When he had joined the marines, he had taken their motto to heart: Semper fidelis. Always faithful. In his friendships, in his work, in his marriage. That was him. Good old Steve.
Until one day he wasn’t faithful anymore. One day he succumbed to the lure of cheap booze and his best friend’s unhappy wife and balled Deedee’s brains out. That had been the beginning of the end.
Or maybe the end of the beginning. Because now he was back, like a risen Lazarus, to try to reassemble the pieces of his shattered life.
It had taken him three years, but he had finally seen it: the flaw in the scenario investigators had painted of the way Deedee had died.
She’d hanged herself in his office early one Sunday morning. His office, which he locked each night as faithfully as he did everything else. His office, to which Deedee had not had a key.
How had she gotten in?
“What is this place?” The question jolted Steve out of his reverie. Glancing over at the woman beside him, he was instantly reminded of the deadly turn his life had taken. Thanks to the double vision resulting from the beating they’d given him, he saw two of her, two blurry images that swayed apart and then together, threatened to merge and then split again. Two hazel-eyed, brown-haired, bigtitted women whose features he had not yet managed to get a real good fix on. Two innocent bystanders who might still die tonight because of him. Or two supremely clever liars. He still hadn’t one hundred percent made up his mind which.
Though no crook he had ever run into had yakked that much.
While one small, objective part of his brain hoped he didn’t have a concussion, the rest of his intellect (which admittedly was not quite firing on all cylinders right at that moment) wrestled with what to do. There were options, he knew there had to be, but he couldn’t think straight with his head pounding and the swelling that had once been his face throbbing and every muscle in his body feeling like it had been worked over with a tire iron—which wasn’t particularly surprising considering that most of them had. The only solution that occurred to him was classic in its simplicity: Get the hell out of Dodge.
“I asked you, what is this place?”
For a moment there, Steve had almost forgotten his companion. “Boat warehouse.”
“Boat warehouse? What the heck is a boat warehouse?”
The woman was a talker. Practically the only time she had shut up all night was when she’d been unconscious. If she wasn’t careful, the thought just might give him ideas.
“A warehouse where they keep boats.” If it hadn’t hurt so much to wrinkle his forehead, he would have scowled at her.
“Oh, thanks. That tells me a lot.”
Steve gave up. Clearly he was not going to be able to intimidate her with his facial expressions—a technique he had used before with good results—when he couldn’t even move his face. “It’s used for off-season storage. For people who don’t want to keep their boats in the water year-round. It should be pretty much deserted this time of year.”
“Do you keep a boat here?”
“A friend does. In winter. Right now, he’s probably got it docked in front of his cabin on Cedar Lake.”
“Is that where you’re headed? To your friend’s?”
Steve gave an unamused chuckle and for the moment ignored her hopeful use of the singular pronoun. “Rosencrans, at this point I’m not sure I have any friends. Stop up here in front of that last building, would you? If we’re real lucky, they still keep the spare key in the same place.”
Man, he hurt all over. Sliding out of the van—she couldn’t go off and leave him because of the locked gate—he did his best to ignore the assorted stabs and twinges that assailed him when he moved. The charley horse in his thigh had hurt like the very devil, but it seemed to be easing up. The main thing was, no bones seemed to be broken—unless his skull was cracked, which, if the way it ached was any indication, it might well be.
Back about five years ago, Mitch had bought a thirty-two-foot Chris-Craft cabin cruiser for fifteen hundred dollars. Top of the line. Slept six. Mitch crowed about the great price, which Steve had agreed it was—just like Mitch to get the deal of the century—until he found out that the damned thing was thirty years old, made of wood, and didn’t run. A classic, Mitch called it. Just needed to be restored. Guess who’d spent weekends and after hours for eighteen solid months helping his buddy replace boards and paint and tinker with the engine?
Yep. Good old Steve.
At Deedee’s funeral, Steve had felt like the lowest worm alive. He could picture Mitch the way he’d looked that day, eyes red-rimmed from weeping, shoulders heaving in his dark suit, head bowed. Mitch’s mother had stood beside him, clutching her fair-haired boy’s arm. It had been January, and it was cold out. The wind was blowing. The sky was aluminum foil gray. There’d been hundreds of mourners at the graveside service—nothing attracted a crowd like scandal. Grief- and guilt-racked, Steve had been unable to stay away. After the coffin was lowered into the frozen earth—a white sifting of frost lay like lace over the raw sides of the open grave where Deedee was laid to rest; he could picture the scene still—the mourners had started to disperse. Mitch was turning away when Steve walked up to him. Hat in hand, his own eyes unfocused from sorrow and shame and lack of sleep, he’d meant to offer his friend an apology, condolences, his head on a plate if Mitch wanted it. Anything. He’d done wrong, but he’d never meant for Deedee to die.
For a second he stood right in front of Mitch. His best friend looked at him, simply looked at him, ignoring his outstretched hand, his stumbling words. The classically handsome face, the eyes of choirboy blue, could have been painted plaster for all the emotion they showed. Then Mitch’s mother—he’d known her practically all his life, too, and would have sworn she considered him almost a second son—put a hand on Mitch’s arm, and the pair of them turned and walked away as if Steve were invisible.
A rebuke well deserved.
From that day to this, he hadn’t set eyes on Mitch.
Two days after the funeral, he was fired. For conduct unbecoming a police officer. The following Saturday, while he was still asleep, his wife took their little girl and left. In the note he found stuck to the refrigerator, she informed him that she was filing for divorce.
His life was shattered. In the space of a week, everything that had made it worth living was gone.
The thought of putting his pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger crossed his mind. As a solution, it would be both simple and effective. Oblivion would be a welcome end to his wrenching pain. But one day someone would tell his little girl what he had done. To be known as the daughter of an adulterous, scandal-ridden, disgraced cop was bad enough. To have her grow up as the daughter of a suicide would be worse. He could not do it to her.
He had done wrong, and he was being punished. Though he was no believer in karma, karma was exactly what it was. He deserved to lose his little girl, his wife, his best friend, his job. He deserved to lose his life, too, at least figuratively. Deedee had lost hers.
Which was why he hadn’t fought, not his firing, nor his wife’s petition for divorce and request for sole custody of their daughter. He’d signed every frigging paper they’d put in front of him, sent support checks for three frigging years, without complaint.
Because he’d known the punishment, the pain, had been earned.
With everything gone, he hit the road. That first night, in a cheap motel, he started to drink. He more or less stayed drunk for the better part of the next two and a half years.
Medicating the pain.
He had screwed around with his best friend’s wife. He had done what, among guys, was absolutely taboo.
When he had regained his senses and told Deedee that he just couldn’t do that to Mitch anymore, she’d pitched a fit. Deedee had been a pro at pitching fits. But he had never, ever once entertained the thought that she might kill herself. Deedee? Over him? Get real.
But she had. Jesus. But he had no answer—yet—to t
he riddle of how she had gotten into his office, to which she didn’t possess a key.
The key to the warehouse was right where it had always been. Steve withdrew it from its hiding place, unlocked the door, and, not without some difficulty, shoved the rusty metal panel aside.
Just like the old days. When he glanced around, he almost expected to see Mitch grinning behind him. Grinning because, as always, Steve was doing the grunt work.
Or Deedee, who had accompanied them to the boatyard a lot.
But wait. Deedee was there. Her tiny, frizzy-haired frame seemed to materialize right in front of the van’s smashed-in nose. For a fraction of an instant, no longer than the twinkle of a star, Steve could see her. She waved at him, waggling the red-painted fingers of her right hand just like she always did.
Then she was gone.
Steve blinked, shook his head to clear it, and stared at the spot where she had been. Of course she was gone. She’d never been there in the first place. The blows to his head were causing him to hallucinate, or something.
Weird.
Just like life was weird.
10
As Frankenstein fiddled around, Summer entertained the idea of gunning the van backward and leaving him to his fate, but the memory of the closed gate dissuaded her. Mainly because she couldn’t remember the code, and he would almost certainly catch up to her while she sat in front of the gate frantically punching in numbers at random.
Besides, in the van she would be a marked woman. Whoever was searching for them knew the vehicle well.
A garage-sized door slid sideways, opening up the warehouse. Frankenstein turned, stared at the van for a moment as if lost in thought, then shook his head and beckoned her in.
She drove past him. Inside, the warehouse was as dark as a coal cellar. The darkness became inpenetrable as the door rattled shut behind the van. She couldn’t see as far in front of her as the steering wheel. Under the circumstances, Summer dared to turn on the headlights. The beam illuminated a vast, echoing space, perhaps one and a half stories tall and about half the length of a football field. To her left loomed a large half-painted boat perched on a peeling trailer. A single lightbulb sprang to life as she braked the van. The bulb dangled from the ceiling by a cord.
Perhaps half a dozen boats ranging in size from an open runabout to the large cabin cruiser to her left were parked at random intervals inside. With the door closed, not even the warehouse’s vast size could keep it from feeling cozy. For the first time in what felt like forever, Summer was reasonably confident that she was physically safe. The tension ebbed from her body like water going down a drain.
She slid the transmission into park, turned off the key, then leaned her head against the back of the seat. Allowing herself to go limp was such a relief.
Behind her, the double doors at the rear of the van opened. Frankenstein, up to no good. There was a moment of silence, then a between-the-teeth kind of whistle.
Against her better judgment, Summer looked around.
Frankenstein’s head and shoulders were silhouetted by the light outside the van. His expression was in shadow, but she did not need to see where his eyes rested to realize what had prompted that low whistle: The van’s cargo was a pair of glossy gray coffins.
Oh, God.
With the concealing furniture blankets crumpled in the aisle between them, the coffins were so obvious that Summer had trouble believing that she had ever escaped seeing them. But darkness and urgency and fear combined must have blinded her to the reality of the shrouded rectangular shapes. Now the van’s inside light was pitiless in its illumination.
Oh, God.
Of course the van must have been delivering coffins. Nothing odd about that. After all, its destination had been a funeral home.
Oh, God.
There was nothing so inherently horrible about coffins, she told herself. No need to hyperventilate over their mere presence. She had merely to think rationally, and compose her nerves.
Oh, God.
Frankenstein hoisted himself aboard the van from the rear. Light poured through bullet holes in the roof and sides, reminding Summer of the pierced-tin Christmas ornaments her mother had bought in Mexico and used on their tree every year. Two webbed black straps ran through metal loops set into the sides of the van. The straps were secured around the coffins, presumably both to hold them closed and to keep them in place.
Oh, God.
“What are you doing?” she asked, horrified, as he began to unfasten the straps.
“Checking.”
Checking what was the obvious next question, but Summer realized she didn’t really want to know. Still, she could not help but watch with a certain fascinated dread as he freed first one strap and then the other. Then he lifted a lid.
The way her life was going lately, she should have been prepared. There was a corpse inside the coffin. A young man in a dark suit, hands crossed piously on his breast.
Oh, God.
Summer’s eyes snapped shut. She felt ill.
“What are you moaning about now?” Frankenstein growled.
Summer’s eyes opened, and she glanced around again. Big mistake. He had the lid up on the second coffin. It was as occupied as the first. This time the body was that of a young woman. College-age, perhaps, with long dark hair, decked out in a pretty floral dress with a lace collar.
Oh, God.
“We’ve got to take them back,” she said with convic tion.
“Yeah, right.” He was staring down at the corpse.
“We do! This is—sacrilegious, or something. They’re dead.”
He shut the lid. “Better them than us.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I vote for heading for Mexico.”
“I mean about the—the bodies!”
He sighed. “You are a worrywart, aren’t you?”
“I don’t consider myself a worrywart just because I’m upset that you’ve stolen two dead bodies!”
“We, Rosencrans. The operative pronoun here is we.” The strangled sound she made earned her an irritated glance. “And for God’s sake stop moaning, will ya?”
“I am not moaning!”
“Sounds like moaning to me.” He turned and clambered out the back, shutting the double doors with a slam that rocked the van. Summer expected him to come around to her door—she expected him to do something—but as minutes passed and she saw neither hide nor hair of him it became increasingly obvious that he was no longer nearby.
Oh, God. Had something happened to him? Had the goons who were chasing them found them? Had they taken Frankenstein out when he jumped down from the van? Was he even now lying on the gravel nearby, blood bubbling from a cut throat, while his killers waited to claim their next victim—her?
Oh, God.
Or had his end been supernatural in origin? Maybe ghosts took a dim view of body snatchers.
Body snatchers. As she thought of herself in that light, Summer moaned again.
“You sound like a donkey with laryngitis.” The door beside her opened without warning. Summer screeched, and shot sideways away from it like a sprung rubber band.
Frankenstein surveyed her from the open door.
“Where have you been?” she gasped.
“Nature called. Come on, get out. I’ve found us a new set of wheels.”
“What?”
But he was already walking away from the van. His limping gait was surprisingly fast. Summer had to scramble to catch up with him.
“Wait—we can’t just leave them.”
“Who?”
“The bodies!”
“Why not?”
His tone was so indifferent that Summer sputtered. “Because—because we just can’t.”
“I don’t see that we have much choice. Unless you want to bring them with us. I always looked forward to going on a double date with a couple of stiffs. Or would you rather try to bury them? I hear grave-digging’s hard work.”
“Would you
be serious?”
“I am being serious.” A slight quirk at one end of his swollen mouth alerted her to the fact that he smiled suddenly. “Serious as a grave.”
“Oh, ha-ha.”
“Glad to see you’ve kept your sense of humor.”
Summer didn’t even bother to dignify that with an answer. “We’ve got to do something—at least call somebody and tell them where they—the bodies—are.”
He snorted. “Why not just tell them where we are while we’re at it?”
“We should call the police”—a sharp shake of his head vetoed that idea—“or Harmon Brothers,” another shake of his head, “or somebody.”
Frankenstein shot her an impatient glance. “Those people in there are already dead, Rosencrans. You want to join them?”
Summer shook her head.
“Me neither. So we don’t call anybody, understand? We just keep our mouths shut, our heads low, and hightail it out of the great state of Tennessee.”
“But …” As Summer followed him through an ordinary-size door at the far end of the warehouse, he flicked off the light. The fresh night air struck her like a threat. Outside, she felt exposed. Vulnerable. She looked anxiously skyward, searching for any sign of the helicopter.
“Couldn’t we just stay here until morning?” Her voice was so small that she barely recognized it as her own.
He shut the door and tested the knob to be sure it was locked. “What do you suppose is going to be different in the morning? Do you think the bad guys vanish in a puff of smoke at daybreak? Not hardly. The bad guys’ll still be bad—and they’ll still be searching for us. So shake your booty, Rosencrans.”
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