S. Tooley - When the dead speak

Jake reached over to help wipe them but Sam pulled away and moved over to the love seat.

“I was going to tell you, Sam.”

“When, Jake? After Preston received a pat on the hand?” She watched him move from the arm of the couch to the couch. The coffee table between them could just as easily been the Grand Canyon.

“I talked to Carl until I was blue in the face. Frank and I both did.”

“Frank?” She was beginning to feel like the punch line of a bad joke. “You trusted Frank enough with the truth but not me?”

“It was what Carl wanted. And as far as Carl changing the President’s mind, Carl’s hands were tied, Sam. We both want nothing more than to see the reputation of Hap and the others cleared. And I DO want Preston to be tried for murder.”

He reached across that canyon for her hand. For a brief moment he touched her. It unleashed her flood of tears again. She pulled her hand away and leaned back. Her eyes were penetrating, accusing, the same piercing coolness she had exhibited the first time she met him at Preston’s.

“You had the videotape of me at Preston’s but you never used it.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Now I know why. You needed to be Carl’s eyes and ears. He needed to know how close I was getting to the truth, how much I uncovered.”

“That may have been true in the beginning.”

She saw pain behind those brown eyes, but told herself he was a good actor. Where was Abby when it came to witnessing the true Jake Mitchell, the man she seemed to trust and mother ad nauseam? Abby’s powers picked a bad time to go on shutdown.

The grandmother clock in the corner of the dining room clanged, echoing off the walls, filling the cold silence. Sam leaned an elbow on the back rest of the loveseat. Her fingers tugged on her hair, winding and unwinding the strands around her index finger.

She despised the fact that Jake had broken through her shell, that he had made her vulnerable. More important, she hated the fact that he made her feel emotions that were foreign to her.

“You discovered Lincoln Thomas was Ling Toy and whisked him right off to Carl.”

Jake leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He studied his hands as if answers were written in the deep creases. “There’s nothing I can say that will make you understand why I had to do what…”

Her head turned sharply. “You’re right.” She was beaten. She didn’t have one more ounce of fight in her. Her emotions had zapped it all out. Rising slowly from the couch she said, “I want you out of here.” As she passed him she ordered, “NOW.”

She opened the front door and stood waiting. Jake placed his hand on the door, leaned close to her. Distance. She needed to distance herself from him before she weakened.

“Sam.” His voice was a whisper. “Don’t do this to…”

She turned away. “Call first before you stop by to pick up your things. Make sure I’m not here.”

Quietly, he left. She closed the door, started climbing the stairs to her room but dropped down on the third stair, too emotionally drained to move. She drew her knees up close and wept.

All this time she had never been able to find a way to get rid of him. She never knew it could be so easy, or so painful.

“You hardly touched your meal,” Alex said.

Abby pulled her shawl up around her shoulders and leaned back against the bench outside of Flanigan’s. The restaurant was across the street from the Three Oaks Shopping Center, a huge, renovated, enclosed center with aqua-colored spires at its entranceways.

Abby looked up toward the sky. The bright lights from the center and Flanigan’s parking lot hindered any view of the stars on this clear night.

“I just have this uneasy feeling.”

A young couple walked past, the mother holding the hand of a young girl. Abby smiled at the girl whose wide eyes stared back. The mother and daughter took a seat on the bench next to them while the father walked off to the parking lot.

The little girl, dressed in a pale yellow shorts outfit which matched her corn-silk hair, walked over to them.

Holding out her doll to Abby, the girl said, “See my dollie?”

“Your dollie is beautiful.”

“Josie.” The young mother gathered up her daughter. “Let’s not bother the nice people.” She led Josie back to the bench.

“You should not let your grandmotherly hormones take over your emotions, Abby. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go out tonight. We should have stayed home.” Alex rose from the bench, positioning his hat on his head.

“I only wanted to give Sam and Jake some time alone.”

A large bird was circling the parking lot. Seagulls scurried from their feasts of food scraps. Patrons emerging from the restaurant looked up as the bird with its forty-inch wing span descended on a nearby light pole.

The hawk turned its head, its beady eyes trained on Abby. It let out a rambling diatribe, a screeching that drowned out the noise from the traffic and the hungry seagulls.

Alex studied the bird and asked Abby, “What does the hawk say?”

Abby sighed heavily and hung her head. The hawk’s report on Abby’s home front was not good.

“Come.” Alex helped Abby up from the bench. “Why don’t we go take in a good blood and guts war movie?” He wrapped a consoling arm around her shoulder. “Definitely no romance movie.”

As they walked toward the truck, Abby patted his hand and asked mournfully, “Dear Alex, is there really a difference?”

Two hours had passed since Jake left. Sam rose slowly from the staircase and walked through the study to the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and brushed her teeth.

Her last meal had been eons ago. Lunch maybe? But she wasn’t hungry. The pain she felt was new to her. It felt as though a large hand had reached into her chest and pulled her heart out. It was a pain she never wanted to feel again.

She lowered herself onto the couch in the darkened study and pulled her feet up under her. Why wasn’t Abby home? She needed a shoulder to cry on. Her emotions betrayed her as the phone rang sending a glimmer of hope through her veins. No matter how much she wanted to, she refused to talk to Jake.

She listened to the voice on the recorder. It was vaguely familiar. When he said his name was Cain, she rushed to the phone.

“Yes, this is Sergeant Casey.”

“I… I have some information I think you might be interested in, Sergeant.”

The hair on her arms rose. “About?” She carried the portable phone upstairs to her bedroom where she stripped out of her shorts and top.

“Your father’s death. I can’t talk now.”

“Then when?”

“Meet me at 160 °Cornell at ten o’clock tonight. And come alone, Sergeant.”

As she listened to the dial tone, bells and whistles went off in her head. A tingling sensation washed over her body. She had pushed Preston’s back to the wall. Maybe Cain was going to turn Preston in. Maybe he had a falling out with his boss. Maybe encompassed a lot of options. But she couldn’t back out now.

A vacant four-block stretch of industrial sites stood dark and quiet. Litter from what seemed like the entire city appeared to have been sucked into this isolated part of town.

It had flourished years ago. A steel container corporation, roto gravure printing company, steel tubing company. All either gave way to new technology or were the victims of cheap, overseas labor.

She had heard the property was being rezoned for a golf course community. Anything would be better than the haven it had been for the homeless, drug addicts, and four-legged creatures. The homeless had moved on. The drug addicts had been cleared out. But the creatures, four-legged and furry, big and small, were in abundance.