Corpses Say the Darndest Things: A Nod Blake Mystery Page 10

  Then again, I suddenly had a hunch and, if it was right, the Nikitins had helped already – by their interior decorating. Among the items I'd taken in during our short and not too sweet confab had been a picture on the wall beside the fake fireplace. A homey snap of the brothers three, standing in snow smiling before a rustic lakeside cabin. It could have been any cabin anywhere, and would have been useless, had it not been for what I remembered in the background; the stylized, conic roofs of, not one but two, old-world Russian buildings. If it had been taken in Russia, I was screwed. But, there was one place, the only place anywhere near Chicago, where those two examples of the pre-communist fatherland might have existed in that wooded setting. A tiny community that had gone about its business for over a century with few on the outside being any the wiser; a place called Lost Lake, one hundred miles straight west over the river and through the woods.

  Lost Lake was perfectly named. At just over 300 yards long, running northwest to southeast, and just over 80 yards at its widest, to those that didn't know it was there, this serene little puddle was certainly lost. A transplanted Russian village, the residential section of which, on the east side of the lake, featured three streets running north and south, Tchaikovsky, Igor Sikorsky, and Turchin streets, each two short blocks long. These were bisected by the one and only east-west street, Pushkin, which was also the village's only access and egress by automobile. A scant few houses stood on the west side of the lake including, if I remembered correctly, the homes of the descendants of the original Orthodox Catholic and Orthodox Jew who started the community. They built their homes side by side in order for each to have their enemy in sight. They fought like rabid wolves ever after and passed their feelings on to their children. Americanized, it would be the Hatfields and McCoys living next to each other. Outside of these, the west side made up the recreational and business arms of the community, the Community house and Post Office, churches, playground, bath house, and beach. And on the shoreline to the south, several rustic log cabins. You reached these on an unnamed gravel path, from a poorly paved country road to the north, by entering beneath a red stone arch hidden in the trees, replete with Russian writing that could have said absolutely anything as far as I knew.

  It might have been a huge waste of time, an hour-long-plus drive into the country, but a lot of detective work was. Nikitin had to be hiding somewhere and I felt good enough about my hunch to make it worth the trip. I actually enjoyed the escape from the city and the drive. It was nice to open the Jag up, after so many days in Willie's embarrassing rattle-trap, and would have been more-so had so many dickheads on the road not been trying to obey the ridiculous National Maximum Speed Limit of 55. Law-abiding citizens, what were you going to do with them?

  It took the better part of an otherwise wasted day to come up with my brainstorm. In consequence, I reached Lost Lake in the dark of night, put out my lights as I turned in not to draw attention, and slowly eased my way under the arch on the western side of the village and started up the rise. Then, because the adventure was apparently going too smoothly, my head decided to attack me again. First came the familiar vibration in the back of my skull, then the low hum in my ears, neither as painful as before but absolutely insistent and impossible to ignore. A brilliant blue flash went off inside my eyes and I was instantly blinded. The flash ebbed and there, floating in front of my car, were two human-shaped figures of gold outlined in intensely bright blue floating just above the road. I cranked the wheel hard to the right not to hit them, slammed the brakes, and barely avoided hitting a tree instead. I threw the transmission into park and jumped out. The figures were gone.

  I realized I wasn't breathing, gasped, and then inhaled deeply. As I did it hit again, the vibration, the ringing hum, the pain – more intense this time. Suddenly everything around me was on fire. I mean fire; thick smoke, licking flames, intense heat, an inferno. It should come as no surprise, I screamed. Someone shouted, ”No!” A second voice, deeper, more angry than afraid, shouted, “Who are you?” Then, from which of them I didn't know, came an all-out scream of pain and terror. I heard a shot, the report of a gun, and something hit my chest like a sledge hammer. I screamed. I was falling backward, the pain in my head overwhelming, the pain in my chest beyond belief, and all about me – flames. It dawned that the feeling in my chest was not unfamiliar. I'd been shot. If that wasn't enough, all of my surroundings were on fire. God, what was happening to me?

  Then it was gone. All of it. The flames, the pain in my chest, the ache in my head, the ringing buzz. My car sat idling, the driver's door standing open, off to my right. I was on my ass on the cold ground surrounded by the real country darkness of the Russian lake village. I'd had another – what? Vision? Hallucination? Or maybe I was just losing my mind.

  There came an excited murmur from somewhere nearby, I wasn't exactly sure where, as I picked myself up off the ground. There followed several frightened shouts, different voices entirely from the ones I'd heard in the vision. I looked up the rise, expecting to see a crowd gathering. Wasn't that what I was hearing? Instead I saw an orange glow topping the hill. It fluctuated to red, to yellow, again to glowing orange, backed by a swirling cloud of smoke. At least that's what I thought I was seeing. How could I know anymore? I was dizzy and, though the sense of burning and the pain in my chest had vanished, my head hurt plenty. I wiped my eyes, blinked, and looked again. The horizon, over the berm, which on my arrival had been black as pitch was brilliant with flickering orange. I followed the drive up, running, crested the hill and stopped. I looked below, down to the lake, the cabins, and what was indeed a small but excited gathering crowd. I couldn't believe my eyes. One of the cabins, what could only be the Nikitin's cabin, was on fire.

  I raced down as fast as I could run in the condition my vision had left me, past the crowd, some dressed, some in night clothes, trading excited Russian and English exclamations among themselves, and to the cabin. The fire had already vented through the roof and lit up the night. The heat was stifling and seemed intent on keeping me back. Orange blazed in the small windows, at the seals of the wooden front door on the lake side, and in scattered spots between the logs where the shrinking mortar clay fell out. Then I saw them, at the top and bottom of the door, chocks driven into the gaps to deliberately block it and hold the door closed from the outside. I knew instantly this was no accident.

  Nobody inside, if anyone was inside, could have gotten out. Then I grew terrified that my guess had been right; that Nicholas Nikitin had been hiding in the cabin. I had come too late; someone else had found him first. I grew furious. I searched the ground before the cabin and found a heavy rock in the grass. Ignoring the heat and flame, I advanced and knocked the chocks from the door. I pulled it open, screaming, “Nicholas!” and was struck by the blue flash again.

  There they were; the same two figures, glowing golden men, one larger than the other, with a bright blue aura encircling each, standing, screaming amid the flames. “No!” one shouted. “Who are you?” yelled the other. Both turned to me, as if they saw me from within that blast furnace. “Blake!” one cried out. “Help us!” yelled the other. They floated there for a moment, just above the burning floor, and then they were gone.

  I didn't have time to be amazed or frightened. As if someone had pushed Play on an insane video machine, suddenly all of the events I'd experienced on the far side of the village hill went into motion again. The vibration, the ringing tone, the pain – and, without taking a step, I was standing inside the cabin, enveloped in fire. I was screaming; another voice (one of them? I didn't know) was screaming beside me. A gun went off. A bullet (the same bullet?) struck me in the chest again. I toppled back into the flames. A heavy, burning rafter let loose above and fell on me. The crushing blow, the searing pain, the terror was indescribable. How my heart continued to beat, I don't know.

  Just as suddenly, the hallucination ended, and I was back outside of the cabin. The fire was still roaring, the flames still tearing away at the buildi
ng, but in comparison, even the heated night air was like a cool bath. It was then, as I stood there breathlessly looking into the cabin, wondering how I could grab hold of reality again, reality grabbed hold of me.

  Within the flames, I saw the bodies. Not the gold and blue space creatures I witnessed earlier, the actual physical bodies of two grown men. Both were doing the long sleep on the living area floor to the left of the door. Making it, I guessed, a pretty good dying area as well. Guessing who they had once belonged to, Nick, John, or Mike, or a combination of two Nikitin brothers, or any combination of any two people on earth for that matter, was out of the question. They were not burned black like you see in the movies, yet, but they were as up in smoke as any weed Cheech and Chong ever rolled. The flames had reached them, their clothes were alight, and both were officially homicide victims. The chocks in the door and, I had a bad feeling, a yet to be discovered bullet, would seal the deal. I knew, like nobody could ever know, that was more than an arson fire, it was the scene of a double murder.

  I couldn't stay in the doorway any longer. The blazing light, the mind-numbing heat, the terrible black rolling smoke were all too much. The crowd of residents from the houses up the hill, and those that had crossed or circumvented the small lake, had grown; with it their ruckus and their stares. It occurred that if I didn't get the hell out of there I would quickly become an object of their attention. That would have been bad. Scorched and sweating, hacking and coughing, but needing to escape, I faced the fire but staggered backward, using a technique developed at the age of twelve for sneaking into movie theaters by walking backward against the flow as the early show let out. It worked great guns as a kid and would have worked there had I not been so near the lake. I slipped and fell to my knees in mud. I crawled to the lee side of the roaring structure to escape the heat and catch some air. I fought to my feet and wiped my caked hands on my pants (my mother would have had the vapors). I fought for a breath, lit a cigarette (because that's what smokers did under stress), and wondered what to do next. Those bodies inside, added to the Katherine Delp murder, put the whole thing beyond church choir intrigue. I had trouble in a major key.

  The cabin, the roof completely gone, roared, a black shell of flame-licked logs; a hellish inferno. I left the envelope of heat and smoke, backed into the cool darkness, and got out of there.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I'd worn a groove in my brain – just thinking – on the trip back from the sticks to my Chicago apartment. I showered letting the hot water treat the aches and the soap eliminate the mud, carbon and stink of smoke, then showered again because the first time hadn't done the trick. It was like scrubbing your kid's face only to discover the real problem was he was ugly. I couldn't wash off what was soiling me. I collapsed into bed with no plans to wake up and a firm belief my life couldn't get any worse. Somehow I slept through the biggest part of the next day but, in the early evening, the pounding on my door gave every indication my imagination was about to be expanded and my life, I had the sinking feeling, was about to head right down the crapper. I opened it to a hungry-looking, viciously grinning hyena, but that was only positive thinking. A closer look showed it was just a bad penny minted by the local police department. What Frank Wenders wanted, again, I couldn't even guess. “Either ante up your half of the rent,” I told him, “or get lost. You're here more than I am.”

  “Is that nice?” he asked with a growl. “Here I go out of my way to bring you a message.”

  “Not a singing telegram, I hope? You're not going to dance or take your clothes off?”

  “No, smart guy, I'm gonna to make you sing.”

  Speechless with anticipation, I walked away. But I left the door open because I got manners. Unable to take a hint, Wenders crossed to my side of the frame before he closed it and followed me into the living room.

  “So what's the message?”

  “It's a long one. Ya' ready? I've been asked to thank you for the bar-b-que. To tell you that you left last night before the fun started. And, if I think it's appropriate, to grab you by the balls and drag you someplace where you'll be safe and ready-at-hand for extradition.”

  It was a strange feeling, my throat instantly going dry while the rest of me felt as if I'd been doused with cold water. Wenders just stared, licking his teeth like a cat measuring a mouse. I'd gone out to Lost Lake on a whim. I had told no one I was going, spoken to no one while I was there (been spoken to by nobody but the dead), and had spoken to no one since I'd returned. Of the uncounted billions of things in this world that Frank Wenders didn't and couldn't know anything about, at the top of the list had to be the Nikitin cabin fire. If somehow he did, he still couldn't have known I was there. But if he wasn't talking about the fire, what the hell was he talking about?

  “The Stephenson County sheriff was disappointed you left so early,” Wenders said. “By the time he and his boys and the fire department got there, you'd already done your killing and left. He missed you; asked me to pass on his regrets. Then to haul you in on a first degree murder charge.”

  Okay, he knew about the cabin. How (as big a question as it was) no longer mattered. What mattered was how I was going to answer him. Deny everything because he was just throwing mud to see what would stick, or come clean and show him that, as distasteful as it was to the both of us, we were on the same side? As was my nature, I decided to obfuscate, to tread water until I had a better idea of where I stood. “I'm as happy as the next guy to be a part of this great melting pot, Lieutenant,” I said. “But why don't you give me a hint? What language are you speaking?”

  “Oh, it's going to be that way, is it? You don't know nothing from nobody. You're innocent as the virgin Mary.”

  I forced a yawn. “Wake me up when you get somewhere I'd recognize.”

  He opened his trench coat, a scary maneuver with his gut, produced a roll of papers from an inside pocket, and unrolled them. “Recognize this?” He stuck them in my phiz, the top sheet showing a black and white facsimile of a picture of a burned out log cabin. Yeah, the Nikitin brothers' cabin, taken just as the sun came up. It was every bit as horrifying as it had been in person, a ruin of terror and despair. Of course, that was none of Wenders' business. Speaking of which, he was still talking, “Pretty lake, huh? I always wanted a cabin by a lake. Course it was awful hot while you were there.”

  “Your sheriff steered you wrong.”

  “I've got that down as a lie, Blake. If you take it back, right now, I won't even ask for an apology. You were there and all God's law enforcement agencies know it. So, do yourself a favor and help the real police out and maybe, just maybe, you can save yourself a lethal injection.”

  “Here we go again. I didn't murder anyone and you know it. Help you with what?”

  “They got two bodies out there. Course, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. The neighbors say they're a couple of brothers named Nikitin, Iancu and Nicholas, but we won't know for sure till the medical examiner scrapes 'em like toast and sees what's underneath. Why don't you do us a favor, do yourself one at the same time. Beat the egg-heads with their lab tests; tell us who they are for sure. Then tell me what you have to do with these two dead Russian brothers?”

  I gave him nothing. Not even a look of innocence.

  “While you're making up a story for that one,” Wenders said. “Tell us what you meant by this.” He shuffled the pages of the roll, moving the cabin photograph to the rear and replacing it with a second fax, which he shoved in my face.

  “Mud?” What else could I ask? I said Wenders had been throwing it when he came in. Now he handed me a picture of it; mud, the puddle and muddy lake bank that I'd slipped in.

  “He-Haw,” Wenders said. “You being an artist, and me an art lover, we both know the mud was just your medium. I'm interested in your message.”

  I looked again, closer, then grabbed a magnifying glass from my desk. He guffawed from across the room, “Just like a real detective.” I ignored Wenders and studied the pi
cture. Sure enough, though somebody had to have pointed it out to the lieutenant in the first place, there was some kind of message scratched in the mud.

  “Tee-something-oh,” I read, straining eyes that not only weren't as young as they once were but that still had sleep in them. “Tee-aitch-something… ess… ess? Then, I don't know, the last looks like a number. One? Eight? Eighteen? What is that?”

  “You're supposed to tell me, genius. You wrote it.”

  “I wrote it?”

  “Good, we agree.”

  “It was a question. What do you mean I wrote it?”