The Keepers

By Craig Conrad

Matt Corbin is going through a rough patch in his life, rougher than his time in Vietnam. He finds himself a cuckold, betrayed by a wife of ten years with another man. Returning to his job as a homicide detective after his service time doesn’t help, nor does having a batch of inadequate partners. It only compounds his trouble tenfold, making it that much heavier to carry. If it wouldn’t be for his best friend, Paul Rice, and a new female partner, attractive and feisty, he would have eaten his gun by now. Then along comes a weird murder case where the bones of the victims are all that is left of them. It’s enough to rock Corbin’s boat and set him back a step.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664137936

Craig Conrad

Author resides in Milwaukee. Wisconsin, has been hooked on mysteries and supernatural thrillers since reading his first H.P. Lovecraft novel. He has written twenty novels, fourteen of them are Paul Rice novels, his reluctant paranormal investigator, with cameo appearances in two others that feature two of his war buddies along with two Dutch Verlander stories, and a collection of short stories.

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Copyright © 2020 by Craig Conrad.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/28/2020

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Contents

VALLEY OF THE KINGS, EGYPT 1922

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN In the 1980s

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Epilogue

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I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury, said cunning old Fury;

I’ll try the whole case, and condemn you to death.

—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

VALLEY OF THE

KINGS, EGYPT

1922

Ray Mercer had been Howard Carter’s assistant ever since Carter joined Lord Carnarvon in excavations in the valley several years ago. Until now, their biggest find had been a cache of thirteen alabaster vases of Ramesses II with ibex heads on the lids, their horns fashioned into ornate handles for the jars. Much later and more digging finally culminated in tomorrow’s big discovery. But tonight in his tent, although dead tired from a long day, Mercer found his sleep to be very erratic; and he slept in stops and starts, too keyed up in excited anticipation for tomorrow’s official opening of the tomb of Tutankhamen when Carnarvon would come down from Luxor to join Carter for the opening and inspection.

This was to be Carter and Carnarvon’s final dig here and probably his too unless he could join up with another excavation, although the prospect was dim of finding any further large and untouched sites in the valley or anyone still with enough eager enthusiasm to take on the task and look. The valley was resembling the fields of Flanders with all the large holes from earlier excavations. But this present dig wasn’t a last-ditch effort to find Tutankhamen’s tomb as some critics said, although Carter sensed that the evidence at hand showed it should be somewhere, but both men felt that their work in the valley had reached its conclusion and would be finished at year’s end. Then as luck would have it and sometimes intervene, after years of digging with a workforce of hundreds of men, they had found what appeared to have been an ancient tomb workers’ settlement of huts and beneath that strata a tomb entrance similar to the tombs of Amarna Cache or Yuya and Tuya.

After more digging, they uncovered a stairway of sixteen steep well-cut steps leading to a doorway that still had its plaster covering intact. The doorway bore the stamp of the royal necropolis seal, which was that of Anubis above nine bound captives. Over the years, Mercer and Carter had seen that sealing in almost every eighteenth-dynasty tomb in the Valley. Later they discovered a different sealing with the cartouche of a king farther down on the lower part of the door. It was the cartouche of Tutankhamen. Along with the cartouche was evidence that the doorway had been broken into twice and twice plastered over. More digging was done on the next day, and another doorway was uncovered like the first one but with no plastered-over robber holes. Carter took down a small part of the right-hand corner of the door he widened with an iron rod, giving a dark peek into the tomb’s antechamber. From what Carter could see, the tomb looked intact and undisturbed.

Mercer woke again but this time not by anxious anticipation but by something he had remembered hearing earlier in the twilight of being half asleep. Had he heard something, or had he just recalled the residue of a dream? It sounded like a scream now that he thought about it. He listened for it again but heard only the desert night. He sat up, pushed the blanket away, and swung his feet to the floor. He was awake now and still clothed, having earlier lain down on the cot that way, too tired to undress. He strained to listen once more and heard nothing. Still, just to be on the safe side, he strapped on his pistol, took his torch, pushed open the tent flap, and stepped out into the moonlit night of the valley and looked about. He could see the small cliffs that bordered the valley and bordered the banks of the Nile on their far side. The Nile was the river that made Egypt, Egypt; for without the river, Egypt probably wouldn’t exist. Beyond that, he saw and heard nothing else. Even the soldiers’ camp was quiet—too quiet.

Carter hadn’t trusted the tomb workers or the local villagers to guard the tomb, subject as they were to the temptations of the poor and any community pressures they might be under; so Carter had soldiers brought to the valley to guard the tomb entrance, which consisted of a detail of six soldiers and a sergeant.

Mercer looked over at their tent. Nothing was stirring. Maybe they were all asleep waiting for the guard change, but it didn’t feel right, and Mercer felt he should check just to make sure. It was too late in the game for anything to go wrong now and have the tomb plundered right under their noses. He pulled open the tent flap and glanced in. It looked like three men were asleep in their beds. Risking a cursing out from them for his intrusion, Mercer put his light on the closest one. The man was lying on his back with his eyes open, staring at the top of the tent. He didn’t blink or move. Mercer pulled back the blanket and loudly gasped. The man’s chest was covered in blood. It looked like his throat had been cut. Mercer checked the other beds and found that the other two men had similar wounds.

He immediately thought of the tomb and left the tent quickly and ran for the entrance, then thought better of it, and began his approach cautiously but quickly. If someone was robbing the tomb, he didn’t want to make himself an easy target. He found one dead soldier at the tomb entrance, killed like the others. There were supposed to be three on guard, plus the sergeant who was unaccounted for. He moved down the stone steps quietly and listened for any voices or movement. There was no sound, but the second doorway now had a robber hole broken through it at the very bottom. Mercer listened once more for any sign of life before wiggling through the hole. It was a tight fit; but Mercer was not a big man and made it through, pistol in one hand, torch in the other. The tomb was still quiet.

He straightened up on the other side of the door and turned on his torch. What he saw was a room full of glittering gold everywhere; and as far as he could tell, nothing looked like it had been taken, but on the floor around the numerous treasures of the room was also an array of bare bones and skulls. Four of the skeletons looked like they had been here for ages, probably the remains of previous robbers; but three looked recent from the blood under them. And from the torn clothing on the floor near them, Mercer could tell that the sergeant and two of his men were the most recent victims here who had tried to rob the tomb.

Mercer moved closer, his face twisted into a stony rictus, his stomach nauseous and ready to unload. It looked like something had gotten to them and torn them to pieces. But it was more than that. Every bit of their flesh had been eaten and their bones picked clean, except for a tiny piece of flesh still clinging to a rib of one skeleton. But what could have done this—and so quickly? Mercer pondered. He knew of nothing that could strip a body that fast and clean except an army of African ants. There was nothing else in the room he could see—no person, no animal, not a trace of insects, except the ancient and recent dead. He shined his light into every nook and cranny of the room but could detect nothing amiss, nothing hidden.

What could have gotten in here? Or was still in here?

His nausea gave way to fear. The thought of whatever had happened in this tomb suddenly made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and sent a chill crawling up his spine. He had a very strong and unnerving feeling he was being watched by something unseen.

And whatever it was, was in the tomb with him.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

In the 1980s

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Stan Kessler’s grocery store was still blessed with the good location it had enjoyed from the store’s birth in the late 1920s. Since its conception, it stood at the beginning of a triangular block that split Franklin Place with Warren Avenue and always did a good area business, even surviving the depression and the drastically transforming neighborhood that had reshaped itself over the years since he was a kid growing up here. Recent affluence was taking over. Urban renewal, if you could call this area urban, was in full swing and had been for the last five or six years. Where once old homes and small cheap apartment buildings sat rooted for years, waiting out the years like senior citizens, the neighborhood now sported a new look of complex high-rise condo apartments, three in a two-block span, built in the last few years, twenty or thirty stories high. You could buy one apartment for close to a million if you wanted to, and lots of people wanted to. The high-risers all faced east toward the blue of Lake Michigan and the whitecaps that could be seen from their windows rolling inland in the distance. That was the main selling point for the condos—the lake and the view—plus the fact that it was close to downtown, only fifteen minutes by bus or car. Urban renewal was bringing economic renewal to the area, especially to those who owned and sold the new condo apartments. The developers did a land office business selling the units off. Besides the change in the area’s appearance, the ethnic diversity and temperament of the people who now lived there had changed too. Sixty years ago, the neighborhood was predominantly of Polish and German extraction and even had its old haunted house, or so the kids thought. But Mr. Karnofsky’s son, John, still lived in the house, and he never complained of any haunting, nor had his father when he was alive.

Then in the sixties and seventies, the east side of Milwaukee had an invasion of flower children, who preferred this part of the city maybe because of its proximity to the lake and set up camp. Some of the hippies were still around, if they were still called hippies, now that the eighties were here, bringing us a new world of communication where you no longer had to converse face-to-face with anyone but could do so electronically and often from a distance, with either voice or thumbs. But people seemed to have become coarser and ruder in manner, more violent in behavior, and the children more bratty than earlier generations. Kessler had purchased the store five years ago from Ra Nasser, or Ray Mercer, as he now calls himself. Ray’s parents had owned the store from the beginning, in those pleasant and peaceful days of yesteryear when doctors and milkmen still made trips to your home. The only people who came to your house now were those asking for money donations or home invaders. The Nassers were the only Egyptian family in the entire neighborhood. The Nassers were the only Egyptian family Kessler knew of in the city.

Except for the newer buildings, the architectural layout of the neighborhood was much the same as it was when Menkaura and Isis Nasser ran the store during the twenties and well into the seventies, a diversification of private homes and apartment buildings mixed among one another, much like the neighborhood populace they housed. However, in recent years, a push by developers saw the money potential of the near-lake location of the neighborhood and planned for the growth of new buildings or the renovating of older ones into expensive apartment condos. The tallest and biggest of the older buildings, and the only one worth redoing, was the Buckingham Apartments, recently remodeled from top to bottom five years ago and sold as luxury condo units to upgrade the neighborhood to an affluent level, drive out the remaining hippies and low-income families, and make money for the planners and promoters, who wanted to take advantage of the spectacular panorama of Lake Michigan as seen from the building’s highest floors. Two other condo apartment high-risers were quickly built and followed the success of the first one. The face of the neighborhood was changing as was the face of the city. Milwaukee used to be a heavy-industry town and a beer town. Now, Kessler didn’t know what it was. The only big brewer left was Miller. All the other beer giants were gone. He knew that change was inevitable. He also knew that it wasn’t always for the better.

The Buckingham was just across the street from Kessler’s store whose front windows had a ringside view of it. Kessler left the Nasser sign above the door since it had been up there for so long that no one knew the store as anything else but Nasser’s Grocery, and he left it there as a tribute to the Nassers for their many years of service to the community. They were a sweet couple, as lovable as cookies and milk, which they often treated to neighborhood kids, especially during the depression years, and to a young and impressionable Stanley Kessler, whose family lived nearby.

The store was still a small mom-and-pop operation but without the mom this time. Kessler was a widower, losing his wife twelve years ago to a battle with cancer and his mother and father soon after. He had never remarried, never felt the urge to, although at age sixty-five he was still young enough and could have if he wanted. He was still trim, could still see his feet, and his looks cracked no mirrors. Only since his wife’s and parent’s deaths, he had lost interest in just about everything, including the need to socialize with women, and, most of all, his job. He knew the owner, Ray, wanted to sell and retire, now that his parents were both gone. So he bought the store on a whim. Having become disillusioned with his profession, he chucked it and the headaches involved and became a small neighborhood businessman. After losing his father, he sold his home in Muskego and moved into his parents’ home, the home he grew up in and which was the first large flat north of the Buckingham and across the street from the Nasser residence. So helped by three hired workers, who more or less came with the store, he plunged into the grocery business without a second thought. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Mr. Davis, the butcher or meat processer, was a loner and curmudgeon and was five years older than Kessler. He took care of the small deli department of the store as he had for the Nassers. Maggie Simms was friendly and attractive and a single mom at forty-five who needed a job to raise her two kids. Jimmy Glenn, the youngest at eighteen, was well meaning but still suffered from an immature teenage mind and just needed a job to keep him off the streets. Jimmy stocked the shelves, and everyone else helped with the produce, except Mr. Davis and Maggie when she had to run the cash register and check out the customers.

Running the store could be hectic especially when supplies came in and needed to be inventoried or stocked or stored, but that was about the only time, and it wasn’t rocket science. Other than that, the store just about ran itself with the staff he had, which gave Kessler less stress and lots more free time than he ever had with his last job. It gave him time to read, usually books on history and new thought; listen to music; watch movie musicals, his favorites; look out his store-front windows; and study the people living and passing by in the neighborhood, as he was doing now.

As an ex-ADA, he was a keen observer of human nature. He had to be. There were a lot of liars and cons in the world. Sometimes he felt like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, who spied on his neighbors while his broken leg was on the mend. But unlike Jimmy, Kessler wasn’t wheelchair-bound and could do other things and leave the window if he wanted to. Not that he was constantly there, glued to the spot, although Maggie liked to kid him about it; but occasionally for short times, he was. And in the years he owned the store, he had learned about some people who lived in the area. And everyone had a story to tell.

Take Mrs. Ortez, who lived in one of less-expensive apartment buildings, which hadn’t been upgraded yet for higher-income renters. She was a hard worker, kept her family together by working two jobs while her husband hardly worked, and was drunk most of the time. Then there was Mr. Muir, a gentleman in his eighties who wore thick glasses and was lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s and was unflatteringly called Mr. Magoo by some of the brainless younger crowd in the neighborhood. Mr. Muir had to be constantly watched so he wouldn’t sneak out of the house alone and get lost. If he did, which occasionally happened, he had to be found and brought back. Then there was Mrs. Rudolph, a very attractive young housewife, who was entertaining another man two or three times a week while her husband was at work; and there were Mr. and Mrs. Dan Phillips, owners one of the luxury condos in the Buckingham. They frequented his store as did the other condo owners from the Buckingham, and Kessler would always enjoy a brief but pleasant and interesting conversation with Mr. Phillips. Dan Phillips was a good man. He was very friendly, and Kessler liked him, more so than his good-looking wife, who acted imperiously and imperviously to those around her, and had a habit of talking down to people she thought were not in the same social status level she imagined herself to be. And for the last six months, Mrs. Phillips seemed to have a new friend, tall and young with boy-toy looks, which was hard for Kessler to understand because the man appeared to be someone she would not usually accept as an equal. Kessler had seen him enter the building numerous times when Dan Phillips was not home. He could have been visiting someone else in the building, but Kessler didn’t think so. He had seen Mrs. Phillips and her new friend talking together on the street once or twice. And he had just seen him enter the Buckingham now.

Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Rudolph seemed to have a lot in common.

Their husbands deserved better.

2

Sheldon Daniels was a self-made millionaire who earned his money the easy way: he stole it from others, usually by swindling them out of property he wanted and they owned. His father had been the bank president of the bank Sheldon started working in twenty years ago. After retiring, his father turned the reins of the First Fidelity Bank over to him, hoping the added responsibility of running a bank would help him mature and grow up, which his parents could never accomplish. But after ten years on his own, Sheldon’s growth and maturity only rose as high as his groin and greed allowed. He was obsessed with women and money and went through as many mistresses as money and variety allowed or as many beautiful women he could find willing to go to bed with him for the large amounts of money he would lavish on them.

Sheldon was never a chick magnet. He never lit up a room with his presence when he walked in. He probably made the lights dim. He was just a plain-looking man of medium height who garnered no distinguished attention from others. He always had a fleshy look about him even when he was younger that added nothing attractive to his appearance. Although he had a wife, he knew that he had bought her too. Now he was nearing sixty, losing hair, and widening out in all directions with excessive fat, he had to pay dearly for any services granted him from women, which was nothing new. Sex with his wife had diminished with age and familiarity and desire, and, most of all, boredom. At the moment, he was on his way to his love-nest apartment and a special assignation with a long-legged blonde named Claire.

The man waiting for Daniels knew he had a hideaway apartment in this building on this floor that his wife did not know of. He knew Daniels would be arriving soon for his lunch date. He would arrive first as always, get off the elevator, hurry to his love nest, and anxiously await his paid companion fifteen to twenty minutes later. It was Daniels’s daily lunch schedule. Sometimes he had a different dish every day, depending on whether the woman wanted to come back for a return engagement or not. So far, the one called Claire had lasted the longest. The waiting man knew all this. He knew of Daniels’s lust and greed and how he swindled people out of homes and property. He knew Sheldon Daniels well. He knew Daniels had to pass this way after leaving the elevator and pass the stairwell door, where the man waited. The elevator was on the right of the stairwell; Daniels’s apartment was on the left. The man had the wheelchair ready for transportation. Had the fake oxygen mask to cover Daniels’s face so he wouldn’t be recognized once he had him under and compliant and wheeled him out of the building. The man checked his watch. It was nearly time. He should be coming. Then he heard the elevator chimes as the doors opened and closed and someone got off. The man could hear somebody walking on the carpeted hallway, coming his way.

The last thing Daniels remembered after stepping out of the building’s elevator and heading for his apartment were visions of Claire’s naked beauty he would shortly treat himself to when she joined him. Those thoughts were suddenly interrupted when someone grabbed him from behind and shoved a reeking wet rag over his nose and mouth, causing an unbearable burning pain to his face and tasted of something sweeter than sugar. Then everything went black. He couldn’t understand where the sun had gone.

When he opened his eyes again, his face was swollen from the chloroform and felt like it was on fire. He was tied hand and foot to a chair in a dingy room with damp and dirty wooden walls that looked like a section of someone’s cellar. There was one bare electric lightbulb overhead that hung down from its wires and gave a dim light to the desolate surroundings. In the penumbra of the light, a large spider was legging it up the nearest wall; and there was a man in the room with him, standing over him, looking down at him, smiling an unfriendly smile. A man he had never seen before in his life. Where the hell am I? Daniels demanded. He immediately thought he was being kidnapped.

You’re in a basement, the man said, tied to a chair.

What the hell’s the meaning of this? What do you want, money? Do you know who I am?

I know exactly who you are. You’re Sheldon Daniels, crooked banker and swindler and murderer.

Daniels squinted up at him, ignoring the accusations for the moment. Do I know you?

You should. You stole from me, or don’t you remember the people you cheated?

I haven’t cheated anyone. I’m a banker, for god’s sake.

The man scoffed. Exactly, and a very dishonest one at that.

Daniels was getting frightened. If this was joke from his competitors, it was getting out of hand. But he thought with his acquired power and prestige and status he should be able to set the matter straight and frighten the jokester. Enough was enough. Someone was pulling a bad prank on him—his wife came immediately to mind—or it was a certain mix-up. He wouldn’t put it past her. He should be able to bluster his way out.

Now, you listen here, he started in an authoritative voice. Untie me and let me go this minute, or I’ll have the law on you.

The man laughed. That’s funny coming from someone who continually breaks the law. The man paused. I guess you don’t read the newspaper headlines much, or do you just read the financial column? I’m the one the media has been writing about in the past. I was a big star three years ago.

What the hell’s this all about anyway? Daniels said, thinking, trying to remember what the newspapers were running, and registering only a vague memory of something that happened years ago about a serial killer never caught. Look, whoever you are, you’ve surely got the wrong man.

Let me enlighten you, the man said. Once upon a time, there was a very corrupt and greedy banker who lived in a big house on Lake Drive, continually cheated on his wife, and constantly stole from those less fortunate than himself by swindling their property away from them or even murdering them to get it. A Robin Hood he wasn’t. He was just a plain old modern-day hood and not a very good one. And this bad and greedy and evil man was none other than—you.

The man’s knowledge caused a chill to pass through Daniels, but he quickly said, That’s absurd. I’m not—

You’re what, Mr. Daniels?

What . . . what do you want with me? I’m no criminal.

Oh, but you are, Mr. Daniels, he said. I just told you what you were, and what I want is payback. What the Bible refers to as a righteous reckoning. It’s time to pay for your sins. And since the law won’t do it, and I haven’t the patience to wait for the afterlife to claim you and settle the score, I’m going to speed your settlement up and send you on your way to damnation. He moved to the door and turned back to Daniels. I’ll give you a short time to reflect on that. I’m glad to say that your punishment will be extremely painful but so very, very deserving. I hope you’re not afraid to be alone in the dark, but don’t worry, you won’t be alone for long.

The man reached up and turned off the light and closed the door and left, leaving the room in impenetrable blackness. Daniels shivered at the idea there might be something else in the room besides him. His mind jumped into a near-panic mode, and he conjured up visions of in the darkness with him. But then, maybe there wasn’t, he thought, trying to slow down his racing mind well past dread and fear and well into the start of panic. He intended to bolster himself up, to reason things out, to focus on the logic. Maybe the man was just trying to frighten him by leaving him alone in the dark. He knew that worked on some people. But if that was his game, he was badly mistaken. Lots of people feared the dark, but he wasn’t one of them. The lightless room didn’t bother him. He had never feared the dark. There was nothing in the darkness that wasn’t present when the light was on. Was there?

Daniels tugged at his restraints and struggled hard to free himself, but the duct tape was too tight; and after a time, he grew tired of the effort. He finally felt exhausted and gave up, slumped back as much as he could in the chair and became inert, resting and working to remain as calm as he could. That was it. Remaining calm was the key. He was certain the man was only messing with his mind, wanting to give him a good fright. He listened to the darkness but heard only a loud silence, then, after a while—something.

A faint sound that wasn’t there before. A soft sound from out of the darkness, not loud but still dissonant to his ears and mind that he couldn’t place. He froze and held his breath, listening without the sound of his labored breathing getting in the way. There was something there, some noise coming from behind the walls. He strained to listen, trying to put a name to what he was hearing. It was a sound he wasn’t familiar with, like a shuffling—a lot of shuffling—and it was getting louder.

Whoever—or whatever—was moving toward this room, getting closer; but he couldn’t see a thing in the inky darkness. He could only hear an almost inaudible breathing now. He held his breath and discovered that it was not his own. And there were voices . . . tiny voices . . . whispering . . . like children at play . . . too faint for him to understand . . . gibberish.

The air around him became brittle, and a strange energy filled the room. There was a menacing danger riding the energy. He could feel it, sense it. It was palpable, insidious, unseen, and creeping closer; and it was strange, for he had never been one to be sensitive to his surroundings before. He never was an intuitive person. He was usually impervious to his surroundings and other people unless he could use them to his advantage.

His eyes finally grew accustomed to the black pit of a room; and in the chiaroscuro of shadows, he distinguished something moving in the darkness along the floor. His skin crawled; and his entire body turned into lumps of goose bumps, causing his face to twitch and his eyes to nictitate uncontrollably. First one, then the other, then both together rapidly, which became more of a blinking seizure than a wink. Panic seized him again, stronger this time. His left thigh and leg burned with something wet and warm that ran down the trouser leg of his thousand-dollar suit and over his black wing-tipped shoes, puddling on the floor around them. His bladder had reacted to the stress. He had pissed in his pants.

What the hell was it? What the hell was in this room with him? Was there really something? Or was his captor merely trying to scare him silly, humiliate him and break his resolve, make him piss his pants? Which he had just done. That should be enough, shouldn’t it? What more did this guy want? The sounds stopped. The whispering stopped. The room became still, very cold.

Whatever it was, was coming toward him. He could hear nothing; but he could see movement, some at least, dark and blurry, small and undulating, coming closer, touching him. He cringed. It felt soft like fur, stiff like the bristles of a hairbrush.

What was it, a rat?

His leg tingled at the touch, which was not slimy but still unpleasantly repulsive. It made him feel unclean, even more so than wetting himself. Whatever it was backed away, lurking, waiting. Waiting for what? Moments later, Daniels waited too, waiting with it. His panic rose, became heavier, unbearable.

He tried desperately to think. What to do? There was something he could do—something. There was always something. How often had he proved that to himself? But after hour-long minutes of racking his brain for a solution, he painfully and fatally realized, with a dying man’s clear insight, there was nothing he could do. He was helpless. This was not a kidnapping. He would die. This maniac would kill him. And he didn’t want to die.

I’m sorry! he wailed, openly blubbering. I’m sorry! Let me go! Please, let me go!

Daniels’s eyes bulged with terror. He let out a strangled, gasping cry of hopeless anguish.

Tears filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Then the final degradation as his bowels let go; and he soiled himself further, fouling the air around him with the stink of his bowels. He cried harder and screamed. His entire body jerked and was suddenly awash in unbelievable pain. Something was biting him in his ankle, more than one something.

It was already too late to do anything but scream.

3

The first purging drink of the day at the Brass Rail in the downtown heart of the city was actually an after-work, late-afternoon drink that purged nothing or took his pain away, although it was nice to think so while he drank. The Scotch eased into him and felt good going down. Life was full of imperfect moments; but sometimes a good strong drink made a perfect moment, giving you a high paroxysm of contentment, albeit short-lived, until the feelings of discontent filtered back through the diminishing effects of the alcohol. Nor did the second Scotch on the rocks have much effect. Detective Matt Corbin was hoping it would change him back to the way he was years ago, change his brain cells from being what he had let himself become, but nothing happened as usual. The Scotch was probably killing off his brain cells. Maybe that would work too.

The place was filling up with the after-work crowd, seeking liquid solace from the pressures and stresses of the workday. Another bartender came on duty, making three. Matt concentrated on his drink and noticed several very attractive women enter the bar. They were all tall and thin and looked like models. It seemed like anorexia and emaciation were part of the tradeoff to modeling. A couple of the models gave him a second appraising look in passing.

Corbin usually got second looks from women. Not that he had anything near movie-star looks. His looks were more of the rugged variety. He stood a notch over six feet and had a nice lean build. His hair was dark, as were his eyes, very dark green and penetrating, which were, according to women, his best feature. His face hair grew out thick and heavy, almost bluish in color, and gave him the appearance of always needing a shave even when he didn’t. Sometimes when he dated or had a woman caller, he had to shave twice that day—once for work and once for the date—although dating was something he rarely did these days.

After two drinks, he filled his overcoat pocket with the bar nuts for his friends in the park and left. Two was his current limit when he was in control. Sometimes he wasn’t in control, and he drank more than he should. He walked back to his car and drove down to the lakefront and on into Juneau Park and left the car along one road, half on the grass and half off, and walked to the lagoon. This was the park he and his father, and sometimes his mother, would wind up strolling through when he was a kid and they visited the War Memorial or something going on at the lakefront. Patches of old dirty snow, the last remnant of winter, still dotted the ground here and there. He stopped and watched a brace of ducks glide around in the water for a while. One had a string of ducklings behind her. Several more birds came in for a water landing and settled on the surface, but these birds were much larger; and when he got a closer look at them, he saw they were some Canadian geese that had taken advantage of the lagoon. Geese were beautiful when in flight but rather messy when walking around on the ground.

Matt walked farther into the park to his favorite bench where he could see the vast ocean-like waters of Lake Michigan from the park bluff above and catch the sun as it set, if he stayed long enough to watch. It was early in the spring to be sitting on a bench outside in a park. March had just started, but he didn’t care. The sky was gray, but it wasn’t raining, and the lake water mirrored the sky with slate-gray waves that weren’t high for this time of the year. The lake looked rather placid but hard as its waves broke against the shoreline and rolled up on to the sandy beach below. A congregation of lake gulls had gathered and hopped about the wet sand, welcoming each wave with anticipation in the hope the waves might bring edible tidbits along with them.

For a March day, it wasn’t bad. The temperature was in the forties, creeping up to nearly fifty; and the wind was tolerable. Even so, he pulled up his coat collar and sat. He noticed other bench warmers in the park. There was only one couple on a nearby bench, both elderly. She was doing all the talking. He was looking at the water, not bothering to listen. Either he had heard it all before, or he was thinking of what he wanted to say next if she ever stopped talking. The other close benchers were men. They were men in the waning years of their lives, men with narrow faces, sitting and staring out at the water, waiting out the rest of what life offered.

Was that what he was doing? He hoped not.

This was his thinking bench. For him, sitting here on the park bench was like sitting in a church for some people. He often came here and tried to relax and think things out and resettle his mind. He liked to sit here when he was stifled by things in his life and felt the overwhelming need for change—to change himself. The solitude of the spot held a certain calming influence for a person who could let the calm in. The only problem with him was that he had trouble doing it; and after a year of bench sitting, nothing ever got thought out, much less settled, and that bothered him. He knew he was no longer the man he was eight or nine years ago. He had gone through a war and was older; for another, he was wifeless and turning into a person he did not like.

His most recent work partner thought he was a jerk, and he had to agree with her there. He didn’t need her to tell him that. He knew he had problems after the war, tried to pretend he didn’t, but that didn’t make them go away. They stuck to him like gum to the bottom of his shoe. It was easier to believe something was not happening then it was to face it. War will do that to you—screw you up inside out and sideways—but what screwed up his mind was his wife cheating on him the way she did, and he just couldn’t get over why she had.

That was a hurdle to clear and had trouble getting over and consequently had trust issues, everyday social issues, and working issues, just dealing with other people was a problem for him. And it showed. It was self-evident, as they say, although who the hell they were he didn’t know and couldn’t say and never had figured it out. He had gone through dozens of partners and didn’t blame them for not sticking. Hell, if he had to work with someone like him, he’d transfer too. Now he had another partner and wondered how long this one would stay.

The wildlife in the park consisted of dozens of gray squirrels and lake gulls. He tried to think of the correct name for a bunch of squirrels. He thought it was dray, a dray of squirrels, but wasn’t sure. Today, all the gulls were down at the beach, scrounging for tidbits along the sand or flying low over the dark water looking for foolish fish swimming near the surface, and didn’t bother coming up to the park benches. But the squirrels were close by, and it didn’t take long for several to congregate and hop around and stare at him. A few sat up on their haunches, waiting for a treat. It was getting to be an old routine. He dug into his coat pocket and tossed them peanuts he had taken from the peanut bowl at the bar for the occasion. A few ate them right away or just kept stuffing them in their mouths as fast as they could pick them up and shove them in until their jowls looked like small inflated balloons. Others ran off with their prize—perchance to bury it, or Matt thought—probably to later forget where the hell they had buried it. He often wondered if they could remember.

Feeding the little buggers, are you? one of the park habitués said, who had been rummaging through the park trash containers for discarded treasures.

Matt looked up. This one’s name was Harold. Harold was a street person who lived as best he could in the park or anywhere else he could find where he was safe and wasn’t chased away by people who didn’t like his kind around. Harold had on an army fatigue jacket that was too small on him and a pair of dark-brown baggy pants too large and too long, folding over several times on top of his battered tennis shoes, which were blue with white highlights and had a rip across the toe section of the right foot. He wore a green wool cap on his head with the Packer logo on it pulled down over his ears. His face was strong with intelligent eyes and features, and his cheeks were covered with a long growth of whiskers that hadn’t been close to a razor in months. Matt guessed his age at somewhere around sixty or not that far from it. From previous chats, he knew Harold was a Korean war vet who had fallen on hard times and was probably from the East Coast. His speech had that tight-mouthed, Wasp drawl to it common to that part of the country. Judging from his speech, Matt could tell that Harold was an educated man, who seemed to have just given up hope after he lost everything and didn’t want to go through the game of life again—having things and losing things. Harold just gave up the ghost and threw in the towel. Matt didn’t blame him. He knew the feeling only too well. But that’s about all he knew about his sometime park companion. He still couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing here in Wisconsin. If he was traveling, you would think he’d pick a warmer state.

Hello, Harold, Matt said. How’s it going?

Same as yesterday, Matt, Harold said, and the day before that, but I’m still hanging around.

He joined Matt on the bench and sat and became quiet for a while. Harold would often turn quiet and stare into the distance out over the water. Matt never knew what he was trying to see. Michigan was on the other side of the lake, but you couldn’t see its shores from here. Maybe he was looking for all the things he had lost, which probably wasn’t a good thing to dwell on. Matt smiled to himself. Look who’s giving advice. Wasn’t he doing much the same thing when he came here?

You ever wonder how it all went south? Harold said. The government sent you off but didn’t help put the pieces back or hold them together again when you returned.

Matt nodded. There was no warmth in the nod. He knew of that which Harold spoke and agreed with him.

The squirrels were milling around, looking for more nuts. Matt emptied his pocket of all remaining nuts and scattered them around. The squirrels gathered them up when they hit the ground and left after a time, all except one squirrel that remained sitting up on its haunches, straight as a pipe, his mouth bulging full of nuts, but ever hopeful for more.

Life is full of disappointments, Harold said to the squirrel, staring at him. When no more treats were forthcoming, the squirrel glanced at Matt, then gave Harold a squinty-eyed look, dropped down to all fours, and hopped off, looking for more congenial company and greener pastures.

How are things in the park? Matt said.

Tolerable, very tolerable.

That’s good.

Think there’s a place where everything stays right? Harold said, absently.

Matt wondered where that thought came from. Yeah, somewhere over the rainbow.

Shit, I guess we won’t find it today. There’s no rainbow. The sky’s as gray as pewter.

Harold stopped talking and stared out over the lake again. Stillness permeated the air.

Sometimes Matt thought they were both suffering from the fog of cognitive dissonance.

How can you love someone, Harold said after a while, and fuck a bunch of other people?

Matt gave him a long look, taken slightly aback by the question. Harold must be traveling down memory lane today. Usually, their conversations were limited to the weather, the shitty state of the country, and the fucking state of human nature in general. Nothing personal, nothing heavy was discussed, until now.

I don’t know, he said. Some people can do it with ease.

Harold nodded as if that explained everything.

I’ve never asked, he said, and you’ve never said, but I think you lost your wife too. You have that look about you, that kicked-right-between-the-eyes look, that wives like to give you when they’ve been caught sleeping around and pretend it didn’t mean anything. I still have the kick mark on my forehead. It’s hard to get rid of. It tends to make the injured one feel incompetent, like you did something wrong, and failed as a man and husband. It’s like the mark of Cain or the scarlet letter, with an F and not an A.

Matt smiled. Yeah, it is, he said but didn’t elaborate on Harold’s comment, however intuitive it was. Matt no longer wore his wedding ring; he had dropped it in the toilet bowl years ago and flushed it down where it belonged.

Wives are hard to figure, Harold went on. They say they love you, but you wonder if they really do. I knew a guy whose wife said she loved him but was part of a call-girl ring for a couple of years until she got caught. She said she did it because she liked the attention, it was exciting, and she liked being desired and liked the money that men were more than willing to pay, getting up to a thousand a night for her services easily. She said it wasn’t about the sex at all. She still loved her husband, and she was able to distance herself from the sexual situations with other men. Another one I knew started screwing around on her husband because she got bored at home. She said it didn’t mean anything.

Makes you wonder about the value of marriage, Matt said, or the sense of it.

Harold went right on talking as if Matt hadn’t spoken.

So I guess she threw everything away that her and her husband had, Harold said, over nothing, something that didn’t mean anything, not to her, anyway. You know, I could never understand when people say that. Is that supposed to make it all right? Is it supposed to make the injured party feel better because it really didn’t mean anything? They were just screwing for the sake of screwing and not for love. Where does one start and the other leave off? Where’s the dividing line that separates the two? Maybe love is passé now. He paused. The guy cried when he found out she was cheating on him. He still cries when he talks of it, and that was a while ago. She begged him to forgive her.

Did he? Matt said. Are they still together?

No, he kicked her out. He said he could forgive a mistake, but what she did was a betrayal, and he could never forgive that. You don’t forgive betrayals. He said he loved her, but he couldn’t stand to look at her anymore. The vision of some guy banging her was forever burned in his memory. Every time he looked at her, he saw that vision.

Smart man, Matt said. He had come to the same conclusion about his wife after catching her in bed with someone else, but he didn’t tell that to Harold.

Yeah, wives are hard to figure. Sometimes I think you’re better off without a wife or without anyone. That way, you don’t get hurt.

Matt had to agree with him but wondered if Harold was talking about himself. Matt felt sad for him and for himself. His sadness was never that far under his emotional surface if he thought about it or if someone made him think about it. Sometimes it wasn’t easy not to. If this is where guys wound up after your wife cheated on you or walked out on you, he had a lot to look forward to. Maybe parks were the graveyards of dumped husbands. A breeding grounds for common-man philosophers like Harold. He would be one of the best.

Wives and lovers, Harold lamented. That’s the name of that tune.

So how does one do that, distance yourself from loving one man and screwing another or many others? Matt said after a time. I guess fucking and making love are two sides of a very different coin. Times have changed drastically. I think we’ve entered into the dominant fucking phase of life now. Like you said, love seems to have become too old-fashioned to bother with. Lust seems to have replaced it.

Unfortunately, that’s so very true. Maybe it’s all about power, even one person’s power over another. Men like to control women, and women like to manipulate men. Power is a great aphrodisiac.

Matt nodded. Money might be greater. He paused, thinking. Then again, money and sex are a hard combination to beat. I suppose fucking compared to loving is like situational ethics.

Harold nodded back. Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

That’s probably about half right.

I’ll take it. If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for me.

Better than nothing.

Maybe with today’s mores, sexual exclusivity is hard to maintain, Harold said like he was adding a footnote to their conversation. Years ago, if you were dating someone, it didn’t mean you were sleeping with them. Today, it goes hand in hand, synonymous.

You could be right, Matt said. If you ever figure it all out, let me know.

Matt stood up and slipped Harold a five spot from his wallet, which he did occasionally but not always, and little more than a few bucks here and there and never over five.

Buy yourself some hot food, he said, and don’t spend it on liquor. Then with a slight smile added, Beware the Ides of March, Harold.

Harold palmed the five. Thank you, Matt. You’re a hell of a scholar and a gentleman for a cop but a kindred spirit nonetheless. Where are you off to? Perhaps a romantic encounter to make the beast with two backs?

Matt frowned, not catching his meaning, then caught on, knowing he meant a sexual encounter. "Huh? Oh, more Shakespeare? Hamlet?"

"Othello," he said with an I-know-stuff shrug.

Matt nodded agreement and then said, Just going home, Harold. Just going home.

Matt got his smile back and walked leisurely back to his car, leaving the park in the care of the squirrels and gulls and in the good hands of Harold. He passed a young couple on the walk, laughing and clinging to each other with love in their eyes, going in the opposite direction, maybe going back to their home. The couple struck a lonesome chord in him, one that made him feel hollow and empty inside. A line from a Robert Frost poem came to mind. Harold had put his mind on a poem track. Home is where when you go there, they have to take you in. Only there was no one there to take him in unless he visited his parents, and he didn’t feel up to doing that. He had nothing planned for the rest of the evening. There was nothing or no one on his social calendar that needed to be taken care of. He’d probably sit in his apartment and watch some TV or read a book or think about his encapsulated life or he could drink more. There was always that.

The young couple came to mind again. He wondered how long their love would last for each other. Love seemed to have a shelf life all its own. It either turned sour or self-destructed. Harold said love was passé. Maybe it was. There seemed to be a lack of it in the world these days, or maybe it was always that way. So far this week, he had arrested a mother for sticking her baby in a microwave because it wouldn’t stop crying. He had arrested a father for sewing his baby’s ass closed with fishing line so the baby wouldn’t keep fouling its diapers. Both babies died. And earlier today, he had arrested good old Victor Landon again. Landon was a piece of shit. He was a twenty-five-year-old spoiled brat from a wealthy family with plenty of money and clout, who liked to rape and beat up young women. He had been arrested twice before, but each time Mama and Papa would pay off the victims with a healthy piece of change, and they wouldn’t press charges. Landon skated. This time paying off the victim would prove to be a little difficult. Landon went too far with his brutality and killed the girl. There was no doubt in Matt’s mind that the guy was a sociopath or that the family’s big money would buy the bastard’s freedom again. The best thing the law could do to protect society from guys like Landon would be to put a bullet in his brain, but that would not happen.

The world was fucked up. And so was his life.

He needed a drink. Maybe more than one.

Harold watched Matt leave. Then he heaved himself off the bench and resumed his scavenging among the park trash baskets for anything discarded that he might turn into a profit. He looked around for his friend Rafferty but didn’t see him. He and Rafferty usually met up and combined their days find. Rafferty was another discarded orphan of the social world as much as he was. Perhaps it was too early. He didn’t have a watch, and he couldn’t tell the time by looking at the sun like some bullshiters claimed they could, but he could tell that the sun was lowering in the sky and evening was about three hours away. Previously, Harold had worked his way down to this bench when he spotted Matt and interrupted his treasure hunt to chat. He had three more areas to check yet, which would complete his rounds and which would take him down to the lagoon. He scanned the immediate area. There were two baskets off to his right that he hadn’t looked in—three if you counted the one almost hidden by bushes. He walked over to the nearest one and hummed If I Were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof.

4

On the twelfth floor of the Buckingham Building, Karen Phillips looked nervously out of her condo windows for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. The scene afforded her a picturesque view of Lake Michigan, which she wasn’t interested in seeing at the moment but was interested in the glimpse it gave her of the street below and the building entrance. She saw nothing she expected to see and turned away in frustration. Days like this always made her feel like something was about to go wrong. Just like she felt she was growing older faster than she wanted to. At twenty-nine, she was a very attractive and sexy young woman of medium height with long light-brown hair and bedroom-brown eyes. From the looks men gave her, she knew they desired her, and that gave her a sort of high, but what she was doing recently was pure foolishness. When her doorbell finally rang, she jumped slightly and hurried to answer her door.

I thought you’d never get here, she said,