Hiss Of Death

Flopped backward over a large plastic ball, Harry did sit-ups, hands clasped behind her head, all while trying to keep the ball steady.

“Crap,” she muttered under her breath as she rolled off. Another tough early-morning workout.

“Butter butt, you slid off.” Noddy offered zip sympathy.

“Tell me why I’m doing this again?”

“Pride.” Noddy lifted one eyebrow. “You want a few more? To look sexy for your wonderful husband, to strengthen your body while it struggles with an invader.”

“Oh, right.” Harry put her two feet flat on the floor and scooched up on the ball.

“This is one of those great core exercises. It works so much. I know you can feel it.”

“Yep.” Harry started again. After doing three sets of ten reps, she gratefully stood up.

“Assume the position.” Noddy pointed to the ball.

“I did them.”

“Yes, you did, and now you’re adding a twist, literally. You only have to do one set. Right elbow to left knee. Left elbow to right knee.”

Harry found this more difficult than a regular sit-up. Gritting her teeth, she was determined not to slide off. She managed, standing up, dripping with sweat.

“Need a break?”

“One sip.” Harry toweled off, picked up her bottle of water, unscrewed the cap, and took a swig. Water never tasted so good. “All right. What next?”

“Take heart. You’re very nearly finished for the morning.”

“Oh, thank you, Jesus.” Harry rolled her eyes. After all this, beating cancer and figuring out why Paula and Thadia died should be a cinch.

“Last one. Then you do some warm-downs, as I think of them. Okay, grab two dumbbells.”

Harry walked to the rack, picked them out. Gray mats covered the floor. A smaller, volleyball-sized ball with two rubber handles was there, as well as two medicine balls on the floor.

From here, she saw the main room of Heavy Metal Gym. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Annalise pulling down one hundred pounds on the lat machine. Toni Enright was there somewhere, but Harry couldn’t see her.

“When do I graduate to the real weight room?” She faced Noddy.

“Don’t think of it as graduation. You build muscle there. You build some here, too, but the purpose of these exercises is to make you strong and supple. This can improve reflexes, especially the explosive exercises.”

“Do I need firecrackers?” Harry asked. She wondered whether if Thadia had had better reflexes she wouldn’t have ended up with her throat slashed.

Noddy smiled. “You perform each exercise very quickly, usually four sets of ten for each exercise, twenty seconds in between. You’ll start some of those next week. You haven’t been at this all that long. Don’t be impatient.”

“Right.” Harry sighed.

“You’re doing good. You started in pretty good shape, an advantage. Now give me those dumbbells.”

Noddy knelt on the floor, then got in a push-up position, her hands on the dumbbells. She dipped low, one good push-up, torso straight, then she pulled the right dumbbell up to her chest, a rowing motion. After returning the dumbbell to the floor, she repeated the same sequence for her left side.

“Got it?” Noddy handed the dumbbells to Harry.

“Got it.” Harry dropped down, fired off ten.

This was easier than the big ball until she had to do four sets. Still, she liked it better than struggling to keep her balance. It felt good to make her mind a blank. Maybe working out would help her look at things with a new perspective.

After that, Harry did some more stretching, then on to the stationary bicycle, another exercise she disliked. She didn’t mind running in the open fields on the farm, nor did she mind bicycling down the farm roads, although she preferred riding a horse. To sit there—pedaling and going nowhere—tried her patience. But she did it. Once she’d put in twenty minutes, she gratefully retired to the locker room. She couldn’t remember a shower feeling so good.

Few women came in at this early hour. She’d hoped she’d catch Annalise and Toni, but they’d wrapped up their workout and already left.

On Harry’s way out, Noddy came out from her small office. “Hey, Toni left this for you.”

Harry took the magazine, opening it to the page marked by a paper clip. “That was nice of her.”

It was a glossy women’s magazine. Harry rarely read them, but this one had a roundtable discussion of five women who had various types of cancer.

“You know what I find about people who have recovered from anything, illness or injury?” Noddy asked.

“What?”

“Most of them renew themselves,” Noddy said.

“Yes, it’s true. I’m asking myself questions I never asked before, and hey, I’m here.”

“Exactly.” Noddy smiled.

Driving home, Harry opened the windows to breathe in the sweetness of spring. Once on Route 250, she put them up again as her speed picked up.

Difficult as those workouts were proving to be, Harry found that once home, she burned through her chores, feeling much more energetic. She also found that her concentration was improving.

“I wish she’d take us to the gym.” Tucker followed behind as Harry ladled out sweet feed.

“Someone would complain about allergies.” Pewter also followed, making frequent stops to check for anything left on the aisle floor that might prove edible.

“There are shots for that.” Mrs. Murphy walked ahead of Pewter.

“Well, what did people do before the shots? What did people do when George Washington was president?” Pewter batted a piece of molasses along the aisle floor. “They sneezed and lived with it. Now everyone has a condition. Wimps. They run to the doctor for a shot or a pill. If you ask me, those allergy doctors should give us a percent of their wages for sending people to them.”

Simon, the possum, hearing this, peeped over the edge of the hayloft. “You woke me up.”

“It’s not my fault you’re a nocturnal creature.” Pewter exaggerated her sashay.

Mrs. Murphy climbed the ladder to the hayloft to catch up with Simon. Pewter and Tucker remained below.

The perfect morning with low humidity added to Harry’s returning energy. The exercise helped, but also the effects of the radiation were wearing off. She had two more treatments. All she could think about was being done with it.

Then she’d need to go in for six-month checkups. More money spent.

She couldn’t help but fret over the cost as the bills came in for use of the operating room, from the anesthesiologist, the post-op room, the hospital room, the surgeon’s bill. That bill she gladly paid, for she liked Jennifer and was relieved at her small scar. It could have been so much worse.

She knew she’d spend the rest of her life enduring checkups, blood tests, and mammograms. On one level, she didn’t care. If it wasn’t for Fair, Susan, and her friends, she’d probably bag it. She’d be in more danger from their anger than from the cancer recurring.

Walking back from her grapes—happy as she could be with how healthy they looked at this early stage, dew on the leaves—her three best friends in attendance, she saw Coop tearing down the driveway.

Tucker’s ears pricked. “Wonder if she has treats.”

“She usually doesn’t,” Pewter replied.

“Yeah, I know, but I’m just in the mood for a bone or cookies,” the intrepid dog said.

Harry reached Coop’s Dodge just as the lanky blonde stepped out. “Hey, neighbor.”

“Hey back at you. I brought over all the registration papers, the figures for T-shirt sales, pink wristbands. Here’s the final accounting for the race, plus all the registration papers.”

“I thought Nita was doing all that.”

“She did. That’s why everything is tidy, simplified, and down to the penny. I ran into her at the post office, and she asked me to take the papers to Cory. She was going to do it, but the insurance people want to go over the Pinnacle Records site one more time. I meant to do it, then I forgot I unloaded the truck and saw the red folder. So I figured I’d pick you up and we could drop it off together, then go over to the nursery on Route One-fifty-one, Jeffrey Howe’s place.”

Immediately interested, Harry eagerly agreed, because she wanted to plant Leyland cypress. “I bet it takes months or even a year before Al and Nita get a check from the insurance company. They need it to rebuild.”

“The company has to establish that the Vitebsks didn’t set the fire themselves.”

“Coop, that’s absurd. Surely John Watson doesn’t believe that.” She named the owner of Hanckel-Citizens, a local insurance company.

“Of course he doesn’t, but he finds the best, cheapest insurer, and those companies are gigantic. So they send their own team. I talked to Marsha Moran about it,” Coop said, mentioning a member of the Hanckel-Citizens team. “She said it was standard procedure. John and Marsha will also be at the site to be sure that the investigators understand that Al and Nita are people of good character.”

“With so much of what we do in the hands of giant corporations or the government, I’m surprised anyone cares.”

“Hey, John and Marsha do. You’re sounding like a cynic.”

“Oh, just a tad. Let’s go in my truck. Then the kids can come along.”

“Oh, pile in.” Coop opened the door to her vehicle. “What’s a little cat and dog hair?”

“Hooray.” The cats jumped in.

Tucker, lifted up with a grunt by Harry, grumbled, “I don’t shed that much. Your old mohair sweaters shed more than I do.”

Cory lived some miles behind the Miller School. The road, parts paved and parts not, would lead you to an I-64 ramp. He and his wife had built one of the very expensive houses within four miles of the interstate.

Harry loved looking at the countryside, which was easier to do when someone else was driving. “You going to leave this at Cory’s door?”

“Nita said this is one of his consultation days, so he might still be there. Isn’t she something? She put everything in that plastic red folder. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to find stuff if it’s in colored paper or a colored box?”

“I have. She’s smart, Nita. Cory doesn’t do but so much—well, he can’t really for the five-K, but he is our titular head, and he should have copies of everything. When did they do that?” Her attention was diverted by a large new feed shed for cattle.

“This year. I don’t come down this road often.”

“Me neither. Good design. I get more excited about barns, sheds, kennel designs than I do house designs. I really try to read the house magazines, but it’s all so fussy.”

“Well, Harry, it’s another way for people to show off.”

“I suppose.”

At Cory’s driveway, they turned left off the road just in time to see him get into his green Lampo. He did not see them.

There was suddenly a startlingly bright flash, and Harry saw the physician jolt violently upward in his seat.

“Oh, my God!” she shouted.

Coop pressed the gas pedal, fishtailing up the long crushed-gravel drive, flopping the animals back in the seat. She skidded to a halt behind the Lampo.

As the two women opened the car doors, they ran toward the electric car but didn’t dare approach it.

Cory Schaeffer was banging back and forth in the seat. His body would hit the seat, then lurch furiously forward to smash his chest against the wheel. His face was twisted and barely recognizable. He was being fried at 440 volts at forty amps.

“Coop, if we touch anything, we’ll be electrocuted.”

Coop ran back to her truck, grabbed her cell, and immediately called 911. Then she called the Lampo dealer. Completing that call, she closed the door of the truck because she didn’t want the animals to get out. Coop, regardless of the crisis, had presence of mind, which was partly her personality and partly her law enforcement training.

Harry had turned away from the dreadful sight. “I can’t bear it.”

They could hear him thumping back and forth. Worse, they could smell the fat in his body frying.

“The battery goes for over three hundred miles. Can’t stop this.”

“I called Barker Rund, the Lampo dealer. He’s on his way,” Coop said.

“What can he do?”

“All dealers have a skeleton keyless entry. He’s bringing it. If he hits it, the car will turn off. He’s on Pantops Mountain. I called to get him a sheriff’s escort. They should be here in fifteen minutes, twenty at the latest.”

“Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“No. I’ve seen some pretty terrible things, but nothing like this. Thank God the kids are in school. Can you imagine if they witnessed this?”

“I don’t see any other car, so let’s hope his wife doesn’t get home until she’s picked them up from school. My God, this is like the electric chair.”

“Worse.”

Coop called it to the minute that Barker Rund with his head mechanic, escorted in a squad car by Sheriff Shaw, arrived. To their credit, neither the dealer nor the mechanic puked. Barker hit the remote, the motor stopped, and the hideous remains of Cory slid down the seat.

Rick, tough, gulped. “Coop, go down and block the driveway until the ambulance arrives, will you? Even if his wife comes home, don’t let her up here.”

Harry sat in the truck with Coop as she turned and drove down the drive.

Back at the horrible scene, Rick asked Barker, “Can he be removed without danger?”

“Yes, now he can. But to be sure, we’ll drain the battery. It’s far too heavy to lift out.”

“Barker, you’re sure?”

“I’m sure. The circuit is broken. And Tom grabbed a tester just to make certain there’s no leak.”

Tom was the head mechanic.

Rick, still unconvinced, followed the men to the car. “Barker, how could something like this happen?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Jesus Christ, Sheriff, do you think I’d sell cars if I thought they were capable of doing this to someone?”

Rick, knowing Barker was shaken, soothingly said, “I know you wouldn’t.”

Working as fast as possible, the body was removed before Mrs. Schaeffer and the children got home. Rick took pictures with his cellphone. They may not have been protocol, but being the boss means you know when to drop protocol without jeopardizing a case.

The car was towed to the dealership. The mechanics found out what had happened easily enough. Someone had direct-wired the battery to the metal frame of the driver’s seat. When Cory turned on the car, he was instantly electrocuted. The pain had to have been ferocious. He could have felt it for only a second or two, but he did feel it.

• • •

Later, Harry was home, Fair with her, when Coop called.

“I’m sorry to call so late, but I thought you’d like to know that a yellow cylinder like what you found at Paula Benton’s was in the backseat of the Lampo.”

“What in the hell is going on?” Harry blurted out.

“I don’t know. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Well, as all right as I can be. What about you?”

“Same. I keep thinking I will have seen everything in my line of work, every humiliation and violence to which the human body can be subjected, and then there’s something new.”

After talking a bit more, Harry hung up. She told Fair the news.

“Not one of them was a horseman,” he replied.

“This is so bizarre. But if there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s that what seems bizarre always makes sense once we find out the killer’s reason.”

“If only she hadn’t said ‘we,’ ” Tucker wisely noted.