Seven ways to die

42

Three Months Later

The sun was setting on the approaching horizon, and Cody recognized the first sights of his native State. “That’s Borah Peak,” he said, “the highest mountain in Idaho. We’re nearing the State line.”

Amelie’s eyes were shining with excitement. She pressed his hand.

And, as though he understood Cody’s words, a gravelly bark came from the backseat driver.

Cody glanced in the rearview mirror at Charley, who had awakened from his nap and was now fully alert, his ears pricked with expectation. “Yes, boy,” he said. “Soon as we’ve crossed, it’ll be time to stretch your legs.”

Charley barked again. His tracheotomy made him sound like a throat cancer victim. This time the shepherd surely did understand. He knew a rest stop would involve another of the knuckle bones Waldo had thoughtfully supplied him for the trip. They were waiting in the Styrofoam cooler Charley never took his eyes off.

A chorus of approving howls echoed through the van.

Cody and Amelie laughed together.

The wild animals could sense their territory approaching.

Last Halloween night, as Dave had reported to Cody, the wolves in the zoo clinic would not stop howling. They knew Cody was in trouble, and they were trying to warn him, to help him somehow. Finally, at the moment when Charley was licking Cody’s wound to restore him to life, the alpha male leaped over the twelve-foot fence-and led Dave Fox to the cave in time for him to rescue Charley, then on to locate Cody.

While Cody was still tracking down Hamilton, Dave called his van to carry Charley’s body back to the clinic-to work one of his miracles. Probing the shepherd in the cave, he had detected the tiniest eyelid flicker then detected the faintest of pulses. Charley was deeply paralyzed, and Dave wasn’t surprised that Cody thought he was dead. His heart was on its last fibrillations; but Charley was still, if barely, alive.

Dave had recited the Nez Perce healing prayer-then force-flushed Charley’s stomach out, shocked his heart with makeshift paddles, pumped him with oxygen, and dosed him intravenously with alkalis, the only known antidote to saxitoxin.

After over an hour of Dave’s relentless treatment, Charley, a veteran of near-death experiences, bounced back for yet another shot at life.?

Of course Metro Magazine had sold off the newsstands in the first hour of its release, trumpeting Hamilton’s posthumous cover article, “7 Ways to Kill-in 7 Days?” Stinelli pulled every string he could think of to prevent its publication, but the magazine’s attorneys threw the First Amendment at him with that peculiarly American mixture of freedom of speech and crass commercial greed that so often prevails.

The article detailed exactly how, from the comfort of his writing chair-one of the murders’ signatures was that the victims were found seated-he and Victoria, following the coroner’s handbook as their diabolic catechism, planned the sequence of “murders by the book.”

The article’s banner line: “If you are reading this, I am dead. My beloved Victoria and I pushed the homicide envelope beyond all limits, committing the murders I was reporting! From the moment I was diagnosed with my own death sentence, we planned to die together, and de-create the world in our own image and likeness in seven days. Neither of us had any interest in losing final control over life and death.”

The closing log line: “Ward Hamilton’s lifelong achievements culminated in his receipt of the Clue Award.” Ward got his vengeful last word on the hated literary committee that had delayed his honor until it was nearly too late. The asshole who wasn’t satisfied with his precious writing awards also wasn’t satisfied with looking through his reporter’s glass at his chosen subject matter. He required a hands-on experience, wanted to redefine the limits of human nature by committing the very murders he was purportedly investigating!

And, yes, Hamilton, in a perverse expression of his southern gentility, had even planned his ultimate double-cross to Victoria. He had promised her that she would kill him first, then changed his mind because he knew her survivor’s pain would be unbearable.

Instead of allowing the love of his life to stalk and slay him, the devil would reverse ambush his Cupid, thus making a final magnanimous and gentlemanly gesture of sparing her the ultimate pain of loneliness. She was “the one human being worthy of my passion,” as the article put it.

Of course because Ward had turned the piece into Sallinger shortly before, ensuring it would remain unedited by him, the article couldn’t have foreseen what actually happened that night in the park. He left the follow-up to the natural inclinations of the magazine’s editorial board. At Stinelli’s insistence, the one concession they made was to abbreviate the events of Hamilton’s suicide and Cody’s survival in the form of an “editor’s note” at the end.?

Fortunately TAZ had broken into Hamilton’s apartment in time to save Patricia from being the seventh way to die.

Cody explained to Amelie that, in case Sallinger’s copy somehow got lost in the morgue shuffle, a second print-out of the article had been tucked to the bomb beneath the barber’s chair. He caught a glimpse of its headline just before it was blown to smithereens inside the robot’s belly.

“I still don’t understand why Raymond had to die,” Amelie lamented.

“If it hadn’t been for Raymond cutting his sister’s support off, she wouldn’t have been writing book reviews,” he guessed. Of course if Handley hadn’t died, I’d have never met you. Cody thought better of speaking the observation aloud.

But he did wonder if there was another surprise planted by Hamilton out there somewhere, just waiting for him to discover. He made a mental note to pay his own visit to the Yellow Door.?

It was twilight by the time Cody and Amelie reached the forest that bordered the Nez Perce reservation in far-western Idaho.

The wolves were showing signs of increasing agitation, knocking their heads against the sides of the cage.

“Will it hold?” Amelie said, a worried look on her face.

Cody laughed. “They’re okay,” he said. “They’re just excited to be home.”

The dirt road they’d been traveling for the past twenty minutes seemed to taper into nothingness as it reached a wide clearing in the tall pines.

Amelie remained in the front seat, her head turned to watch Cody open the back doors, and the cage.

With yaps of excitement, the two wolves leaped onto the ground and sprinted toward the far side of the clearing.

Amelie opened her door, then Charley’s, and stood with Cody watching the sleek animals bound across the meadow.

“Be fruitful, and multiply,” Cody called after them.

The alpha male and his consort reached the far tree line, where they were greeted with howls and yips of welcome as they reentered the wilderness that was their home.

Then, just as Cody and Amelie were turning back to the van, the alpha male reappeared at the edge of the clearing under the full moon-and looked toward Cody in gratitude.

Charley gruffly barked his approval.