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 By Rudy Baldacci
The man's body was found in the alley at two A.M. on the eve of the new
millennium. He had been dead for one hour, the coroner said. Sheriff
Paul Postle noted, with great surprise, wounds to the hands and feet,
and a bullet hole to the forehead. The dead man had long brown hair,
and darkish skin, his features finely drawn. Postle touched his arm.
There was a tingling in Postle's fingers when he removed his hand. "Do
we know who he is?" Postle asked. His deputy, John Baptiste, handed him
a slip of paper that had been found near the man. Postle read, "J
Carpenter."
"Get the body to the morgue," Postle said. And then
he set to work. The town was one of those small affairs one sees signs
for off the highway but never has reason to go there. Postle quickly
found where the man had been staying. A tiny roadside motel. No one had
seen him leave his room. Postle wandered around J Carpenter's last
home. A bowl of water was on the table, a long sheet on the chair, no
bags, no wallet, no item of jewelry or clothing. Postle lit a
cigarette. An X-ray had revealed a large black smudge on Postle's lung.
He was to go today for more tests. He had been a life-long smoker. He
knew he was dying. He coughed a good one, and then touched his fragile
chest.
He was interrupted by
his deputy, John Baptiste, bursting into the room. "Sheriff, you're not
going to believe this, but J Carpenter's body is gone."
At the morgue Postle questioned everyone thoroughly. "Bodies do not up and walk off on their own," Postle said.
"This one did," said the coroner.
Postle
looked inside the sliding door that had housed the body. There was a
sheet in there. For a moment Postle thought someone had been playing a
trick on him for the sheet held the shape of a man's body. Then he
grabbed it but it crumpled to nothing.
An
hour later they got a break in the case. Someone had been seen running
from the alley shortly before the body was discovered. Conscious Pilot
was a leading businessman in town with grand plans. He said he had been
driving past the alley about the time the killing had occurred.
"What were you doing there at that time of night?" Baptiste asked while Postle was silent.
"What does that have to so with it?" Pilot said.
"I'll
ask the questions." The deputy didn't like Pilot. There was a matter
pending before the town council right now that if passed would allow
Pilot to knock down most of downtown and replace it with a mall.
Pilot looked at Postle. "Do you want my story or not?"
Postle opened his notebook. "Shoot."
At
midnight Pilot had seen a man run out of the alley holding something in
his hand, maybe a gun. He had gotten a good look at the man. "Clyde
Lived," he said. Lived, they all knew, was a hermit who lived in a
shack on the outskirts of town.
"You're sure it was Clyde Lived?" asked Baptiste.
"As sure as I'm looking at you. Check it out."
Pilot got in his car and drove off. Postle looked after him with sad eyes. "I don't like that man," said Baptiste.
"You don't have to like a man to believe him." Said Postle. You find Clyde Lived and talk to him."
Later
Postle went to the doctor for his examination. Tests were done and
studied. The doctor came in smiling. "This is a miracle," he said. "The
spot is gone, as though it was never there. It's as though you've been
spiritually healed," said the doctor. This statement troubled Postle
and he looked at his hand.
John
Baptiste had been scouring the town for clues. He was at the town hall
going over some records when he came across a file on the meeting
taking place that afternoon to vote on Pilot's development plan. It was
clear from the notes that the town council would vote it down.
Late
that afternoon he attended the meeting. He was in the audience while
Postle, who was also on the town council, took his place on the raised
stage. To the deputy's shock, the council voted unanimously in favor of
Pilot's plan. A horrible thought struck the deputy and he set out to
prove himself wrong.
Baptiste
tracked down the precise whereabouts of another man at the time of
killing. Then he ascertained that the man Pilot had fingered, Clyde
Lived, was out of town at the time of the shooting. Pilot, Baptiste now
knew, had been lying, and had counted on the hermit Lived having no way
to prove otherwise. Next, the deputy discovered the bullet that had
killed Carpenter in the alley. It had wedged in some brick mortar. The
Deputy looked at the bullet. A nine millimeter Silvertips. That night
Baptiste went back to the police station, found the weapon he wanted,
went in the back of the building and test-fired the gun. He took the
bullet to the coroner who confirmed that it was a match. Baptiste had
found the murder weapon.
Baptiste began to think about it all, talk it through to himself. The dead man, J Carpenter,
those initials, JC. The wounds on the hands and feet. The body
disappearing. He checked his watch. He knew where the killer would be.
It was time to close this case.
* * *
Postle
hadn't felt this good physically in years. The aches, the pains, the
lung tumor was gone. And yet something nagged at the man. He looked at
his hand, where he had touched the body of J Carpenter. He sipped
drinks with his wife, as the crowd partied and counted down to the new
millennium. He looked and saw his faithful Deputy Baptiste standing in
the doorway. The man was looking at him with a very sad expression and
then Baptiste held up the gun, the sheriff's gun. Postle went over to
Baptiste.
"You know?" he said.
"Let's go outside," said Baptiste.
They leaned against the brick wall of the nightclub.
"You want to tell me?" said Baptiste. "Or do you want to hear it from me?"
"Go on," said Postle. "See if I taught you good."
"You
were in the alley that night with Pilot. You were receiving a payoff
for you and the rest of the town council to back Pilot's development.
Carpenter happens down the alley and sees the exchange. You can't let
him live. You shoot him and then Pilot lies about Clyde Lived and you
pretend to investigate a murder you committed."
"You can prove that?"
"I found the bullet in the alley, matched it to your gun."
"You have better eyes than I do."
"Why, Sheriff?"
Postle
shrugged and took a deep breath. "Money, what else? I had cancer. Or at
least I thought I did. Didn't want to leave the wife without a penny."
"Had cancer? What do you mean?"
"Damnedest thing. I'm cured. Never felt better."
"Like you were healed?" said Baptiste.
Postle gave him a strange look. "Yes. Why?"
"You
touched J Carpenter, didn't you? In that alley." Baptiste paused. "Why
did you wound him in the hands and feet before shooting him in the
head?"
"Dammit, I didn't. I
don't know how those other wounds came about it." He looked at Baptiste
with frightened eyes. "What are you thinking?"
Baptiste stared dead at him. "I think you killed Jesus, Sheriff."
Inside they heard the countdown and then the shouts of "Happy New Millennium."
Postle
stared at the ground, the blood gone from his face at what he had done.
For money. And the dead man had healed his killer. It was the worst of
all possible fates.
Baptiste
was about to handcuff the devastated sheriff when they saw the man
walking toward them. J Carpenter's wounds were gone, his eyes clear and
dazzling. As he grew nearer, he grew larger. And with each of his steps
the sky grew lighter until it was as bright as day at midnight. Postle
and Baptiste each caught a quick breath as the light and heat flooded
over them, the world seemed on fire, the very air foreign top them;
their bodies seemed cast off from their spirits. Postle forgot about
his crime, and Baptiste forgot about his prisoner. J Carpenter stopped
in front of them and slowly raised his arms to the heavens.
* * *
The
audience burst into applause as the theatrical play "The Second Coming
of Christ" concluded. It was a year-end tradition in this small town,
and was always attended by most of the people who lived there. The
actors came to the front of the stage and took their bows. The actor
playing Sheriff Postle looked around. J Carpenter had not come out to
join them. To be sure his part was small, but obviously important. When
they came back out for the encore, the actor playing Baptiste pointed
toward the back of the theater. "There he is."
Sure
enough, there came the actor walking down the aisle, still in the small
cloth he had worn during the play. Obviously, the actor was having a
little fun. Postle was about to call out to him, when he saw the actor
who had played J Carpenter rush out from the dressing room area to join
them on the stage. The Postle and Baptiste actors looked at each other
and then to the sky. Which they could now see, for the small theater
building was gone, and the night was as bright as a comet's tail, and
the clock had just struck the beginning of the new millennium. There
should have been much cheering and applause for the new century, but
there was only silence. The crowd turned as one to watch the man.
J Carpenter walked toward them all, his arms lifting toward the heavens as the earth breathed its last.
© 1999 David Baldacci; Illustration by Rudy Baldacci
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