Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

I had just gotten back into town when Pike, the closest thing that Rocky Start had to law enforcement, surprised me coming out of the door to Coral's apartment above Ecstasy , I assumed after spending the night.

"You don't look good," he said from behind me, a sign I was off my game since he'd snuck up on me.

"I'm fine," I lied as I set the backpack down on the bench in front of Oddities. I was trying not to shiver in front of Pike, a Clint-Eastwood-weather-beaten seventy-two-year-old, Coral's younger man. Rose's boss Oz had been her older man.

"The boys texted me," Pike said. "They're worried about you. Are you all right?"

Great. The Weed Brothers were worried about me.

"They saved my ass."

Pike smiled, proud of his foster sons, who also tended to his marijuana farm during growing season. "They're good kids." He nodded to where he'd parked in front of the pharmacy. "Walk me to my truck."

"Sure." What I really wanted was a hot shower, an aspirin, and Rose, but Pike wasn't the kind of guy who asked you to take a walk just to chat.

"Marshal Dillon or The Rifleman ?" Pike asked me as we ambled past Oddities.

Not what I'd expected since that was, in fact, chat, but better that than "We have another problem, Max, you'll have to stick around." I had to think for a minute. I'd been forced to watch Gunsmoke and The Rifleman on reruns while recovering from some wounds in a government hospital. They didn't let us have the remote even though they did let us have guns and bombs to go after bad people. You figure it out.

"Chuck Connors wasn't a sheriff," I said in reference to the star of The Rifleman . "Not official."

"We're not exactly official either," Pike said, nodding at a civilian, who nodded back a bit nervously.

"Personally," I said, "I kind of like Shane. He wasn't officially the law either."

"Stranger comes to town," Pike summarized, "cleans things up, and then rides away." He shook his head. "You riding away, Max?"

"I don't have a horse."

"Don't have a dog now, either, it looks like." Pike laughed, looking at the empty space to my left that Maggs usually occupied. "And Shane was gut shot at the end. He died in the mountains. They didn't show that." With that he nodded up at the Smoky Mountains surrounding Rocky Start, adding, "The weather can turn in the mountains, Max. Hate to see you get caught in a blizzard. Alone. Freezing to death."

I was trying not to squelch in my boots as I walked. Pike saw and heard everything. "You don't need me here." And , I didn't add, someone doesn't want me here .

"Who said I needed you here?" Pike paused at his rusting pickup truck and pointed down State Street. "You go check on the town one last time, Marshal Dillon."

He opened the door to his rust bucket, slammed the door shut, cranked the engine, and then rolled the window down for his parting words.

"Later, Marshal," he called out. "Say hey to Kitty for me."

He drove away past Oddities and Ecstasy, heading for the highway and then the one-lane bridge out to his place in the woods, but he'd asked me to patrol the town, which was just two blocks up and back, and he didn't ask for much, so I strolled by the bookstore on the south side of the street and then on past the display window for the Merriweather Funeral home, glancing inside to nod at Melissa Merriweather, who always stood there between two coffins, surveying the street, dressed in an impeccable white suit, as unmoving as a statue, hawklike in her stillness.

Then I stopped and stared in the window.

The two coffins in the window display were tilted up on elaborate stands as usual, and Melissa was still as a statue as usual, but this time she was inside the shadowed coffin on the left, minus her jacket, her hands folded across her chest over a funeral urn, her eyes open, seeing nothing.

I pulled out my latest burner cellphone. Pike was #3 on my favorites, Rose, of course being #1 and Poppy #2. I hit #3 and typed:

FESTUS COME QUICK.

* * *

Pike pulled up a minute later, grouchy. "What the hell, Max?"

I pointed at the window, forcing him to get out.

He frowned and looked past me at the store, squinting. I wondered if Pike's eyes were going. Granted, the lights were off inside the business and the storefront faced north, putting it in dark shadow.

Then he saw it.

"Oh, shit ," Pike said.

I took my phone out and took a couple of pictures.

"What the fuck?" Pike asked.

"Evidence," I said, although I was reacting mostly out of instinct, having had to often take pictures and even genetic samples while on missions to provide proof of death. I put my phone away and checked the door. It was unlocked. I pushed it open and entered, Pike right behind me.

"We've got to get her out of the window," he said.

We got on either side of the coffin and lifted it off the stand. It was heavy, made of metal, and I heard Pike grunt from the effort. Being a manly man, I kept my grunt internalized. We carried it to the rear of the building via a large door that separated the ground level in half. We almost dropped it to the floor when we got to Melissa's back room but managed to set it down without damage or spilling the body out. Then Pike closed the door and turned on the lights.

We stood on either side of the coffin, both pretending not to breathe hard, and looked down at Melissa. Both of us had seen enough death to know she was gone.

"So what are you going to do about this?" Pike said.

My first thought was, Nothing , but we had a murderer running around now, and "we" included Rose and Poppy, so I was going to have to do something about it.

Which meant I needed somebody smart and fast who knew the town and the history of its inhabitants. And who didn't breathe hard after carrying a coffin.

"Luke," I said and got out my cell.

* * *

Luke Granger made it over to the funeral parlor in record time since his woodworking shop was just across the street. He wasn't as big as when we'd worked together in covert ops, but he was still pretty much a human tank, well over six feet tall and broadly built. His full beard was mostly gray now, which contrasted starkly with his black skin. Besides being big, he was smart, skilled, and calm and a good man to have around in any bad situation.

"What's the rush?" he said to me when he came through to the back room. "I—" He broke off when he saw the body. "Oh." He stared down at Melissa. "This isn't good."

Master of the understatement, my buddy.

"She was in the window like this," I told him.

"I walked right past this morning." Luke seemed more bothered about missing the body than the body itself. "She was posed in the window?"

"Yep," Pike said.

Luke frowned at me. "What happened to your head?"

"I fell in the river."

Luke nodded, not one to pry. "What are you going to do, Max?"

"You mean, what are we going to do," I said.

"I don't want any part of this," Luke started, but I cut him off.

"Your kid still lives in this town, and we have a killer on the loose." I looked down at Melissa. "A killer who posed the body like it's a big joke. We'll get whoever it is faster if there're three of us on it."

"Two of you," Pike said. "I'll advise. You boys go out and kick this joker's ass."

Since both of us "boys" were in our fifties and "boy" was never a good thing to call Luke at any time, Pike was not thinking clearly.

"And what would you advise?" Luke said to him, sounding annoyed.

"We'll have to get Sid to take a look," Pike said.

I frowned at him. "Sid Quill, the pharmacist? Why him?"

"Melissa was our coroner. But Sid should be able to get us a cause of death. He got kicked out of med school before he went into the Agency." He frowned. "Too early for him to be in his shop. Probably at Coral's." He looked at me. "Making a move on Rose if she's there."

I ignored him and knelt to feel the skin on Melissa's throat. "Cold. She's been dead awhile."

"Where's her suit jacket?" Luke asked, looking around. "She always wore it."

I shrugged. "Does it matter? She was a player, right?"

"She was a chemist," Luke said. "A damn good one."

In our world, "chemist" means a wide range of things. She could poison you. Or she could concoct explosives to blow up a building. And Melissa was a legitimate undertaker who could also embalm bodies or cremate them.

"When she was active, she was good at making it look like it was a natural death," Pike said, staring down at her. "Could be someone here in town. Some of us crossed paths during ops."

That rang an alarm bell. "Something like this has happened here before?"

Luke looked at me like I was an idiot. "A town full of retired agents with deadly skills? C'mon, Max."

I looked at Pike. "How many times?"

"Three or four over the years," Pike admitted. "Oz cleaned things up."

"How?"

"With extreme prejudice," Pike said, reverting to old-school jargon. "The number one rule of Rocky Start is you are retired when you choose to live here."

"I thought the number one rule of Rocky Start is we don't talk about Rocky Start," I said.

Pike, of course, ignored me. He nodded at Melissa. "She'd smoke the results." Meaning she'd cremate the bodies. "Sid will know how to do it." He got out his phone and punched in a number. I assumed it was Sid's since he started talking autopsy.

"Who's in the urn?" Luke asked.

I pried it out of her dead hands. There was nothing engraved on the small plate on the front. I lifted the lid. It was empty. "No one."

"Weird," Luke said.

"Maybe it was for her," I said. I turned to Luke. "Do you know anyone in town who might want to settle an old score with her?"

"She's been here twelve years," Luke said. "That somebody waited a long time to settle a score. I'm thinking it's an Outsider."

"So somebody new?" I said.

"You're the newest player in town," Pike said as he put his phone in his pocket. "Might have to hold you on a material witness charge until spring. I'll release you to Rose's custody."

I ignored him as I tried to figure the angles.

"You know who would know who her enemies are?" Luke said. "The one who has files on all of us. Knows every op we ever ran. Pretty sure you have his number."

I closed my eyes. "I do not want to talk to Herc."

"Who does?" Luke said.

"I don't think calling him is a good idea," I said, understating considerably the dangers of calling my old boss. "Melissa looked very unhappy to see him last week when he told her to wrap up Serena's body."

"Do you know anyone who is happy to see Herc?" Pike said. "He's the fucking Grim Reaper." He shook his head. "Besides, if Herc wanted Melissa dead, he wouldn't have had it staged. She'd just be dead. Call him and find out what he knows."

"Man up, Max," Luke said, but without an edge. "I don't like what's happening to our town. My son got tased by Norman Oswald and his life threatened. I am not happy."

I was tempted to say something like "Norman is dead, I double-tapped him, you're welcome, get over it," but I wasn't happy, either. Civilians had gotten drawn into our shit world. Civilian kids like Poppy and Darius and the Weeds. And good women like Rose.

"Call Herc, Max," Pike said. "Oz was always the one who called him."

I'm not Oz . "I need to get back to Oddities. I want to make sure Rose is safe."

"She's in Ecstasy," Pike said. "Surrounded by suitors."

I pointed at my wet boots. "And I need dry socks. Luke, the rope bridge was cut while I was on it."

Luke frowned. "That's odd." He considered it and moved on. "Something else you can check. The Ferrells have CCTV coverage of State Street. Maybe they recorded something."

" We can check," I said to Luke. "You and me. I am not going to talk to the Ferrells alone."

He nodded, reluctant. I knew he was with me now, a good partner to have. But behind the smile I could see he was worried.

Well, hell, so was I.

I needed to see Rose.