Mary Davidson’s Blue Hand
by Gary Cadwallader
There are voices and dogs barking in the distance. The pale blue hand of Mary Davidson does not hear. It is, after all, only a hand, disembodied and rather petite. Still, the fingers are curled as if they listen.
And that is all the sheriff’s men find. A hand. They don’t find Mary Davidson, but she is identified by her weeping husband who clutches her wedding ring to his lips as if the ring were more important than her flesh. Perhaps it is. The ring is something he can keep, wear, put upon a mantle, admire in the night, tuck under his pillow. And he can more readily accept its symbolism than he can accept her rotting tissue.
He takes the ring – in a plastic bag – to an alley on Mercury Street. He takes five hundred dollars. He follows a heavy-hipped woman through a maze of twisty passages and pulled curtains. He hears groans and chants and things clanking that might be bells, or perhaps chains. He smells cinnamon and clove and chicken blood.
In a room painted black, he meets the emaciated man called Koko, who sits on a wicker throne. “Find Mary’s killer,” Mr. Davidson says.
Koko’s fingers are like crab legs and he touches the money, moves the money, fiddles with the money, leaving goose bumps in Davidson’s palm.
“What shall I do then?” Koko asks quietly, holding Mary’s ring up to the light.
“End the killing.”
Koko nods and waves him away with crab fingers.
Mr. Davidson does not sleep for two nights and two days. He passes out on the couch, only to jump up, shaking and sweating, when the phone rings.
“We have him,” Koko says. “You must come.”
Davidson nods without answering and hangs up the phone.
In the dark alley, the woman with hips three-feet across puts a hand in the middle of Davidson’s chest. “You can’t come in.”
“But he said to come.”
“These are yours.” She hands him a black plastic trash bag. Heavy things jostle inside. “Koko says it was a pleasure to serve you.”
Mr. Davidson backs away as she closes the door. He squats behind a dumpster and stares at the plastic bag. He touches around the edges. The contents are thin and hard and feel as if things are suspended in jelly.
Finally, he pours it out like dumping fish from a net.
There are two severed hands and two feet and Davidson begins to shake. He runs from behind the dumpster and pounds on Koko’s door. “You bastard, you bastard!” Davidson yells.
He holds a dead, white foot. The cut is clean and been made with something hot, cauterizing as it went. “You let him live. Damn you, damn you!”
Koko’s voice comes like a whisper from behind the door. “You said end the killing. It has been done.”
“I wanted… I wanted… something else.”
Koko opens the door. His dark eyes stare down at Davidson. “Would you like to meet a man who can do no harm?”