S. Tooley - When the dead speak

Jake made his way toward the gazebo. It was eight in the morning and already eighty degrees. Wearing a pair of floral beach shorts and a short, cropped tee top, he looked as if he should be on an island somewhere. He was supposed to be on the road with Frank enroute to Elkhart, Indiana, but he told Frank to go on without him. There was something else Jake wanted to check out.

He walked up the two stairs to the screened-in gazebo, set his cup of coffee on the small rattan-framed, glass-topped table, and stretched out on the glider.

Closing his eyes, he replayed his conversation with Carl. Jake had a feeling President Whittier’s main concern right now was re-elections. To bring out information of a government cover-up would point a finger toward Whittier since he had been chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee back in 1977.

Jake didn’t like being a party to the continuing cover-up. Because now it wasn’t just the murders of three black men in Mushima Valley, it was the murder of Hap Wilson and the questionable death of an investigative reporter. Carl had agreed with Jake that Sam was going to dig until she got to the truth. Carl wanted him to head her off at the pass, and Jake hated having to do it. He had told Carl he wanted the bodies of the three men in Hap’s unit found. Carl said they were already trying to locate them. If they weren’t deserters and had been murdered, the first place to start looking was Mushima Valley.

Jake pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. He didn’t hear Abby enter the gazebo and sit down in the chair across from him. She reached over and touched his arm.

“You are agonizing over something.”

“Agony is my middle name.” Jake swung his legs around and sat up. He studied her calm facade, her gentle, caring eyes. Everything in her world seemed to have meaning and order. “Why is it you were never able to tell…”

“That Samuel and Melinda were in danger?” She shook her head. “It was something I had a difficult time understanding. We can’t select what we want to see or what we want revealed. We don’t have the choice. For that reason alone I think our trip to the reservation after their death was as much for me as for Sam. I had to talk to my grandmother, get some answers.”

“Did you?”

“She said there are some things we can’t control. We may think we direct our future but fate controls our destiny. She told me to focus on my successes, not the failures.”

Jake reached across and grabbed Abby’s hand. It felt soft, yet strong. Sam had her strength. Each day he saw more of her in Sam.

“Why is it no man has dragged you off to the proverbial tipi with the picket fence?”

He saw a trace of sadness wash over her face.

“I was married once, briefly.” Abby smiled wistfully. “It was small and ceremonial.”

“Just you two and the spirits?”

Abby laughed, crinkling the tiny lines around her eyes. “We had a few more people but basically that’s all a couple needs. They just have to exchange a treasured possession, offer it to the four directions, and express their love.”

“So what happened?” he finally asked.

The sadness crept across her face again, washing away her warm smile. She studied her hands for the longest time. “I had an alcoholic husband, an alcoholic father, and a dead baby. That’s what happened.”

Jake saw tears push into the corners of Abby’s eyes. She inhaled deeply, lifted her head. The tears dried immediately. He was sorry he had brought up the subject. They lapsed into a comfortable silence, until Abby broke it.

“I believe our fathers were very much alike, Jacob.”

Jake looked at her sharply. He had never spoken of his father.

“Alcohol clouded his judgment. He wasn’t physically abusive, but he was easily manipulated by my husband. My father wandered around drunk one cold winter night and froze to death. He died the same way your father did.” She stared deep into his eyes. This time it really did feel as if she knew his every thought and could see into his soul.

Jake slowly straightened, a look of shock inching across his face. “How did you…?” He knew better than to ask. He remembered the day she had touched his back and the look on her face, of the times she would hold his hand between hers and stare into his eyes as though they were windows into his darkest thoughts.

“You keep a life of solitude, Jacob, because you believe you will end up like your father.”

“Like father, like son, the saying goes.”

“If that were true, then I would be more like my father, wouldn’t you say?”

Jake lit a cigarette and took a long drag. He studied her face, a slight grin turning up the corners of his mouth. “I hate it when you make sense.”

Even after she patted his hand and returned to the house, Jake was still staring at the empty rattan chair where she had sat. She never fully explained about her marriage or how her child had died. She just managed to turn the conversation to Jake’s father. How could she know about his father? No one knew, not even Frank. She had touched his scars. Was it true she could touch his soul?

The elderly man behind the counter looked like a tall Yoda complete with pointed ears and wrinkled forehead. He squinted at the handwriting on the form Jake handed him. Charlie Buckmeister had retired from the police force ten years ago but couldn’t seem to keep himself busy at home. So he was hired on as a part-time records clerk.

“Nineteen-seventy-seven? You weren’t even born then.”

Jake laughed. “I assure you, Charlie, I was alive and driving my mother crazy.”

The Records Department archives were in the basement at Headquarters near Central Stores. The smell of paper dust mingled with subtle exhaust fumes filtering from the door to the underground garage.

Headquarters, Precinct One, was Sam’s old precinct and home to Chief Connelley. Being a weekend, there would be a skeleton crew upstairs but Jake had no plans on browsing the halls.

“They’ve been trying to get all the records on those new-fangled computers but they’ve only gotten as far back as, I think, about 1982.” He scribbled the name on a piece of paper. “Casey, Samuel. Okay, let me lookie-see what I’ve got.”

Jake watched Charlie shuffle off to the filing cabinets. A half-empty cup of coffee sat next to a chocolate donut with two bites out of it.

“Have to try the back room,” Charlie called out, having checked the dates on the cabinets in the front room. Several minutes later, Charlie returned. “Here you go. Need to sign out the file or do you just want a copy of something?”

“I’ll let you know.” Jake skimmed through the incident report on Samuel Casey’s death. Reading Abby’s comments made him conjure up a picture of a cute five-year-old girl, clutching a doll, waving to her father through the window.

The case was only investigated for three days. It seemed to have been thorough. Even the arson and explosive experts found nothing to point to a homicide. Jake wondered if the technology they had today would have come to the same conclusion. If he had been the detective on the case, he would have spent more than three days investigating it.

“Do you remember this case, Charlie?” Jake asked.

“That specific case, no. But I remember the date. June 6. That was the day before that letter bomb went off at City Hall. Injured three people. Killed the mailman.”

“Nice diversion,” Jake whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Jake pointed to a signature at the bottom of the report. “Do you recognize these initials?”

Charlie squinted again, studying the curly letters that looked like an ampersand with a line through it.