Chapter Nine
Flashing red lights pierced the back of Hud’s eyelids. He was lying flat on his back, face up on a stretcher. It felt like he was buried under a blanket of cement. He couldn’t move: not his toes, not his fingers. Nothing. He feared he was paralyzed, permanently injured, until he realized that he was awake, still alive, just coming out of a daze. A familiar pain in the side of his head told him that he had survived. He had been hit like that before; unaware. But not by an oar. All he could think was that his life might have been a whole lot easier if he had become a baker or a janitor instead of a cop.
Hud sighed, swallowed the best he could, then blinked his eyes open. The first thing he saw was Burke staring down at him. The disappointment on the chief’s face was impossible to misinterpret.
“Life went on?”
“It had to. I was in third grade. It was winter. If I remember right, we had a lot of snow that year. And ice. There was a lot of ice. There was no time for fun, no ice fishing, no skating or sledding. Even if there had been, Gee was in no mood to let me out of her sight. She didn’t smile for a year, and rarely after.”
“The police came, of course.”
“Burke’s dad. He was sheriff then. Paid an obligatory call to the shop once he figured out he was going to have to calm Gee down, that she was going to keep raising hell until he did something, acknowledged that something was wrong.”
“She didn’t call the newspaper?”
“Sure she did, but there wasn’t much of a paper around here then. Everybody got the Daily Press, but that was mostly for the box scores in the summer. People are on vacation, they don’t give a shit about the news when they’re here. They want to go skiing, fishing, lie in the sun, forget the world and its problems exist. Besides, the Press was thirty miles away. We were in our own little world out here.”
“Things have changed.”
“I suppose they have. Now you can get the New York Times on your phone.”
“What did Gee do once she figured out the police weren’t going to do anything?”
“She did what she always did. Took it into her own hands. She had no choice but to go looking for my mother herself.”
“And you went with her.”
“Every chance I got.”
Hud knew he had been lucky to get away with a mild concussion and a black eye. The ER doctor had dosed him with morphine and prescribed some pain meds. The doctor was a young guy, not long out of med school. He’d recommended that Hud take a week off the job, and talk to the worker’s comp people. “Sure, I’ll do that,” Hud had said. The doctor had exited the triage bay unconvinced, and that was just fine with Hud. If he claimed workers comp every time he got a scratch on the job he’d never get anything done.
A battery of x-rays and an MRI cleared him of any broken bones or any serious brain damage. He would add the scar tissue to his collection.
Hud could stand, but he was hardly capable of making his own way back to the hotel. Burke had sent a deputy to drive him home. He had been relieved to see Moran push into the ER. She stood at the opposite end of the bed staring at Hud, still in her uniform and looking less like a kickboxer and more like a woman exhausted from a hard day’s work, ready to go home. Her blonde hair, pulled back tight with ambition that morning, had begun to fray at the edges, protesting at being confined, anxious to be released. Her skin was paler than it had been when he had seen her earlier, as if her enthusiasm for life and police work had been drained from her by what she had witnessed throughout the day. Hud knew the look, the feeling, especially from the beginning of his career, when he hadn’t been accustomed to murder investigations. There was a price to pay for trying to make sense out of chaos, for digesting the smell of blood and evil, for being a witness to the ultimate nastiness that one human being could inflict on another. He could still taste death on the tip of his own tongue, and he was sure Moran could, too. She was a rookie exposed to madness. She didn’t know that it was contagious.
“You’re sure you’re up to walking out on your own?” she asked.
Hud shrugged. “Not much more damage I can do if I go face down.”
“Says you.”
“Says me.” He stabilized himself by grabbing the cold metal rail of the hospital bed. His knees were wobbly, and Moran looked like she was seven miles away. She’d never make it to him if he withered to the floor. It had always been like that. Even Gee couldn’t catch him when he fell.
The interior of Moran’s cruiser was clean and as organized as it could possibly be. Electronics cluttered the dash: a mounted laptop, three radios, a GPS screen, and other gadgets that were turned off or asleep. There was nothing to do about that kind of mess, but the seats and the floor were free of bags and wrappers, and there was no lingering smell of cigarette smoke or doughnuts. He figured Moran for a health-food freak anyway. Maybe a vegan or one of those New Age non-meat-eaters. She was lean; he wondered how long that would last, how long before the spread of time affected her body, from spending so much time in the driver’s seat of a county cruiser.
“I could have got home on my own,” he said, settling into the passenger seat.
“Sure you could have. You’re stoned.”
“Like that’s ever stopped me before.”
“Nice.” Moran put the cruiser in gear and navigated it out of the parking lot. “Where to?”
“The Demmie.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re not staying at the shop.”
Hud said nothing, just stared past the beam of the headlights, into the darkness ahead. “What time is it?”
“Almost three.”
The hospital disappeared behind them, and a row of fast food restaurants lined both sides of the road. Their signs were off and the lights dark. Even if he was hungry—which he wasn’t—there wouldn’t have been a place to stop to eat. It didn’t take long for civilization to fade away into a rural stretch of road.
“You’ve had a long day,” Hud said. Moran’s features had softened in the dashboard lights, and even though she was at least ten years younger than he was, he suddenly felt comfortable in her presence. It might have been the morphine, but he doubted that. He’d liked her directness from the start.
Moran flicked her head to him, reacting to the change in his tone. “It’s been a long day for us all. Nothing like this happens around here.”
“There’s always been crime here.”
“Not like this. Stupid stuff. Winter burglaries mostly, from what I remember. A boat theft every once in a while. That’s why there’s three detectives. Break-ins are so common, especially in the winter, there isn’t time for anything else. Sloane’s never caught a murder. Lancet, either. You’re not going to be popular with them.”
“I’ve never had a seat at the cool kids’ table.” Hud had heard the rub in her voice again, heard her desire to rise up in the ranks. Sloane wasn’t going anywhere, and he knew Burke well enough to know that he wasn’t going to promote another woman to detective. One woman on the squad was enough to keep the wolves at bay. It didn’t matter if Moran was qualified or not. He hadn’t met Pete Lancet yet. Didn’t know him from the past, but he’d heard good things about him from Burke. “I suppose you’re right,” he added.
“Of course I’m right.”
Hud smiled and relaxed even more. His mind started to wander, and he realized that he knew nothing about Moran, Sloane, or even Burke for that matter. He was sitting at their table, and he was the newbie. The emotional landscape was familiar, just like the physical landscape, but he didn’t know it. Not like he should. He’d never been very good at starting over. With the pain distancing itself and the swelling in his face growing more noticeable, Hud began to wonder if he had made a mistake by coming home. Not that he’d really had any choice.
The road curved, and Moran took it a little faster than she should have, sending Hud’s shoulder into the door. He grimaced, bit his lip, and tried not to show any discomfort, even though the smack against metal hur
t like hell.
“Oh, sorry,” Moran said.
“The Demmie’s up on the right about two miles.” The pain lingered, hung on like it wanted to spread and conquer him. He should’ve had Moran stop and fill the prescriptions the doctor had given him, but he wanted to crash in his own bed as soon as he could.
“Yeah, I know,” Moran said.
“Of course you do.”
Moran flashed Hud a smile, then returned her attention back to the road. “You like being a cop don’t you?”
Before Hud could answer, his cell phone buzzed with a familiar alert tone. It was Burke, and he had sent a text. Hud struggled to get to the phone and struggled even harder to read the text:
Autopsy at 0800 sharp. Don’t be late.
“Great,” Hud whispered.
“Something wrong?”
“No, it’s just Burke. The autopsy is at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“And he wants you there?”
“Looks that way.”
“Figures.”
Moran wheeled the cruiser into the hotel parking lot. There were a few cars in the lot. One that Hud recognized as Tilt’s. He thought for a second about going into the bar for a late one, or to see if the grill was still hot, but decided against it. His skin felt like glass, like he would shatter at the sound of loud music. It was best to forgo any human contact at this point.
“You need help to your room?” Moran asked.
Hud studied her face for a second, thought about the possibilities, then let the idea drop before he went to a place that he wasn’t up to. A flash of memory from earlier in the day flittered through his mind, and he had to wonder if his reunion with Goldie Flowers had been real or was just a drug-induced fantasy. He hoped it had really happened. “I’ll be fine,” he said.
“All right, I’ll wait until you’re in the room before I leave.”
Hud shrugged and reached for the door handle, but stopped. “What happened back at the Shermans’? How’s the woman?”
“DOA.”
“Damn it, I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Chapter Ten
There were places that Hud had always longed to visit, but once he got there he wished he were somewhere else. The morgue was one of those places. He had imagined himself countless times as an eight-year-old boy walking into the cold, sterile room to identify his mother after she had been found, a victim of murder or some freak accident; a lightning strike on the lake, an attack by the lion at the Dip, or maybe the ostrich had pecked her to death—something, anything. The adult in him knew that he longed for closure. Why else would he want to go to the morgue voluntarily? He had been told that he longed for closure over and over again. Most recently in Detroit by the droning psycho-something woman who had finally determined that he was still fit for police work after being shot. He wondered if he would have to go through that crap again, then thought, I just want to know the truth. It was the one thing that pushed him forward, urged him to get out of bed, face whatever pain he had to, and do his job.
He stood in the open doorway staring at a sheet-covered body lying prone on a stainless steel examining table. His nose had already been invaded by the antiseptic hospital smell that permeated the building, but there was another layer to the aroma in the basement. Mustiness mixed with death and cleaning fluids. For a second, he thought he was going to puke.
The smell, along with his little-boy desires, had stopped Hud in his tracks. It was like he had run headlong into a wall. Maybe it was nothing more than a morphine hangover, or the queasiness in his stomach from his coffee and four-Advil breakfast, or maybe it was something more than that. It was that handshake with death after being smacked upside the head the night before.
He certainly wasn’t at his best, even though he needed to be.
“Detective Matthews,” a familiar voice called out, distantly, from down the hall behind him.
Hud looked over his shoulder to see Bill Flowers and another man he didn’t know heading his way.
“You’re late,” Flowers said. He held a manila folder in one hand, a steaming cup of coffee in the other, and his jaw was set so hard that Hud thought the bone might pop out of its socket.
Hud looked at his bare wrist to see what time it was. He relied on his cell phone these days. His watch had been a casualty of the Detroit incident. He shrugged. There was no use checking the phone to see how late he really was. If Flowers said he was tardy, then that was obviously the way it was going to be, no matter what any clock said. Burke was going to be thrilled when he read the autopsy report. Detective Matthews was late for the procedure . . .
Hud turned and faced the two men as they came to a stop before him. His reactions were slow, tempered by the lingering pain that the Advil couldn’t touch, the haziness of the drug fog, and the lack of sleep. He extended his hand, even though the coroner’s were full. An “are you serious?” look crossed Flowers’s face. Hud nodded, then quickly pivoted to the man he didn’t know.
“Hey, there, pardner, it’s about time we met.” The man grabbed Hud’s hand and shook it furiously. His hand was as cold as a January morning and as big as an omelet skillet.
“Oh, you’re Pete Lancet aren’t you?” Hud said, taking in the man as fully as he could.
“The one and only.”
There was no mistaking Lancet for anything but a cop. He wore a heavily starched white Oxford shirt and a thin black tie, while a 9mm Sig Sauer sat holstered comfortably on his hip, and a shiny silver detective’s badge hung on his belt. He was a head taller than Hud, his thick black hair slicked back with some kind of oily pomade, and a bushy but well-trimmed mustache. His body was lean, and, as if his height alone wasn’t enough, he wore a pair of custom-made cowboy boots with two-and-a-half-inch heels. The boots looked like they were cut from yellow snakeskin instead of leather, and they glowed spectacularly below his sharply creased black slacks.
Another smell invaded Hud’s nose. Lancet wore a cologne so thick it had completely obliterated all of the other smells. It brought Hud close to puking again. This fragrance was worse than all of them combined. It was a spicy, manly scent, probably one of those cheap dime-store brands advertised by a pair of busty blonde beauties on TV. Hud closed off his nose the best he could. He could hardly breathe.
“Boy, that’s some shiner,” Lancet said, leaning in to Hud. “Sloane said you took a good one for the team, but I didn’t expect that.”
The left half of Hud’s face was black and blue, and his eye was bright red. A blood vessel had popped from the impact. If there’d been a carnival in town, he could have auditioned for the freak show.
“You sure you’re up to this?” Lancet went on.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Sure you will.” With that, Lancet smacked Hud between the shoulder blades with the open palm of his hand. “We’re gonna be good together. You wait and see,” he said, spinning around, heading into the morgue with a little more purpose and glee than was necessary this early in the morning.
Flowers looked at Hud with disdain and shoved the folder at him. “You need to bring yourself up to speed.” he said, then quickly followed after Lancet.
Hud was left to himself in the empty basement corridor with pain radiating down his back and more questions swirling in his head than he knew what to do with.
“I always looked for her. In a crowd. In the lake when I was fishing. I looked for her everywhere I went. Always.”
“And that’s why you became a cop, went into police work?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“It just happened?”
“Burke and I were friends. His dad was a looming presence, even when he wasn’t around. Which was most of the time. But when he was, I felt safe, like nothing bad could happen when he was in the house. I liked feeling that. It was rare. If your mother can disappear without a trace, anything can happen, can’t it?”
“Burke’s dad calmed you, even after?”
“He changed. Grew
more distant. I think he was uncomfortable around me. I didn’t know that then. Couldn’t know it then. But that’s what I think now. He couldn’t solve my problem. He couldn’t bring her back—or even find her for that matter.”
“Did he talk to you about it?”
“He never mentioned my mother again. Not after he quit coming by to see Gee.”
“You think he knew something?”
“He was always on my list.”
“So, you wanted to do that for other people when you grew up? What Burke’s dad did for you when you were a kid? Make them feel safe?”
“Sure, if you say so.”
“Or did you do it for yourself?”
“I really have to go take a piss. Do you mind?”
Harriet Danvers had been right. The victim had been that Pam girl. The brief at the top of the report read:
Victim has been identified as Pamela Lynn Sizemore, age twenty-six, Caucasian female, unmarried, divorced two times, mother of one eight-year-old boy, Timmy. Currently unemployed. Last place of employment was Cottage Maids, a local cleaning service. Death from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head requires validation. No other visible wounds. Two ex-husbands, Roy Vaughn and Tim Sizemore have been placed on the interview list, but not located. Last seen alive outside the back door at Johnny Long’s Supper Club by a busboy, Jordan Rogers, five hours before she was discovered dead on the lakeshore by CO Leo Sherman.
Hud nodded and glanced away from the report, from Burke’s signature. He wasn’t sure how it had been determined that the dead girl was Pam Sizemore. Burke hadn’t alerted him that she’d been ID’d—but then Hud had been out of the loop for a few hours. Still, it seemed a text would have been appropriate. The lack of communication wasn’t important—at the moment—but it would be at some point.
The feeling that Hud was lead on this case was falling farther and farther away. He had to wonder if it had really been his in the first place.
The revving of the bone saw drew Hud’s attention away from the report, from his position in the department. Any more details about Pam Sizemore’s short life would have to wait. So would his ego. The file for both was thin.
Where I Can See You Page 6