P. Parrish - South Of Hell

“Do you ever think about past lives?” Mel said.

Louis looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

“What your life might have been like if you had done things differently.”

Louis took a drink of beer. “No.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately,” Mel went on. “Thinking about my life before I hit that kid.”

Mel had told him the story. How when his failing eyesight first set in, Mel had refused to acknowledge it, refused to tell his chief that he no longer had any business being behind the wheel of a police cruiser. Then one night in Miami, a couple of years ago, Mel broadsided a car he hadn’t seen coming. The seventeen-year-old kid driving the car spent a year in physical therapy. Mel had been forced to resign quietly but had talked his way into a detective’s job on the smaller Fort Myers PD — until he finally turned in his badge on his own. He’d been living on disability ever since, sometimes helping Louis with his PI cases.

“I think we live many lives inside this one,” Mel said. “Lives that begin and end in an instant, like the eight seconds it took me to hit that kid. Or the minute or so it takes to tell someone you don’t love them anymore.”

Louis looked down at the beer bottle, wiping the condensation with his thumb and wishing Mel would shut up. He was dangerously close to wandering into something he and Louis had never talked about: Mel’s long-ago relationship with Joe, Louis’s girlfriend.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Mel said. “I’m done ruminating. But I’m not done drinking. Get me another, would you?”

Louis went to the kitchen, grabbing another beer for himself, too, figuring Mel was about fifteen minutes away from falling asleep on the sofa, saving Louis the long drive back over the causeway to Fort Myers.

On the way back to the living room, he noticed the red message light was blinking on his answering machine. He was tempted to let it go until morning, but it might be a new job offer. Or a message from Joe.

He hadn’t talked to her in a week. It had been three months since she moved to northern Michigan to take the job as undersheriff of Leelanau County. He missed her. Missed the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin against his, the smell of Jean Nate in his sheets.

He hit the button.

But the voice that came from the machine was male. Deep, with a flat southern Michigan timbre.

“Hello… uh… this message is for Louis Kincaid. The PI? You probably won’t remember me, but my name is Jake Shockey, and I’m a homicide investigator with the Ann Arbor PD.”

Louis set the beers down and turned up the machine’s volume.

“You were the responding officer on a missing persons case back in 1980,” the voice went on. “It’s still unsolved, but a few new leads have surfaced, and when I was reviewing your report, a couple of things jumped out at me I’d like to ask you about. You know, the kinds of things we don’t always think were important at the time. So-”

The tape cut off. Louis immediately hit the button for the next message. For a few seconds, there was only the shuffling of papers and the impatient slam of drawers. Then Shockey’s voice again.

“Damn machines,” he said. “Anyway, this is Shockey again. What I was saying was, I would appreciate it if you’d consider coming up to Ann Arbor to help me light a new fire under this case. We’re willing to cough up the airfare and lodging. So, if you could spare the time off from whatever it is you do down there as a PI, let me know. Call me when you get in. Thanks.”

Shockey left his home number and clicked off.

Louis waited, hoping for a message from Joe, but there was nothing else. He walked back to the living room and handed Mel his beer, then dropped back into the chair.

“He sounds like a real charmer,” Mel said.

“Can’t say. I don’t remember him.”

“You remember the case?”

“Not a clue.”

They were quiet. Louis’s eyes went to the muted television again. Now Sonny had some dirtbag in a pink shirt smashed up against a turquoise wall.

“So, you going?” Mel asked.

When Louis didn’t answer, Mel let out a low burp and went on. “Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Little paid vacation back to A Squared. Stroll around the campus, drink some beer, breathe in the sweet air of youth, relive those moments of reckless adventures and lustful indiscretions. I would give anything to feel twenty again. Wouldn’t you?”

“It was only nine years ago.”

“Right. But tell me it doesn’t feel like another life now,” Mel said.

Louis stood up and walked to the screen door, looking out. It was too dark to see the water, but he could hear the familiar heartbeat of the Gulf in the crashing of the waves, feel its breath in the tangy, salty breeze.

Six months, a year ago… maybe it wouldn’t have felt like another life. But it did now. He felt as if that young man back in Ann Arbor had faded away or even died. And this new man in his place? Far from perfect and riddled with spaces that still needed filling. Yet… this man, this newer him, this man was comfortable in his skin, had made a home for himself on this island. When had that changed? And what had caused it? The nearness of the people he had allowed into his life? Margaret and Sam Dodie, Mel. And Ben, of course, because maybe it took the love of a young boy to help make you grow up.

And Joe…

She was the one who had really saved him.

Louis heard a grunt and turned. Mel had stretched out on the sofa. He was asleep.

Louis took the beer from Mel’s hand and set it on the table. An old throw lay nearby, and Louis laid it across Mel’s legs, knowing he would want it in a few hours when the cooler breezes snuck into the old cottage.

He looked back to the answering machine. Something Shockey had said suddenly registered. Homicide detective. What was a homicide detective doing investigating an old routine missing persons case?

He replayed Shockey’s message, but there was no other information. He paused, then dialed Joe’s home number. For the third time in two days, the answering machine picked up. He listened to the crisp words in her low voice and waited for the beep.

“It’s me again,” he said. “I’m coming north.”

The air smelled of freshly turned earth. Was it just the wind bringing in the odor of a nearby farm? But Louis didn’t remember there being any fields this close to the city.

That’s what Ann Arbor was now, still a college town, the one he remembered from his four years here. But since he had left, it seemed to have taken on the rigor of a bigger place, with traffic and noise encroaching on the quiet sanctity of the University of Michigan campus.

Louis left the rental car in a lot, thinking a walk to the police station would do him some good after the long trip. Two hours sitting on the ground at the Tampa airport before they finally got in the air. Another lost hour at Detroit Metro while a Northwest clerk tried to find his missing suitcase. It had turned up in San Antonio, and the clerk promised it would be delivered to his hotel that night.

The one sweater he had packed — hell, the one sweater he had kept since moving to Florida — was in the suitcase. And now, as he headed down South University, he zipped his windbreaker to his chin against the chill, thinking maybe he should have driven after all.

A bell tolled. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was the Burton Tower. He counted three bells. Shit, on top of everything else, he was going to be late. He spotted a phone and dialed the police station.

“Don’t bust your hump,” Shockey said. “Where are you now?”

“By the Law Quad,” Louis said.