The Guilty Dead

by P. J. Tracy

  Such a sensitive child, so aware of the tiniest details of everything around him. He’d loved nature more than anything, and you couldn’t keep him inside no matter what the weather was like. He saw magic everywhere and inhabited his own little worlds, different ones each day. But something had gone terribly wrong. And it was his father’s fault.

  Failure. The word hadn’t been in his vocabulary until Trey.

  Tonight, he, Betty and daughter Rosalie would finally release Trey’s ashes into the Roaring Fork so he could hitchhike with the trout over the agate boulders and make that magical journey to someplace else, someplace better.

  Gregory paused in the doorway of the empty, silent breakfast room where he normally seated himself every morning after coming downstairs. As always, there were flowers in a crystal vase centered on the big black walnut table. Today the vase was filled with lush August roses from Betty’s garden. A full place setting was waiting for him at the head of the table, and Chef had put out a platter of pastries and fruit before he’d left last night, but no food or beverage would be served or swallowed here today.

  It felt strange to close the doors on the deserted room without even setting foot inside, but it also felt liberating. He’d lived a life of obligations, both large and small, but there were none today.

  He retreated promptly to his study and disabled the security system and surveillance cameras, which also felt liberating. He hated being watched and recorded by his own cameras twenty-four hours a day, but Betty insisted on it. She had a pathological fear of intruders and dishonest help. She also had a pathological fear of unfaithful husbands, although he’d never once betrayed her or their marriage vows.

  He drew down the shades and mixed himself a pitcher of martinis at the wet bar. This morning belonged to him, and he would indulge his clandestine thirst for gin and oblivion with no consideration for anything else, except positioning his long-deceased father’s most beloved Frank Sinatra LP on the same turntable he remembered as a child. He gently dropped the needle into the well-used grooves and closed his eyes as music filled the room, instantly transported to a different time, a different place, just like Trey would experience tonight.

  There were occasional pops and hisses as the needle encountered the scratches in the vinyl on its slow track down the shiny black disk, but it didn’t bother him. Some people wanted to experience nostalgia through an idyllic lens, but he wasn’t among them.

  Everything gets scratched up with use, he mused, as the gin started to enter his bloodstream. Just like his life, just like everybody’s life. The old record and the old turntable were poignant reminders of that.

  Time passed as he listened to Frank and drank martinis with the same abandon the singer and legend had shown back in his prime days. He was alone, but felt like he had a friend and compatriot in Frank.

  After a certain point, things blurred into a mesmeric stew: the music stopped as the record ran its course; the olives bobbing in his glass looked like disembodied eyeballs; the shuttered gloom of his office cooperated nicely with the gin to dull his vision. But his mind and body were alive, itching with a buzzing electricity that fed a spectacular recklessness.

  He unlocked the top drawer of his mahogany desk and withdrew a Colt Peacemaker from its coffin of cherrywood and velvet. As he gazed upon it, he suddenly realized what a conundrum he held in his hand. The name alone boggled the mind. When had death ever brought peace, or solved anything at all? You could kill your enemies, but they would always return, like angry ghosts, in one form or another, haunting you, tormenting you.

  And for a perfectly tooled instrument of death, it was such a beautiful thing, so exquisitely crafted of the finest materials. Or perhaps there wasn’t such a puzzle here: death and beauty were two of the most powerful forces driving humanity and often went hand in hand.

  The grip felt slimy in his sweating palm as he pressed the cool barrel against his temple. This could be the Colt Peacemaker’s finest moment—it could finally do its job as advertised and actually bring peace through death. At least, Gregory Norwood II’s final peace. In a millisecond, he could be liberated from his guilt and regret, from the slow, agonizing crawl to the grave as his body was ravaged by disease. But, as tempting as the prospect was, it wasn’t his time yet. He had one last thing to take care of, one last mystery to solve.

  And then his phone chimed, shattering his focus, shattering his perfect moment. His hands were shaking as he placed the gun back in its velvet nest and reached for the phone. Funny, the whole time he’d been holding the gun and ready to use it, his hand had been steady as a rock. Steady as an agate boulder in the Roaring Fork River. Now that he was about to answer this call, it was quaking like aspen leaves in the autumn, when their stems were getting weak and they were about to fall to the ground in a shower of gold coins.

  “Yes?” he snapped.

  A hesitation at the other end of the line, then, “Gregory?”

  “Oh. Oh, Robert. Sorry to be curt. I was expecting another call, so I didn’t even look at the ID before I answered.”

  “Can I help you with something? You shouldn’t have to deal with any external annoyances today.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary, but thank you. We’re just having some problems with our new caretaker in Aspen,” he lied. “There were some issues when Betty arrived last night. A broken faucet, dead mice left in traps and so forth.”

  “Well, I hope you get it sorted out. Listen, Gregory, I’m sorry to disturb you today, but I just wanted to let you and Betty know you’re in our thoughts and prayers. Louise and I went to mass last night and lit candles for Trey.”

  “That was kind of you. And kind of you to call.”

  “I hadn’t expected you to answer. It’s good to hear your voice.” He heard Robert sigh anxiously. “Are you all right?”

  Gregory deflected the question because he couldn’t give his old friend the answer he wanted to hear. “I’m flying to Aspen this evening to meet Betty and Rosalie. We’ll be spreading Trey’s ashes.”

  “I think that will be a good thing. Perhaps it will bring you some closure.”

  A word that should be struck from the language, Gregory thought, feeling bitterness rise in his throat, partly from gin, partly from regret. “There is no closure for something like this, Robert. My actions, my inactions, are responsible for Trey’s death. I killed my son.”

  There. He’d finally said it out loud to the one person who would understand. It felt so good. But then Robert’s stern warning at the other end of the line, fragmented his joy.

  “Gregory, we’ve spoken about this. You must not go down that path. Do you understand? It’s dark and dangerous and it will never put right a tragedy. It will only bring more.”

  “Tragedy. There’s plenty of that to go around, isn’t there?” He took another sip of his martini while he waited out Robert’s silence.

  “Have you told Betty yet?”

  “You mean, did I tell her she would be a widow soon, just days before she said her final goodbye to Trey? Of course not, Robert. There’s only so much grief a person can endure at one time.”

  “Have you been drinking?” he asked.

  “Excessively. Drinking like Frank.”

  “Frank?”

  “Frank Sinatra,” he explained, no longer bothering to modulate his voice or the sudden belligerence welling up in him. Whiskey courage, they used to call it in his day, but in this case, it was gin blessed with a little vermouth. “I’ve recently discovered that it’s a wonderful thing, being drunk. It gives you strength and freedom. You lose all inhibitions. All fear.”

  “I’m coming over.”

  “Please don’t. I prefer to be alone.”

  “Listen to me ‒”

  “Tell me something, Robert. When you go to confession, do you feel cleansed? Does it help your soul when it’s so sick that it’s dying inside of you, poisoning you?”

  “Uh … well, yes, of course. God forgives.”

  “Everything?
”

  “If you confess your sins, God will forgive you.”

  “But I’m not Catholic. I’m just a boring Episcopalian without a priest or a confessional booth. I don’t think I’m eligible for unconditional amnesty.”

  “God is merciful. There is grace everywhere, Gregory. We may not see it, but it’s there.”

  “That’s comforting to know. Thank you, Robert. I appreciate the call. I’ll let Betty know.” He hung up, wishing he hadn’t answered.

  When the phone rang again a few minutes later, he looked at the ID. He’d been expecting a frantic callback from Robert, but he was wrong. This was an unknown number, most likely the call he’d been dreading and the one he’d been waiting for. Even Robert couldn’t help him with this.

  CHAPTER

  2

  GERRY STENSON HAD found a nice bank of shrubbery behind the Norwood estate to conceal himself. He couldn’t get close enough for a shot, not without trespassing on private property, but if Gregory Norwood II decided to take a dip in his pool on the one-year anniversary of his son’s death, his Canon 600-millimeter zoom would be able to catch it from this angle. Not that such a photo would be a scoop, or even marketable to any mainstream outlet—that was painfully obvious from the lack of other paparazzi present ‒ but a local rag had an interest in the Norwood story and they would pay for good shots of him or his family. Not much, but it was something, and something was better than nothing when you were three months behind on the rent, buried in debt, and desperate.

  In his line of work, he’d been called a maggot and much worse. But maggots had their place in the food chain, too. Unfortunately, it was at the rock bottom of it, exactly where he was now. He was just another maggot, looking for a scrap of meat.

  He felt sweat gathering on his brow as the rising August sun worked like a convection oven, heating the damp ground beneath him, coaxing the humidity higher and higher, fogging up his lens. Damn hot, sticky day in store. A scorcher. Just wait until two o’clock ‒ people would be melting in the streets. Maybe he should be taking shots of that instead.

  He lowered his camera, swabbed his brow with a bandana, and pulled an energy bar out of his bag. This particular one was a self-proclaimed miracle bar that promised instant nirvana, a lifelong hard-on, and a mansion on Jupiter Island through sustainable, fair-trade organic ingredients fortified with outrageous amounts of refined sugar.

  That was Kris—she always put little snacks and beverages in his kit before he left for a job, and always from the New Agey co-op she devoutly frequented, happily oblivious to the fact that some so-called health food was exactly the opposite. They were always accompanied by notes, carefully written on Post-its. Today’s read: “Love you to the moon and back, Sugar Bear.”

  Suddenly he felt a sickening guilt creep up on him. His sweet, thoughtful, loving Kris didn’t know about the financial troubles yet, but he couldn’t keep them from her forever, especially if his luck didn’t change soon. He had to catch a break.

  Gerry was washing down his energy bar with the last dregs of a vitamin water drink—courtesy of Kris, of course ‒ when he heard the gunshot and jumped like a grasshopper.

  He swore out loud, clambered to his feet, then froze as he worked through potential scenarios. There had been only a single shot, and that shot had come from the Norwood estate, he was sure of it. Suicide was his first thought—the normally media-savvy old man had become a virtual shut-in since his son’s overdose. He also hadn’t accompanied his wife last night to their Aspen compound.

  As a full-on epic tragedy filled out in his imagination, he started running for the security fence, stumbling through the underbrush. There was no worry about private-property issues now because he would just be doing a welfare check. Good Samaritan and all that. Maybe he’d even save the life of Minnesota’s beloved benevolent patriarch and become an instant hero. And if he got a juicy shot in the process, well, so be it.

  Maggot.

  The word was ringing in his head as he jumped the fence and ran across the Norwoods’ manicured back lawn, past a formal rose garden, past the pool toward the main house, all the while his weighty camera rig swinging from the strap on his neck, digging into his flesh. Of course he’d call 911 if he found something bad, but the cops were probably already on their way—in a wealthy, peaceful enclave like this, a gunshot would be called in immediately.

  He’d laid out the scenario so clearly in his mind, knew exactly how it would unfold, but in his version, there wasn’t a man coming at him from his right flank, taking him down and smashing his face into the lawn.

  CHAPTER

  3

  HARLEY DAVIDSON’S SUMMIT Avenue mansion was dark except for the pair of Tiffany lamps that glowed amber and green and projected art-nouveau lilies onto the windows of the third-floor Monkeewrench office. From the street, the sight might have looked charming and whimsical against the backdrop of the forbidding, red-stone estate, but it was still too early for anybody to be walking the boulevard to appreciate it.

  Harley was wide awake and at his desk, mindlessly playing bridge with his computer while he waited impatiently for the chamomile tea—Nature’s Sleep Aid! the box proclaimed ‒ to take effect. He had no idea what had jolted him out of a sound sleep an hour ago—maybe a bad dream that had fragmented before he could commit it to waking memory, a strange sound his subconscious had registered, or just old-fashioned insomnia from working too many long, intense hours lately.

  But, whatever the reason, it had unnerved him, and more troublesome still was that this had been happening with alarming frequency lately. Up until a few weeks ago, he was the guy who could fall asleep in the mosh pit at a heavy-metal concert, and now he was haunting his own mansion in the wee hours, like a displaced ghost.

  He’d checked the doors, the windows, and the alarm systems on all three floors, but everything was buttoned up tight, as it always was, and if there was a boogeyman out there somewhere, he was messing with the neighbors.

  He suddenly thought of Grace MacBride, one of his dear friends and partners in Monkeewrench Software. She was eight months pregnant now and probably sleeping like a log. She had a burgeoning new life in her womb, an awesome dog named Charlie, which was probably hogging half the bed, and the baby’s daddy, Leo Magozzi, hogging the other half. The irony lifted his mouth a little—Grace, the most devoted loner and outcast he’d ever known, was now lovingly cocooned in the safety and comfort of things she’d always eschewed ‒ or, at least, the things she’d never allowed herself to want.

  It made perfect sense to Harley that a homicide cop had been the one ultimately to breach Grace’s titanium shell—they both had very complicated relationships with death, and if that wasn’t the foundation of a solid bond, he didn’t know what was.

  He played another game of bridge and felt none of the drowsiness the chamomile tea’s colorful packaging had promised. He finally decided that herbal nightcaps were for hippies, amateurs and recovering alcoholics. It was time to hit the wine cellar for something a little more reliable, like a good port.

  Years ago, when he’d been given the opportunity to buy the historic estate on St. Paul’s most coveted boulevard, the basement had almost been the deal-breaker—decades of neglect, unchecked water damage, and massive colonies of microbial evil-doers had nearly rendered the entire home uninhabitable. But in the end the place had spoken to him, and such a grand old dame deserved to have a custodian who could afford to take the restoration seriously, which he had. And once the deep basement had been gutted, revealing stone walls beneath moldering wood panels, he realized he had the makings of a perfect, naturally climate-controlled, wine cellar, and the deal-breaker became the most cherished feature of his home.

  As he descended into the dark heart of the cellar on a spiral staircase, he took deep breaths, drinking in the dusky aromas of wine-saturated cork and wood, stone, and the mushroomy undertone of earth. There was no smell like it in the world, and there were times when he would spend hours down here among
his racks and casks, until the scent of his subterranean paradise had permeated his hair, clothes, and skin.

  He aimed a remote and clicked on a toggle that lit the wall sconces. Once his eyes had adjusted to the sudden light, his gaze seemed to drift of its own accord right past the racks of port to the old wine crate he kept stashed in a corner all by itself, a crate he hadn’t thought about in years. In it was a sparse collection of childhood mementoes ‒ a pathetic assortment of trinkets and all that remained of his distant past, before Atlanta, before Grace, Annie, and Roadrunner, before the four of them had fled from a killer, resettled in Minneapolis, and built Monkeewrench into a modest software empire. It was the entirety of a sorry, ephemeral young life reduced to the size of a box meant to hold twelve bottles of wine—nine liters. Nine liters of life, if that.

  He moved toward it reluctantly and knelt down, placing a hand on the cool pine lid, feeling as apprehensive as if he was about to open Pandora’s box and unleash evil spirits into the world. But the spirits in the crate weren’t evil, just sad, and he finally lifted the lid and exposed a scuffed-up baseball, some plastic figurines left in a field by a traveling carnival, a few old coins, and a railroad spike—things a scared, troubled, runaway boy had found of value while on the run among the back roads and woods of rural Georgia.

  At the very bottom of the crate a battered, dog-eared book of poetry was sealed in a plastic zip-top bag. It produced an instant smile. Jesus, he’d forgotten all about it.

  He removed it from its sheath and cradled the wrecked spine in his big hand while he carefully opened the cover. Inside was a faded inscription, written in a painfully neat hand: Property of Miss Elizabeth Daltry. Miss Lizzy.

  His memories made the trek back to his eighth year of life. He’d been on the run for three days, fleeing the hell of a foster home where there was never any food, only drugs, alcohol and cruel strangers, who thought it was funny to use him as a punching bag. Sometimes he was left alone for days at a time. His only friends were rats, mice and cockroaches, and his only nourishment was what he could scavenge from other people’s trash.