Buried Alive (34 page)
Authors: J. A. Kerley
A minute passed and I heard a howling. I first thought it the wind until it turned into a siren, flashing blue-and-white light filling the cab of my truck as a Mobile police cruiser pulled beside me. I wiped condensation from the window with my sleeve and saw a face on the driver’s side, a hand gesturing me to lower my window.
Rain whipped in and the face - a pretty young black woman in a patrol cap and uniform - yelled, “You can see out the windshield a little, can’t you?”
Perplexed, I nodded the affirmative.
“Stay on my bumper,” she said, “but not too close, right?”
I saw the plan, pure magic. The cruiser whipped away and I stood on the accelerator, pasting myself fifty feet behind the MPD wagon. When we hit the highway another set of flashers slid in fifty feet behind me. I was bookmarked by light and sound and we blasted toward the morgue at perilous speed, though I can’t say how fast exactly, never once taking my eyes from the lights of the leading cruiser, my sole point of navigation.
Fifteen white-knuckle minutes later our impromptu caravan rolled to the entrance of the morgue, more correctly the pathology department of the Alabama Bureau of Forensics, Mobile office. It was a squat and solid brick building by the University of South Alabama. I spent a fair amount of time here for two reasons, one being its function as a waypoint in the passage of murdered humans, the other being the director, the brilliant and deliciously lovely Dr Clair Peltier, was my good friend. Take that as you wish, you can’t go wrong.
I pulled under the protective portico and parked beside the nearest NO PARKING sign. The cruiser protecting my flank sped away, dissolving into sheets of gray downpour and leaving only the vehicle driven by the young officer. I waved thanks as she pulled to a stop twenty feet away, on the far side of the portico, rain drumming across her cruiser.
The driver’s-side window rolled halfway down and the pretty face reappeared, frowning at my trusty gray steed. “You really ought to get rid of that truck, Carson,” the woman called through the downpour. “You’ve had it for what - eight years now?”
Her familiarity took me aback. “Almost nine,” I said. “How did you know how many—”
“Carson Ryder …” she said, studying me and tapping her lips with a slender finger, like recalling a story. “Swimmer, kayaker, angler, cook, jazz buff. A man whose intuition battles his logic, perhaps to the betterment of both. A secret fan of poetry. Poorly informed folks might
add womanizer to the list, but that’s far too harsh. How about lover of beauty in both mind and body …” A puckish twinkle came to her eyes. “How’d I do? Was I close?”
I felt my mouth fall open. Her other descriptions aside, virtually no one knew of my taste for the poems of Cummings, Dickey, Roethke, and a few select others. My mind raced to identify the face. Even through rain and the twenty-foot distance, I was sure I’d never seen it before. And she was too pretty to forget.
“We’ve met?” I said, flummoxed by the surreal ex-change.
“Don’t you remember holding me in your arms, Carson? Or the time we kissed?”
“Uh…”
Her radio crackled with a dispatcher’s voice. She canted her head to listen, then looked at me with a sigh. “Lightning blasted out a string of traffic lights along Airport Road,” she said. “I’ve got to go. But I expect I’ll see you soon enough.”
She winked and did a little finger-wavy thing, chirped, “Bye-bye, Carson.” Her window rolled up and she disappeared into the gray as if never existing. I stared into the rain before recalling the building at my back and the reason for the wild ride that had started my day.
Get to the morgue pronto,
Harry had said.
There’s a strange situation
…
Giving a final glance to the space where the woman’s cruiser had resided, as if the drenched asphalt held a clue
to her identity, I turned and pushed through the door to the morgue, finding - as always - a dry and cold atmosphere spun through with molecules of violent death and human despair.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
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1
First published in Great Britain by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
2010
Copyright © Jack Kerley 2010
Jack Kerley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-978-0-00-735001-8
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EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-32815-4
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