Chapter 3: The Constable

The days that followed were filled with a pitiful imitation of detective work mixed with pathetic attempts at functional sobriety. I had failed Bernie Lutz back in Arras; I would not fail Naomi Fisher in Abraboca. Overcast or not, this was my home now. If someone had decided to start depositing bodies in my backyard then, well, I figured I had a say in all that.

     Lawson worried about me, as was his way, and his dear wife never missed an opportunity to point out how thin I was. “I work better on a starvation diet,” I told her, and left it that. I spent an ungodly amount of time at the Abraboca library, tracing back family histories, looking through arrest records, and more-or-less stabbing at the dark with a plastic blade. Still, you had to start somewhere.

     The life of Naomi Fisher proved a tricky, confusing beast. If the obituary was correct and the girl was indeed eight years old, born on December 10^th at the back end of 1914, then there was no birth certificate to confirm that bit of information. The first known record of her was from a Sunday paper dated March 1917, in which one Mrs. Crabtree had been named Teacher of the Year and had her picture taken with her entire class. It took a few scans and a frustrating guessing game, but the class was small enough that I managed to pick out a young Naomi with scrapes on her knees and ribbons in her hair. The photo was in black and white, but there was no mistaking those bright blue eyes that were almost white in the glare of the photograph.

     From the end of 1914 to the March of 1917, the girl called Naomi Fisher had been a ghost. Abraboca was a small town with little to report, and virtually every birth was announced in the Sunday papers. I scanned through the December editions but found no mention of a blue-eyed girl born on the 10^th and I even made my way through countless papers that followed, looking for any announcement of her adoption, which were also recorded. But no. No birthdate. No adoption date. As far as the official records were concerned, Naomi Fisher had spontaneously appeared to pose for a class photo. It was frustrating. It was maddening. But it was necessary. Entirely necessary. If I had for all intents and purposes declared myself a doctor, then I had better know my patient. Best know the rules if I was going to play the game.

     And the game was afoot. I imagined myself on a sea filled with blood and water-soaked ash, scanning the horizon for the fire-skinned man who had burrowed his teeth into Bernie Lutz and dumped a ghost called Naomi Fisher into the ocean. I imagined the hunt, the thrill that was so much like flying and the smoke-drenched skies over France. But more than anything, I imagined driving a knife into his demon heart and watching those fiery eyes go cold. All along I had been Ahab, and now I’d found my Whale.

      But damn it all if the Whale didn’t find me first.

     He came forward on October 3^rd, 1921; just two weeks after the girl had washed up on the grey beach of Abraboca. Weeping and gritting his teeth and spitting up blood, Richard Parish was a shell of a man with skin as thin as paper and bones as brittle as dust. His eyes were wild and red, his clothes mud-stained and filthy, his breath like uncooked corpses. You would not be faulted for believing him capable of murder. He’d stumbled into the Abraboca Police Station half-drunk and shouting in tongues. But there was one word that stood out from the din, one word that would condemn him to life behind bars or death in a chair of fire: Naomi.

     There was a great deal of commotion, as you would expect. I imagine John Wilkes Booth received a similar welcome. As soon as the news had spread, a crowd of no less than twenty had gathered outside the station, holding invisible pitchforks and shouting half-veiled curses as they called for Parish’s immediate crucifixion. Lawson and I watched from the tavern’s porch, he with a beer in his hand and I with clenched fingers in mine.

     This is wrong, I told myself, seething. It can’t be him. Richard? Seriously? A shark-toothed, fire-skinned hell-demon named Richard? God was laughing at me, or maybe the Devil. Probably both.

     “It’s not right,” I told Lawson, bracing myself against the morning chill. My anger was the only thing keeping me warm. “He’s not the one, he can’t be.”

     “Why in God’s name would he confess, then?” Lawson spat and shook his head. “Who wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Gee, I think I’ll confess to a murder today and follow it up with a big lunch and some light reading?’ He’s mad as a cow fresh off the brand, if the talk is anything to go by. Sounds to me like he fits the bill.”

     “Madness doesn’t equal guilt, and capability sure as hell doesn’t. Of course he’s capable of doing it. Anyone’s capable. The toothpick-framed guy who sells cigarettes down at the general store is capable. Everyone up to and including my mother is capable. Slit the throat, set her on fire, and dump the burnt corpse a few dozen yards off the coast. It’s easy.”

     “If this is some stab at dark humor, John, I don’t think "”

    “I know what I saw back in France. And I know what I saw that day at the Amusement Mile. They’re the same thing. Beat for beat, note for note. Whatever killed Bernie Lutz also did the girl in. Something terrible, something wicked, something not of this earth or any other. In other words, not some homeless man named Richard Parish.”

      “Let me put it to you this way: do you have any proof?”

     That gave me pause. Aside from intuition and two weeks of relative temperance, I was sorely lacking in the credibility department.

     We stood there in silence, Lawson killing his liver and I my doubts. What was I to do? Leave it at that, accept society’s dull answer, and give up the chase? No. Of course not. Naomi the ghost-girl haunted my dreams now, almost as much as the specter of Bernie Lutz had in the weeks that followed that night in Arras.

     The crowd was chanting now. We want justice. We want justice. We want justice. It was sad, in its own way. I found myself wondering if the United States still conducted public hangings. The thought made me shiver for some reason. I scanned the throng, watching the feet stamp, the fists pump into the air, the mouths spit vile. The entire thing was moving as one, save for a thin, plain couple near the back. They had come late, and lingered near the back as the crowd chanted. As the voices grew louder, the husband put a hand around his wife’s shoulder as she buried her face in his chest. Gears turned in my head.

     “I’m gonna get in on this,” I mumbled under my breath as I stepped off the porch towards the crowd. Lawson made no reply.

     At first, he didn’t acknowledge the hand on his shoulder. But slowly, like a man resigned to the hangman’s noose, Mr. Fisher turned to face me, his brown eyes shining in the light of the damp morning. He looked older than I expected, but then again, most people would say the same of me. Grief is just another agent of time.

     “I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” I said, and meant it. Odds were, a thousand Bloody Aprils couldn’t compare to what was going on in his heart right now. 

     For a moment, he didn’t answer. Then, in lieu of feeble words, he nodded and managed some semblance of a smile. By then, the chanting had subsided, and I found myself being pushed out of the way as the mob dissipated. By the sound of it, a storm was rattling in the air.

     The engine of the patrol wagon creaked and huffed for breath as it tumbled into the yard outside the station. The crowd parted like the red sea, their rage forgotten and their own skin remembered. No doubt a few of them had never seen an actual motorized vehicle before, and I spotted more than a few younger men gaping in wonder. The car jerked to a stop and a woman stepped out of the exposed passenger seat, not even waiting for the vehicle to come to a complete halt. She was tall, with thin hair black as sin and skin as pale as the moon. She had a man’s figure as far as I could tell, but maybe that was just the clothes; her uniform consisted of a thick brown button-up coat, knee-high boots, and a military-style cap with a badge pinned to its front. She might as well have been a mannequin in a soldier’s clothes. Several other officers stepped out, as well, but there was no doubt as to who was in charge.

     She scanned the crowd with pale, smoky eyes before settling on the Fishers. The couple came forward, heads bowed. The crowd had formed an odd circle, I among them, as we watched the three exchange low, muted words. And then, with half of Abraboca watching, the officer swung her arms wide and embraced them. They hugged her back, wrapping their arms tight around her. An awkward, confused silence hung in the air even as they broke apart and the Fishers returned to the crowd.

     “Return to your homes,” the officer declared, her small voice booming despite itself. “This is a matter of federal investigation. Richard Parish is innocent until proven guilty, and I will not suffer attempts at vigilante justice, nor will the Abraboca Police Department. Any efforts to lynch Mr. Parish will be considered attempted murder and the perpetrators will be tried as such. Good day.”

     Mumbles of dissent and unrest ran through the yard as the mob grudgingly dissipated and went back to their boring lives beret of nooses and pitchforks. Even the Fishers disappeared into the crowds of departing protestors, swept back into the currents of Abraboca. Clenching my fists, I moved against the tide, pushing against the sea of bodies. My heart was racing as I put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and said, “Ma’am?”

     She spun around slowly, grey eyes fixed on me like a wolf on a lamb. The other officers made no move to help her. They - like most people with proper eye function - were very aware of how easily she could snap me in two should my song ring false or my intents prove wicked.

     “Ma’am,” I said again, knowing I only had a few seconds before I was either escorted away or on the ground with a bullet between my eyes. “He’s not your man. There are two incisions on the victim’s neck on either side of the throat near the jugular veins. That fact is not in any report, and I doubt the mortician caught it. The police have no idea what this is and neither do you. Look at the body and tell me otherwise. Parish isn’t your man. And if he is, you’re in way over your head.”

     As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was sure there was a better way to say what I had intended. Feeling incredibly stupid, I stood there as he studied me like an electrician studies a faulty circuit. She never blinked. I noticed that her badge declared her JENNIFER MATTHEWS; CONSTABLE. I wasn’t entirely sure what that last word meant, but it sounded important.

     Then, after what felt like an eternity of her staring into my face, she shrugged me off and went inside without a word. The other officers followed her, some eyeing me warily and others ignoring me entirely. My stomach twisted. She didn’t listen to a word, I thought. Richard Parish will hang or burn or feel the volts of the chair running through his veins by this time next week, and they’ll be no closer to justice than they were when Naomi washed up on the beach.

     I nursed my doubts with Lawson over my last bottle of scotch later that night. We sat in my dingy apartment, still unsettled and more or less a biblical wreck. Darcy’s stuffed bear sat hunched in the corner, eyes cast down at the floor. He really was the only color in this dull, dry place.

     “Do you ever notice how much we drink, Swansea?” Lawson said, not two seconds before he took another shot of scotch, smacked his lips, and belched. “You think we’d have better ways to occupy our time by now.”

    “My friend, we live in coastal nowhere at the edge of the forever.” I saw his shot and raised him a swig. For some reason, the more I drank the more bitter the drink became. No fun. “Also, the Amusement Mile’s closed and my book’s in the shitter. Cheers to the future, mate.”

     Lawson gave a huff of disapproval. “So that’s it, then? You’ve given up the ghost.”

     “Abandoned the quest.”

     “Dropped the ball.”

     “Both of them. Then I lopped them off and tossed them into the sea.”

     “Pity.”

     We both drank some more.

     “It keeps me awake at night, you know.” He took another sip, only to realize his bottle was empty. He sat it down on the counter and sighed. “I close my eyes and I see that damned body just sitting there on the beach. Burnt or roasted or whatever you want to call it. I see Darcy, slack-jawed and dead and then I’m the one burying my daughter.” He shook his head. “Might be I’ve had too much to drink, Swansea.”

     “No such thing,” I said, and put a hand on his shoulder. “And that won’t happen. I promise.”

     “You mean to go through with it, then?”

     I nodded. “I’m an alcoholic author who doesn’t write and lives month-to-month on a military pension. What have I got to lose?”

    “It’ll be dangerous,” he said. “How will you get past the police?”

     “Elementary, my dear Lawson,” I said. Truth was, I had absolutely no idea. But one way or another, Richard Parish was getting a visit from me tonight. “You leave that to me.”

     When we went outside to smoke, the air was thick with the scent of rain. The clouds might just burst, after all, I thought. Always rainy, never raining. Welcome to Abraboca.

     “She was crying tonight, you know.” Lawson said between puffs. “Earlier, when I went to her room to kiss her goodnight. Darcy was curled up under the covers, like she was trying to scrunch up inside herself. I asked her why she was crying, and she told me didn’t know why. She just crawled up under the blankets, talking about how she was scared, how we were safe. ‘Church,’ she said, ‘I’d feel safer in church.’ I stayed with her, waited until she was asleep. She…John, she cried herself to sleep.” He took another puff of his cigar, coughed, then swore, then stamped the thing out on the ground. “It was Naomi, I think. Darcy’s too young to see…stuff like that.”

     I didn’t know what to say. We sat there in silence, Lawson staring out into the darkness of Abraboca while I smoked my cigar, said not a word, and thought about Bernie Lutz. And when Lawson finally left, it was only with a pat on the back and a half-mumbled goodbye.

     I’m going to let him down, I thought as I stamped out my own cigar on the damp dirt. The state or the feds or the mob will burn Richard Parish one way or another, and the last bread crumb will be gone. No rest for Naomi, no rest for Bernie. No rest for John Swansea.    

     That fear proved unfounded when the Constable showed up to my apartment ten minutes later and shoved a gun in my nose. She had abandoned her officer’s cap, but the rest of her uniform remained. She had come alone except for her pistol, with which my left nostril became almost instantly acquainted.

     “You have ten seconds to explain how you knew about the bite marks,” she said as soon as I’d opened the door and instantly regretted it, “and you just wasted four of them listening to me talk.”

      She didn’t f**k around, this woman.

     “I didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re getting at.” The barrel of the gun remained inside my nose. I offered her my hand as an attempt of goodwill. “John Swansea. Formerly a pilot for the RFC and currently a writer who doesn’t write. And you are?”

     “About a fifth of a second from leaving a red stain on your ceiling, Oliver Twist. I ain’t gonna ask again.”

     “Actually, the stain would end up brown in the end.” I shrugged. “But go ahead. Blow my brains out. I’m not afraid to die. And it’s Swansea. Twist is a common mispronunciation, so you’re excused.”

     She took a step forward, and I played along, backing up into the apartment. She kicked the door shut behind her. Splendid. First time I have a proper woman over and she’s the one waving the gun around. Time makes fools of us all.

     “Listen,” I said slowly. The back of my head was starting to itch for some reason. “I know you’re upset. But you’ve talked to Parish, I haven’t. I have information you need and you the same for me. Two halves of the same puzzle. We can do it together, but only if we stop prodding each other’s skulls with firearms.”

       “You think you can play games with me?” She gritted her teeth, and I swear there were tears welling in her eyes. “You knew about the bite marks, and don’t think the mortician missed it. It was in the report. But you’re not a mortician. You’re a monster is what you are. A stranger.” She pushed me up against the wall and I felt the barrel shove itself against the edge of my eye socket. “She’s here, isn’t she? You’ve hidden her under the floorboard or in your cupboard or in your bathtub. Is that what she is to you? A trophy? I swear to God I’ll have them tear this place apart.”

     “Trophies?” My mind was a haze. I had expected hostilities, but not riddles. What was she getting at? “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m not following you in the least.”

    “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said, gritting her teeth so tightly it looked like they might shatter. “Is it here? Tell me truth, and I’ll know if you’re lying.” And just like that, she was shouting. “Where is she? Where’s Naomi? What did you do with the body?”