“Well, it’s a real mess, Sarge,” Shaw said.
“Let’s have it,” Warren said, pulling a cigarette from behind his ear and showing it some flame.
So Shaw told him all about it and the whole time Warren’s eyes shifted from the stiff to Louis and it didn’t look like he cared for the looks of either. When Shaw finished, Warren just nodded.
“They treating you okay, Mr. Shears?” he said.
And Louis launched right into it. The re-telling of this tale sounded no better than the other one, but the evidence was all over Kojozian’s shoe and pantleg.
“He’s got a weak stomach,” Kojozian said. “He got sick in the grass over it all.”
Warren grinned. “No shit? Well, take it easy, Mr. Shears. Dead is dead. You can tap dance on this kid or drop your knickers and take a dump in his mouth. It’s all the same to him.”
Louis stared up at him, pale and wide-eyed. “You’re all crazy,” he said.
“Boy, he does have a weak stomach, all right,” Warren said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. “No offense, Mr. Shears, but you wouldn’t make much of a cop. Lots of bodies, always lots of bodies.”
“We had a guy last week,” Shaw said, “over on West Rider Street. Mail piling up and all that. Neighbors call us and we go over there. We had to go in through a side window and that stink when we opened it up… holy Jesus! We found the stiff on the shitter. Old guy had a heart attack while he was delivering the mail. Must have been about a thousand flies on him. Another thousand on the windows and flying around. They were buzzing so loud, you couldn’t hear yourself think.”
“That’s nothing,” Warren said. “When I was first on the Department, we got a call to go out to the airport. Middle of summer, some guy’s sleeping in his car with the windows all rolled up. A real hot bastard it was, too. Some kids were riding their bikes around, saw the guy laying in there, said he had rice all over him. Rice. Ha, what a mess! The smell would have put you right down to your knees, swear to God. He’d been in there almost a week, came apart like boiled chicken when we tried to pull him out. Most of him stuck to the seat…”
Louis got to his feet and then he was running, running dead out for the Dodge. His brain was filled with a screaming black noise and he was certain that he had lost his mind. Nothing else could possibly explain it.
“Hey, where you going?” Kojozian called out.
“Let him go,” Shaw said. “We don’t need him. What we need here are a couple shovels to scrape this kid off the sidewalk with…”
And then Louis was in his Dodge. He could feel the seat beneath him and his hands gripping the steering wheel. He held on tight before the entire world went flying away beneath him. Because it was coming, he knew it was coming.
He squealed around in a U-turn and saw Warren wave to him in the rearview. As he screeched away down Tessler Avenue, barely missing a parked car, his face was slicked with sweat and his entire body was shaking. He needed badly to pull over and be sick, but he didn’t dare. He just did not dare. He had to make Rush Street and home. And the most insane, impossible thing of all was that the cops did not come after him.
They did not come after him…
6
At Greenlawn High, things began to happen.
Macy Merchant, a junior and honor roll student, sat down in her fifth hour Mass Media class and tried to shut out the teenage soap opera that played around her as it did on a daily basis. Macy was not a popular girl. She was smart and ambitious and serious, qualities which certainly did not endear her to the more socially elite of Greenlawn High.
Not that any of this really bothered Macy.
At least, not that she was willing to admit openly. Some kids were funny and some kids were jocks, some were drop-dead gorgeous and some were burgeoning criminals, and some, like her, were just smart. A thin, flaxen-haired, girl, she knew her one true attribute was her brain. And she was adult enough to know that in the real world, this is ultimately what counted. Sometimes she wished she had looks like Shannon Kittery or Chelsea Paris or some of the other senior vixens, had guys worshipping at her feet. But not too often. For she knew that looks faded, as they said, and that both Shannon and Chelsea would probably end up living in trailers with three screaming brats each and the obligatory alcoholic, abusive husband who once upon a time had rushed for a hundred yards in the big game, but now only rushed to the refrigerator or to the TV set to watch the WCW or Girls Gone Wild on DVD.
Unlike so many of the others that ran the maze of high school looking for their slice of cheese, Macy had ambitions. School and study came easy to her, so early in her freshman year she decided to go to law school upon graduation and commenced to arrange her classes accordingly. Yes, a good law school. Then maybe criminal law followed by district attorney and even judge. After that, a leap into politics and who could say where it would all end?
Yes, Macy had high ambitions, lofty aspirations, but no one save the school counselor knew this. None of her classmates would have suspected that brainy, quiet little Macy was aiming at positions of great power.
And the reason for that was Macy herself.
She was, sadly, shy and introverted and much-ignored. Much as she fantasized about being a great wolf of the courtroom, the fact was that she found it nearly impossible to give even a three-minute oral report before the class or to even speak up unless directly called on. These things, she well knew, were something she would need to work on.
On her way into Mass Media, she steered her way through the mulling bodies in the hallway and slipped into her seat. No one noticed her outside and nobody noticed her inside. She was simply a fixture in the minds of the other students, much like a chair or a desk. She sat up in front, arranging her materials, trying to shut out all the gossip and bitching that was going on around her. Sometimes it all seemed so terribly juvenile she could barely stomach it.
“—and if he doesn’t call tonight, that’s it—”
“—thinks she’s got me wrapped, dude, but she’s in for a surprise—”
“—so they blamed me, can you believe it? It’s just a little dent—”
“—that top cost me fifty bucks, so the dumb bitch puts it in the dryer—”
“—he told us to hand it in tomorrow, like I have the time—”
“—if that’s what he thinks of me, he can kiss my ass—”
And on and on and on.
Macy could hear Shannon Kittery and her pop squad discussing something almost breathlessly and she figured it probably had something to do with hair color or shoes or something else equally as revelatory.
“All right, all right, pipe down!” Mr. Benz said as he waltzed into class, chewing a big wad of bubble gum as usual. “Everybody in their seats or I’ll get my whip out.”
He opened his briefcase and snapped his gum. Everyone took their seats and the commotion died to a low murmur.
“You’re not supposed to chew gum unless you have enough to share,” Shannon Kittery giggled. A few stifled laughs broke out, mainly from her group.
Benz strode over to her, grinning. “All I’ve got is this piece,” he said, pulling the blob of wet gum from his mouth and sticking it about an inch from the end of her nose. “But you’re welcome to it. Go ahead.”
Shannon made a disgusted sound and shut up.