Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

“Wish you’d deposit that,” Misty said, screwing the cap back on the bleach bottle. “I don’t like having it around.”

“You and me both.”

“You should deposit it,” Ashby said.

“That’s right, Ashby,” Misty said. “He should. You tell him.”

She took the ashtray, dumped the contents in the small toilet off my office, and flushed. Ashby was riveted, like he was watching his favorite movie.

“You got a next move, Detective?” she asked.

I shoved the envelopes back in the drawer. “I was afraid you’d ask that. I still don’t know what happened to Turgeon. Oh. Wait a minute. Maybe I do.”

“What do you mean? You think he survived?”

With a stubby thumb and forefinger, I gingerly took out the bloody cell phone. “No.”

“Oh, my God, Hess, is that . . . ?”

I nodded. “Evidence. And my pocket isn’t exactly a sterile environment. We got a plastic bag around here somewhere?”

Exasperated, she said, “Sure, why don’t I just pull one out of my butt?”

“Probably be cleaner than my pocket.”

“Heh-heh. Heh-heh.”

She shook her head at the kid. It was me she was annoyed with, but Ashby took it personally. Surprising us yet again, he looked sheepishly at Misty and said, “Sorry, can’t help it.”

“Oh, that’s okay, honey. I know it’s not your fault,” she said. She stuck a thumb in my direction. “Him, though, I know he can keep his trap shut when he wants. I’ve seen it.”

“Hah,” he said. Just like that, a real laugh. Hah.

At first I thought of Misty only as a good way to keep him steady, but this was getting interesting. I pointed to the door. “Misty, a word in the reception area?”

The “reception area” was a gray piece of work; the only bits of color were what peeked out behind the peeling paint and looked sticky. It doubled as a storage space and Misty’s bedroom. She sat on the edge of her cot and crossed her legs. As I sat next to her, some vague half memory told me I should be looking at them. It was just a twinge, and it left as soon as it came, but it made me realize Misty had been looking healthier lately.

I whispered, “I want you to try to ask him about last night. Whatever happened, he was there. When I talked to him about it, he kept flashing back to his arrest, but you . . .”

“You really think I can focus him?”

“Looks that way so far,” I said. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

She nodded and stood. I hesitated, but then I figured, Why not? “It probably wouldn’t hurt if you sat down close and crossed your legs.”

“Hess!” she said. She slapped me playfully on the shoulder, then paused and frowned. “Really?”

I shrugged. “Worth a shot. If you don’t remind him of his mother, maybe you remind him of some teacher he wanted to screw.”

She rolled her eyes and went back in. I settled back and leaned my head against the wall. The rot smell wasn’t so strong here, and I caught a whiff of the cheap perfume she used, buys it by the quart. Big heart, Misty. Works with the bleach so much, her hands are always dried out. I keep telling her to use those big yellow gloves, but she never listens.

I heard her talking, softly, Ashby doing the nervous laugh, but I couldn’t make out any words. I put my ear against the plaster. Still no go. With no confession forthcoming from the Boyles, Turgeon was my only other link. Even if he was dead, it’d be a lot tougher to hide a liveblood body. His boss, at least, would be missing him. That was something I could follow up on.

After a while, there was more “heh-heh” than not. When she opened the door I could hear Ashby running like a lawn mower—“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

“Anything?”

“I think so. For some reason, they went back out of town. A black car cut them off and two men attacked them, one with a lot of muscle and a scar on his forehead, the other older, African-American, I think, with short white hair. They forced them to drive off the road, out into the desert. One of them pulled out a set of head clippers. Ashby says they tried to hold Frank down, but he put up enough of a fight to kick open the door and push Ashby out. Ashby thinks they chased him, but he wasn’t sure.”

I blew some dry air through pursed lips, but still couldn’t whistle. “Maybe you should be the detective.”

She sat down and rubbed her temples. “No, thanks. I don’t have the stomach.”

“I could give you mine.”

“Cute.”

I tried to picture the scene. “The goons were probably hired guns. If they were local, the descriptions might ring a bell with Jonesey. Anything about Turgeon?”

She shook her head. “Only that he and Frank had been talking about a man named Kendrick.”

“Frank Boyle’s husband. It might mean something, or maybe Turgeon was just being nosy again.”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

Misty shrugged. “Anyway, that’s when he started making that sound over and over. Maybe if I had nicer legs.”

“Your legs are fine. You could stand to eat more. But the name shouldn’t upset the kid. Kendrick wasn’t Ashby’s dad.”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.” It was coming out nonstop now, like a machine gun.

“Maybe it upset Frank and that upset Ashby?”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

It made sense, but it felt like it should make more sense, like I’d understand if I could only focus. The laugh was getting to me, though.

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

I rapped my forehead. “Okay. It doesn’t look good for Turgeon, but if Ashby survived, maybe he did, too. Misty, can you call around to the hospitals, see if he checked in?”

“Sure. What about you?”

“I’ll go check out the other possibility.”

“Meaning?”

“Do I have to spell it out? No one gives a shit about Frank Boyle, but if a liveblood turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, they take the body to the police coroner.”

11

Fort Hammer’s police station was an old building in a city full of them. It’d been renovated a few times, when the economy was good. Built in the 1920s, it had an art deco look, the craze that swept the nation when archaeologists found Tut’s tomb. Everything looked like ancient Egypt for a while—worshipers of the dead. In the 1980s they added a new wing devoted to holding cells, designed to match.

To me, it was different things: office, library, dungeon. When my photographic memory went, it took a lot of the picture albums with it. I could no longer recognize the exact spot on the wall where I’d rammed a perp’s head into the fine stonework, or exactly where I’d leaned back for a smoke while the rest of the department was laughing over a job well-done or hooting over some woman’s rack. I got tingles, though, feelings like I should remember.

I did know where the rear entrance was, and I was smart enough to head there fast. If any of my former coworkers saw me, I didn’t doubt I’d be buried so deep I could crawl down into China. Funny. Boyle wouldn’t even get that burial. Then again, Booth wouldn’t bother to D-cap me first.

The morgue was in the basement, open until three—I didn’t even have to worry about running into the coroner, Anthony Philbrick. A round guy with a vague goatee, he had a pretty good sense of humor. He was one of the few I used to clown around with. Not someone I wanted to see, and not because I didn’t like him. While I was in jail, I heard that ever since he saw Lenore’s body, he hadn’t cracked a grin.

The after-hours guy was a chak. I could picture him easily, but I was damned if I could remember his name. Half his abdomen was gone, but that was always covered by his clothes, so you wouldn’t notice unless he bent in a weird way. His face was intact except for a missing chunk of his chin. Nothing unusual. Maybe I remembered because he didn’t wear the typical chak deadpan. There was a slight look of shock haunting his face, as if all his worldly concerns had been blown away all at once, and part of him was still going, “Oh.”