Jeff Abbott - No Rest for the Dead

“What have you heard? I’m not dying,” Nunn said, hearing himself laugh under the rumbling din of the Irish pub. It smelled like cardboard and old beer, the wood below his hand knotty and warped from slipshod cleaning.

“Yes, you are, of boredom, if you’ve called me. ‘For a good time, call the chief medical examiner of the city of San Francisco.’”

“You know why I called,” Nunn said soberly.

Regina closed her eyes shook her head. “Na-ah. No way, my friend.”

“What does it hurt?”

“To look into a case that was closed ten years ago, with all the original examinations done in Germany? That hurts my head, Jon.”

“Just noodle it a little before shooting me down.”

“The thing about you, my friend, is you’re timeless. You could have lived a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now, and people would still know what you are.”

“Which is what, Regina?”

“Lost.”

“Don’t you care that we might have had a part in sending an innocent woman to death?”

“You’re looking for the TV version of me, I think.” Regina stood and fished in her pocketbook for a few dollars.

“Wait!” Nunn put his hand on her wrist as an earnest Bob Dylan song came on. She froze.

“Everything all right, Regina?” Mick, the globular and imposing bartender, appeared, looming over Nunn.

“Yeah, fine,” Regina said.

“Please,” Nunn said to her when the bartender had warily scooted back to his spot. “You used to trust my instinct.”

Nothing discomfited a woman who relied on humor in her personal interactions as much as seriousness.

“McGee.”

“What?”

“Ignatius McGee,” she said. “Forensic anthropologist. Nobody digs up the old bones like he does. But he’s a tough one to get ahold of. He’s based in Boston and booked up for years at a time. Plus, he doesn’t really like living people.”

Nunn went on, “I’m getting closer to ending all this. I need this, Regina. Can you at least get me a conversation with this McGee?”

Regina surrendered a little around her shoulders, returning to her stool and pushing her whiskey to the side.

The routine hadsolidified itself now. In San Francisco, the early morning was the kind of gray cold you feel in your bones. The late afternoon too. This left only a small window in the middle of the day that was clear and beautiful. Nunn would sleep most of the morning so that he could wake to the beautiful hours instead of to the painful fog. He knew it was temporary relief, but it was still something to help him to his feet.

Sometimes he’d tail Stan Ballard in the late afternoon. Stan must have thought his souped-up sports car put him above and beyond the reach of mortal men, but instead, it made him an easy target-he stood out like the arrogant bastard he was. Nunn would watch from afar his wine-and-cheese meet-ups with Peter Heusen on Peter’s boat.

Nunn still couldn’t think of Stan as Sarah’s husband. It was just Sarah and that… bastard, sonuvabitch, scumbag -these were all words that blocked out husband .

Nunn had followed the sonuvabitch bastard scum and wondered what the hell he’d been doing visiting Rosemary Thomas’s grave, with that god-awful smirk across his face.

There. That proves it. It’s not just that I hate him for stealing my wife. He’s hiding who he really is. He’s hiding it from my Sarah and from the world .

Peter, meanwhile, that two-bit snake, almost made Nunn equally angry with the dissipated life he had built on the foundation of his sole control of the old, drying family money.

More and more, Nunn would end up back at the old fortune-cookie factory, back in the rear encampment for heroin and methadone addicts that started as an informal needle exchange. The crack smokers poisoned the air. The smokers and shooters were supposed to stay in separate rooms along the corridor, but really, was anyone here going to complain? A filthy, scraggly dog desperately whined at Nunn-then choked and coughed. The mutt was attached to the wrist of a pierced, tattooed, formerly middle-class runaway who only used the dog to beg aggressively for money in the Haight and fed him the minimum to keep the dog alive.

When asked what he had to sell by one of the occupants, Nunn mumbled his stale story about looking for his confused uncle-what he used to say back when he was looking for Christopher Thomas years ago. Even though many of the shades in here had been there when he’d done this before, he didn’t exactly worry about anyone putting one and one together.

“Tell me. Have you seen him here?” Nunn asked.

“Who?”

“My uncle,” Nunn said, and showed a photo of Chris Thomas.

The shade went pale and shaky, looking over Nunn’s shoulder to a new arrival. Dropping his head, the shade stumbled his way down the corridor.

Now two lean, tall, well-dressed young Asian men were standing at the entrance to the den. Their robust, healthy auras were all too conflicting with those of the place’s occupants. They were the weakened leftovers from Hong’s years of control.

“You lost, or are you a cop?” the more slender of the two asked.

“I could be neither,” proposed Jon.

“Then you don’t belong. That’s a problem. And a problem here is a problem for me.” He had a white scar across the length of his upper neck as if someone had tried to commit suicide for him.

“Maybe I’m just looking for a fortune cookie that finally gives me some good news,” Nunn said, faking a laugh.

“You a cop?” the man repeated. The hulkier man had his hand inside his fatigue-colored jacket. Nunn could see by the way the arm was positioned it probably wasn’t a gun he was reaching for-maybe a knife, or knuckles.

It would have been all the easier for these men if Jon were a cop. He could either be bribed or ignored, depending on what he was here for. Here was where Jon’s anonymity came to good use. Without knowing who he was, any attack on him could be dangerous.

“Funny thing. I was looking for my uncle. You know him?” Jon held up the photo of Chris Thomas and watched their faces cautiously. Their eyes both flickered ever so slightly and they said nothing. They wouldn’t talk, but still, the hornets were stirred by his visits. Jon hadn’t felt this alive in ten years.

Rosemary, you watching this?

“No, I guess you don’t. Oh, well. Long shot.”

“Your uncle’s not here, hasn’t been any of the times you walked in here. You can see that. You should leave.”

Jon stuck his hands deep in his pants pockets. “Here’s the funniest part,” Jon said, casting his glance around the filthy den. “I walk in here looking for my long-lost uncle, and see my dog, Max, that someone stole out of my yard. I was just about to call the police to help get him back from that freak over there with the tattoo of Jesus on his forehead.”

“Don’t bother,” answered the interlocutor. He glanced at his companion, who took out a switchblade from his pocket and took a gigantic step toward Jon. Waiting to see if Jon would scream or run away-he did neither, just stood his ground-the muscle walked past to the unconscious addict and cut the rope off his wrist.

“Max, come here, old boy!” Jon called out. The desperate little dog ran over and jumped into Jon’s arms, licking his hands. The dog would probably have run over to anyone who called his name in a friendly tone-but on top of that Jon had rubbed his hands in his pockets where he kept a stash of beef jerky for his long walks through the city, and the dog could have smelled it a mile away. Jon had a friend who was a former animal-control officer and now ran a rescue shelter-Max would have a new home within days.