The Heaven Trilogy (38 page)
The cadaver stared up at the moon with its wide, gray eyes, and Kent shuddered. He reached in, swallowing hard, wrapped both arms around the cold torso, and yanked. The body came out like a bloated sack of grain, and Kent staggered under its weight. The head bounced off the rear bumper and came within an inch of leaving a slab of skin on the asphalt, which would have been a problem.
Move it, man! Move it!
Kent hoisted the body and flipped it into the crooks of his arms as he turned. The trunk would have to remain open for the moment. He staggered down the alley, wheezing like ancient bellows now, fighting to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged. If he’d eaten more over the last day, it might have come up then while he staggered down the alley, eyes half closed to avoid seeing what lay across his arms. Mr. Brinkley bounced naked and gray. Butt up.
The cadaver nearly fell from his grasp once, but he recovered with a lifted knee. He lost his firm grip on the body, however, and had to run the last few yards before the fish slipped all the way out of his arms.
The rear door proved another challenge altogether. Kent stood there, bent over, straining against the dead weight, knowing that if this thing fell it would leave evidence. Dead body evidence.
Problem was, his hands were trembling in their task of keeping Mr. Brinkley from landing on his toes, and the door was closed. He would have to get the body onto his shoulder—free up a hand.
“Oh, man!” He was whispering audibly now. “Oh man, oh man!” The words echoed ghostly down the alley.
It took him three panicked attempts to heave the naked body up by his head, and by the time he finally managed to snake a shoulder under it, his breathing was chasing those words. The body’s flesh felt soft on his shoulder, and visions of that hole in the cadaver’s gut filled his mind. But Mr. Brinkley’s spare tire was sucking up to his right ear, and the realization put him into gear.
Kent opened the door and staggered through, fighting chills of horror. The thought that he’d have to wipe that door handle managed to plant itself firmly in his mind. He had dead flesh on his hands.
He ran for his office with the body bouncing on his shoulder. Groans accompanied each breath now, but then who was listening?
He heaved the body from its precarious perch the second he lurched through his office door. It fell to the gray carpet with a sickening dead-body thump. Kent winced and pushed the door shut. His face still twisted with disgust, he paced back and forth in front of the body, trying to gather himself.
To his right, the computer screen still winked through its dirty deed.
PROCESSING, PROCESSING, PROCESSING . . .
He needed fresh air. Kent ran from the bank and walked back to the car, thankful for the cool air against his drenched shirt.
He removed a green-and-red cardboard box, which had only two weeks earlier held twelve bottles of tequila, from his rear seat and carefully cleaned out the trunk. Satisfied that the Lexus carried no physical evidence of the body, he stuffed the plastic into the box and walked to a tangle of pipes and knobs poking from the concrete halfway down the alley. The smallest of these controlled the bank’s sprinkler system. He twisted a valve and shut it down.
From the tequila box Kent removed a pair of running shoes and replaced his own loafers with them. A few stomps down the alley insured they would leave a print. Evidence. He wiped the rear door handle carefully and reentered the bank.
The body lay face up, naked and pasty when he stepped into his office. He shivered. The computer screen still flashed its word: PROCESSING, PROCESSING . . .
Kent stripped off his clothes, until he stood naked except the running shoes. He started to dress Mr. Brinkley but quickly decided that he could not tolerate being naked in the same room with a naked dead man. Granted, he would put up with whatever it took to do this deed, but bending naked over a dead naked body was not in the plan. He would dress first. He snatched a pair of loose jeans and a white T-shirt from the green-and-red box and pulled them on. Then he turned back to the body.
Dressing a dead body proved to be a task best done with a vengeance—anything less had him cursing. The body’s stiffness helped, but the dead weight did not. He forced his white boxers over Mr. Brinkley’s midsection first, holding his breath for most of the operation. Relieved, he struggled with the slacks, rolling the body around, and tugging as best he could. He had the shirt nearly over the cadaver’s chest when a blip sounded at the computer.
Kent snapped his head up. TASK COMPLETE, the screen read. $20,000,000.00 TRANSFERRED.
A tremble seized his bones. He returned to the body, tearing about it now. His watch went on the wrist, his socks and shoes on the feet.
Satisfied, he withdrew his floppy disk from the drive and exited the program. A fleeting thought skipped through his head. The thought that he had just transferred twenty million dollars into his personal accounts successfully. The thought that he was a very rich man. Goodness!
But the overpowering need to flee undetected shoved the thought from his mind. He emptied half the contents from his briefcase into the tequila box. The incriminating half. What remained in the briefcase represented the work of a dedicated programmer including a personal reminder to speak to Borst Monday morning about efficiency issues. Yes sir, show them he fully expected to return to work on Monday, the morning after a casual fishing trip and a late night at the office.
Kent yanked the cadaver, now fully dressed in his clothes, to a standing position so that it leaned against his chair like some kind of wax museum piece. Here rigor mortis was his friend. He had buttoned the shirt wrong, he saw, and the slacks were hitched up high on one side. Mr. Brinkley looked like some kind of computer nerd short the pocket protector. But none of this mattered.
The corpse stared wide eyed at the poster of the white yacht. Now that Kent thought about it, he should have closed those bug eyes like they did when someone died on television.
He backed to the door, surveyed his work, and pulled the nine-millimeter semiautomatic Uncle Jerry had given him from the box.
Okay boy, now you’re gonna do this.
He lifted the pistol. Once he pulled the trigger, he would have to fly. No telling how far the report might travel.
But Mr. Brinkley was having none of it. At least not yet. He suddenly slipped to the side and toppled to the floor, stiff as a board.
Kent cursed and bounded over to the body. He jerked Mr. Brinkley upright and planted him in place. “Stay put, you old fish,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. “You’re dying standing up, whether you like it or not.”
He crouched and squinted. The gun suddenly bucked in his hand.
Bang!
The report almost knocked him from his feet. Panicked, he fired twice more, quickly, into the body—
Bang! Bang!
The body stood tall, still staring dumbly forward, oblivious to the bullets that had just torn through its flesh.
Kent swallowed and tossed the weapon back into the box. Shaking badly now, he staggered forward and yanked a two-gallon can from the box. He gave Mr. Brinkley a nudge and let him topple to the floor. He emptied the flammable mixture onto the body and then doused the surrounding carpet. He scanned the office, picked up the box, and backed to the door.
It occurred to Kent, just before he tossed the match, that he was about to go off the deep end here. Right off into some abyss, spread-eagle. He struck the match and let it flare. What on Earth was he about to do? He was about to put the finishing touches on the perfect crime, that’s what he was about to do. He was about to kill Kent Anthony. He was about to join Gloria and Spencer in the ground, six feet under. At least that was the plan, and it was a brilliant plan.
Kent backed into the hall and tossed the match.
Whoomp!
The initial ignition knocked him clear across the hall and onto his seat. He scrambled to his feet and stared, unbelieving, at the blaze. A wall of orange flames reached for the ceiling, crackling and spewing black smoke. Fire engulfed the entire office. Mr. Brinkley’s body lay like a log, flaming with the rest, like Shadrach or Meshack in the fiery furnace. The accelerant mixture worked as advertised. This cadaver was going to burn. Burn, baby, burn.
Then Kent fled the bank. He burst through the back door, tequila box in hand, heart slamming. His Lexus sat parked around the corner to his left. He ran to his right. He would not need the car again. Ever.
He’d run three blocks straight down the back alleys before he heard the first siren. He slowed by a trash bin, palmed the gun, and ditched the box. Behind him a cloud of smoke billowed into the night sky. He had known the old wood-frame building would go up, but he had not expected the fire to grow so quickly.
Kent looked back four blocks later, eyes peeled and unblinking. This time an orange glow lit the sky. A small smile of wonder crossed his face. Sirens wailed on the night air.
Five minutes later he entered the bus depot on Harmon and Wilson, produced a key to locker 234, and withdrew an old, brown briefcase. The case held eleven thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills—traveling expenses—a bus ticket, a stick of deodorant, a toothbrush with some toothpaste, and a passport under his new name. It was all he owned now.
This and a few dozen accounts holding twenty million dollars.
Then Kent walked out into the street and disappeared into the night.
Eight Days Later
HELEN BROUGHT two glasses of ice tea into her living room and handed one to Pastor Madison. Returning to her own home was the one small blessing in this latest turn in events. No need to stay at Kent’s if he was gone.
“Thank you, Helen. So . . .”
“So,” she repeated.
“So they’ve concluded the fire resulted from a freak robbery attempt. You read this story?” he asked, lifting the
Denver Post
in one hand.
“Yes, I saw that.”
The pastor continued anyway. “They say evidence from the scene clearly shows a second party—presumably a robber. Evidently this guy found the rear door open and entered the bank, hoping for some easy cash. Unfortunately, Kent was there, ‘working late on a Sunday night, not unusual for Kent Anthony. The thirty-six-year-old programmer was well known for working odd hours, often into the early hours of the morning.’”
“Hmmm,” Helen offered.
“It says that the investigators speculate that the robber stumbled into Kent, panicked, and shot him dead. He then returned and torched the place—probably in an effort to erase evidence of his presence. He’s still at large, and the search continues. The FBI has no current suspects. No actual robbery was committed . . . They estimate the fire damage to reach three million dollars, a fraction of what it could have been, thanks to the rapid response of the fire department.” He lowered the paper and sipped at his tea.
“And of course, we know the rest, because it’s just about the funeral.”
Helen did not respond. There was not much to say anymore. Things had dropped off her plateau of understanding. She was guided by the unknown now. By the kind of faith she had never dreamed possible.
“What’s happening to his belongings?” Bill asked.
“His will leaves it all to Gloria and Spencer. I suppose the state will get it now—I don’t know and quite frankly, I don’t care. From what I’ve seen, there’s no use for this stuff in the next life anyway.”
He nodded and sipped again. For a while they sat in silence.
“I have to tell you, Helen. This is almost too much for me.”
“I know. It seems difficult, doesn’t it?”
Bill cocked his head, and she knew he was letting his frustration get the better of him. “No, Helen. This does not
seem
difficult. Not everything is about
seeming
this way or that way. This
is
difficult, okay?” He shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, first Kent’s wife dies of a freak disease, and that was unfortunate. I understand these things happen. But then his son is killed in a freak accident. And now we’ve hardly put away the funeral garb, and
he’s
murdered in some freak robbery attempt. Strange enough? No, not quite. Meanwhile you, the mother, the grandmother, the mother-in-law, are walking around—quite literally—talking about some game in heaven. Some master plan beyond normal human comprehension. To what end? They’re all dead! Your family is all dead, Helen!”
“Things are not always what . . .”
“. . . what they seem,” Bill finished. “I know. You’ve told me that a hundred times. But some things
are
what they seem! Gloria
seems
quite dead, and guess what? She
is
dead!”
“No need to patronize me, young man.” Helen smiled gently. “And in reality, she’s more alive now than dead, so even there you are less right than wrong. In practical terms, you might be right, but the kingdom of heaven is not what most humans would call practical. Quite the opposite. You ever read the teachings of Christ? ‘If a man asks for your tunic, give him your cloak as well.’ You ever do that, Bill? ‘If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.’ You see anybody smash their television lately, Bill? ‘Anyone who does not take up his cross’—that’s death, Bill—‘and follow me is not worthy of me . . . Let the dead bury the dead.’ And it was God speaking those words, as a guideline by which to live life.”
“Well, I’m not talking about the teachings of Christ here. I’m talking about people dying without apparent reason.”
Helen searched him deep with her eyes, feeling empathy and not knowing really why. He was a good man. He simply had not yet seen what was to be seen. “Well, I
am
talking about the teachings of Christ, Bill, which, whether you like it or not, include death. His own death. The death of the martyrs. The death of those on whose blood the church is built.”
She looked away, and suddenly a hundred images from her own past crashed through her mind. She swallowed. “The reason you look for is here, Pastor.” She waved her hand slowly through the air. “All around us. We just don’t often see it clearly, and when we do, it is not often as we think it should appear. We’re so bent on stuffing ourselves full of life—full of
happiness
—that we lose sight of God. Make up our own.”