Steven Womack - Way Past Dead

The necktie had already been loosened after my disastrous meeting at the insurance company, but now it was off and flung onto the bed before I even got my jacket off. I changed into a pair of jeans and an old flannel shirt, then flipped through the television listings to see if there was anything worth watching.

I realized, as I stood there desperately scanning the cable listings, how empty my evenings were without her. Before Marsha, my evenings were equally empty, but they didn’t feel that way.

I settled back in the chair next to my bed and pointed the clicker at the TV. I surfed around the early-evening stuff, pausing to watch a new Mary-Chapin Carpenter video on Country Music Television, then jumping over to Comedy Central.

“Make me laugh, damn you,” I muttered to the stand-up comic who appeared onscreen.

When the hell is she going to call? I wondered. On the local stations, there was nothing but a brief recap of the morgue situation, then the regular evening stuff. For Marsha, it would be just another quiet evening down in the bunker.

I turned to the phone on my nightstand by the bed. “Ring, damn you,” I demanded. That’s when I noticed the blinking red light on the answering machine. I pushed the mute button on the remote control.

“Aw, hell,” I exclaimed, figuring I’d probably missed her call.

I pushed the button on the machine. The computer voice came on: “Hello, you have one message.…”

Then a short beat, followed by Ray O’Dell’s frantic voice: “Harry! Where you at, Harry? They done arrested Slim, man! They done charged him with killing that bitch! Can you believe that shit? Call me, man, just as quick as you get home!”

There was a breathless pause for a second, followed by Ray’s voice again leaving me a number to call.

I mumbled another obscenity, pointed the clicker at the TV, and unmuted it. Hysterical laughter erupted from the set. Presumably the comedian had just told the funniest damn joke of the entire damn century.

And I’d missed the punch line again.

I slipped the car into a space on Seventh Avenue just across Church Street from my office. I walked back across Church, down the hill toward Broadway, and stepped up into the alcove that led up to the front door of my office building. It was eight-thirty at night, and there was already a bundled-up wino cradling a bottle of Wild Irish Rose sleeping next to the door. He stirred uneasily, caressing his bottle, as I hit the step in front of him.

“Just going into my office,” I said soothingly. “You go back to sleep.”

He mumbled something and rolled over as I struggled in the dim light to get the key in the lock.

The hall lights were off, the hallway illuminated only by the glowing red Exit sign at the other end. The stairway to my left had a silver cast to it from the streetlights outside shining through a dirty window at the landing. I hit the stairs two at a time, got to the landing, then turned back to my left and hopped up the last half of the flight.

“That you, Harry?” a voice boomed from my right, down the hall from my office.

“Yeah, Ray,” I called. “On my way.”

Ray and Slim’s office door was open, with the muted light from a shaded lamp barely illuminating the end of the hallway. I stopped at the door and looked in. Their office was bigger than mine, but still consisted of only one room jammed with file cabinets and desks. Ray sat at one of the desks, his feet up, a large acoustic guitar on his lap. His right arm draped loosely over the body of the guitar, his left hand dangling off the side of the chair.

“You okay?” I asked, wondering if he was drunk, stoned, shocked, or all of the above. “Yeah, I guess,” he said.

I sat on the edge of one of the desks. “When did they arrest him?”

“About six.”

“They chase him down?”

“No.” The chair creaked loudly as Ray shifted his weight. “I got hold of him and told him what you said. He called the detective in charge and went on down there. He said they just asked him a few questions, then Miranda’d him, then booked him.”

“What did Slim do?”

“Well, it appears he had the good sense to shut his mouth at that point. They let him call me so I’d know what was going on.”

“What are they holding him on?”

“Murder, but I don’t know what degree. Arraignment’s at nine in the morning.”

“No,” I said. “Not arraignment. They’ll have to have a preliminary hearing and a bond hearing first. That’s when you get the first indication of how strong the DA’s case is.”

Ray stared at me over the honey-colored wood of his guitar. “Well,” I asked, “how strong is it?”

“I don’t know.”

I figured if his closest buddy and business partner wasn’t jumping up to defend his honor, that was a real bad sign. “Okay, next step is to find him a lawyer. Preferably an experienced one.”

“Yeah.” Ray seemed almost dazed.

“You guys got any money?”

Ray stood up and leaned the guitar against the wall, its neck balanced precariously on the shiny paint. He paced back and forth in the limited space between the desk and a window overlooking Seventh Avenue.

“Not much.”

“That’s bad. Justice costs money.”

“We’ve got Roger Vaden. He handles all our contracts and does our books, what books we have.”

I’d heard of Roger Vaden. He was an entertainment attorney, a reputable one, but he wasn’t the guy to get you off a murder charge.

“That’ll do for tomorrow,” I said. “But you’ll need a criminal attorney on this one, Ray.”

Ray stared out the window, his head leaning against the dirty glass. “Slim’s got his faults, Harry. I don’t think he killed Becca.”

He turned and looked at me. “But he sure as hell had reason to. That woman was a snake, Harry.”

I took that to mean that when the divorce came down, Ray’d been on Slim’s side. I’d learned from painful experience that everyone feels compelled to take sides in a divorce. There were people I’d considered good friends, only to learn they wouldn’t take my calls after Elaine and I split.

“Tell me about her,” I said.

“Rebecca Gibson was a Thoroughbred. Frisky, fast, creative. Could put a song together better than anybody I ever knew, me and Slim included. But she was unpredictable. You never knew what was going through her. All you could count on was that sooner or later she was going to explode.”

“She was the volatile one and Slim was the steady, patient type?”

“Most of the time,” he said, crossing the office and stuffing his hands in his back pocket. “But she liked to pick at him, and it got her goat when she’d go to work on him and he wouldn’t fight back. She’d nag and pick at him until he just couldn’t take it anymore. Then ol’ Slim’d pop his cork. Next thing you know, you got a domestic-disturbance call in the middle of the night.”

Damn, I thought, and the DA would be glad to mention each and every one of them to a jury, as long as the judge would let him.

“He ever hit her?”

Ray hung his head. “Time or two. Hell, she hit back, though.”

“How long were they married?”

“Almost nine years. The last straw came when she booked a tour without him. Didn’t even tell him about it. They were trying to make it as singing partners, working the nightclubs and the honky-tonks for a grand or two a night. She did a three-day gig down in San Antonio without even letting him know where she’d be. When she got back, Slim was gone. Just packed his shit and left.”

“Who filed for the divorce?”

Ray shook his head. “I don’t know. It just happened. I think she did, but I’m not sure.”