Steven Womack: Dead Folks' blues

“I’m Sergeant Spellman, Metro Homicide,” he said. Up close, he had pockmarked skin, the last residue of teenage acne, and his hair was graying. I recognized him. We’d met a year or two earlier when I was reporting the murder of a country music star’s head roadie. Turned out the guy supplemented his income with ventures into the pharmaceutical import-export business, and wound up taking a header off the I-265 bridge over the Cumberiand. Occupational hazard, I hear.

“I’m Harry Denton,” I said, offering him my hand. “We’ve met before.”

He stared at me, questioning, as he shook my hand. “Oh, yeah. You’re the newspaper reporter.”

“Ex-newspaper reporter. I’m a private investigator now.”

Spellman choked off a snort. “Sony to keep you waiting so long, but we had to finish our on-scene upstairs. You know the routine.”

Actually, I didn’t know the routine, but I was willing to take his word. “So what’s the program now?” I asked.

“Has the doctor released you?”

“Yeah. If I spend any more time in this hospital, I may not survive.”

Spellman grinned. “I hate ‘em, too. I’d rather take a horse whipping than see a doctor. You feel like answering some questions?”

I looked down at my watch: 1:20 A.M. “Right now?”

“We like to interview witnesses as quickly as possible,” he said. “You get a good night’s sleep, big breakfast tomorrow morning, get back to business, I guarantee you won’t remember what you’re remembering now.”

“Am I under arrest?”

Spellman grinned again. “You do anything to get arrested for?”

“No, definitely not.”

“Then this is only a request.”

I brought up my hand and rubbed my eyes, stretching the skin on my face to try to bring some feeling back into it. The only feeling, though, was the searing pain in the back of my head.

“You work this late all the time?” I asked.

“Just like being a doctor. Some nights you’re on call, some nights you’re not.”

“The press pick up on this yet?”

“If they haven’t, they will soon.”

“You notified the decedent’s next-of-kin?”

“Why don’t you let me ask the questions, Mr. Denton.”

“I just thought she ought to be called.”

“What’s it to you?”

I looked up at him. There were dark circles under his eyes as well. Guess everybody looks like hell in the middle of the night.

“That’s who I’m working for,” I said, at least savvy enough to know that in this state, client privilege doesn’t extend to P.I.s. “Fletcher’s wife hired me to get him out of a jam.”

Sergeant Spellman’s eyes flicked from his notebook to me, then back down. “Yeah,” he said. “We need to talk.”

Which is how I found myself on the way to the Metropolitan Nashville/Davidson County Criminal Justice Center at just shy of two o’clock in the freaking morning.

Spellman offered to give me a ride downtown; I was too tired to argue otherwise. We pulled out of the med center parking lot onto 21st Avenue. The white and fluorescent blues of the emergency room faded quickly into the dark oranges of the city streetlights and the neon rainbows of restaurant signs, retail shops, all-night pancake houses. At two in the morning, Nashville’s a strange compound of insomniac music types, graveyard-shift workers, and people looking for love or trouble and not caring very much which one they find first.

I sat in the unmarked Ford Crown Victoria and rested my head against the back of the seat. Every time we hit a pothole my head felt like it was coming apart. But I was too tired to sit up straight.

“What happens next?” I asked.

“We just want a statement from you. That’s all.” Spellman navigated expertly through the thick traffic on Broadway. I thought of the line from some twenty-five-year-old Rolling Stones lament: Don’t people ever want to go to bed.…

“There’s not much to say, I just came across the guy-”

“Not now,” Spellman said. “Wait till we get downtown.”

I settled back as we crossed over I-40 and drove past Union Station. My uncle, the one I’m named after, worked the L amp; N railroad for decades before he died, back before the automobile makers conspired to screw the trains into oblivion. Now only freight trains came through the station, and it’s mostly home for pigeons.

Ten minutes later, I followed Spellman into the police station, down the earth-tone carpeted halls to an interview room. It was quiet there in the middle of the night, a cold kind of quiet.

I sat at a table in front of a portable tape recorder. Spell-man sat across from me and opened his notebook. Then he leaned across and fiddled with the tape recorder.

“Want anything? Coffee, a Coke maybe?”

“Cup of coffee’d be great,” I answered. “Milk, half a sugar.”

He stood back up, left the room for a minute. There was a mirror on the wall behind me. I wondered who was watching from the other side. Figured I’d better not pick my nose or scratch my crotch.

Spellman came in with a Styrofoam cup in each hand. Steam wafted off the coffee.

“Powdered’s all we had. Can’t keep milk around here. It starts stinking after awhile.”

“No problem.”

I sipped the coffee as Spellman jacked around with the tape recorder again, then pressed the RECORD button. He recited his title and name, the date and time, then asked me to state my full name and address into the mike.

So asked, so done. Then Spellman opened his notebook and scanned a page of notes. “Tell me what happened from the time you got to the medical center until you found Dr. Fletcher’s body,” he instructed.

I began the narrative. It felt strange trying to recollect, and recreate in my mind, an entire evening’s events. Like most people, I go through life relatively oblivious to everything around me. There’s so much stimulation, so much stress, these days, that if you paid attention to everything, you’d never get anything done and lose your sanity in the process. It’s like some New Age fruitcake telling you to live every day as if it were your last; hell, that’s impossible. You’d be so overloaded you’d explode, and it would be your last day.

It only took a few minutes to recite the tale. I tried to remember everything like a professional. It was impossible to tell from Spellman’s face what he thought. He sat there in his tan shirt and brown flowered polyester necktie like a law enforcement sphinx, making a few notes here and there and watching the tape recorder spin.

Then his tone changed. Suddenly, we were into details.

“Where did you park your car?”

“Off 21st, a block or so from the hospital.”

“Where off 21st?”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t know the name of the street. I mean, this is Nashville, man. I saw a space, I grabbed it.”

“You don’t know where your car is?”

“Of course, I know where my car is. I just don’t know the name of the street.”

“Who else knew you were going to the hospital?”

“Nobody.”

“You didn’t call anybody?”

“I live alone, Lieutenant. My landlady was asleep.”

“You didn’t call a girlfriend? Maybe tell her you were meeting her later?”

“I’m not seeing anyone right now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “No relationships with women, huh?”

I cocked an eyebrow right back at him. What the hell was going on here?

“I said not right now. I didn’t mean never.”

“Who’s your client?”

I hesitated, then remembered he already knew. “Rachel Fletcher, Conrad Fletcher’s wife.”

He was firing questions like this was the freaking Double Jeopardy round: When did she hire you? Where? How much did she pay you?