And Crawling Things Lurk
Chapter 19: A Place Dark and Dank

With an absence of traffic behind him, Don allowed his patrol car to drift to a stop at the crosswalk where he sat watching the flow on the busier cross street.

It was almost two weeks since tissue samples from Josie’s autopsy were sent to the lab. The only thing Don had received back, so far, was just a confirmation that her body had apparently been emptied of organs by use of acids and/or other chemicals, as yet unidentified, and/or by mechanical means, as yet undetermined, for purposes unknown. Cause of death was still unknown. She hadn’t been strangled, battered, sliced or stabbed other than the shallow neck punctures, which were hardly lethal, and the single puncture in her abdomen, which could have been. And, considering the social station of the victim, there probably wouldn’t be a long series of expensive tests and consultations to make further determinations. After all, with her organs gone, it was impossible to say with certainty what had been damaged from the abdominal puncture. Something could have pierced her stomach, lung, heart, kidney, and/or liver, or none of them. It just depended on its angle and depth of penetration.

Jackie was still in county jail, and bail had already been denied because he faced a charge of murder with little preventing him from fleeing. He would just have to wait for his trial to free him, with whatever likelihood that carried. Considering the social station of the suspect, that process should take no more than a few days, because they wouldn’t really try to establish how Jackie did it, only that he did do it. De Leon was comfortable going with nothing but circumstantial evidence and was confident that the District Attorney would go along with it, although Don had good cause to doubt that. He couldn’t see how they could reasonably convict Jackie, but he also knew that many unexpected things were possible in court.

He remained stopped at the intersection since no cars were behind him. The man he waited for was still a hundred feet down the sidewalk, but he wouldn’t be much longer reaching the crosswalk. He drove his battery-powered wheelchair around town at speeds that scared Don at times. After the chair wheeled down the ramp to street level, it slowed and approached Don’s side of the car at a walking pace.

“Yo, Evans. ’S up?”

“Afternoon, Sarge. Not much. I’m just nosin’ around. Anybody new on the scene lately?”

“You mean like anybody that might have killed Josie?”

Don wasn’t surprised it was common knowledge around town.

“Well, that too,” Don said. “But just anyone new hanging around town. Anyone new, at all. Maybe an old woman with a righteous stink about her? Or anyone at all with an odor that would be noticeable even down at the Hole? Not necessarily worse than down there, but different.”

Sarge wasn’t one of the Hole crowd, but he was a street person even if he didn’t live on the street. Don was as likely to replace him hanging around with one of the Hole bunch as with a local hardware store proprietor or the talk show host of the local radio station. He had told Don one time that the people at the Hole were often more honest, more real, and had always been more accepting of a Nam vet.

“Nope, ain’t seen her, either. That the one Jackie’s been claiming took Josie?”

“Damn, am I always the last one in on something?”

“No, man, not the last one in on, just the last one to accept.”

“So, you believe Jackie’s story?”

“Can’t say. But I don’t disbelieve it, either. I’m open to it. You need to be open to things, man.”

“Thanks, Sarge. Keep in touch.”

“Of course. Always.” The chair pivoted toward the front of the car and slipped around the corner of the fender. Then, as he was going past the grill, Sarge accelerated fast enough to have popped a wheelie if his chair wasn’t so heavy. With a grin, he took off as fast as a man could run. Don smiled and shook his head.

Instead of going up the ramp to the sidewalk across the intersection, Sarge veered over to the street side and zoomed along the parking lane. At mid-block he encountered three parked cars, so, without slowing, he glanced over at a side-view mirror the guy down at the Chevrolet garage had mounted for him. Assured no cars were coming, he swerved around it with his flag and pennant fluttering atop the staff.

His chair hugged the curb as he whipped around the next corner, confident that he had learned just how fast and sharp the heavy chair could turn without tipping over. He had toppled a couple of times in the early days – a hard way to learn to use the harness – and was still surprised that so many townsfolk came running to his aid back then.

When he turned left at the next corner, he spotted Joe Ortega and Ed Hughes sitting at the curb sharing a bottle. They waved as he drew near. In his enthusiasm, Ed even rocked back and waved with his feet.

“Pull it over, Sarge,” Joe hollered. “There’s still almost half left.”

Sarge stopped his chair partly turned toward them where they sat on the curb with four knees stuck into the air like a row of fence posts.

“You ain’t been slobberin’ in it, have you Joe? You know I can’t take your slobber.”

“Naw, I only slobber when I’m drunk. I ain’t drunk.”

Sarge took the bottle and held it up to the fading light of the evening sky for a moment, then to his lips. After a long pull he handed it back and said, “I guess not, man. Or if you did, it’s the cleanest slobber I ever tasted.”

“Hah!” Joe turned grinning a snaggle-toothed grin at Ed and backhand slapped him on the knee closest to him. “See? Sarge says he don’t, but I think he likes my spit. How come you don’t?”

Ed took the bottle and his own turn at trying to gross out his friends. When the bottle was empty, and none had vomited in disgust, they agreed between laughs to let it go for the day and try again next time. Sarge promised that bottle would be on him. He meant it, and they believed him. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The curbside wine tasting among friends had put Sarge in the mood for good food, and he hadn’t had dinner yet, so he started back downtown. He would normally decide at the last minute where to go. He had just gotten his check, though, so tonight he’d treat himself to a steak at Charlotte’s Grill over on Main.

Still over a block from Main, he noticed a figure moving ahead of him on the other side of the street, and he slowed to a creep. There was nothing especially wrong, just that it looked like a little old lady that he had never seen before. She moved at a plodding pace, although she didn’t appear feeble. But, the thing that really got his attention was that she was pushing a shopping cart. His own road noise faded away as he slowed, and he heard a noticeable squeak from over that way. It sure sounded like Erica’s cart.

He was looking forward to a good steak, but he’d just follow her for a bit and see what happened. Evans would be off duty, but maybe one of the swing shift would drive by and he could flag him down.

At the next corner, the old woman paused. Sarge wasn’t sure, but she might have glanced back in his direction. He backed off the joystick and let the chair glide to a stop still on the opposite side of the street from her and over a hundred feet back. She fumbled with whatever she had in the cart, and that gave her another opportunity to look back in his direction without seeming to do so. Oh, well. It wasn’t like he could remain invisible while riding the chair. If she saw him, she saw him.

He waited.

When she started moving again after a moment, she turned right instead of continuing towards Main. After she passed out of sight behind the real estate office on the corner, he nudged his chair forward. He slowed at the corner just long enough to catch sight of her a hundred feet from the corner and still plodding on.

He crossed the street but stayed down on the pavement instead of directly behind her up on the sidewalk. With the few cars parked at the curb, he would be partially shielded from her if she looked back. Of course, she was also shielded from his view until he periodically veered over to the curb between the cars to spot her again.

She seemed to be moving at a steady pace, not rushed, but not dawdling, either. Did she know she was being followed? Did she imagine she could outpace him just because he was in a wheelchair? She didn’t know his chair.

Why would she try to outpace him?

Was she really the one Jackie had seen? She looked pretty harmless to him.

Just what was it that Jackie saw?

At the next space between parked cars, he eased over to the curb and leaned over to peer around the back end of a pickup. She wasn’t there. He leaned farther, thinking maybe she had moved over closer to the curb, but there was still no sign of her. He knew the stores and shops in the area, and they were all closed for the night. So, if she didn’t get into one of the parked vehicles, and he was certain he would have heard a car door, the only other place she could have gone was into the alley just past the picture framing shop at mid-block.

Why would she go into the alley, though? It was a dead end after only about a hundred feet. None of the businesses backing onto it were open, so either she was lost or was just alley prowling. It was a common enough sight: a raggedly dressed soul pushing an old, dilapidated shopping cart into an alley with hopes of replaceing something worthwhile to put in it.

He eased forward to the front end of the last car in line and stopped. After unbuckling his harness, he leaned forward as far as his legless torso could manage supported only by his muscular arms and peered around the car and into the alley. The first thing he noticed was the unattended shopping cart in the middle of the alley about half way to the end. A dumpster sat on the right side just past the alley entrance in its normal place against the wall, and with one lid up and one down as always. Beyond that sat a number of plastic and metal garbage cans bunched together on the left side. Near the cans was the back door to a dry-cleaners, and it would be locked. On the other side, blocked from his view by the dumpster, was the back door to the artist supplies and framing shop, also closed. Farther down were two more doors, almost opposite each other. The one on the right serviced a hardware store fronting on the street he had come down before turning on the one he was on. The door across from it was to a shoe repair shop fronting on the street beyond the end of the alley.

No one was open, so where had she gone? And why did it bother him? Did he really believe Jackie? He still wasn’t sure, but he still didn’t disbelieve him, either.

His hand found the chair joystick and nudged it. He crept past the end of the car and pivoted to face the alley. He cocked his head to one side, then to the other like a stalking beast focusing sensitive ears – or like a stalked prey searching for the beast.

Now, why did he think of it that way?

Then, as his questing mind pulled up a buried memory, he knew why. So faint it was almost unnoticeable, his olfactory receptors picked from among the stew of odors in the alley one he had not known for all those years since his legs were taken from him. With the stink now pricking long forgotten memories, he resisted closing his eyes. He knew, if he did, the nightmares would be back, nightmares he had thought were safely buried beneath mounds of dead, scar tissue. But he knew, now, that even after all those years they were still there, waiting to be allowed back to the surface. And, even as he resisted, with his nostrils flaring to sniff the stench from memory, his eyelids drooped.

He was back in Nam, in the tunnels beneath the jungle. He had run Charlie to his den, and like a relentless, but foolish, hound, had gone in after him. But, once in there, he became the hunted. In the maze of tunnels, some almost large enough to stand up in but mostly narrow burrows for scooting from one enlarged area to another, it took him only moments and few turns to lose the trail. With his bearings lost, the way out became nothing more than a guessing game, wild, grasping stabs in the dark. He took more wrong turns, rushing from one dead end to another, places dark and dank, where crawling things lurked. He wasn’t quite reduced to a mindless, babbling idiot when they pulled him out, but he was pretty sure he knew what such a state would feel like.

He pulled his eyes open and took a moment to re-orient himself with the alley.

He forced his senses to go beyond the odor, to listen for rustling paper and tinkling cans and bottles as the old woman scavenged, but all he heard was the little bit of evening traffic down on Main and his own pulse pounding in his ears.

He drove the chair forward, across the sidewalk and into the gaping mouth of the alley. Even with the darkening, but open sky above the edges of the roofs, he still felt that suffocating claustrophobia that had grabbed him in the tunnels trying to resurge. He veered slowly around a discarded six-pack beer carrier. The walls blocked out all but a whisper of the sounds from Main, so the thub-thub of his heart pushing blood through what was left of his body dominated.

He glanced around the corner of the dumpster, but only empty space filled the dark there. He was far enough in to see into the recessed doorways on both sides, and they, too, were empty. That left only the jumble of boxes and crates stacked and not stacked at the end of the alley.

Rolling forward, he again asked himself why he was doing this. Why did he subject himself to this kind of emotional trauma? So, what if the old woman did come into the alley and disappear, which, of course she didn’t actually do. Did he have to solve that particular enigma? If he didn’t, would his life be any worse for it? When he saw Jackie again, he could just tell him he had seen an old woman that sort of matched the description of the one that his friend insisted had taken Josie, but he didn’t follow up on it and didn’t know who she was or where she went. Couldn’t he?

Of course not.

When he reached the shopping cart, he circled around it, looking at it from all sides, remembering what it had looked like all those times he watched Erica muscle it around. Same cart. But, just to be sure, he reached out and gave the front end a push. The right front wheel tended to wobble and want to go off on its own as it protested with a squeal. How many times had he laughed at her for tolerating that squeak? “What squeak?” she would answer then laugh right along with him.

As he approached the jumble at the end of the alley, he looked for a place where a person could be concealed. The only illumination aside from the darkening sky was from a street light across from the mouth of the alley, but the light didn’t have that far to go to show him there was no place she could be hiding. Maybe she had crawled inside one of the boxes, but they didn’t appear to have been moved recently, all sagging together.

He turned back toward the street and considered. Maybe one of the doors was unlocked, after all. But, since there was no way he could reach the doors in their recesses at the tops of two and three stair steps, he couldn’t test that theory.

Okay. He had done what he could. He’d head back down to main and grab a steak. If he didn’t see a patrol car, he’d replace Evans tomorrow.

He eyed the cart again as he was going past it, so he didn’t notice the shadowy form rise out of the open side of the dumpster. But, when he turned back toward the street, he saw it in partial silhouette against the streetlight as it folded over the lip and down the side of the bin. When it reached the pavement of the alley it stood upright. It was her, the little old woman. She moved sideways far enough to stand in his path if he should continue toward the street.

Was she really trying to block him?

“Evening,” he said, bringing his chair to a stop with eight feet between them.

“Good evening.” Her voice was soft and gentle, grandmotherly.

What to say? What accusations was he prepared to make?

“Friend of mine is missing her cart. That one sure looks like it.”

“Does it?”

“Uh, yeah, it does. She got pretty upset that someone would steal her cart. She’d had it for a long time. Kinda got used to it, you know?”

He didn’t know what he expected her to say, but he thought she would say something. She didn’t. She just stood there and stared at him. He supposed she was staring at him. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the huge, dark glasses she wore. How could she see anything in the alley with the sky gone dark and no decent lighting? Maybe she was blind. Maybe she couldn’t see him at all, just reacting to the direction of his voice. Anyway, he had no real desire to continue their conversation since it wasn’t one.

Without a word, he pushed the toggle forward and the chair shot forward, swerving to the right to go around her. But her reaction was as quick. She lunged before he swept past, dipped low, and grabbed the chair. Then, as easily as if it were a flimsy, wooden chair instead of a heavy, steel and battery weighted conveyance, she flipped it onto its side.

Sarge threw out his arms to catch his weight as he slammed against the pavement and rolled out of the chair, but it cost him some hide scraped from his palms. He scrambled up onto his hands and arms and spun about.

Long before he got the chair he had taught himself to get about in his manner, developing balance as well as building powerful arm and shoulder muscles. Those were some bitter days, but he could still scramble. After all, he couldn’t take his chair into the bathtub, or lots of other places. At home, with no one around, he often moved about in this way rather than try to maneuver his chair in the restricted space.

But as soon as he spun to face her, she was on him. He couldn’t tell just what she was doing in the bad lighting, but she wrapped some kind of bindings around him. Thin and wispy, they were strong enough. In just a few moments he could no longer scramble. And, just that fast, he found himself trussed up like a turkey ready for the oven. He strained with the muscles bulging in his arms, but the bindings held.

He hadn’t screamed to this point because it had all happened so fast, and he couldn’t believe she had overpowered him so easily. But, when he peered up at her, his view of her less than perfect due to the gauze-like bindings that even wrapped around his head, Jackie’s words came back to him, words he had laughed at. “She had teeth as long as knives, and they stuck out of her mouth like two droopy cigars.” He sucked in enough breath to power a good scream, but it never came out. As soon as those twin daggers buried themselves in the back of his neck, any ability to cry out became no more than a wish.