The Dead Husband

by Carter Wilson

  Colin had never heard this story before, but it didn’t take a detective to see where it was headed.

  “Wasn’t even five years before that goddamn company was out of business and our money gone with it. Fucking Bryson didn’t even apologize to us. Said we knew what we were getting into.”

  “That’s terrible,” Colin said.

  “It’s a crime,” she replied.

  “How many drinks have you had?”

  “Not enough.”

  He sighed, expecting that answer.

  “Pour me one more, will you, sweetie?” Her voice was suddenly sweet and light. Her daytime voice. “That’ll calm these nerves, I’m certain.”

  “What you need is medication,” Colin said.

  “I’m not a junkie,” she snapped, falling back into the anger she had unleashed for the memory of Bryson. She steadied herself, took a breath, and said, “Just one more. Sit with me for one more. Then I’ll go to bed.”

  Colin wrestled with his conscience one more time, and once again, he did as he was asked. He would pour her a drink, just as he’d surely give her morphine were she dying of cancer.

  “One more,” he said. “Where’s your glass?”

  “Kitchen counter.”

  Colin burrowed his way to the kitchen, found the glass, and grabbed the gin from the counter. Then he grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator, one of a twelve-pack he’d brought for himself last week. She didn’t touch his booze, and he didn’t touch hers.

  They sat in the alcove, in the chairs where his parents sat together thousands of times, sipping their drinks in silence. Over a period of several minutes, Jackie settled her bones deeper into the well-worn fabric chair, slipping into what appeared a numbness, a memory, and a fog all rolled together. Her gaze fixed on the far wall, and a hint of a lazy smile grew on her lips.

  Finally, she said, “Tell me about your day, Thomas.”

  His father’s name rang odd to his ears, but not as much as it used to. She’d referred to Colin by her dead husband’s name a half-dozen times by now.

  Unsure at first how to respond, Colin choose to simply answer her question.

  “I’m investigating this woman. Rose Yates. She’s the reason I had to leave town a couple of weeks ago, remember?”

  His mother continued to stare straight ahead but shook her head. “No, I don’t remember you traveling for work.”

  He’d spoken in bits and pieces about Rose Yates to his mother, but she always had trouble recalling things at night. Were they having this conversation in the morning, Colin was sure she’d know exactly who he was talking about.

  So he started from the beginning, from the moment he was assigned the Riley McKay case. He took his time, filling in all the details, as he knew she was comforted by the company. It also benefited him, because hashing the case out aloud helped him identify weaknesses and potential opportunities.

  She said nothing, and Colin briefly wondered if she thought she was listening to her husband speak about his day at work and why on earth he was investigating a potential murder. Or maybe she was already lost in some other world, one Colin would someday know but couldn’t comprehend now, a world of spiderwebs and smoke, a mind lost.

  All he knew was he was talking to himself, and that was okay. Colin finished his beer and grabbed another. His mother was still nursing her last drink, a good sign she was done for the night.

  Sitting back down, he said, “Truth is, I don’t have enough to warrant extradition back to Wisconsin. And no, I don’t really believe she’d be so bold as to directly mimic a murder scene from one of her books. I’m not even as convinced as I was before that she did it. But the amount of Ambien and Valium in Riley McKay’s system was clearly enough to put someone at the very least in a coma, even without alcohol. And I’m having a hard time seeing this as suicide. Especially given that he confirmed weekend plans with a friend that same night.”

  Her voice jolted Colin from his thoughts. “Only idiots and junkies mix alcohol and medications.” She sipped her gin.

  “And murderers,” Colin added.

  She fell silent for a good thirty seconds before remarking, “It’s the Day of the Dead.”

  “What?”

  His mother finally looked over at him, her eyes now only half-open. “Today. It’s Day of the Dead. November 1.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “The dead all rise today.”

  He took her creepy statement in stride. “Well, there’re just a few hours left in the day. They better get to it.”

  “Cheers to that,” she said, taking another sip of her drink.

  The idea of the rising dead made Colin think of Caleb Benner, the sixteen-year-old who went missing in Bury over twenty years ago. Caleb was certainly dead, Colin figured. There’d been no trace of him, no real leads, and it had been so long. Caleb Benner was surely one of the rising dead today.

  Colin began telling his mother about that case and how it was the only unsolved missing-persons case in the past half century in Bury.

  “High-school senior. Jock. Popular kid, a bit of a reputation, but sounds like he was well liked overall. Went to a party on a Friday night and left early. He was never seen again.” He rubbed the back of his neck, easing the tension that’d been building up more and more over the past few weeks. “All the kids who had been at the party were interviewed, but no one remembered much of anything. The police thought maybe he left early with someone else, but no one could say for sure. Or maybe he left alone and just ran into the wrong person on his way home. But Caleb didn’t sound like the kind of kid just to leave a party early.”

  He turned to his mother, whose eyes were now closed, drink still in hand. “And here’s the thing,” he said, “the only thing that stands out to me on this. There were fifteen kids at that party, all of them interviewed. And one of them was Cora Yates, the sister of Rose.”

  That thought bounced around in his brain as it had been ever since he learned of that fact. Seventeen-year-old Cora Yates was interviewed in connection with the disappearance of Caleb Benner over two decades ago. Now, the younger sister, Rose, was a person of interest in the overdose death of Riley McKay. Rose wrote about a similar overdose murder in one of her novels.

  Was there a connection, or just mere coincidence?

  Then something clicked in Colin’s mind. Something that hadn’t clicked until this very moment.

  Had Rose Yates, J. L. Sharp, ever written about a sixteen-year-old boy? One who went missing or was murdered?

  Before he could mull over this question any longer, he heard the front door opening.

  A voice called out, “Hello?”

  Meg.

  “In the dining room,” Colin called out. He expected his voice to jolt his mother, but her eyes remained closed. He reached over and grabbed the drink out of her hand, setting it on a coaster. She mumbled a soft and sleepy thank you.

  Colin’s wife walked into the dining room, nearly knocking over a stack of boxes.

  “Didn’t expect you to come over,” Colin said. He glanced at her seven-month-pregnant belly. “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. I just felt like getting some air.”

  Colin nodded at his mother. “Just about to get her to bed. You ready to go up, Mom?”

  She sighed. “I suppose so.” She fluttered her eyes open and looked at Meg. “Well, hello.”

  It was such a distant-sounding greeting, Colin thought. He wondered if, in this moment, she even knew who Meg was.

  “Hi, Jackie.”

  “Okay, Mom, let’s get you upstairs,” Colin said.

  Jackie began to stir as Meg looked around, taking in the house and seeming to sense the true chaos of it for the first time.

  “We need to get this place cleaned up,” Meg said.

  Colin thought the comment a pebble in a can
yon. “Ya think?”

  “I mean it. Even just a little bit.” She turned her head to her mother-in-law. “Jackie, how about I help you organize your place. How does that sound?”

  His mother walked past her and slowly ambled up the stairs, carefully stepping around the obstacles on each riser. She never answered Meg’s question.

  Colin turned to Meg. “What’re you doing? You can’t help her clean up this place. You’re almost eight months pregnant.”

  “Not me. I mean, I could help direct things, but maybe she’ll let me bring a cleaning crew in. You know, like those Got Junk? guys.”

  “She tells me no every time I suggest it,” Colin said.

  “Which is maybe why I should be the one making the suggestion. Maybe she’ll respond better to me.”

  “I don’t know, Meg. I don’t think you should—”

  “She needs her dignity,” Meg said. “She’s lucid in the day. Do you know how awful it must be when she’s sober and lucid and sees what her life’s become? It’s not safe with all this mess, but moreover, it’s no way for the woman to spend the last part of her life.”

  Colin let her words sink in, and after he did, he felt a good degree of shame that he’d never considered his mother’s dignity as part of the whole equation.

  “Well, I suppose if you can convince her, that’d be great,” he said. “And very appreciated.”

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.” Meg nodded at the staircase. “Make sure she gets to bed. I’ll wait here… I’m not navigating those stairs.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then let’s walk around the neighborhood,” she said. “I just want the air and…I don’t know. The stars. I don’t want to just sit on the couch tonight. I’m feeling…”

  “Feeling what?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure.” She walked up to him and kissed him. “There aren’t that many days left we can walk around the neighborhood, just the two of us.”

  He felt himself smiling. “There are such things as babysitters, you know.”

  “I don’t mean like that,” she said. “I mean soon we’re going to be parents. And then we’ll never not be parents. I still want to do some things as not-parents. I don’t know why, but that’s important.”

  “A walk sounds nice,” Colin said.

  As he climbed the stairs and made his way to his mother’s room, Colin thought about what Meg said, about how they would soon never be not-parents.

  So much permanence attached to it.

  But this thought was transient, and by the top riser, he’d returned to what had been swirling through his mind when Meg walked in. His thoughts about Rose Yates.

  There were two things he needed to read, Colin thought.

  Just two things.

  One: the decades-old transcript of Cora Yates’s interview in the aftermath of Caleb Benner’s disappearance.

  And two: anything written by J. L. Sharp that he hadn’t already read.

  Thirty-Three

  TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW—(SC)

  Interviewee: Cora Davis Yates (minor)

  Investigator: Det. Michael Patterson

  Bury Police Dept.

  In attendance: Logan Yates (father of interviewee)

  Date of interview: September 20, 1995

  Re: Case 76887-A

  MP: Okay, for the record, today is Sunday, September 20, 14:37 hours. I’m at 1734 Rum Hill Road in Bury, New Hampshire, speaking with Cora Yates. Logan Yates, Cora’s father, is also in attendance. After this interview, I’ll be speaking with Cora’s younger sister, Rose. Cora, I just want to remind you you’re not in any trouble, okay?

  CY: Okay.

  MP: Our only focus here is finding Caleb. That’s the goal. We’re talking to everyone who was at the party Friday night, and I want you to tell me everything you remember. And I’m not going to care about underage drinking or anything like that.

  LY: Were you drinking?

  MP: Mr. Yates, please, this will go much faster if you let me ask the questions.

  LY: (unintelligible) a question.

  MP: I understand. Cora, can you tell me where you were Friday night?

  CY: I was at Ron Finch’s house.

  MP: Why were you there?

  CY: He was having some kids over.

  MP: How many kids?

  CY: I don’t know, maybe fifteen of us. Twenty.

  MP: What time did you arrive?

  CY: Maybe seven. A little after.

  MP: How did you get there?

  CY: I walked. It’s just a couple blocks away.

  MP: Did you arrive with anyone?

  CY: No. I was going to meet my friend Debbie there. She didn’t show up.

  MP: Why not?

  CY: (four seconds of silence) I think her parents didn’t let her. Not really sure.

  MP: Was Caleb Benner at the house when you arrived?

  CY: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, he was. For sure.

  MP: You think so, or he was for sure?

  CY: For sure.

  MP: What was he doing?

  CY: (six seconds of silence) I don’t know. Hanging out. Talking with people.

  MP: Drinking?

  CY: Yeah. Everyone was.

  LY: Detective, they’re just kids. It was just a regular party.

  MP: Please, Mr. Yates. Cora, did you notice anything unusual about Caleb? Was he in a weird mood? Did he seem angry? Scared? Drunk?

  CY: (eight seconds of silence) No.

  MP: Okay, I see. That’s good, thank you. Now, a few other kids said they saw you and Caleb talking. What were you talking about?

  CY: I don’t know. Just stuff.

  MP: What kind of stuff?

  LY: She said she didn’t know.

  MP: Mr. Yates, I’m going to ask you again to not interrupt, please. I know this interview is only happening at your discretion, and I appreciate that. But the focus here is finding Caleb. Your daughter isn’t in any kind of trouble. Cora, anything you can remember about your conversation would be helpful.

  CY: I need some water. (unintelligible) I’m going to go get some and I’ll be back, okay?

  MP: Of course. We can take a little break.

  (eleven seconds of silence)

  LY: Detective, this just feels wrong. It’s like she’s being interrogated.

  MP: I know what you’re feeling, Mr. Yates. I don’t know how else to assure you she’s not. Look at it this way: If she were the one missing, wouldn’t you want us talking to every person she interacted with the night she disappeared?

  LY: Yes. Yes, of course. It’s just that—

  MP: It’s fine, Mr. Yates. I don’t have too many more questions. We’ll wrap up soon. (seven seconds of silence) You mind if we move this somewhere else? Maybe the kitchen? The fumes are getting to me a little. What is that, paint?

  LY: (four seconds of silence) Wood stain.

  MP: House projects?

  LY: We had some contractors touching up some of the worn parts of the flooring yesterday. Some of the stairs. Sorry about the smell. I guess I’ve gotten used to it.

  MP: No need to apologize. I’ve always had a sensitive nose.

  End of transcript

  Thirty-Four

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  November 3

  That was it. For some reason, the transcript just ended with Cora going to the kitchen and getting some water while Detective Patterson and Logan Yates discussed house projects. Maybe the battery died on the recorder. Perhaps Logan Yates used his power of persuasion to keep the rest of the conversation off the record. Whatever the reason, Colin felt like he’d read the first half of a mystery story and was denied the satisfaction of an ending.

  But what he had read pulsed tiny bursts of electricity through his skin. To a lay person, the t
ranscript was dull. But to Colin, someone who’d become increasingly intrigued with the Yates family history, it was like unveiling an entombed artifact, one that would surely provide clues about who these people were.

  The first thing to hit Colin was the odd fact that he and Detective Michael Patterson each conducted interviews of the separate Yates sisters twenty-two years apart in the Bury family home. That itself didn’t yield any new information, but what were the odds? They’d both sat in the living room and asked the women about their involvement with a potential crime.

  Of course, it was clear Cora Yates wasn’t a suspect, just a witness. Patterson outright stated that, and there was nothing in the transcript to infer otherwise.

  What had struck Colin as a red flag was how quickly Cora stopped the interview and left the room within just minutes. Patterson would have made sure the interviewee was comfortable when they began, likely suggesting she get something to eat or drink. Anything to relax her. So Cora leaving the room to get a drink was clearly a chance to regroup. And it came right after Patterson asked her what she and Caleb Benner had discussed.

  No one would likely ever know the answer to that. Cora was probably the only person still alive who could say. But through his conversation with Chief Sike from the Bury PD and after reading the transcripts from some of the other kids at the party that night, Colin had pieced together the last known hours of Caleb Benner’s contact with anyone.

  Caleb Benner, sixteen, was one of eighteen kids to show up at Ron Finch’s house for an impromptu Friday-night party. Finch’s parents were only out for dinner and a game night with friends, so all the kids knew the party was going to start and end early, and Finch had enlisted Caleb’s help in cleaning up any trace of the party before the parents came home. But Caleb had started drinking, and Finch said he knew early on he couldn’t rely on him to help, so he asked another friend instead.

  After a few drinks, Caleb apparently told his friend Rick Mastington he wanted to try to get alone with Cora. That he was attracted to her and thought she felt the same way. Mastington didn’t think Cora and Caleb knew each other well and figured it was the alcohol talking. But sure enough, Mastington (and others) witnessed Caleb walk up to Cora, pull her away from the friends she was talking to, and lean in as they had a private, side conversation. This lasted until just before 8:00 p.m., at which point Caleb abruptly left the party alone. In his interview, Mastington told the police that wasn’t necessarily unusual. Caleb was known to be aloof and often would break away from a group to be alone. Mastington figured he’d struck out with Cora and left the party sulking.