Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys Part 14

He grinned. "Because every once in a while I come across something really weird, and my wife requires proof."

"Do you lie to her that much?"

"I don't like to think of it as lying. I...embellish. I embroider. I exaggerate."

"You lie."

"I lie. Just to keep her guessing, mind you. Believe me, after 32 years of marriage, nothing I do surprises her anymore, so I gotta do something to make it interesting for the old gal."

"So you carry a digital camera to work in case something weird comes up."

"That's it. Don't you ever fib to your wife?"

"I'm divorced."

"Oh, sorry. Well, didn't you ever fib to her when you were married?"

"Probably."

I was tempted to ask him what other weird things he'd encountered that required him to take pictures so his wife would believe him, then decided that some things were better left as mysteries.

"I'd rather not stay here by myself, Fred. Okay if I come along?"

"Sorry, my friend, but once we're on the premises, at least one of us has to be with the body at all times. Them's the rules."

"Then let me go and get the camera."

"Oh, no, sorry. I paid a pretty penny for that thing and n.o.body but me handles it. Look, you'll be fine. Back in a couple of minutes. Take a look around, it's pretty interesting."

And with that, he left me alone with a dead body, several thousand dollars' worth of custom-made slot-car racing track, and what felt like a solid rod of iron running from the top of my throat to the bottom of my stomach.

2.

Okay, confession time: this was not the first instance of my being in a situation like this.

Back in the Neolithic Period, when I was a senior at Cedar Hill High School and working part-time for the same janitorial company I still worked for, a guy in my cla.s.s by the name of Andy Leonard flipped out one Fourth of July and killed a bunch of people, including most of his family. The man who owned the company at the time-a Vietnam vet named Jackson Davies-was hired by the city to go in and clean up the Leonard house after the police were finished with it. No one who worked for him wanted to help, so he wound up offering me and a couple of other guys-Mark Sieber and Russell Brennert-300 dollars each to go in with him. Brennert had been Leonard's best friend. Mark and I gave Brennert a pretty hard time that night; h.e.l.l, everyone in town was still upset and sick about the murders, and I guess we were looking for a scapegoat. Things were pretty bad in Cedar Hill for a long time after that particular July Fourth.

I will never forget what that house felt like; even from the street, you could sense the death that had soaked into its walls and floors. And once inside, that death got on your own skin, as well.

And it was so cold. I don't think I've ever been that cold in my life. I couldn't stop shaking the whole time we were in there.

I don't know if it's possible to put into words how it feels to mop up a puddle of blood and tissue that used to be a human being. Sometimes I still have nightmares about it.

Brennert wound up going into the nuthouse for a few weeks after that night. After we graduated, he kept on working for Davies until Davies decided to retire to Florida. Brennert bought the company from him. It said an awful lot about Brennert's character that he hired me right on the spot when I came looking for work after both college and my marriage (in that order) didn't work out. We never talk about that night. I guess we can still smell that cold, cold death on each other. Like I could smell it now. Hence the rod of iron inside me.

Since I couldn't just stand there-it seemed like there were shadows in every corner trying to move in around me-I heeded Dobbs' advice and took a walking tour of the place.

Altogether, Miss Driscoll had 17 tracks of various sizes mounted throughout her apartment-though the track in the bathroom, a small, simple oval, was a battery-operated child's version of what engulfed the rest of the place. She had arranged the larger tracks to create aisles so that she could move easily between rooms. I couldn't help but wonder at her fascination with these things.

And then thought of her loneliness.

Everything told you that this wasn't just a hobby with this woman, it was an obsession, something she'd fostered to fill the holes in her life. Dobbs might have found this interesting in a weird sort of way, but the more I moved from room to room, seeing the details she'd added to each setup (tiny bits of trash spilling from a trash can at a rest stop; the tired, road-weary expressions on the peoples' faces; a vending machine with an Out Of Order sign taped to its front), the more it all struck me as frighteningly sad. A lot of care had gone into the construction and maintenance of these tracks, and I couldn't help but wonder if it had been her way of avoiding her loneliness.

It was in the guest bedroom that I first began to notice the trashed cars and tiny memorial wreaths set among the HO-scale buildings. The trashed cars were bad enough-how she'd manage to crumple some of these like she had was beyond me, but d.a.m.n if they didn't look like the real thing-but it was the miniature wreaths and crosses that really started to unnerve me. You've seen the real thing, I'm sure: drive for any length of time on any stretch of highway through any state, and you'll pa.s.s them; sad little shrines-some homemade, others bought from florist shops-left behind by family members and friends to mark the place where someone they loved died in an automobile accident. Crosses and hearts seem to be the two most popular shapes, usually constructed of wire mesh covered in plastic flowers or plastic white lace to make the shape stand out, ribbons hand-tied all around to flutter in the breeze as if that silent activity was meant to fill the world with movements the dead could no longer make for themselves...and always, in the center of these memorials, staring out at pa.s.sing cars whose drivers never return the eye contact, are the photographs, the faces of those who will never again see a new place, a different road, or a light in the window waiting for them at journey's end.

Yes, give me a mondo case of the w.i.l.l.i.e.s and I turn into a half-a.s.sed poet.

All of the tiny wreaths and crosses that were set at various points around the tracks had even tinier photographs in their centers.

And each one was numbered on the back.

I got out of there, found myself in the suddenly too-small hallway, and without thinking about it walked through the nearest doorway- -and right into Miss Driscoll's bedroom.

To this day I don't know why I didn't just turn around and leave once I realized where I was. I could have just waited in the living room for Dobbs to come back, but I guess morbid curiosity got the better of me.

The thing is, her body was the last thing I noticed.

Expensive tract lighting ran alongside opposite sides of the room, giving the place the too-bright look of a department store; if you wanted to make sure you kept yourself awake at night, this was the way to do it. There were two table-mounted tracks in here, and they were even more intricate than the others-one of them was a four-lane triple-tiered job that must have taken days to set up. There was a computer that had an LCD flat-screen monitor bigger than my television. Pages torn from what looked like a few dozen road and highway atlases were taped to the walls, the windows, and her dresser mirror. The pages sparkled under the harsh lighting, and it was only as I moved closer to a few of them that I saw why: the maps were decorated with dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of small foil stars, each roughly the size of my thumb nail. (Remember those little stars that your kindergarten teacher would stick on your drawings when you got an "A"? Yeah, those.) They were all over these maps; some of the stars were silver, some of them were blue, but most of them were gold.

And each one had a hand-written number in its center.

Out in the hallway, a shadow moved near the door.

"Fred?" I called out.

Nothing. My imagination. My nerves.

I was getting jumpy. Jumpier.

Stepping back, I moved to the side in an effort to avoid b.u.mping into one of the tracks and in the process banged my hip into the back of the desk chair, that in turn rolled forward, hit the keyboard tray, and woke the machine from Sleep mode.

There were two images displayed side by side on the screen: one was the schematic of an HO-track configuration; the second was a map of the I-71 loop in Columbus.

There were the same shape. I knew this because I'd just seen it.

It was behind me.

I turned to look at the second table-mounted track and, sure enough, eight mashed cars had been set aside, and seven small memorials had been placed at the spot where the accident had occurred.

Not being one whose grasp of the obvious will ever be called keen, I looked back at the computer screen, then again at the track, then once more at the computer.

Which is when I finally noticed the stack of files beside the desk.

Another shadow, this one bulkier than the last, moved in the periphery of my vision. I stomped to the doorway and looked in every direction but saw no further movement.

"Fred? G.o.ddammit, c'mon, this isn't funny."

No answer. No sound.

Checking my watch, I saw that Dobbs had been gone only three minutes. It felt like I'd been alone in here for hours.

Ever had one of those "I-Know-This-Isn't-A-Good-Idea-But" moments?

The smart thing to do was leave the room and not look at anything else.

The smart thing to do was leave.

Once more, with feeling: Smart Thing = Leaving.

So of course I turned back, picked up the top file, and sat down in the desk chair to look at it.

It was a record of traffic deaths.

The first several pages consisted of hand-written columns noting dates, locations, number and makes of cars, fatalities, and the names of everyone involved. Next to each line of information was a number written in blue, silver, or gold ink. The rest of the file contained newspaper clippings, arranged by date, containing details (and sometimes photos) about the accidents catalogued in the first batch of pages.

Closing the file and setting it back atop the stack, I looked around the bedroom once more.

How G.o.dd.a.m.n lonely, bitter, angry, and morbid would someone have to be to make this their hobby? I mean, it was bad enough she'd spent so much time collecting and organizing this information, but to drop thousands of dollars on custom-made HO track and accessories to recreate the accidents in the privacy of her home...can I get an Eeeewwww!?

And to top it all off, she hadn't even gotten the last accident right; five people, not seven, had died as a result of the I-71 crash.

I stood, pulling my wallet from my back pocket and riffling through its contents until I found my lawyer's business card. I wanted out of this. If it meant some jail time instead of community service, so be it. I was so creeped out that even the threat of incarceration seemed preferable to spending one more minute in this apartment. Brennert would understand. I wouldn't lose my job over this. He was that kind of guy. (And I had serious doubts that the judge would actually put me in jail; I'd probably end up washing dishes at the Open Shelter or something like that.) I spotted the phone among the stuff on the cluttered nightstand, walked over, picked up the receiver, and only then allowed myself to look down at Miss Driscoll's body.

She might have been the same woman in the photo hanging in the foyer, but I couldn't be certain; at least fifty years separated the face in the picture from the one I was looking at now.

Staring down at her still form that looked more asleep than dead, I couldn't help but wonder how she came to this, what led from point A to point B (and so on) to her cutting herself off from the rest of the world with only this grotesque hobby to fill her days.

Is that why you cried some nights? I wondered. Did you know or suspect that your life had become something ghoulish and ugly? Did you feel so powerless and alone and afraid that you couldn't talk to someone about it? Did it hurt that much, knowing what you had become?

"Lady," I whispered, "what the h.e.l.l happened to you?"

I reached down with a shaking hand to punch in my lawyer's phone number and accidentally hit the Redial b.u.t.ton, freezing just long enough for the seven digits to complete their rapid-fire dialing and hear a voice on the other end say: "Cedar Hill Police Department, how may I direct your call?"

"Sorry, misdialed." I hung up with too much force, just about tipping over the mostly empty gla.s.s of water next to the phone. Steadying the gla.s.s, I managed to knock one of the prescription containers from the nightstand. Sometimes I'm so graceful it's a wonder I didn't pursue a career in ballet.

Counting the one I'd knocked to the floor, there were seven empty prescription containers on the nightstand: painkillers, sedatives, blood pressure medication, muscle relaxants, anti-depressants, and two different kinds of sleeping pills. There was also a good-sized bowl with remnants of chocolate pudding clinging to its rim and to the spoon lying inside (having consumed more than my fair share of chocolate pudding and knowing how it looks when you fail to rinse out the bowl in a timely manner, I recognized this immediately, perceptive and clever fellow-not to mention tidy housekeeper-that I am). Mixed in with these remnants was a not-so-fine powdery substance.

Oh, s.h.i.t.

I take in pill form a drug called Imitrex for my migraine headaches. The stuff works wonders most of the time, except on those nights I forget to carry some on me and end up at the ER getting a shot of Demerol so I can be arrested for DUI on my way home and be a.s.signed community service that will lead me to be standing over the dead body of a seriously weird old lady, but I digress. If I do not take the Imitrex with food or milk, I will be vomiting within half an hour. Since it takes two pills to tackle one of my migraines, I break them up into several pieces and mix them in with applesauce or-drum-roll please-pudding.

I stared at the bowl, the empty prescription containers, and knew.

Miss Driscoll had committed suicide.

Now before you shake your head and let fly with one of those long, low-pitched, boy-has-he-lost-it whistles, consider: 1) This was an isolated and terribly lonely old woman who, 2) had a morbid hobby, 3) possessed enough prescription medications to kill herself three times over if she took them all at once, and whose, 4) last phone call had been to the non-emergency number of the police department.

It would have been simple enough; wait until you feel yourself starting to drift toward sleep, then make the call: I'm sorry, this isn't an emergency, it's probably nothing, but I live over at The Maples on-oh, you know where that is? I was wondering if you could send some officers over to apartment 716 sometime tonight around, oh, 8:30 or 9? There's a young man who's been coming to my door at that time for the last couple of nights-I think he might be trying to sell something-and he will not leave me alone. He's been very insistent, and he's starting to frighten me a little. I was hoping the officers might have a word with him?

She'd probably invented a better reason, but my guess was it had been something along similar lines, some vague, borderline silly, old-lady reason to have a couple of officers drop by, nothing urgent, mind you, but allowing for enough time between the call and their visit to make sure she'd be dead when the police arrived.

I can't say that I was pleased about realizing this-consider the circ.u.mstances-because if it was true, then it raised more questions than it answered: why was there no record of this downstairs? The police would have checked in with whomever worked the front desk. The door to the apartment hadn't been forcibly opened, it had been unlocked by someone with a pa.s.skey (presumably the building manager or one of the security guards). How did the mayor come to be involved? And why would the coroner file a false report of "Natural Causes" when it must have been obvious to him that Miss Driscoll had taken her own life? (C'mon; if I could figure it out based on an almost-empty pudding bowl, someone with the coroner's medical knowledge must have known it the moment he saw the body.) Two things stopped me from deciding that I was full of s.h.i.t and just letting my anxiety get the better of me; the first was something Dobbs had said on the way over here: "...this whole to-do was supposed to be handled by the book, but there ain't been nothing about this has gone like it's supposed to."

The second thing was what I saw when I finally worked up enough nerve to test my theory and picked up the bowl: pieces of pills mixed in with the remaining glops of pudding.

Now what was I supposed to do?

First thing: put down the bowl.

The second thing was what I should have done in the first place-get the h.e.l.l out of the room. I'd put in my CS time today, go home, and call my lawyer this evening. Whatever was going on here was out of my hands and none of my business.

h.e.l.l, yes, I felt bad for Miss Driscoll-you'd have to be a monster not to-but none of this was my responsibility. A lonely old lady offs herself and some city officials decide for whatever reason to cover it up. Fine. I was just here to transport her body so she could get some kind of decent burial. And like Dobbs had said, ultimately this wasn't her, it was just something she used to walk around in. Wherever she was now (a.s.suming there was a Wherever), she had better things to concern herself with.

"I see you've located the body," said Dobbs from the doorway.

I looked over just in time to be half-blinded by the sudden flash of his camera.

"Oh, man, you ought to see the expression on your face. " He started over, working his way around the tracks. "Take a gander." He turned the camera's display window toward me.

"All I can see right now are spots."

"Oh, sorry about that. I couldn't resist."

If I was going to say anything about this, now was my chance. I pointed at the cluttered bedside table. "You notice anything odd?"

Dobbs looked at the table. "She was a bit messy."

"Is that all?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"Humor me. Take a good look at what's on this table."

Dobbs sighed, then leaned down to examine everything. He picked up the pudding bowl, stared at its contents, and made the Stroke Face again, so I knew he was concentrating.

After several seconds, he said: "Gimme the clipboard."

I handed it over and he flipped through the official paperwork.

"Son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h," he whispered.

"What?"