Jeff Abbott - No Rest for the Dead

She gestured with her hands for him to continue.

“Listen,” Nunn said. “Thomas was a womanizer, but he didn’t pick just any women. They were always of a certain type-classy, well-educated girls who he could be sure would never blackmail him. Pardon the barb, but you never fit that mold. So why would he get involved with a crooked little tramp like you ?”

“Was that a statement or a question?” she asked, opening a bottle of water that had now gone warm in her bag.

“Drugs?”

She didn’t say a word.

“I know enough about you so that if you don’t cooperate with me, I’ll make sure you see prison, and by the time you get out, that pretty face of yours will look like a beaten-up old tire. I may be discredited, but I still have a few friends at the SFPD.”

She tried to calm herself down. He couldn’t do anything to her. He was a washout. The case was closed .

“You know, they probably have closed-circuit cameras at the Ritz…”

“What do want to know?”

When Nunn left, Haile was standing in the middle of her room and looked up questioningly at her image reflected in a cheap mirror. She didn’t like what she saw. She had walked away from that long-ago life. She had done everything she could to put it behind her, but here was Nunn reopening all of it, using any compromising information he’d been able to glean about her to get her to cooperate with him. She still wasn’t sure how much he had managed to uncover about her life.

Had he been following her, watching what she did at the Ritz?

He must have. Anyhow, she couldn’t be in this room anymore. She knew that he might be waiting for her outside, but she had to get out again.

Shielding herself from view, shoulders up, head down, she hurried along the path until she reached her car.

Once she was settled in the front seat, she started the engine and punched her foot down on the accelerator.

Hang on , she advised herself. She needed to concentrate on her driving as she raced through the neighborhood as if it were a Formula 1 course. She exited the immediate neighborhood with a series of maneuvers designed to smoke out and lose any tails. She couldn’t afford to be followed.

At the moment, she was giving an excellent imitation of someone who hadn’t a care in the world. She rolled down her window and let the damp, ocean-scented air wash through her long red hair, leaned back in her seat, and relaxed-or pretended to.

She thought, Rosemary Thomas was executed for murdering her husband ten years ago. And now all these years later that detective is trying to use me to uncover facts about Chris’s past, while Tony Olsen has invited me to this memorial even though I was never Rosemary’s friend and I was screwing her husband .

Why?

Haile stared at the road.

Who wins by opening all these old wounds?

She thought again about Chris. She was over him and had no reason to kill him. But of course, she had lied about that to the cops-and to herself-that she was over him, could so easily quit him.

She sighed.

It wasn’t as if she were still in love with Christopher Thomas after all these years, but she still wasn’t over what he had done to her. The man had taken something from her, and that loss had yet to be recouped.

But why celebrate Rosemary’s death? What’s the point of that?

She thought again about Nunn. Last she heard he was drinking himself to death and his wife had walked out on him and had married the Thomases’ financial guru.

Why couldn’t Nunn let it all die along with the Thomases? What if he didn’t keep his word and she did go to jail?

She pulled into a Burger King and stopped at the drive-in microphone. She was suddenly starving and needed time to think. She needed to go over everything she could remember about the people who were in any way involved in Chris Thomas’s death.

She ordered a number one without cheese and a Diet Coke. Ordering at Burger King made her feel even more as if she had fallen on hard times.

Chris Thomas’s murder and Rosemary’s subsequent execution had been a blight on the lives of any number of up-and-coming folks who were no longer so young or up-and-coming-including her. Especially her.

She parked on a side street and ate the burger, thinking about Christopher Thomas and the woman who she knew had come after her-Justine Olegard, his associate curator at the museum.

At least that bitch got a permanent job out of the deal , she thought bitterly.

What did I get?

Two days before the memorial, and I don’t have much to go on, but I feel close to finding out the truth. Don’t give a damn how I find it, all I know is that it won’t be in a court room, the press won’t be descending like vultures, and there won’t be an ambitious DA, talking about how the state has to protect itself from the likes of Rosemary Thomas.

Years ago when the pain used to become too much, I’d go down to the subway and stand on the edge of the platform, wondering if I had the courage to take that final step as the train approached. It’s the same reason I still go to bars. There’s one about a block from where I live. Drab place, dark, mostly empty, smells weird. A big, tattooed black guy is always at the bar shining glasses-never says anything. I order a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks, and take a whiff of that comfort brew and dare myself to take a drink. Before Tony rescued me, whenever I’d feel that emptiness that used to threaten to rip my soul apart, alcohol always helped numb me up.

Now, set against the shiny bar, moisture around the glass, the ice cubes glistening, it still looks good to me, but I won’t touch it. I just stare at the drink, knowing that draining that six-ounce glass will take me back down a hole from which I’ll never climb out.

Tonight I stared for a long time into the glass and saw a faint reflection of myself staring back. Usually the rest of the dancing ghosts join the show-all of them, Sarah, Rosemary, Tony, Chris Thomas-like actors taking their place on a stage.

Who would haunt me tonight?

You know whom I saw tonight? My dad. Saw him when he was my age, tired and on the roller coaster of addiction.

I got up, put my jacket on, and went out into the night.

When I got to my place, I walked past a bum and into the hallway that led to my tiny apartment. I never open windows, and as soon as I open the door, the stuffiness of times gone by is always there to greet me. I took off my shoes and lay on the sofa. The phone rang, I picked up.

“Jon Nunn?” I heard a tired voice say on the other end.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Hank Zacharius.”

I respected Zacharius, but I didn’t know him well. “I left the SFPD years ago, so if this late-night call is about a story, I can’t help you.”

“That’s not what it’s about. Look, I need to talk to you. I need help, and I think I can help you.”

“Are you drunk? Your voice sounds funny.”

“My mouth’s busted up, that’s why.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.” He gave me his address.

I had nothing to lose. Better this than another endless night remembering the execution, the day Sarah walked out on me, every mistake, every regret. I took a cab to Zacharius’s place, a ramshackle, rent-controlled apartment that smelled like curry.

Zacharius wasn’t at the door waiting for me, but the door was unlocked and I went in. He sat hunched over on a wingback chair, his face cut, eyes swollen.

“What happened to you?” Looking closely, I realized his nose was broken and had been packed. “Who did this?”