I needed a drink.
The casket had been snug. Although it had clearly been built for a woman, it was surprisingly comfortable. The makers had not held back on the padding, either.
Prior to climbing in I had examined the lid's closing mechanism. There was nothing on it that would indicate it would lock from the inside. It seemed to swing open and shut readily enough.
Once inside the casket, I reached up and lowered the lid slowly.
Sealing myself in.
Traffic was backing up as the 134 East merged with the 5 South. Someone honked. Someone answered with another honk. A car nearby was thumping the bass. I ignored them all.
As I shut the lid, an overwhelming sense of panic overcame me and immediately pushed the lid back open, relieved beyond words that the lid had opened easily enough.
Thank God.
Lowering it again, I lay back on the slightly dirty pillow, my skin crawling, and certain that I was going to heave at any minute. But in the meantime, I went to work. I turned on my key chain light again, casting a powerful blue-white beam into the enclosed space.
I was all too aware that I was lying in something that was meant to be buried six feet deep. In something that was supposed to contain the corpse of a murdered young woman. I was all too aware that this disturbingly cozy box was supposed to have gone undisturbed for perhaps all eternity.
All of it added up to some serious goosebumps, shivers, and an inability to control my breathing.
I was on the 5 Freeway now, moving faster, but knowing the freeway could stop at any moment - as it suddenly did now. I drummed my fingers on my steering wheel as I relived those final moments in the casket.
With my key chain light casting an eerie blue light in a setting that didn't need to be any more eerie, I noted there was just enough space for me to raise my right arm. Which I did.
Aiming the small light with my left hand, I raised my right fist and placed it where it would have been most comfortable knocking on the inside of the casket.
It landed, of course, in the same area of the depressed cushion. The area of the slight discoloration. Someone, I was certain, had been knocking from the inside of the casket.
Breathing hard, I opened the blade to my small pocketknife. Hammer's evidence, be damned. I cut through the fabric of the cushion above my chest, and soon spread it open, revealing the unpolished wood beneath.
The wood behind the cushion was split and seriously damaged.
And when I raised the lid and sat up, gasping for fresh air, I was not too surprised to see Boyd the coffin-maker standing inside the storage room doorway, watching me.
Chapter Nine
Dr. Vivian Carter was recommended by a new friend of mine, an older investigator I had recently worked with on an unusual case a few weeks back.
Aaron King, who also specialized in finding the missing, had produced her card and tucked it in my shirt pocket. He said only that she would help me, and that she was helping him, too. I hadn't asked for help and I had been mildly offended, but who was I kidding? I was a royal mess, and an old guy like Aaron saw through my feeble charade.
Now I was sitting across from her in a lounge chair, unable to meet her direct gaze. She was a lovely woman, older than me by perhaps five or ten years. But I wasn't here to admire her loveliness. I was here because my life was spinning out of control.
"How are you, Mr. Spinoza?"
"I've been better."
The light from her desk lamp reflected off her own thick glasses. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her. She was unmoving and stoic, but also so calm that I found my shyness slipping away quickly. She tilted her head slightly to the right and some of the desk lamp light caught along her slightly upturned nose.
"Tell me about when you've been better."
And so I did. Or I tried to. I told story after story of my life before the tragedies.
Dr. Vivian listened quietly, occasionally nodding encouragingly and sometimes even writing down notes. Mostly she just watched me closely, radiating a calm intensity.
"You keep talking about 'before the accidents'."
I nodded, looking away.
"Tell me about the accidents."
And so I did that, too. I found myself going over my wife's car accident in detail. Or as much of it as I could, since I had not been there. She had been coming home from work. It had been raining. Her car, as best as anyone could figure out, had slid out of control. I knew my wife. She was a great driver. Some asshole piece of shit had probably cut her off. I knew it. I felt it in the very marrow of my bones. He had cut her off and she had swerved and lost control and went spinning across the slippery freeway. She had hit the center divider head on, only to be hit immediately after by a tour bus cruising down the carpool lane. A tour bus that had been speeding recklessly, no doubt.
Dr. Vivian listened to all of this calmly, compassionately, making sympathetic sounds where appropriate.
She asked me a few more questions and I found myself explaining the hate I had felt - still felt - for everything, especially God and my wife's alleged guardian angels and anyone responsible for her death. I hated the phantom car that cut her off, and I loathed the tour bus driver.
In the past, I had always turned to drinking as an escape; after her death, my drinking got ten times worse. My employer, with a heavy heart, eventually fired me.
I next described my utter neglect of my little boy, who was suddenly without his mother, and now without a father, too. My neglect for him led to more drinking. I was trying to kill myself, I knew it. I couldn't stand the pain of living. I couldn't stand the fact that I would never, ever see my wife again.
"You said accidents, Mr. Spinoza," she said quietly, calmly, leading me along gently, expertly.
I took a deep breath and plunged forward, describing the night I was to take my son to a birthday party in the Hollywood Hills. It had been the sixth month anniversary of my wife's accident, and I had taken it pretty hard. I was so drunk that I don't even remember driving along the twisty Mulholland Drive. My memory only begins when my car veered off the road and down into the trees several dozens of feet below. I had been ejected, but my son hadn't been so lucky. I was so badly hurt and drunk that I was incapable of piecing together what had just happened. It was then that I felt the fire behind me...and heard the strangled cries. I remember turning around on my hands and knees, in the dirt and bushes, as blood poured from a head wound, and seeing my son through the windshield.
Still strapped in his seatbelt.
As the fire engulfed him.
We were silent a long, long time. I was aware of the clock ticking behind me. It just might have been the loudest clock I'd ever heard. In fact, it was nearly driving me nuts. I forced myself to calm down as I wiped the tears away.