PILATE’S
GHOST
Book Three in the John Pilate Mystery Series
J. ALEXANDER GREENWOOD
PILATE’S GHOST
Book Three in the John Pilate Mystery Series
J. ALEXANDER GREENWOOD
Original Copyright © 2012 by J. Alexander Greenwood
Revised second edition Copyright © 2019 Caroline Street Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0988320109
All rights reserved. Published by Caroline Street Press. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Pilate's Ghost
Pilate's Blood
Pilate's 7
Pilate's Rose
Big Cabin & Dispatches from the West
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For
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Always a spirit.
CHAPTER ONE
The Man’s beard itched.
Each hair of his beard erupted from his chin, warring with its neighbors, poking one another like cranky infants forced to nap on an old hooked rug. Perspiration added to each follicle’s furor and the Man’s overall misery.
Driving ten hours straight in the rusty old Datsun truck had been torture, especially without air conditioning. Hot air blasting from the engine – the only way to keep the engine from redlining in the sweltering Southern air - baked him behind the wheel. His rank sweat glued him to the ripped vinyl seat.
The tinny AM radio aggravated his headache. He missed his own car, a luxury SUV with leather seats, air conditioning so cold you could chill a nice Napa Valley varietal in the front seat, six disc CD changer, satellite radio and a smoked glass sunroof.
His face itched as if he wore a beard made of fire ants.
He gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to punch the Datsun’s dashboard.
He blinked at the surface of Route 1, a reliably monotonous hell of concrete and homogeneity. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw kids in a minivan pointing and laughing at his ramshackle ride.
The cruel insouciance of the kids mocking him aside, the Man had picked the ramshackle truck because it would blend in. Nevertheless, it was a shit ride and he was hot and enough was enough.
He found the old man in the restroom at the rest stop on the outskirts of the Everglades at two AM. He parked the rusting grey Datsun in the parking lot beside a late model Buick LeSabre.
Inside, the old man was taking a crap with the stall door partially open. He had a grey comb over and wore a blue shirt with pearly western snaps. His jeans were pooled around cheap ostrich cowboy boots. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“You stink, mister,” he told the old cowboy through the half-open door.
“I ate something bad down the road a ways, sorry,” he said. “I’ll do a court’sy flush.” He tugged the lever, the sound of the flush akin to a jet engine. “They do have some powerful plumbing here. I hope it don’t suck my bunghole out my ass.”
The Man’s vision grew swimmy, his skin clammy. He walked over to the sink and turned on the tap. It was one of those faucets that gave water only as long as you pushed the button. Tough to wash your hands when you have to keep touching the damn faucet. He splashed lukewarm water on his face, soaking his irritating beard. He carefully avoided looking at himself in the polished metal mirror.
The old cowboy grunted and farted in the stall. His stink flourished anew.
Disgusted, it made the Man angry. For weeks, he had wallowed in the filth and stink of others. The Man was tired of it. Sick. Tired and sick. It was hot and humid and his entire skin crawled with a dried saltwater rash.
He pondered leaving the cowboy, getting back in his mobile sauna and making more distance.
The old man’s bowels moved again, a furious disgorgement that sent a new cloud of shit stink into the restroom, barreling into the Man’s nostrils, stinking up his thoughts.
“Are you almost done in there, cowboy?” he asked, sighing. This wasn’t any fun.
“Hard to say,” came the grunting reply.
“Well, fuck it then.”
He pulled a hammer from his belt behind his back and wheeled around to the front of the stall, yanking the door wide. The cowboy threw his hands up to protect himself.
“No mister! Please no!”
“Give me your keys,” he said, the hammer raised over his head.
The cowboy fumbled in his pants pocket for the keys. His hands shook as he handed them over.
“Just toss them over here,” he said. “I can’t bear to be nearer your stink.”
“Oh-okay mister.” The beads of sweat on his face seemed to grow in size.
“Wallet,” while he looked at the wall over the old man’s head, avoiding his eyes.
The cowboy fumbled and pulled out a stitched calfskin wallet with the initials MC on it and tossed it over.
“Please mister, I got three grandkids,” the cowboy pleaded.
The Man picked up the keys and wallet. In an aged but still transparent vinyl window was a photo that he presumed was of the aforementioned grandkids. Two boys and a girl. He found two twenty-dollar bills and a two-dollar bill folded over four times in a corner of the wallet’s bill envelope. He grunted and walked outside, the hammer behind his back. No cars had appeared. He threw a switch inside himself.
The cowboy struggled to rise from the toilet and pull up his pants.
The Man walked back inside. Adrenaline accelerating, his mind achieved a sickening speed of purpose, a velocity that left his rational sense on the side of the road.
“Sorry about the grandkids,” he said. He brought the hammer down repeatedly.
The Man staggered outside, covered in gore. He vomited behind the restroom.
His mind decelerated.
The Man dragged the body by the cheap ostrich boots out to the Datsun. The ruined head left a greasy red trail from the restroom to the parking lot.
He propped the body in the driver’s seat of the despised Datsun. He covered the corpse and the truck interior with lighter fluid. He looked around, breathing heavily, his stomach roiling.
Hurriedly, he stripped off his clothes and threw them, along with the hammer, in with the dead man. He hurried over to the cowboy’s car, a virtual Rolls compared to the truck, and started it. Then he went back to the truck, flicked a lit match inside and slammed the door. It erupted with a whoosh.
He didn’t stay to watch the man and truck burn.
How far I have traveled, he thought. How terribly far.
Tears worked from his eyes into his beard of ants. He scratched at the beard
until it bled.
He didn’t really have a plan. It was all so…dispiriting. No one was looking for him; no one cared who he was. He was a nowhere man. Nowhere to go and nothing to do. His life was effectively over, but he still had to live it, to go through the motions of an empty daily existence.
The LeSabre was much more comfortable. The snaps on the cowboy’s shirt, stolen from the suitcase he’d found in the LeSabre’s trunk, were getting cold from the blast of the AC. A much more suitable irritation. There was even a small cooler, almost full of beer, in the passenger seat.
Thanks, cowboy.
A few hundred miles later, he passed the sign noting the upcoming exit to Gainesville. He flipped his blinker and swerved into the exit lane. The Man wasn’t leaving Florida, after all. Not yet. It was time to get a new car and more money.
And a shave.
CHAPTER TWO
John Pilate’s red running shoes smacked the pavement in a monotonous rhythm of pain. His calves felt like lead, his shins on fire. His breath came and went in measured gulps; his nose wasn’t keeping up so his lungs were getting enriched with a surprisingly cold May morning’s 43-degree air. Somehow, the chill air burned.
Pilate was dismayed to see that the marker he passed most recently was mile 7. He really thought he was at least near mile 10 of the half marathon’s 13.1 miles.
His legs hurt, his lungs burned and his body cried out for the disgusting energy gels he wolfed down every mile or so.
The race, laughingly called “Cross Valley’s Toughest Mile,” was living up to its name. He passed a slow-moving woman, her wide rear-end swathed in yellow spandex as she trudged on, a pigeon-toed tribune. She looked to be in her late forties or early fifties; he didn’t slow down to check.
Steadily loping through the pain, Pilate gained on a kid from Cross College. The young man – boy, really – snorted then smiled and stepped up his pace to stay ahead of Pilate on the path through the oaks.
Pilate realized as the kid passed that he, too, was smiling. Despite the leg pain, he had to admit he felt kind of good. So this is the runner’s high I’ve heard so much about?
Pilate followed the kid to a watering station, making no apologies for slowing to a brisk walk to scoop a paper cup of Gatorade from the outreached hand of a student.
“Come on red shoes, you can do it!” she yelled.
Pilate nodded, drank the Gatorade and snatched two gel packs from the table.
Umm. Vanilla.
“Break’s over John,” a familiar voice intoned between his ears. “Reminds me of that joke about the man who went to hell. Remember?”
No, Simon, why don’t you tell me again?
“My pleasure. A bad man goes to hell after he dies. The devil says to him ‘Welcome to hell. You must now choose whether to spend eternity in room one, two or three.’ The Devil opened the doors to the rooms. Room one was filled with men standing on their heads on a wooden floor. Room two was filled with men standing on their heads on a cement floor. Lastly, room three had just a few men, standing in shit up to their knees and drinking coffee. John—you’re breathing funny—are you okay?”
Just finish the joke, Simon.
“Where was I? Oh yes. The man thought for a moment and decided to go with room three. After all, it was less crowded and had free Starbuck’s.
The man entered the door to room three. Just as it closed behind him, the Devil says ‘Okay, coffee break’s over. Back on your heads.’“
Lovely.
“Perhaps you feel like some kind of a shithead for agreeing to run in this half marathon, John?” Simon said.
John focused on regulating his breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
“Why did you do this anyway? To prove to Kate that you’ve taken the whole ‘getting healthy, quitting smoking’ thing seriously? Not smart. Men your age die running silly races like this all the time.”
Pilate put one foot in front of the other.
Simon had a point. He wasn’t just doing this for Kate, though. He had stopped smoking in Key West after the mess with the Bahamian, a guy named Taters, the Coast Guard and Kay the cop.
“Kay the cop. Now she was a nice bit of..”
Pilate wasn’t paying attention to Simon this time, though. He thought about his reasons for running the half marathon. He had been on the airplane back from Key West, his new wife Kate and stepdaughter Kara sitting beside him, when Kate leaned over and said, “The baby will be born just before your fortieth birthday.”
Pilate had smiled at her. She was, to use the cliché, glowing, and not just from carrying his child.
They had survived some dangerous situations in the past year together and wound up married. Pilate became an instant husband and stepfather, with a baby of their own on the way.
He signaled the flight attendant. “Bloody Mary please?”
Kate poked his ribs. “Ha ha.”
“Forty. Hmm. You know, I think I need to get in shape.”
“Because you’re nearly forty?”
“Well, yes, but also because by the time our baby graduates high school I will be 57 or so. I want to be in good shape to make sure I can be a good Dad,” he said.
“Quitting the cigarettes is a good start, honey,” she said, kissing his cheek.
“Well, I never do anything halfway,” he said. “And it’s a couple of months until Cross Valley’s Toughest Mile.”
“John, you don’t even run - how do expect to run that 5K? You’re not even in shape.”
“Actually, they’re adding a half marathon this year,” he said.
Kate raised her eyebrow. “John, how about you just do the 5K and build up to the half?”
“I’ll train. Starting when I get back,” he said. “I’ll ask the track coach for a regimen.”
Pilate did get the regimen, but barely followed it. The furthest he ran in training for the race was six miles, not even half of a half marathon.
“You’re paying for it now,” Simon said.
I am. Nevertheless, I feel great.
Pilate looked at his feet, the red shoes connecting with a path through the woods now. The dirt surface was certainly a relief from the asphalt, but the novelty wore off in moments.
Shit.
“Well, it beats nearly drowning in the Gulf of Mexico,” Simon said. “Though I did get a nice tan down there. So, what’s the plan? Are we moving back here?”
Pilate came to a steep hill. He would have to slow down to take the incline or run through it, risking a twisted ankle. He ran through it, overtaking the kid and a woman closer to his age who had paced ahead of him the last three miles.
He still smiled.
His last session with his psychiatrist, Dr. Sandburg, in Key West was eventful.
“So, you survived another conspiracy, got a woman pregnant, married her, and ended up with another harassing phone call, is that right?” the psychiatrist asked, scratching behind his ear with his pen.
Pilate nodded. “Yeah, kind of a quiet trip.”
“Uh huh. Any more phone calls since the one on your wedding day?”
“No,” Pilate said. The threatening calls stopped that day. The call managed to cast a shadow over his honeymoon, but they were safe. “I’m sure somebody was playing a prank. Jack Lindstrom is dead.”
Sandburg cocked his head to the left and regarded Pilate a moment, his face passive.
“You don’t fully believe that, do you?”
Pilate only looked back at the doctor, who made a quick jot on his notes.
“Heading back to Nebraska?”
“Day after tomorrow,” Pilate said.
“Book finished?” Pilate had come to Key West to write a journalistic account of the events surrounding the unearthing of a decades-old conspiracy at Cross College that nearly saw he and Kate killed.
“Yep,” he said. “Shipped it off to my agent this morning. She’ll turn it over to the editor and by October or so we should have ourselves a bestseller.”
“Fast pace on the book publishing,” Sandburg said, his eyes widening.
“Well, this story’s been all over the news, and the publisher wants to cash in before people forget about it. Already did 60 Minutes and I may get Dateline.”
“Right. Interesting,” Sandburg said, looking at the notes on his lap desk. “What does your friend Simon think?”
“Simon the Rat?”
“Words can hurt like a fist, John,” Simon said.
Sandburg shrugged indulgently.
“He’s around,” Pilate sat up straight on the couch. “But only when I need him.”
“Oh, I get it, so I work for you, now?” Simon sounded pained.
“Well, that works,” Sandburg said. “Keep a short leash on your imaginary friend. So what’s next?”
“I’m turning forty soon…having my first baby in November. I quit smoking.”
“Congratulations on both,” he said.
“Thanks. Let’s see. I’m going back to a place that I want to forget.”
“Cross Township?”
“Yes.”
“No law that says you must stay there, right? Didn’t you say that Kate has the proceeds from the sale of the mortuary? You can set up housekeeping anywhere now.”
“Well, it’s complicated. Her father-in-law gets out of the clink in a few months. She wants to be there to help him reintegrate into the polite society of Cross Township.”
“I see,” Sandburg said.
“So I get to go back and teach a few sections of writing and speech classes while we figure all this out.”
“But it’s summer break now, right?”
“Right - just started.”
“So maybe you and Kate and…”
“Kara.”
“And Simon.”
“—can take some time to figure things out until that book of yours hits the shelves. What then, the book tour?”
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