Deeper Than the Dead

21

Game one of the 1985 National League Championship Series. The St. Louis Cardinals versus the incredibly awesome best team in baseball: the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The day before, Tommy had thought about how much fun it would be: just him and his dad on the couch in the family room, watching the game, eating hot dogs and popcorn, drinking sodas (strictly forbidden by his mother). Wednesday nights his mother had a meeting of one of her many organizations and didn’t get home until late.

Now the game was playing, and Tommy wanted to lose himself in it and get excited and cheer for his team, but he couldn’t make himself feel the way he wanted to. He sat on the couch, his too-big Dodgers T-shirt swallowing him up, his scorecard abandoned on the coffee table with his Dodgers souvenir pencil. Fernando Valenzuela was pitching. The Dodgers were up by one in the top of the sixth.

His father sat at the end of the couch, reading newspapers during the commercials. Los Angeles Times, Santa Barbara News-Press, The Oak Knoll Independent. Every so often he would look over.

“What are you thinking, Sport?”

Tommy shrugged.

“Are you hungry? I can make the popcorn now.”

Tommy shook his head. He glanced over at the paper his dad had put down on the coffee table. There was a photograph of yellow crime-scene tape tied to two trees and uniformed deputies bent over looking at the ground. The headline read: MURDER IN THE PARK. Below it, in smaller bold type: CHILDREN MAKE GRUESOME DISCOVERY.

“I’m just making sure none of these has the names of you kids in the story,” his father said.

Tommy said nothing. He didn’t want his name in the paper. Unlike Wendy, he wanted this all to go away as quickly as possible.

“Dad? What’s a cereal killer?” he asked. “How can you kill someone with cereal?”

“Not cereal, like breakfast cereal,” his father said. “Serial with an s, as in a series of events. A serial killer kills a number of people over a period of time.”

“Why would anyone do that? Are they mad at the people they kill? Or are they just crazy?”

His father seemed to think about his answer before he gave it. “I don’t think people really understand why someone turns out to be a serial killer. I think it’s really complicated. But it’s not something you need to worry about, Tommy.”

“How do you know? What if the killer saw us, and now he wants to kill us too?”

“That isn’t going to happen,” his father promised. “I’m not going to let that happen. Miss Navarre isn’t going to let that happen. Detective Mendez isn’t going to let that happen. You don’t need to worry, son. You’re safe. We’re all going to keep you safe. Okay?”

Tommy didn’t answer because he didn’t want to tell a lie. Instead, he sat closer to his dad and pretended to feel safe while the Dodgers came up to bat.

Later in the evening, a few blocks away, Wendy sat under her covers with a flashlight illuminating her makeshift tent as she scribbled away in a spiral notebook.

She had told Tommy she was going to write their story and sell it to Hollywood for a movie. Maybe they would even get to be in it. She liked the idea of being an actress, as long as it didn’t get in the way of her being a journalist. All Tommy had said was that it was going to be a really short story.

“No, it isn’t,” Wendy said. They had been sitting outside in the sun during the lunch hour, Wendy busily making notes. “Finding the dead body is just the first scene. Now we have to find out who the dead lady is, and who killed her, and why.”

“That’s the detective’s job,” Tommy pointed out. “I’m not even allowed to play outside now.”

Wendy made a face. “Your mother can’t watch you all the time. She has a job. We have to go back to the woods.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“It’s grounded until further notice.”

“Don’t be such a wuss,” Wendy said, annoyed. “In a couple of days our parents won’t care anymore. Promise you’ll go with me back to the woods.”

Tommy looked frustrated with her, as he often did. But he always caved in the end.

She batted her eyelashes like her mom did when she wanted something from her dad. “Come on, Tommy. You said you would protect me. You can keep an eye out in case that dog comes back.”

“Or the killer,” Tommy said.

“That would make a great scene in the movie!”

She made notes about it now, as she hid under her covers. She and Tommy were in the woods, creeping carefully toward the place where the body had been buried. It would be almost dark. Maybe there would be thunder and lightning. That would add to the excitement. The killer would be creeping through the woods too, watching them. And just as she and Tommy came around a huge tree, the lightning would flash, and THERE HE IS!!!! Looming over them, his ugly face twisted, eyes bugging out of his head, clawlike hands grabbing at them. Their hearts would be pounding as they jumped back and screamed.

Tears filled Wendy’s eyes, and she flung the covers back sending pen and notebook flying. OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD!!! WHAT IF IT REALLY HAPPENED THAT WAY?

Wendy leapt out of bed and beat it out of her room and down the stairs, yelling, “MOM!!!”

In another house, in another part of town, Cody Roache was awake in his bed too. He didn’t like being awake at night when his mom was asleep and his dad was at work. He always heard sounds in the house. Floorboards creaking. Footsteps coming down the hall. And he would hold his breath and try to listen harder until all he could hear was the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears.

He sat in his bed with the covers pulled up around his chin. He was shaking like crazy. Dennis would have called him a pussy.

Dennis had seen dead bodies in the woods. Cody thought about running through the woods, playing commando, stepping on the dead bodies as they ran. He thought he might never sleep again, because in his nightmares he was running through the woods and a hand reached up out of the ground and grabbed him by the ankle. Then he fell down. Then all the dead people started getting up out of the ground as zombies, their flesh rotting, eyeballs falling out of their heads. And he ran to Dennis for help, but Dennis turned into a zombie too, and came after him.

Don’t worry about Dennis, Miss Navarre had said.

Miss Navarre was nice. Cody appreciated her coming over just to see him. That had never happened before in his whole life—an adult coming to the house just to see him—and not because he was in trouble, either.

But Miss Navarre didn’t know very much about Dennis. She didn’t know the kinds of things Dennis liked to talk about, like doing bad things to girls. And she didn’t know that sometimes Dennis would just get really mad and hit him for no reason. If Miss Navarre knew those things about Dennis, Cody thought, she would be scared too. And she probably wouldn’t want to sleep, either.

Dennis didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to be mad. He wanted to hit someone, kick someone. Miss Navarre came to mind. Stupid bitch. It was all her fault his father had come after him with his belt. If she would have minded her own business, but no, she had to COME TO HIS HOUSE to personally tell his parents he had been absent from school.

His back and butt were still stinging like stripes of fire where his father had hit him for lying and for skipping school. He lay now on his stomach because he couldn’t lie any other way. He pushed himself up onto his knees, the anger inside him spinning around like a wild animal. He didn’t know what to do with it, so he started hitting his pillow with both fists, over and over and over.

He pretended the pillow was Miss Navarre’s face, and he punched her and punched her until there was nothing but blood.

Stupid bitch. Fucking cunt.

The rage welled up in him again, and he punched the pillow some more until his arms were tired and tears were running down his face.

He would show them all one day. Nobody would push him around or embarrass him or tell him he was worthless. He would be the one doing the pushing. They would all be afraid of him.

Dennis slipped out of bed, got down on the floor, and stuck his arm as far under the bed as he could reach until he got hold of what he wanted. The flashlight he had shoplifted from the hardware store. With the yellow beam of light leading his way, he went to his closet and dug down deep through the pile of dirty clothes to the old cigar box he kept hidden there.

Pride filled him that he had been able to get away with it. No one had seen him take the thing. No one had suspected he had it in his pocket. Cops all around, and no one had caught him.

He took the box over by the window and set it down on the chair. Still holding the flashlight in one hand, he opened the lid and peered inside.

The cigar box was where he kept his most treasured possessions: his pocketknife, the cigarettes he had stolen from his mother, a lighter, the dried-out head of a rattlesnake he had watched a gardener kill, and his newest, most prized addition.

It was squishy and had started to smell, but that only added to the wonderful grossness of it. This was what the corpse would smell like if they had left it in the ground. It excited him to think about it.

He smiled as he carefully lifted the treasure out of the box and held it under the light.

The severed finger of a dead woman.