Steven Womack: Dead Folks' blues

“Yeah, right,” Lonnie said. I stuck out my hand to him, which was prompuy refused. “Wash that crap off your hands first.”

He led the way into the trailer, the door swinging to on its own behind us. I walked over to the filthy sink, with auto grease and used, dried crankcase oil caked around the edges, and turned the water on.

“You won’t shake hands with me because I’ve got a little chicken on them, but you’ll drink a glass of water that comes out of this filthy sink.”

Lonnie laughed. “Who said I drink water? I don’t drink water. Stuff don’t taste right.”

“Need to get you one of those water filters. Filters out all the chlorine and crap they put in it.”

“It’d have to be some filter to make Nashville water taste good. Like sucking up a swimming pool.”

The table with the scorched hole in it had been pushed into a corner. In the middle of the room on an old blanket sat some kind of disassembled motorcycle engine.

“You rebuilding the bike?”

Lonnie looked at me real serious, then sat in a chair and planted his feet against the wall. “You didn’t come here to talk about engines and feed Shadow. First time I’ve seen you in a week. What kind of trouble you got yourself into?”

I pulled a chair around backward, spread my legs, and sat. I rested my chin on the back of the chair. “It’s like this, Lonnie,” I said, and I began telling him everything that had happened since the day of Conrad’s funeral. I started with Bubba, worked my way through James Hughes and the medical students, LeAnn Gwynn, Jane Collingswood, Albert Zitin, and anybody else I could think of who even remotely might have wanted to kill Conrad Fletcher. And I ended with pulling into Rachel’s driveway the night before and finding Walt Quinlan’s car parked behind her house and all the lights off except in the bedroom.

Lonnie whistled. “You got yourself in a hell of a mess, boy. Damn lawyers’ll stab you in the back every time.” Lonnie’d never met Walter Quinlan; they didn’t exactly run in the same circles. But he knew who he was.

“You want to know what I think?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“I think she killed him.”

“Rachel?”

“Yeah. A man gets killed, first thing you do is look at the wife.”

I sat for a second, thousand-yard stare pasted on my face. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it,” I said finally. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Besides, she’s got an airtight alibi.”

“Airtight alibi, my ass. Ain’t no such thing. And what you mean, it don’t make sense? She told you they weren’t getting along.”

“So? You don’t kill someone because they’re not nice to you. No, she might have divorced him, would have divorced him. But not killed him. You don’t kill doctors; you divorce them and take everything they’ve got. That hurts them a lot worse than killing them.”

“And they had a lot worth having?”

“You ought to see this place, Lonnie. Straight out of the country club crowd. And I don’t know what kind of money he made, but it had to be serious.”

“You’re looking at appearances again, man. You got to look behind that, beneath it, around it.”

“I know. That’s why I came here today.”

“Yeah?” he asked, confused. “What’ve I got to do with it?”

“You still got your laptop?”

Lonnie smiled. “Is Elvis still making records?”

“Let’s go.”

Lonnie stood, led the way down the hall to the back bedroom of the trailer. This was Lonnie’s private office, with all his electronic surveillance gear, computers, nightscopes, cameras, wiretappers, super-secret stuff that you didn’t want to get caught with in a routine traffic stop. Only this time, we were going legitimate.

Lonnie unlatched the cover on the laptop computer, folded it back to reveal a screen and built-in printer. The laptop was a dedicated computer rented from the credit bureau. You didn’t have to program it. You just turned it on and it booted itself up.

“You got a Social?”

“No, I don’t know what his Social Security number was. Can we just run an inquiry?”

“Sure.” Lonnie typed in a command to dial up the credit bureau.

“Would the computer already have Conrad listed as deceased?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. Sometimes it takes ten days, maybe a couple weeks. Depends partly on whether Rachel’s notified them yet.”

My stomach churned as the screen began displaying a message, then a menu of options. This was as sleazy as anything I’d ever done in my life. I felt like I was betraying Rachel, a breach of trust so serious that even if I never told her, it would lay inside me for the rest of my life like a sleeping virus strain.

The worst part was that I couldn’t figure out whether I was doing this because it was part of my job, or if I wanted to know out of some sick compulsion.

“Got a middle name or initial?”

“No,” I said. I stood behind Lonnie as he sat there, typing in commands, looking over his shoulder at the silver and blue LCD screen.

Lonnie typed in a string of letters, followed by Fletcher, Conrad . He hit the RETURN button, and we sat there for what seemed like a long while.

“Maybe this don’t work on Sunday,” I said.

“No, the offices are closed. But the computer’s on twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven days a week. Except when it crashes or shuts down for maintenance.”

The screen lit up in a burst of characters. There were four Conrad Fletchers, each with a different middle initial and address.

“That’s him,” I said. “The third one.”

Lonnie moved the cursor up to the line and pressed RETURN. “It’ll take a minute or so to print out. Want some coffee?”

“Your coffee?” I asked.

“Yeah, who the hell you think’s coffee?”

“Nothanks. I’ll pass.”

The thermal printer started buzzing and spewing out paper a line at a time. I paced the office while Lonnie went for his coffee cup. I was afraid to look at the report as it came out of the back of the computer. I could still not do this. All I had to do was tear it up and throw it away, and I’d still be able to stand myself in the mirror.

The computer beeped, indicating the report had been sent. Then the printer buzzed as it rolled out the rest of the sheet. Lonnie came into the office with a dirty mug full of coffee.

“Well,” he said, setting the cup down on the desk, then reaching behind the computer to tear the paper, “let’s see what we got here.”

I stood back as he ripped the paper out of the computer. He held it under the desk light and looked it over. His eyes flicked back and forth across the paper.

“Well?” I asked.

Lonnie cocked his head toward me, still bent over the desk.

“Sweet Mother of Jesus,” he muttered.

This pain shot up the back of my neck, radiating out through my skull like heat waves. “What is it?” I asked.

He handed me the curled sheet of paper. It had a grayish shiny cast to it, almost as if it had been wet. Credit bureau reports are complicated creatures; you have to know the codes or they’re largely indecipherable. When I started skip tracing for Lonnie, he gave me a handout that explained it all, but I hadn’t looked at it in a couple of weeks.

A row of asterisks ran across the top of the report, broken only by the letters REF A64 centered in the line. Below that was a line that read: NM-FLETCHER, CONRAD, J., DR., and below that, the address, and Conrad’s Social Security number.

The first chunk of the report was personal information: his age, the date he established credit, spouse’s name, spouse’s maiden name, her Social Security number, and their former addresses, going back at least five years. Below that, Conrad’s employer, position, and salary were reported.