Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

“Will you resign?”

They came tumbling, end over end, one over the other, most not even expected to be answered, thrown out as an accusation, as an insult, as an indictment of police incompetence, stupidity, failure.

The chief held out both hands, palms down, looking like a man warming his hands by a fire.

“We’re not going to be able to answer all these tonight. Judge Reese, that’s a different issue. We haven’t had a chance to talk to him. We’ve only read the story in the newspaper today, but yes, that’s something we’ll want to talk to him about. Gasoline, I can tell you that. Gasoline was the accelerant. And no one in our custody was beaten or maltreated. I can tell you we were as surprised as anyone both by the things we found downstairs and by the fact we found them at all. Mr. Goodwin had been a helpful and forthcoming witness in our investigation in both cases.

“We have no idea as to motive. It may be we find that in the coming days, although the fire has pretty much destroyed Mr. Goodwin’s house and any evidence that might have been in it. I would guess that might be a reason for setting it, but I don’t know that. We had thought of him as helpful. We thought of him, until we walked in that house earlier today, as a victim in his own right of these murders and their consequences. He was, instead, it appears, the perpetrator, the man who killed both Sarah Reese and Noel Pittman, and several others.”

Sully called in a couple of final grafs to Tony, the celebratory lap, the last touches. Tony had left, gone home, and come back again. He was taking feeds from who knows how many reporters. He keyed it in, asked some basic follow-ups, and then stopped.

“Just shipped it,” he said, finally. “Done. Story’s gone.”

“I’m clear?”

“You’re clear. One-A. Above the fold. Jesus, man. Two days in a row. Reese and now this.”

R.J. was on the phone two minutes later, before Sully could even get to the bike.

“Boy. You boy, you boy . Just watched it on television. You were right. Brilliant. You told me you had a feeling about those women up there. You did. It was-I’m sitting on the couch next to El, I’m saying, ‘It’s Ruth calling his shot to center, this kid.’”

Sully let the feeling soak into him, the exhaustion, the end of the adrenaline spike.

“Thanks, amigo.” He didn’t know much else to say. “Reese? We ever hear anything on Reese?”

“You mean, other than he’s dead to the Supremes, and possibly off the bench? You didn’t see the punditry today. The Senate is making noises there’ll be hearings.”

“I meant corrections, denials.”

“Not a peep.”

Sully blew out his lips. “Well. Okay.”

“So,” R.J. said, “you know we’re going to want you on this full-time for a while, the big picture about Goodwin, the women up there, the whole shebang. God only knows how many women he actually killed.”

“It’s going to be more than we know about right now.”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah. And we’ll want you on it.”

“Can you let Chris do the wrap-up on the three suspects? I would imagine they’ll get released tomorrow. There’ll be a ton of stuff on that.”

“You feeling bad about making him look like a punk?”

“Maybe a little. Speaking of punks, I haven’t heard from Melissa today.”

“Ahaha. Neither have I. She’ll eat shit on this one, but she’s not going anywhere. I’d smoke the peace pipe with her, I was you.”

“Maybe.”

Sully got to the bike, cranking it into life, unlocking the helmet, straddling it. He saw the glittering sign of the Show Bar two blocks down. Why not? he thought. Plop down in Doyle’s old haunt, sit where he sat, look at what his twisted mind had looked at night after night.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, R.J. I’m going to have a drink. Don’t look for me before noon.”

When he stopped the bike and got to the red front door of the strip club, he gave the man in a black suit ten dollars for the cover. The man ushered him inside, the music throbbing, the purple and red lights revolving. He started to put Sully at a table near the front until Sully motioned toward a booth at the back of the club, and the man took him there.

He got a gin and tonic and watched the show. After a while, Sly walked in. Sully had not spotted Lionel, but someone must have seen him and called the boss.

Sly walked to the booth, sat across from Sully. The waitress came and Sly took a Hennessy.

The dancer finished her routine. Scattered applause, maybe a dozen bills stuffed in the white garter adorning her right leg. She came around the room in a short white silk robe, propping a leg on each customer’s chair to say hello, to let the robe fall open and allow them another view and to tuck more bills into the garter. Sully obliged with a five. Sly did not look at her and she left.

Sully watched the new woman onstage for a minute. He leaned toward Sly, semishouting to be heard over the music. “The necklace? In his hand?”

Sly kept his eyes on the dancer, sipped his cognac.

“Nice, hunh? Couldn’t take a chance it getting lost in the fire.”

“Where was it?”

“On a shelf down there, the basement. He had a whole lot of Noel shit.”

“Hunh. Didn’t see it. Didn’t see anything from Sarah.”

“You didn’t look around in that back room. That was his-his what? His workshop. That’s what it was. His workshop.”

Sly put his drink down, popped a crick in his neck. He seemed upbeat, almost ebullient. Sully had never seen him like this before. It dawned on him that perhaps Sly was slightly drunk himself.

Now Sly leaned back over, shouting in his ear. “Coldhearted mother, got to give him that.”

“Who? Doyle? How you mean?”

“How I mean? How you think I mean? I mean all that shit. Noel? Bitch that fine, dumping her ass in the basement, by his own store? Michelle, in his own house? Who does that? He probably did the Mexican girl just for practice. And the white girl, goddamn.”

“Sarah,” Sully said.

“What a white-girl name.”

“Don’t see a lot of white chicks named Keisha.”

“You not getting racist over there,” Sly said.

“It’s just an observation about your observation.”

“Yeah, well, my man fucking chokes Sarah and then cuts Sarah’s throat after Sarah’s goddamned dead. That’s some sick shit, you wanna ask me. Why would a nigger do that?”

“Am I supposed to answer?”

The waitress came back and they both took another round. They watched the dancer onstage for a while without speaking. She put Sully in mind of Noel, a dancer herself, who was dead and buried at the hand of Doyle. Lorena, he thought. Today had to just be hell on her. It was too late to call now.

“Noel must have died the same way,” Sully said, blinking back a sudden wave of nausea, an intense vision of her last moments of life, what she would have seen, heard, felt, sweeping over him. It had happened just a few hundred feet away.

“How you mean?”

“The knife. The throat.”

“Hey, the fuck, you not going to be sick over there.”

“No,” he said, opening his eyes, his forehead clammy. “Just tired. And this damn railroad gin.”

Sly nodded. “Girl’s got skills,” he said, looking at the stage, but the evening felt spent. After the girl finished and another came on, Sly rapped his glass twice on the table during the middle of the song, something by Rick James. He nodded to Sully, slid out of the booth, walked between the tables and out of the place, that slow lope, unhurried.

The liquor and the lack of food and the exhaustion settled into him now. He watched the spinning Donna Summer disco ball overhead. He felt like he weighed a million pounds. Standing up, getting out, it just felt impossible.