And if a fine surgeon hadn’t been on call at the hospital in Hemet, he’d have drowned in his own blood.
I guess I inherited some of my mother’s moral outlook. Some things just aren’t supposed to happen. Good and evil aren’t abstractions to me anymore. They’re found in people and what they do or don’t do. It bothers me that reward and punishment don’t necessarily relate to justice. It took me an especially long time to get my head around the fact that Levi Halliday shot his own son in cold blood, felt righteous about it, and was probably going to get away with it. All that, and he hadn’t been struck dead.
The irony is that Levi may just get the death penalty for the gun-dealing couple’s murder once he’s well enough to stand trial. His wife, in protective custody, will make a good witness now she’s turned her nasty side on him. So will Megan, of course. The aftermath of a great crime is the ongoing involvement required of people who’ve already been traumatized. Especially Megan, but also Jerry Weibold, still waiting to retrieve his stone axe from the evidence lockup, Marcella Perkins, and even me. No choice but to revisit pain and horror in courtrooms, waiting for their sidetracked lives to resume, lives that will always be divided into before and after.
I don’t know if Megan will ever really heal. Nothing can erase those toxic doses of paranoia, superstition, abuse, and sheer malevolence administered by two disturbed parents. No number of new friends can outweigh that, though we’ll try.
Time will carry Megan farther and farther from this history. When enough years have passed, her memories may fade like the names once recorded in fresh ink, now only pale shadows on the yellowed page of an old family Bible.
©2009 by Patricia McFall
Wake Me Up for Meals
by Bev Vincent
Bev Vincent is a contributing editor at Cemetery Dance magazine and the author of over forty stories, including one contained in the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology From the Borderlands: Stories of Terror and Madness. The Road to the Dark Tower, his first book, an analysis of Stephen King’s Dark Tower epic, was nominated for a 2004 Stoker Award. But the Texas author is also a mystery writer. One of his tales appears in the MWA anthology The Blue Religion; and the following story tails a crook who may be too full of his own cleverness.
I used a stolen passport as a down payment on new identity papers. El Gordo knew I was good for the rest. No one in his right mind stiffs him. After buying a one-way plane ticket, I had just enough money left over for a few in-flight drinks and the bus into town from the airport.
Eight hours later, Milan was little more than a bad memory. Battling jet lag on the sidewalk terrace of an Irish pub called Cuffs, I perused an abandoned copy of the Boston Globe. It was probably the appropriate time for a couple of draft Guinnesses somewhere on the planet, though Cuffs was currently as empty as my wallet — which was why I was sitting on the sidewalk.
The Franklin Park Zoo sounded like a good place to blend in with tourists, and the four-mile walk — after a short sprint — helped clear my head. Motor coaches lined the street outside the main entrance. I loitered under a tree until another bus arrived and spewed out a gaggle of gaudily dressed adults who looked like they got lost on the way to Disney World.
The tour guide was about thirty. She had shoulder-length black hair. Her short skirt revealed long, lean legs and her white blouse was open at the neck. Mother Nature had been generous to her both above and below the waist.
She carried a striped umbrella that she waved to command her group’s attention. The men’s eyes, I noticed, never got as high as the umbrella. When the group passed me, I dusted my clothes off and followed them through the turnstile reserved for tours. The purple happy face affixed to my shirt came from one of the older travelers, who might eventually wonder where he lost it.
By the time everyone assembled at the meeting point three hours later to board the bus, I knew the names of half the people and got nods or smiles of recognition from the rest. I have the sort of face that seems familiar, they tell me. Philip Uxley from Baltimore had even sprung for an overpriced soda for me at the concession stand.
I found an empty seat and relaxed in air-conditioned comfort while the guide explained in an Australian accent that we would be traveling out of the city to explore the New England wine district. Yes, there would be free samples, she assured a couple near the front. Then we’d have a picnic at Revere Beach, the oldest public beach in America, before returning to the hotel for the night.
Sounded fine to me. The bus pulled out of the parking lot and wended its way through the streets of Boston. I adjusted the angle of my window seat and was about to take a stab at resetting my internal chronometer when someone dropped into the seat beside me. A woman, I decided, based on the luxurious waft of perfume that accompanied her.
“You know,” she said, “sometimes I come up a person or two short after I do my head count, but it’s a rare day when I end up with one more warm body than I started with.” Her voice was nasal, her vowels flattened, but the net result was sexy and sultry.
My senses went on full alert. I opened one eye in cool consideration. The other one popped open on its own. She looked even better up close than she had from the careful distance I’d maintained at the zoo.
“What was your name again?” she asked. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”
I’d used Gerald — “Gerry to my friends“ — with the others, so I extended my hand and repeated that name, which sounded as real to me as any of the others I’d adopted in recent years.
The corporate nametag nestled precariously above a bounteous curve identified her as Jane. “And where did you come from?”
“Milwaukee,” I said, which was the truth. I try to keep the number of lies associated with any given alias to a minimum.
“I saw you join us at the zoo.” Her pale green eyes grew hard, like a lawyer dropping a bombshell during cross-examination. A look with which I had more than passing familiarity.
“What do you mean?” Might as well play my hand until I ran out of cards.
She smirked. On any other face it would have been irritating, but it worked for her. She reached out a well-toned arm and fingered the purple happy-face sticker an inch north of my left nipple. “Mr. Reeves.”
I said nothing, trying not to be distracted by the manicured fingernail resting on my chest.
“That’s who you stole this from. Very slick.”
I shrugged and offered my most disarming grin. If I’d been burdened with guilt or plagued by a conscience, I might have blushed. I waited for her to deliver the punch line. Why hadn’t she blown the whistle on me back at the zoo? Did she intend to dump me among the road kill in remote northeastern Connecticut to teach me a lesson? I’ve been taught worse.
She leaned in to make sure she wasn’t overheard. When she did, two things happened to make it difficult to concentrate: Her blouse fell open at the neck and another cloud of intoxicating oriental woody fragrance enveloped me.
Women have always been my downfall. That’s not to say I haven’t scammed a lady or two in my time. As a teenager, when I worked at my father’s store, I identified his most vulnerable clients — wives whose husbands paid them too little attention. After I delivered their new mattresses, I helped the lonely ladies break them in. Then, while they lolled in post-coital bliss, I relieved their homes of one or two valuable trinkets. They never called my father or the cops. I like to think they were so appreciative of my services that they considered it a worthy payment, but in reality they were probably embarrassed at being taken in so easily and didn’t want to admit their weakness.