The White Noise of Ashes (TWO)

TWO

They walked in lazy circles, their nonchalant steps stirring muddy rings around the body as they looked for… something. This was all part of procedure. When there was a big crime, (and this was the biggest crime, probably the darkest the county had ever seen) you had to comb the area to look for clues. Almost all his deputies were here now, slowly pacing the loop, their eyes transfixed to the morass beneath their boots. They were normally a gossipy bunch, chatting about arrests, rumors, and happenings as did any group of people living in a small town. Now they were deathly silent, pacing discs as they searched for answers, the lighter brown of their uniforms blending in with the sapping dirt.

From the lip of the plateau, Jesse watched the whole thing feeling nervous. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he incessantly rubbed his arms and body to blot out the shivers. The sun still shone down on this beautiful day turned to abomination, but up so high the wind was blowing unobstructed sending icicles through his still-soaked uniform. It made him feel weak and helpless, even more vulnerable than he was right now. The ghastly weight of the shriveled horror in that field sat on his shoulders crushing him. He glanced over to where it still lay. Posts had been hammered around with yellow crime scene tape making a flimsy perimeter that danced in the breeze. The body itself was hidden by the wisps of grass growing wild up here. Not a pinch of flesh could be seen. He shivered again. It had nothing to do with the cold.

Behind him came a familiar double tap on a car horn. Instantly, Jesse turned and jogged down the embankment. After he’d called in the discovery, he’d also discovered a dirt road on the other side of the hill that led up virtually to the summit. More testimony to the crappy GPS he had to work with. When the first of his deputies had arrived, he’d run down to meet him covered in mud waving a broken shotgun in a panic. The poor guy’s shock was understandable. Jesse was lucky he hadn’t gotten shot.

Pulling up beside three identical brothers was yet another car with the Sheriff’s logo. The difference was, instead of being an old, beat down, blocky ford, this one had the angular muscly lines of a Dodge charger. The midlife-crisis-mobile skidded to a stop in customary fashion, and the door kicked open. Usually when he drove up somewhere the driver would step out with a swagger, showing off a face just as young and a uniform as well-pressed as Jesse’s usually was. This time, Irvine Billingsley’s head suddenly appeared above the door looking at the sheriff like a paranoid meerkat.

“Jesus, Boss.” Irv croaked at the sight. He always called him boss when he was on duty. “What the hell happened to you?”

Jesse opened his mouth to speak then just shook his head.

“Did you bring everything?”

Irv zipped around and produced a fresh uniform. Wordless, Jesse hurried over and began to change in the back seat with Irv standing watch to preserve what was left of the panicky sheriff’s dignity. As he slipped on fresh trousers, he was amazed to note that the backseat of the patrol car had leather seats. Anyone arrested would be bussed around in luxury. Still, Irv had bought the car and it was on his insurance rather than the town’s. If that’s what he wanted, that was his business. Jesse was grateful he was here watching his back. It felt like high school all over again.

A fresh thought struck.

“How about that other thing I asked for?”

From his back pocket, the deputy pulled a chrome and leather flask and handed it over. Jesse took a long pull then nearly spat half of it into the dirt.

“God,” He rasped through the sickly sweet burn. “What the hell is this?”

“Peach schnapps.” Irv replied.

“That’s all you got?”

Deputy Billingsley shrugged.

“That’s all that was left in your liquor cabinet after the fourth of July. You want me to go do a booze run on the way to a crime scene?”

The man made a fair point. Jesse looked at the flask with irritation then drained most of it again. He came away with a sour expression, but was still at least partially numbed. Irv took the flask back and finished off what was left as Jesse continued fumbling his shirt on with trembling fingers.

“So… what happened?”

“You’re going to see in a minute.” Jesse kept fumbling. “It’s bad.”

“What brought you out this far? Radio said there was a dead body up here…”

“I know Irv, I found it.”

“Well… How dead?”

Jesse looked up from the buttons with an irritated glare.

“Very dead.” He stressed at him. His friend turned deputy sagged, looking as worried as he should have been. “We need everyone on this. And I mean everybody. I’ve already got Wayne, Earl and Griff out there doing laps. Did you call the medical examiner?”

“You mean Doc Hughes?”

“Call him the ME,” Jesse hissed tensely. He dropped a button again, his fingers not obeying his commands. “Someone is going to ask for a statement at some point. Someone from state, some reporter, somebody. Keep it formal.”

Irv paled further at the thought.

“Uh, right. The ME,” He spoke the letters like they were Chinese. “I called him two hours ago. Said he had to deal with something then he’s coming out.”

“Deal with something?”

“There was an accident at the arena.”

Jesse looked at Irv like the whole world had gone nuts.

“At the jam festival?” Jesse spat, incredulous. “What the hell can happen with jam that trumps a dead body?!”

Irv spread his hands looking at him helplessly. The town held one every year in late august, with crones and farmers coming in from all over the county with their cans of jelly. Some wit had named it the “Jam-bo-ree” but he had too much self respect to use that name.

“You couldn’t get him out here faster?”

The deputy looked at his friend, his features split between anxiety and irritation that he was actually being pressed on something in this job.

“What was I supposed to do?” Irv squeaked. “Tell him it can wait?”

The answer was obvious.

“Yes, Irv. You tell him that!”

That shut him up. He stared at Jesse vacantly as he pawed at the clasps on his clothing as his fingers continued to betray him. Eventually the anger steadied his nerves, at least long enough to get dressed.

By the time he stood up, he had gotten a grip on himself again. Ultimately, that too proved pointless, because a second later the green Jeep that he knew belonged to the missing Doc Hughes pulled up a few yards away throwing him into a tailspin once more.

Doctor Wendell Hughes got out of his car, and stood next to it taking in the whole scene while looking as dignified as ever. A broad shouldered man in the twilight of his fifties, he was equally broad of belly now. He wore a tweed jacket, complete with patches on the elbows, wire framed glasses, with pens protruding from his jacket pocket. The man was also black enough to pull off the red polka dot bow-tie he sported without looking ridiculous. Jesse had never seen him in less than a sport coat he was so well put together. Maybe it was the army thing.

Town legend had it that when he’d seen the two towers falling on that September day he’d walked straight out of his office and down to city hall where a recruiter sometimes tried to sign up the patriotic or the foolhardy. The guy wasn’t there that day, so Hughes had them call him at home to come in just so he could enlist. Three tours as a surgeon in Iraq later, he had returned as the town’s resident sore-bones and doubled as the medical examiner when needed. No one had even raised their voice to him they respected him so much. Today would be different.

“Doc, where the hell have you been?” The sheriff exploded as he stalked up. “I can’t get you up here for a murder, but an old lady sprains her wrist carrying marmalade and you come running?”

Doc Hughes’ eyes widened at the unfamiliar anger from the sheriff, the whites looking especially bold against his black face. He blinked, then reformed his expression into a resolute frown, the eyes narrowing on Jesse’s much younger features.

“They were heating up preserves and a crock exploded.” He said softly. “Laura Ainsley got a lot of the glass in her face. You want me to leave a nine-year-old girl mutilated, or look at a corpse? I promise you, that body isn’t getting any worse. Laura’s face will.”

The pushback caught Jesse by surprise. He stood there for a moment as if suddenly remembering there were other people in town who would need help today. An image of happy little Laura Ainsley slipped into his head. She always giggled when she saw him walking down the street with the shiny star on his chest.

The sheriff wilted, feeling ashamed.

“Sorry Doc.”

The doctor’s dark scowling features still said ‘you should be’ but his mouth stayed closed.

Jesse wilted further, feeling like a child again himself in front of his old family doctor. He took a breath and tried to sound like he still had some authority.

“How’s she doing?”

The sympathy didn’t make Hughes thaw his glare any.

“Got most the fragments out and sedated her. With any luck she’ll still be a beautiful little girl after all this. She still might lose an eye; we’ll have to operate later.” He harrumphed a little, straightening his coat in an uncomfortable silence. Then, having said his peace, he got back to business.

“Right,” He said looking at Jesse and the deputy lurking meekly behind him. “now what’s been happening around here?”

The tape on the posts around the body was still dancing when the three of them walked up. The wind had changed however, and the smell reached them long before their eyes took in any horror. From somewhere Doc Hughes produced a stylish handkerchief, and pressed it to his nose and mouth. Irv, who never carried anything to a crime scene but aviator shades, made a ghastly face and tried to breath through his elbow. It worked for a while, but when the raggedy grass broke away and the full sight loomed into view, he turned away and retched. Jesse didn’t think less of him for a second.

He tried to keep a steady face. This was his responsibility. Beside him, the doctor’s eyes were wide again, his mouth probably a hard grimace under the pretty green paisley of his kerchief.

“What can you tell me Doc?”

The black man’s eyes flicked over to Jesse as if suddenly remembering he was there. When they returned to the carnage before them, he seemed to think about it then offered one word back.

“Male.” His voice croaked from under the silk. “At least I think so.”

“Is that all you’ve got?” Jesse hissed through gritted teeth. As he did, he couldn’t help but notice the teeth on the body gritted right back at him in a hideous smile.

There were no lips anymore. They had been burned away. There was no hair either, just stringy patches on a head equally charred. The eyes were mercifully shut, eyelids intact, clamped down in some sort of painful grimace of death, never to reveal their colors again. The body of the man, if it had indeed been a man, had clearly been doused and set alight. The limbs were bent, twisted to odd angles as though still batting at his body as it was ravaged by flames. Patches of grass were speckled with char from where his arms had flailed, casting off tiny fires and bits of flesh. His back was curved as he’d instinctively gone into a fetal position in his agony. There he sat in his own pyre, the grass and earth nearby stained and scorched to black as pitch. His shirt, likely polyester, had melted in the inferno and now pooled beneath the remains along with what parts of him had sizzled away in the heat. The puddle of man sat inches from their shoes, Jesse unable to look away from it. He blinked hard for a moment, but the sight remained. He knew it would be tattooed upon his eyes until his dying day.

As gruesome as it was, he forced himself to look closer. To look at the details. Beside him, the doctor cleared his throat again.

“Uh… the musculature, the size, the general body type makes me want to say a man. Its hard to…” A sickly sound came from the back of his throat.

“Anything else?” Jesse sifted through his memory for questions. Anything his grandfather had told him a lifetime ago when he wore this star. “How long has he been here?”

The doctor stuffed his face further into his handkerchief.

“A day or two?” He offered. “Its hard to tell. The crows didn’t help.”

From over their shoulders came the sound of Irv clearing his throat.

“We don’t know that Doc.” His voice still sounded queasy. “That smell is pretty rank. With all the sun the past week he could have been out here a while.”

“No, Doc’s right.” Jesse stepped in. He looked over at the two of them, thankful he’d thought of something intelligent at last. “The heat tells us everything. Everything was dried out from the sun until last night. This had to happen in the rain, or just after it.”

“Why?”

Jesse pointed to the shaggy brown field around them.

“Otherwise, the grass would have caught when he got set on fire. It just burned in one place, as it was too damp to catch. On any other day the whole ridge would have gone up. Remember when Phil Nelson started that grassfire cooking off cherry bombs?”

Irv nodded. He should remember, they’d both been there. He turned his head skyward into the blue then cautiously back to earth.

“Makes sense I guess.”

It fits with the timeline of the tip too. Jesse thought. His friend still looked green as he watched the process unfold. Irv needed to know what brought them here, but he didn’t dare say anything in front of the doctor. There were going to be too many rumours already. He’d tell him the whole story later.

“What about age? Ethnicity? Distinguishing marks?”

Doc Hughes shook his head in futility and waved at the charred mess before them.

“Maybe Caucasian? There’s no way I can even be sure of that. I’d have to cut into the poor soul to tell you anything.” He looked over at Jesse, his eyes looking worried. “I take it you’re going to want me to do an autopsy?”

“The minute you can do it.” Jesse told him heavily. “What about cause of death?’

A fresh groan of nausea came from beside him.

“God, are you serious?” Deputy Billingsley croaked.

Jesse thought it looked pretty damn obvious too, but he asked anyway.

“Well, what do you think?”

The doc was already leaning over. He moved around the body making learned noises. Jesse watched his shoes, nice wingtips, skirt the ghastly puddle beneath it. Above the silk, the doctor’s brow furrowed. He leaned over the burnt abattoir that was the man’s back, looking intently. It seemed nothing but a field of gashes where the crows had been feasting until a short time ago. From his jacket pocket he produced a pen, a cheap plastic Bic, and poked at the wounds with the tip.

That nearly made Irv puke all over again. Jesse was a millisecond behind. He felt the bile rise and had to choke it back down. Years in the army had clearly tempered Doc Hughes, who kept at it.

“Yes, fairly obvious.” The Doctor eventually nodded. “Definitely shot.”

At this point in the day, Jesse had thought he was now immune to surprises. But as soon as the last word was out, his jaw came down like an avalanche.

“Shot?”

“Three bullets,” Hughes muttered, the pen jabbed some more into the indistinguishable horror. “Tight ring on the back. Close grouping, so not an accident.”

Yeah, that was pretty obvious.

“Probably someone who can handle a gun.” Hughes finished, standing up. He took off his glasses and cleaned them in the same rag he’d been breathing through. His mouth was a flat grimace as he did it.

“That’s about all I can tell you.”

Jesse slipped a glance over to Irv, who he found staring back with wide eyes. For a moment he pondered what was worse: Someone in his town burning a man alive or someone in his town shooting someone, then burning them alive. The deputy’s left hand had drifted down to the butt of his revolver in the holster at his hip with the physician’s words. Jesse might not carry a gun, but Irv had always thought he should, sporting a .357 if purely for the look. Now the sheriff began to think he’d been right all along.

He opened his mouth to say they were done here, but the stench was so strong that for a moment he actually tasted death on his tongue. Repulsed, he stumbled backward and turned to walk back to where the cars waited, the other two men quickly taking the excuse to stroll away from this newly bloomed garden of evil. As he passed them, one by one his deputies looked to him with pleading nervous eyes, all clearly wondering what he was going to do about it.

He tried to dodge their penetrating gazes. Jesse had to admit something, at least to himself: He had no idea what to do.

As they came down from the plateau, the three saw there were new arrivals. Adding to their comprehensive collection of vehicles with blinking lights was an ambulance (The town had three), idling by in the trees with its red flashing lights playing shadows off the vegetation. The two paramedics had leapt from their cab to stand in silhouette carrying triage bags and wearing rubber gloves. The sight irritated Jesse so much, he pointed angrily back up where they had come. A quick furious bark had them rushing back into their cab, only aggravating him further. Somehow, he thought it too late to save the man laying in that field.

From his side, Deputy Billingsley cleared his throat.

“So what’s the next step?”

That very heavy question got a respectful moment of silence.

“We need to know whom to notify.” Doc Hughes finally declared quietly.

“How?” Jesse snapped at him. “I don’t know who the hell that guy is, much less his next of kin.”

“No, I mean in general.” If the physician heard his anger, he chose to ignore it. “This is beyond anything I’ve ever seen here. We need to tell some people at the state police, maybe the state government.”

He paused.

“How much do we tell the town?”

“That they burned the guy? We don’t tell that to anyone.” Jesse said steely. “Everyone will lose it. We have to say we found a body though, the rumour mill wont miss that.

Hughes looked at Jesse over his spectacles.

“You should ask the mayor.”

The sheriff shook his head negative.

“I tried calling him. He’s in Spokane until the end of the week.”

“No, I mean the other one.”

That made Jesse frown even deeper, and gave him a pang of fear in his gut about the whole situation. He took a deep breath.

“I don’t want to do that…”

At all. He thought.

“…Unless we absolutely have to. We’ll finish our canvas up here. Go with the body, Doc. As soon as you can do an autopsy I need everything you can tell me.”

Hughes’ dark features nodded solemnly.

“I’ll probably need a day to do it right.” He said. “But I’ll call you the minute I have anything. I am going to need someone to sign off on removing the body from the uh… crime scene.”

Irv stepped over and gestured to where the ambulance was backing up the crumbling slope.

“I’ve got you Doc.” He volunteered helpfully. The color had returned to his features a little. “The guys are probably done anyway.”

As they walked away, Jesse drifted over to where Irv’s patrol car still sad, lights spinning idly. He walked around it and when he was sure he was out of sight he blew out all the air in his lungs. Every molecule of oxygen he had billowed out onto his shoes. Along with it, he hoped, was every particle of pestilence and death he had taken inside himself standing over the body. He still felt a sickness inside at the thought of it, he wondered if he would ever feel clean again. Why the hell hadn’t he just gone to the creek to watch Mollie Biehn?

He leaned back, his rear pressing against the Sheriff’s logo on the car door as he vomited more precious breath upon the ground. Panic, slithered into him again, gripping his legs and threatening to drag him down. He stared at his muddy shoes, remembering how close they’d been to the puddle of man that lay upon the ridge. What would his grandfather have done?

He could think of nothing, the old man’s memories seemingly blanked from his consciousness. Then, annoyingly, his father’s words crept into his mind.

Start with what you know best. The rest will come in time.

As he sat there bent over. He let familiar advice calm him. What did he know best in this town? Where to start?

A moment later, he was upright again. He reached into Irv’s charger and lifted his radio. Flawless, like the rest of his car.

“Rosie?” His voice chirped into it. “You there?”

She must have been waiting for someone to call, because it was no more than a second before her schoolmarm-esque voice floated up from the speakers.

“How’s it going out there Sheriff?”

Oh, about as bad as it could possibly go.

“We’re handling it.” He answered stiffly. “Look, I need to know who called in that tip. I need to speak with them.”

The tiny voice in the box made a negative sound.

“Sorry Sheriff, but the call was anonymous. I have no idea.”

Before she finished her sentence he was violently shaking his head.

“Yeah, I don’t buy it.” The sheriff grumbled into the mike. “I’ve seen your setup. The phone number pops up every time someone calls.”

Silence followed his words, as she absorbed them. When her voice came back it was pained, speaking slow.

“I told you. I…”

“Rosie,” His fingers tightened on the window frame. “You’ve been doing this since I was five. You’re like google. You know every damn number in town.”

“That doesn’t mean…”

Jesse could already tell that it did.

“Rosie it’s important.”

“I promised they could stay anonymous.” Her voice sounded tortured. “They were so scared on the phone…”

“I’m scared too.” Jesse told her honestly. “I don’t know how we’re going to handle this. Please.”

More silence.

There in the woods, Jesse began drumming his fingers on the metal. The tension mounted in the emptiness, as Jesse watched the spinning red and blue lights play off the trees. Just when he thought he would crack, the sizzle of static from the radio roared up and he jumped in alarm.

“I did know that number.” Rosie confessed. Even miles away and through garbled static she sounded like she was betraying a friend. “But they trusted me.”

Jesse felt himself getting frantic. He opened his mouth to implore her again, to say someone was dead, that it fell on him, there were slightly bigger concerns than a pinky swear she’d made to a stranger. In the end, she cut him off before he could be petty.

“A man’s voice.” The good woman told him on the line told him. “The Holloway Motel.”