Speak the Dead (4 page)

6

C
losing the fire exit behind her, Sally fastened all three deadbolts and sank to the floor. Cold radiated from the shallow concrete landing as she wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed.

What the hell was she thinking? How could that possibly be the correct license plate? The cops would be furious at her for wasting their time, but it had seemed so real…

All she had done was touch the woman, and she had… what? Relived the last thing the woman experienced before she died.

That didn't make any sense. Sally had been working with the dead for years and apart from… Sally hesitated, remembering. When she had touched her dead mother all those years ago, she had still been warm, her life just ended. But Sally hadn't left her own body and witnessed her mother's death. Instead, her mother delivered a warning. She told Sally to run.

And I've been running ever
since.

Maybe she'd inhaled too many fumes, Sally thought as she glanced across the room at the ancient exhaust fan sputtering in the far corner.
That could explain
everything.

Feeling better with that explanation, Sally rose to her feet, shook off the chill, and returned to Mr. Lombardo. The poor man had been left alone with nothing but a plastic diaper to protect his dignity.

The detergent from the sponge had evaporated, leaving odd-looking green chicken scratch on his stomach. Sally rinsed the sponge in warm water and gave the body a quick wipe to remove the marks.

After drying him, Sally peeled away the thin plastic dry-cleaner wrap from around the fresh suit his widow had delivered and began the process of dressing him. As she feared, she had to slice the suit jacket down the back and stitch it together with safety pins to get just the right fit. But once she was done, Mr. Lombardo looked like a successful businessman who had fallen asleep on a stainless steel tray.

The only exception, as is the case she found with most men, was his hands. Those could have belonged to a potato farmer.

Sally stretched a kink out of her neck and glanced at the clock before picking up nail clippers and an emery board to make Mr. Lombardo's hands match the rest of the presentation.

She was just adding a final touch of metal polish to his gold wedding band—something his widow insisted be buried with him—when there was a firm knock on the rear door and a man's voice called out her name.

7

D
etective Jersey Castle stood in the alley and knocked on the door once more.

“Yes?”

Sally's voice: firm yet tentative; soft but not defensive.
A voice
, Jersey thought,
one could fall asleep to and still be thrilled to hear upon awakening
.
Seriously?
he chided himself,
you just met the girl. Snap out of it, man.

“It's Jersey.” He made his voice firm and deep. Strong. Not soppy at all. “The Medical Examiner has removed the body, and I just have a few final questions.”

“Hold on.”

When he heard the locks being turned, Jersey felt a joyfulness stir in his soul that he hadn't experienced in far too long. Never married nor engaged, Jersey had contentedly lived his life, never contemplating loneliness until this exact moment as he waited in anticipation of the green-eyed woman behind the locked metal door.

When the door swung open, Jersey wiped the excited grin off his face and replaced it with a serious, and what he hoped was a manly, for handsome was probably a stretch, expression.

Sally held the door and looked up at him. She appeared worried.

“It's okay,” Jersey blurted in an attempt to put her at ease. “It's just routine.”

“Do you want to come in?” Sally asked.

“Sure, that would be great.”

Jersey winced at his own enthusiasm as he stepped through the door and followed her down concrete steps to the chilled basement below.

At the bottom of the stairs, Jersey took in his surroundings: plain off-white walls, unimaginative linoleum floor in a speckled black-and-white gravel pattern, gleaming stainless steel fixtures, two large walk-in refrigerators at the far end, and an elderly corpse in a smart-fitting herringbone suit.

“Nice place,” he said.

Sally burst out laughing and it was so infectious Jersey couldn't help but join in.

“Sorry,” Jersey said as the laughter died down. “I guess that was lame.”

“Not to worry.” Sally walked over and lightly touched his arm. “For an inner-city mortuary, it does have its charms.”

Sally moved past him and grabbed the occupied gurney.

“Can you get the door?” she asked. “The cooler on the right.”

Jersey crossed to the giant refrigerator and pulled open the heavy steel door, which allowed Sally to wheel the gurney inside. Once the body was parked, Sally covered its head and upper body in a light cheesecloth veil to protect against dust or other contaminants wrecking her work. When she was done, she closed the door.

“So,” Sally moved to pack up her supplies, turning her back to him, “what questions did you have?”

Jersey cleared his throat and fumbled open a small fake-leather notebook.

“Just the one really,” he said. “How did you see the vehicle's plate?”

SALLY DIDN'T KNOW
how to answer.

The truth seemed ridiculous: she had noticed the car's registration while watching the hit and run through the victim's own eyes.

It was the one part of her experience that really bothered her. All the rest, the woman's legs being broken, her neck hitting the windshield… it didn't take a detective to piece together what must have happened. The state of her body told that story. It would have ignited anyone's imagination.

But how did she explain the license plate and the two faces she glimpsed through the windshield?

“Ms. Wilson?” Jersey's face radiated concern.

“Sorry.” Sally smiled. “I drifted off for a second.”

“You look worried. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes, I'm fine. Just… tired.”

“It can be a shock,” said Jersey, “seeing a thing like that. It hits me, too, sometimes. I'll be working a case, wading through bodies, thinking I'm invulnerable to it all, and then,
wham
, I need to sleep for about twenty hours just to get things back in perspective.”

“My guests are easier,” Sally said. “More at peace than yours.”

Jersey grinned. “I've never thought of my cases as having guests, but maybe I should start.” His eyes reflected a gentle warmth and Sally felt something inside her stir. “Then maybe their faces wouldn't stay with me so long.”

Sally reached out and stroked his arm again, her fingers becoming hooked in a rip in the sleeve of his ratty T-shirt.

“How did you get that hair?” Sally asked. “The white streak.”

Jersey blushed. “Natural curse, I guess. My grandfather had it, which never endeared me to my father as he hated the son of a bitch.”

Sally laughed, but quickly covered her mouth. “Sorry.”

“No, don't be,” said Jersey. “I can be a son of a bitch, too, if the mood strikes.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Jersey smiled wider. “You might be surprised.”

“I think I'd like that,” said Sally.

“Like what?”

Sally grinned playfully. “To be surprised.”

Jersey blushed again.

“Why Ms. Wilson,” he said in a weak attempt to sound like Rhett Butler, “are you hitting on me?”

Sally feigned indifference. “Would you like me to?”

“With all my heart.”

Jersey's sincerity was so unexpectedly earnest, Sally felt her own cheeks grow warm.

The awkward silence that followed was broken when Jersey's cellphone burred.

“Sorry.” He answered the phone. When he hung up, he said, “They've found the vehicle and need me on scene.”

“Good news?”

Jersey shrugged. “Didn't sound like it.”

“Pity,” said Sally. “Your work day is just beginning, while mine, thankfully, is at an end.”

“Don't rub it in.”

Sally laughed and punched his arm. “I wasn't.”

Jersey crossed to the steps leading up to the rear door.

“Lock up behind me, will ya? It's a crazy world out there.”

“Don't I know it.”

Sally followed him to the door.

Jersey stepped into the alley, but before taking off he did something completely out of character—he turned and kissed Sally on the lips.

Sally was startled, but secretly pleased.

“Just in case.” Jersey headed down the alley and disappeared from view.

Back in the
mortuary, Sally bustled to pack up the rest of her supplies and finish cleaning the equipment and tables.

It had been too long since she had found a man who wasn't either completely freaked out about her occupation or had a morbidly disturbing fascination with it. Jersey hadn't seemed to give it much thought either way. He had been more interested in her than with what she did to pay the bills.

The discovery of the hit-and-run vehicle was also good news. If they had found the car maybe Jersey wouldn't realize that she never told him how she saw the vehicle's plate.

8

W
hen Jersey arrived at the scene of the suspect vehicle, discovered in an alley less than eight blocks from the nightclub, he covered his ripped T-shirt with a navy blue windbreaker that he kept stashed in his trunk.

The word POLICE emblazoned on the back of the nylon jacket in large, glowing white letters reflected any available light. The jackets were great for rainy night traffic stops but, as Jersey liked to joke, not recommended for undercover work.

There was nothing he could do about the leather pants and tattered biker boots, but at least the windbreaker made him look slightly less like an overweight thug with a leather fetish.

“Nice pants,” said the uniformed officer manning the barricade at the mouth of the alley. “Vice got you cruising gay clubs?”

“Just your wife's bingo hall,” Jersey fired back.

The officer laughed. “In those pants, she'd eat you alive and spit out the zipper.”

“Sounds like domestic bliss.”

The officer sighed. “If only.”

Jersey went around the temporary plastic barricade and continued down the alley to a small crowd of uniforms mulling around a large, four-door Dodge sedan.

“We know who owns it?” Jersey called out to the crowd as he reached the rear of the vehicle.

“We think it's this guy's.” The answering voice carried the smoky undertones of a seductive Portuguese lilt, but it took a practiced ear to truly enjoy it.

Jersey turned to see his partner, Detective Amarela Valente, as she popped her head out of the open front passenger door on the opposite side of the car. She was dressed head to toe in black—form-fitting slacks, tapered blouse, sensible shoes, and a shiny bomber-style leather jacket. Unlike him, however, she pulled it off with aplomb. It also didn't hurt that she was athletically slim and possessed a perfect heart-shaped rear that could make a Spanish bullfighter cry—and probably had.

This morning she had twisted her sable black hair into a serious ponytail and was wearing disarming cat's-eye glasses. She was also nodding impatiently in the direction of the car's interior.

Jersey shouldered past two uniformed officers who were so distracted by every movement Amarela made that, despite his considerable size, they hadn't registered his arrival. Jersey figured they were probably hoping she would offer to spank them after class.

“Forget it, boys,” Jersey muttered. “She doesn't know you're alive.”

The two officers flashed him sour looks as Jersey bent down to peer through the driver's window. The seat was occupied although it was difficult to make out the driver's face due to the amount of blood that splattered the glass.

“We got a gun?” Jersey asked.

“Still in his hand,” said Amarela.

“Angle of entry?”

“Stand up and see for yourself.”

Jersey straightened and noticed the bullet's exit puncturing the car roof less than an inch above the top of the window. Instinctively, he tried to follow the bullet's trajectory, but the alley hadn't yet been graced by the morning's slowly rising sun.

“We'll need that bullet,” he said to no one in particular.

The sour-faced officers ignored him.

Jersey walked around the car's enormous front hood, careful to avoid several muddy puddles slicked with oil, their depth and contents unknown. He leaned over Amarela's shoulder to look inside.

The dead man's gun was a snub-nosed .38 revolver with blued metal finish and handsomely polished walnut grips.

“Not a bad choice for suicide,” said Jersey. “It sucks for just about anything else.”

“Don't diss the snub .38, Jers,” warned Amarela. “Some of us are too embarrassed to carry Baby Glocks.” She made the word “baby” sound, well, babyish.

Jersey grinned. “It's all about being comfortable with your own sexuality, partner. Some of us don't need to compensate.”

“You
have
sexuality?”

“Oh, don't be modest, girlfriend. I saw you checking out my butt in these pants.”

Amarela snorted. “I was just trying to figure how tight you had to tie the girdle.”

“Ouch.”

Jersey snapped on a pair of blue latex gloves and leaned further into the car, putting his weight on his knuckles so he didn't fall face first into the corpse's lap. When Amarela wriggled in beside him, the situation became cozy, except for the bloody dead man in the seat beside them. Amarela smelled of Dove soap and peppermint shampoo; the dead man didn't.

“So what brings you out so early?” Jersey asked in a low voice to avoid being overheard by the bored uniformed onlookers.

Amarela shrugged. “Couldn't sleep. Went for a drive and heard your name over the radio. I was heading to the hit-and-run when the report came in on this.”

Jersey studied his partner. “You feeling okay?”

“I'm fine. Just couldn't sleep. No biggie.”

“Okay,” he said softly. “If you say so.”

“I do. Besides, why are you so damn chipper? You've obviously come straight from the club. The gig go well?”

Jersey nodded. “Real well. Crowd loved us. Only three fights, and the mosh pit was writhing.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what else? Usually before a gig, you get all stoked and happy, but you crash right after, like a kid coming off a sugar rush, and turn into Mr. Grumpy Pants for at least twenty-four hours.”

“I do not,” Jersey protested.

“Do, too. It's like male PMS. So fess up.”

Jersey sighed. “I met a girl.”

“At the gig?”

“No. After. In the alley.”

“A hooker?”

“No! A witness. She works in the funeral home across the alley from the club. She's the one who saw the car's plate.”

Amarela grinned wide, showing a full set of nearly perfect white teeth. Rebelling against its sisters, the perfection of the smile was marred by a single eyetooth that stuck out at a slight angle. Amarela's choice not to get it fixed had been one of the first things that endeared her to Jersey when they were partnered together five years earlier.

Amarela said, “You met a mortician in an alley over the body of a dead woman and now you're all gaa-gaa?”

“I'm not gaa-gaa!” Jersey spoke too loudly and several of the officers outside leaned down to look in the windows at them.

Jersey gritted his teeth to avoid blushing and glanced over at the dead man. “We can talk about this later.”

Amarela shrugged. “Suit yourself, but we
will
talk.”

The driver was
in his mid to late sixties with a good head of silver hair. He appeared reasonably fit in a soft but still slim way, and wore a tailored, designer-label suit. The shirt and tie, however, looked slightly off as though he had been in a hurry to get dressed.

“How come he looks rumpled?” Jersey asked.

Amarela snorted. “He just blew his brains out and you expect him to tuck in his shirt?”

Jersey rubbed the side of his nose with a latex finger. “You wear a three-thousand-dollar suit, you want to look your best. You tuck in your shirt, you straighten your tie, you make sure the Windsor knot is just right…” He let the thought trail off.

“He just drove over someone,” said Amarela. “That can make a guy twitchy. He starts to sweat, he loosens his tie, starts grabbing at his shirt, the man's a nervous wreck.”

“Hmmm,” said Jersey. “Then what?”

Amarela shrugged. “Then the remorse kicks in, so he pulls into an empty alley, digs out his gun and buys a one-way ticket to the hereafter.”

Jersey leaned closer to the victim and sniffed.

“I don't smell booze,” he said. “Why run if you're sober? The alley outside the club was dark. It could have been an accident.”

Amarela didn't answer, so Jersey hunched lower to get a better view of the entrance wound in the side of the dead man's temple.

“Get forensics to check the angle, just to make sure it was self-inflicted.”

“Why?” asked Amarela. “You thinking car-jacking gone wrong? Those assholes don't tend to leave guns behind. Guns cost money and jackers are scavengers.”

Jersey locked eyes with his partner and kept a serious face. “It's only a crappy .38.”

Before Amarela could protest, Jersey backed out of the car and stretched his back. “We got an I.D.?”

Amarela exited the car and stood beside him. The top of her head was not quite level with his shoulders.

“The car is registered to a Nicholas Higgins. Whether or not that's Mr. Higgins hogging the driver's seat will have to wait until we get him out of there. I didn't see a wallet.”

“He wouldn't want to ruin the line of his suit,” said Jersey. “You check the glove box?”

Amarela sighed. “I
was
just about to do that before you strolled up like a Billy Idol wannabe and wanted the back story.”

Jersey stepped back and held up his hands. “I wasn't criticizing. And just so you know, Billy's
White Wedding
is still a huge hit with the fans.”

Amarela popped open the glove box and carefully removed a thin, calfskin wallet. She kept her eyes averted from Jersey's smug grin as she flipped it open and removed an Oregon driver's license. She compared the photo I.D. to the dead driver.

“Looks like Mr. Higgins won't need to renew,” she said. “The license was set to expire at the end of next month on his… ” she did a quick mental calculation, “sixty-fifth birthday.”

“About the same age as the woman he ran over.” Jersey moved to the rear window and pressed his face close to the glass. A dark object wedged behind the passenger seat caught his eye.

“There's something behind your seat,” Jersey said. “Can you unlock this door?”

Amarela leaned over and flipped the lock. Jersey opened the door and pulled out the object. It was a woman's leather clutch purse.

“You want the honors?” he asked.

“Embarrassed by what you might find?”

Jersey rolled his eyes, opened the purse and plucked out a wallet. When he opened it, he found another Oregon driver's license. This time the I.D. matched the woman lying dead behind the club.

“It seems,” said Jersey as he showed the I.D. to his partner, “that Mr. Higgins drove over his own wife.”

“That could definitely make you suicidal,” said Amarela.

“True,” agreed Jersey. “But if you loved your wife so much that you couldn't live without her, why would you leave her for dead in the first place?”