Chapter 7
SEVEN
Ivan
Knowing Chris was right behind him, Ivan wrenched open the driver’s side door and jammed himself behind the wheel, turning the ignition as he did so. Blue started right up—as always—quiet as a cat. Before Chris could clip his seat belt, Ivan was pulling away from the curb.
“Jesus Christ, Ivan, I’d like to live through the night.”
Like always, Ivan planned to drive recklessly, take corners too fast. “Let’s do some crimes, Let’s get sushi and not pay, thank you very much, Repo Man,” he muttered. He’d do about anything to hear Chris growl his name.
“What? Are you still drunk, Morrison?” Chris demanded.
Ivan smirked and pressed his foot against the gas pedal. He wanted to hear his name from Chris’s lips all the time. Every day. Forever. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chris grab for the panic strap. Fine.
“Braking now.” Ivan risked another glance at Chris. “Don’t worry, I have plans and they don’t include the emergency room. But first, let’s figure out where those hogs went.”
His plans for Chris were more hopes than anything else, but the hope was stronger than it had been when he’d arrived.
“And just how are we going to do that? They’re nowhere in sight.”
“Let’s drive around a bit, maybe we’ll run across some unlawful behavior. With luck, they will be in the middle of it. Who shoots off weapons in the middle of a mobile home park?”
“Probably lots of people. Do not run over anyone here—that is a direct order.”
“As if,” Ivan scoffed, his attention back on the street in front of him. “When have I ever?”
“I’m serious, Ivan. We’re not on the job, and killing senior citizens is frowned upon.”
“Most of them are asleep in front of their TVs. We’ll just drive through the hood for a look-see.”
He was going for reassuring but damn, it didn’t seem to be working. Chris Hatch was wound a tad tight some days. Most days. He needed to loosen up a bit, and Ivan was the man for the job.
“We are not here in an official capacity, please remember that. We are regular citizens.”
“Yes, boss,” Ivan snarked.
“You know,” Chris said thoughtfully, seeming to ignore the boss comment, “when you called the other day, I was mildly entertained by a senior motorcycle gang that stopped at the house sort of kitty-corner from Frank’s place. The shots were close by, let’s head that way.”
Morrison slowed Blue to a snail’s pace and, with great care, executed a three point-turn, then headed back toward Frank’s address.
“Which house was it?” he asked.
Hatch pointed to an older version of a single-wide similar to Susie and Lance’s, its front door angled away from where Chris was staying. Morrison swung a left and pulled to a stop in front of the home. There were fewer lights on inside the surrounding homes now, and the hum of HVAC units filled the air like a swarm of cicadas.
“Maybe they do all take their hearing aids out, then turn up the AC?” Morrison said, peering into the dark. “I bet no one hears much. Does it look to you like the door is open?”
The longer he stared at the front door, the more it looked to him like it might be ajar, just a crack. Could have also been his imagination.
“Possibly,” Chris allowed after peering at the modular home’s front door for several seconds.
“We should check. You know, just in case. It’s the right thing to do.” Ivan wanted to go busting in there, but he would play it cool for Hatch.
“Alright.” Chris drew the word out slowly. “But I’ll take the lead. It’s late, and whoever lives here may have just forgotten to shut the door properly.”
“In that case, we need to be neighborly and alert them. Who knows the types of folks around here?” Except for Susie and Lance, who were obviously cool and on the up and up.
Chris narrowed his eyes at him. “I’m going first.”
“Sure, sure,” Ivan agreed easily.
There was no way Ivan was letting Hatch go in first; he’d been a desk man for too long. But Ivan would let him insist he wanted to go first all he wanted.
Together they got out of Big Blue. When they reached the door and Chris tried to take the lead, Ivan stepped in front of him.
“Take the left side,” Ivan ordered.
Amazingly, Chris moved to the left. Ivan took what he considered the more dangerous right side.
“Ready?” he asked, his back pressed against the siding and his right arm outstretched.
Chris nodded.
Raising his fist, Ivan rapped his knuckles against the slightly open door. No response. The house was silent in a way that felt empty. No soft, snuffling sounds of a person asleep, just a sort of abandonment.
“Do you hear anything?” Chris asked quietly.
“I don’t think so.” Ivan banged harder on the door. It moved infinitesimally. If there was someone inside, they weren’t answering.
“The lock isn’t engaged,” Chris pointed out, as if Ivan hadn’t figured that out for himself.
Not wanting to get gut-shot, Ivan kicked the door with the back of his heel, forcing it further open.
“There’s something blocking it,” Chris muttered.
“Hello? Anyone there?” Ivan called out quietly.
He cocked his head, listening, but there was definitely no answer. The house felt deserted, unoccupied, as if no one had been inside for days, if not weeks. But was it empty? If so, why had the door been ajar? And why had some bikers been poking around? That couldn’t be good. Wary, Ivan peeked around the door frame and blinked several times at what he saw in the dim light from the single streetlight nearby.
A human-shaped foot connected to an oddly orange leg kept the door from opening all the way. Ivan stared at it, trying the make sense of the foot and leg from the angle he was at, but it proved impossible.
“Police, we’re coming in,” Ivan called out in a more normal tone.
He didn’t have his normal door-busting gear, so he pulled his phone out and turned on the flashlight function.
“Police?” Chris whispered. Ivan knew he was gawking at him. “Jesus Christ, Ivan.”
“You said not to say we’re not here in an official capacity,” Ivan hissed back.
“I meant… oh for fuck’s sake, open the door.”
Ivan used his larger mass to push the door open against the weight of the leg. Because in the end that’s all it was—a leg. A leg that looked like one of those attached to clothing store mannequins if the angle at the top of it was anything to go by. He tipped his phone downward to get a better look. Except this appendage appeared to be made out of plaster, not hard plastic, which explained why it was so heavy.
“What the fresh hell is this?” he said.
“Jesus Christ,” Chris repeated, also staring down at the lone body part.
“You must be getting old, you sound like a broken record.”
“Ha fucking ha.”
The front room was shrouded in darkness, one of the few houses that hadn’t had a glowing TV illuminating the lonely evening streets. Instead, the heavy curtains were still pulled closed against the blazing sun and the heat it promised come morning. To Ivan’s sensitive nose, the house smelled musty, as if it wasn’t currently lived in—or the occupant wasn’t a great housekeeper. He blinked, fighting off a sneeze.
Bringing his phone up again, Ivan bit back the scream building at the back of his throat.
Eyes, many of them, stared back at them. So. Many. Eyes.
Breathing in through his nose, Ivan worked to calm his pounding heart. Whatever the eyes were, they weren’t alive, at least not anymore. And Ivan was pretty sure they weren’t human.
“What the actual fuck.” Chris really needed to be more imaginative with his cursing.
“Taxidermy,” said Ivan. “One of my creepier uncles was into it. He even did snakes, which are really fucking difficult. The really good taxidermists paint each scale by hand to make them look more realistic. Less dead.”
Slowly, Ivan panned the room with his phone, the light from the flash app reaching through the murky dark to illuminate a menagerie of beasts. The light didn’t go far, so the creatures—it seemed to Ivan anyway—resolved into whatever the fuck they were and then disappeared again as he moved his phone along.
The remains, for lack of a better descriptor, hung from the walls, stood on their own feet (or in some cases, lay on their sides or backs), and loomed from every corner. At first glance, he spotted several owls, possibly a fox, a couple of coyotes. A six-foot alligator—maybe a crocodile, he never had gotten them straight—was propped up lengthwise against some shelves. In a distant corner, a badger, or who knew, maybe it was a fucking wolverine, bared its sharp teeth at them.
In the jumble, it was difficult to tell whether the stuffed creatures had been arranged that way or if someone or someones had rifled through them. The odd musty odor in the air that Ivan assumed had to do with the carcasses was really starting to bother him.
“Is this legal?” Chris asked. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Ivan doubted that what they were looking at was entirely legal. His uncle used to “procure” endangered species for clients and, like the weirdos who had to have their own DaVinci or van Gogh, his customers often wanted their own condor, bald eagle, or Bengal tiger.
“People are weird,” was all he could come up with.
Bending down, Chris tugged the plaster leg out of the way of the door, grunting at its weight, and stepped inside.
“Seriously, what the fuck is all this?” he asked, using his own phone light to look around.
Surely that was a rhetorical question.
“Ya got me, boss.”
“Stop it with the boss stuff,” Chris grumbled. “I think we’re past that.”
“What if I like calling you boss?” Ivan teased, bumping Chris with his shoulder.
Chris pinched the bridge of his nose. “My god, what have I gotten myself into with you? Obviously, that was a rhetorical question.”
“So much good stuff.” Ivan shot him a lascivious grin. “I’ve just been hanging around waiting for you to see me.”
“That’s what scares me. Regardless of your intent, which I approve of, what the hell is going on here?” Chris asked. “We should probably have a look and make sure there’s no human body hanging around.”
“Alright, if you insist. But you and I both know if there is a body around here, it’s been decades since it was alive. And this person doesn’t do his work here, or he buys it at estate sales and shit like that.”
“Huh. Well, since the door was open, let’s do a check just to make sure no one’s here.”
Chris pushed past the leg and into the house. Rolling his eyes at Chris’s back, Ivan followed him. The man just had to prove he was in charge, didn’t he? Admittedly, Ivan liked that about Chris Hatch.
There were no live bodies and no dead humans. There was no one else in the home, just Ivan, Chris, and a couple hundred creepy preserved creatures. The kitchen was clean, the fridge empty. A stack of flyers and envelopes on a scarred side table told them that someone named Cleevus Buckley had at least had his mail sent there at some point.
“Postmark on this one is mid-January,” Chris said after looking at the envelope on the top of the small pile.
“Maybe he has his mail held until he picks it up. I bet the association here offers that service.”
“Okay, but then why were the bikers here the other day? They knocked as if they expected someone to answer the door for them.”
“That I cannot say.”
Aside from the fucking plaster leg by the door and the creepy animals with their beady plastic eyes, there were odd pieces of terracotta pottery stashed around the home too. Morrison assumed they were supposed to be art, but who really knew?
Suns and moons, candle holders, a chess set. Planters, pots, weird sculptures. He was reminded of the masturbating frog he’d seen. Perhaps this was the artist? The pieces were everywhere, propped up against the walls in the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the closets. There was even a box of them in the bathroom. In addition to the first leg, there were several more appendages—hands, feet, full arms, and even more legs—scattered across the carpeted floor.
“I don’t see how a person could live here. There’s hardly enough room to move around.” Ivan felt like he was about to knock something over and send everything to the floor in domino fashion, adding to what was already there.
“This place is extra creepy, right?” Ivan asked Chris. “It is, isn’t it? It’s not just me? Is Cleevus auditioning for the part of serial killer in the newest Netflix series?”
“There’s nothing here except—well, no dead or injured humans anyway,” Chris agreed. “And since you asked, it is fucking creepy. Whoever this Buckley guy is, he likes to collect extremely bizarre stuff.”
“What if there are real people parts inside those plaster molds? Ugh, I’m ready to get out of here.”
Turning, Chris slow-blinked at him before responding. “Real people parts? Isn’t the taxidermy shit bad enough? Seriously, Ivan.” He took one last look around before pulling the front door shut behind them. “I still think the gunshots came from here though. And I’d like to know why.”
Back behind the steering wheel of Big Blue, Ivan drove through the neighborhood again and then covered a six-block radius outside it, but the hogs were gone and there was no immediate evidence of uproar. Not that they found anyway.
“Fine, let’s get back to Frank’s place,” Chris finally said. “I’m tired and my mom will be knocking on the door before eight a.m. I can’t believe you agreed to breakfast.”
“And the Grand Canyon,” Ivan reminded Chris.
“ Maybe the Grand Canyon.”
“Right, first figure out what’s going on with Cleevus, then the Grand Canyon.”
Chris groaned, but Ivan knew he was right.