bounced. I rolled. The pain was enough to keep me in my body, snap me out of it, but not completely. A car screeched as it swerved to avoid hitting me. A horn blared.

But Turgeon hadn’t seen. He was too busy with his friends.

27

Imade it to the shoulder, collapsed at the edge of a brittle, sunbaked field. A turkey buzzard wheeled in the sky above me, coming lower and lower. Once it got close enough for a good look, it turned and flew off. I wasn’t even good enough to be carrion.

Forcing myself to sitting, I fished in my pockets. I couldn’t find my cell, but I did get my hands on the recorder. I was thinking I should get some of this down. Not that I was worried I’d forget, but if Turgeon had spotted me, he might be on his way back, and I wanted to leave at least some kind of record.

Crap. The recorder was still damp. I pressed a button and a set of little black LED letters flashed on the screen. It still worked. I pressed record and tried to talk, but all I could do was babble. After about ten seconds, I turned it off.

I looked up and down the highway. Hondas, trucks, and hybrids. No sign of the Humvee. Good for me, not so much for Nell Parker. Soon she’d be one of his friends, one of his daddies , or, in her case, a mommy , and he’d be reliving the death of his own parent over and over and again for the sake of . . .

Wait a minute.

Christ, I think I’d set a world record for staring at something and not being able to see it. Whatever other relationship he was having with the heads, he was trying to keep them quiet.

What did they know? What was the one thing Wilson, Boyle, and Parker all knew? That they were innocent , that someone else killed their spouses.

Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch. What if it was Turgeon to begin with? What if he’d committed the murders and set them all up? It’d be a perfect gig for a psycho. Most murder victims are done in by someone they know. Need to kill someone? Find someone with a history of domestic violence, kill the spouse, and leave the aggressor to take the rap. Brilliant. It’s not like they’re not going to bring your patsy back from the dead, right?

But then they do bring them back. You can’t have them wandering around, maybe trying to find the real killer. So you find them and silence them.

And if I was on his list, that meant . . .

I grabbed my chest as if something still beat inside it. I grabbed my head. I could feel every crenellation pulse, filled to bursting.

I’d found the man who killed Lenore.

That’s why he hired me in the first place, why he asked all those questions about whether I remembered what happened or not. The fact that I couldn’t probably pushed me farther down the list.

The man, the thing that killed Lenore.

I saw my wife’s face for the first time in ages, smooth, pale, Irish skin, a round moon face with saucer eyes, cupped by straight black hair. You couldn’t see a single blemish unless you looked real close, but I remembered even those, even a little crescent moon scar under her jaw, half the width of my pinkie nail. She said she got it from tumbling down a flight of stairs when she was two. She had a tight body and just enough muscle to make it interesting.

The better angels of our nature aside, she was moody to the extreme and I was a shit with a temper. My father, Albert Mann, was a big drinker, a bull of a man. He’d get in your face and yell real loud until you backed down. Usually he didn’t have to hit you.

Whether it was a strategy or not, the shouting worked, so I picked it up. Get me pissed enough and I’d come at you with murder in my eyes. Only, I’m not planning to do damage; I’m trying to cow you. It worked with me and with my mother. It never worked with Lenore. She always held her ground. Coming from a big family with a lot of brothers toughened her up, made her stand up for herself.

I admired it, but in a pinch, it crossed my wires big-time. I was a one-trick pony. Whenever I tried to cow her by screaming, I wound up feeling cornered. Yeah, I did hit her once, and no, I don’t remember what the fight was about. Worst day of my life, not counting the one where I found her body. She kicked me back pretty good—we both had nasty bruises for days.