Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

Honestly, if I wasn’t so incredibly relieved that someone knew where I was, I would have taken the time to get pissed. I controlled the impatience in my voice, but only with effort, and only because I had a sneaky suspicion that if I gave him any excuse at all, Absalom would pretend the whole thing never happened.

“Get in here,” I told him. “I can’t get out.” As if to prove it, I made another jump for the rim and missed. “I can’t get out by myself. If you could just give me a hand up…”

“In there?” Absalom’s voice sounded closer now, like he was right outside the door. “You want me to come inside?”

“Of course I want you to come inside. What the-”

And then it hit me. Absalom’s reluctance. Absalom’s voodoo doll. Absalom’s chilly personality.

I’d assumed it was all because he was a hardened criminal.

I never even bothered to think that he might be scared to death to be in a cemetery.

“Absalom?” I called out, reminding him I was still in trouble so he wouldn’t hightail it out of there. “It’s just a mausoleum. Just a room. Like a small chapel.”

“Dead people buried in there.”

“Yeah, there are.” There was no use denying it. He was bound to see the names carved into the walls. “But they’ve been here a long, long time, and there’s never been a problem. I mean, no ghosts or anything.” I crossed my fingers as I said this, just in case one of those pesky spirits who’d greeted me my first day at Monroe Street actually was buried there. “There’s definitely no ghosts down here where I am.” I could say this with some authority. “There are worms, though. And spiders!” I felt one skitter up my arm and squealed. “If you could help me out, I’d really appreciate it.”

For what seemed like forever, there was no reply. Then I saw him peek over the edge of the hole. “You scared of spiders?” Absalom asked.

“Terrified.” I didn’t have to pretend. I stretched my arms. “If you could just-”

I never had time to finish. Before I could, Absalom latched onto my hands and pulled. One second I was sailing through the air, seemingly as light as a feather thanks to Absalom’s muscles. The next, I was standing on solid ground.

“Thank you.” I held a hand to my heart, fighting to keep it from bursting through my ribs, and I was all set to give him a hug to show him how grateful I was.

Only by that time, Absalom was already out the door.

I followed him outside, grateful for a lungful of non-moldy air. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

Rather than answer, he looked around slowly and carefully, as if he expected something dead to pop out from behind the nearest headstone.

Of course, I knew dead things could pop out from behind headstones. But this did not seem like the right time to mention that.

Instead, I brushed off my jeans and my shirt again, which didn’t do much good, seeing as I was coated with icky mud. My knees were trembling, my arm was bleeding, my hair hung in my eyes. I plunked down in the dry, prickly grass.

Doesn’t it figure, that was precisely the moment that Greer showed up. Of course Bianca was with her.

The supermodel took one look at me, shook her head sadly, and left. Greer, though, quivered with anticipation. “Thought I heard a commotion,” she said. “Not as good as that Sammi beating up on her boyfriend. That was priceless!” She gave me a once-over, and I don’t think it was my imagination. She really did smile when she saw that I looked awful.

“Looks like you’ve had an accident of some kind.” Greer called her cameraman over. “Get this,” she ordered him. “Let’s have Ms. Martin here tell us what happened.”

This was not my idea of a good time, but trooper that I am, I pulled myself to my feet.

“We were just checking out the mausoleum,” I said.

“You? Both of you?” Greer turned to Absalom. “I don’t know. I can’t say for sure, but I thought I heard two people yelling back and forth. You know, like one of you was in that mausoleum and the other one was outside. What do you think…?” Like she was teasing, Greer elbowed Absalom in the ribs. “Think there are ghosts hanging around that place?”

He gulped, and that’s all she needed. She was all set to pounce when I stepped between her and Absalom. “We were checking to see what kind of work needed to be done in the mausoleum,” I told her in my best team-captain voice. “Absalom told me to be careful. I should have listened. I went right through an old, boarded up part of the floor. If he wasn’t here to pull me out… well, I don’t know what would have happened.”

“You’re sure?” Greer peered at me before she turned to Absalom. “That’s the way it happened? I thought for sure I heard you sounding like you didn’t want to go into that-”

“For sure,” I interrupted. “That’s the way it happened.”

Her shoulders slumped inside her navy suit jacket, but in her own way, I guess Greer was as much of a trooper as I am. She latched onto her cameraman’s sleeve and led him toward the open door of the mausoleum. “Let’s get in there, Charlie, get some mood shots. You know, dark hole and all.” She looked my way. “We could re-create the scene.”

“Not on your life!” I didn’t wait for her to try and wheedle me into agreeing. I was wheedle-proof, and besides, I knew what was going to happen next. Greer was going to try and talk Absalom into showing her how he’d saved my life. And she was going to read right through his big tough-guy facade. Just like I had.

Rather than risk it, I walked away.

Absalom came along. “You didn’t tell her,” he said.

There didn’t seem to be any use in pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about. “It’s not her business,” was my only reply.

He nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re not so bad after all.”

Reluctant to break the bond we’d forged, I scrambled for something to say and thought of it when we neared Jefferson Lamar’s grave and I saw the voodoo altar nearby. “Do you suppose that voodoo doll of yours had anything to do with you hearing me and coming to save me?” I asked him.

“I don’t doubt it for a minute. Protection. That’s what she’s for.”

“Then I’m guessing I owe her something. You got any rum?”

Absalom smiled.

Lenny Fitzpatrick, the current warden of Central State, didn’t know me from Adam, and he wouldn’t have given me the time of day if he wasn’t stuck on a treadmill. I knew this because when I finally found him in the dizzying maze of buildings that make up the massive Cleveland Clinic, he looked me over with as much suspicion as if I was one of the inmates in his prison and he’d just found a hole in my cell floor with an escape-plan map tucked inside.

To my credit, I didn’t let that stop me. But I didn’t appreciate it, either, especially since when I left the cemetery at lunchtime, I’d stopped home to shower and change. I was neat, clean, presentable, and looking as good as ever. I wasn’t about to be intimidated. Not by a silver-haired, sixty-something guy wearing gray fleece shorts and a white T-shirt that said I MIGHT BE OVER THE HILL, BUT I GOT HERE ON MY HARLEY.

I introduced myself and told him the same story I’d told Helen Lamar, the one about doing research for the TV show competition and how if I could find out more about Jefferson Lamar, it would get my team big points.

“That was a long time ago.” Fitzpatrick wasn’t moving very fast and it was no wonder. His left leg was crisscrossed with glossy, bright red scars. He took a dozen more slow, careful steps. “There’s nothing new to learn about Jeff Lamar, anyway. Anything you need to know about him, you can find in the old newspaper articles. There were plenty of them. Jeff’s case, it created quite a media sensation.”