"Dr. Carr?"
"Please, hon. 'Eleanor'. 'Dr. Carr' was my father." Eleanor looked up from diagramming the corpse's wounds on her clipboard, peering over the reading glasses she'd had to start using last week, to see one of Haven's finest in her doorway. She gave him credit: as obviously new as he was to the uniform, he was managing to keep his eyes off the mangled body currently on the table. "What can I do for ya, Officer…?"
"Wuornos, ma'am. The Chief had some," he trailed off, looking down at the body. "Uh, did this guy fall under a hay tedder?"
"Nope, but I like it," she grinned, jotting it down on the side of the sheet. "C'mon, let's go sit in the office. I have coffee and danishes from that new bakery, Rosemary's, in there." She steered him around the corner into a cramped room with a desk with a single accordion folder and a lone IBM Selectric typewriter, dropping the clipboard in the center of the desk. "Go on, sit," she said, motioning at the long, low couch. "Hope you like your coffee black, since the milk's only fit for the lab in Augusta. Now. 'The Chief had some...'" she asked while pouring.
"Uh, yeah." He took the proffered mug and sank onto the corner of the couch. "The Chief had some issues with my report about the Carpenter...uh, incident. Said what I wrote was 'too honest'." He looked down at his untouched coffee.
"Let me guess." She smirked, and pitched her voice lower. "If you're going to be a cop here, you need to learn what you couldn't say about some of these incidents. Even if an officer lost his life." She paused, and continued quieter, in her normal voice. "Even if you have to kill someone that looks like your partner." Eleanor pulled her chair out from behind her desk settling in. "First, enough with the 'ma'am.' We're the same age."
He nodded.
"Second." She glanced at the office door, checking that it was shut. "You're Jacob's son, right? Do you remember when we were kids, there were a couple years that all sorts of bizarre things started happening?"
"Sort of? Dad called it the Troubles, said to not talk to anyone about it, especially the time he got upset and the back wall of the house cracked."
"Sounds about right." Eleanor took a slow sip of coffee. "He tell you anything else?"
"Nope. I take it they're back?"
"Ayep. Every twenty-seven years, give or take. No one knows why." She waved at the clipboard. "And because we don't need no one from Augusta, or worse, Boston, poking around, our reports end up reading more like a Borthwick novel than something resembling actual fact."
He nodded and glanced back towards the closed door to the morgue. "Not a hay tedder, then?"
"No, but no one is going to see the body closely enough to know otherwise."
He stared at her, frowning, but clearly thinking it through.
"Fine, fine." She hoped she could get him to play along, get the necessity through his new-to-the-blue head. "Hay tedder for Augusta, and for you…" She tilted her head. "You can ask the Chief for names, see if he'll tell you. As for the body, it turns out that a little girl in town can draw very well. And when she draws things, the picture can control them. No one knew that when she crumpled up the piece of paper where she drew her school teacher."
Wuornos winced. "Wondered why we weren't big on the tourism." He looked down, considering. "Guess Augusta doesn't need to know about that. Or the FBI. So the official is that he was servicing a hay tedder. For the family?"
"They're locals; they get a version of the truth that includes the how, but not who. It's closure, of a sort," she said, sighing. "And the Chief keeps a file locked away somewhere with what happened, and who, so that when this all happens again in about thirty years, we can head the worse Troubles off at the pass."
He looked skeptical. "That work before?"
"Nope! But here's hoping. Anyway, your case. Threw you a bit?"
He stared at her for a minute. "Had to shoot something that looked like my partner, then watch his skin peel off. After having seen six other people with their skin pulled off and piled up like last week's sheets. Yeah, it threw me a bit."
"You have my condolences on your loss." She reached over to the accordion file. "I haven't finalized that paperwork. Been trying to come up with something plausible. You got any thoughts?"
He laughed, quietly, pulling out a packet of smokes. After waiting for her nod, he lit one up. "Had a C.O. in 'Nam, was big on visibility. Got some camera hack he knew from L.A. to take some 'real' shots of the platoon. But we didn't look the part enough, so he used some costume stuff to fake us up. Now that I think, the," he waved the cigarette in a circle, "remains looked a lot like the costume skin peeled off."
"That's macabre, and oddly accurate. So, costume makeup."
"Yeah." He looked into the other room. "Some weird fetishist, took his victims and made a costume for them, then tossed the victims' bodies in lye. A headshrinker might say something like 'consuming the victim whole to replace their own flawed identity.' Or something." His gaze shifted. "Thought I saw the worst I ever would in the jungle."
Eleanor leaned back. "Why, Officer Wuornos, I'm impressed. That almost sounds plausible. Did you actually break the rules and pay attention when you were in Vassalboro?"
"Had thoughts of going on to the FBI at some point, ma'am."
"Hmm. Keep them thoughts, lock 'em up. We need you around here. I need you around here. We can make a date of it, start a book club. And what did I say about 'ma'am'?"
He nodded, stubbing out the smoke. "Don't you feel bad about lying on official documents? Even a bit?"
"Nope." She shook her head quickly. "People round here, they know the history. They grew up knowing what could be coming, what happens every generation. They're prepared for it. Well, as prepared as anyone can be. But someone in Boston? They won't be prepared. They'll react. Badly." She looked straight into his eyes. "That shiny badge you got came with an oath to protect and serve. Sometimes we gotta protect them from themselves."
"Fair enough. I'll twist the Chief's arm, get him to assign me the cases related to the Troubles. I'll even bring pastries from Rosemary's next time."
She leaned back, laughing. "You sure do know how to win an argument. I will take that deal, on one condition. I do not know your first name, which might be something of a problem in our conspiracy."
He smiled at her, standing up to leave. "Garland, ma'am. Garland Wuornos."
"Dr. Carr?"
She looked up from the contents of her autopsy table - contents which, if it still had bones, might be called a body. "Officer Wuornos. Nathan, I should say. What can I do you for?" She looked at the victim on the table, then over at the wall calendar. "Oh, joy. It's that time already, huh? What stories will we write this cycle?"