When the Dead Speak (1st Sam Casey Mystery)

by S. D. Tooley

  “I told you to keep her in line. Now it’s too late.” Preston hung up before he could hear a response. Then he unplugged the phone, laid his glasses and speech on the nightstand, reached up and turned off the lamp.

  Chapter 79

  Sam checked her watch. Five-thirty. Sunlight was struggling to break through the room darkening shades. It had succeeded with the vertical blinds in the living room.

  She glanced down at Jake, lying on his side, the sheet pulled up to his waist. She was afraid to kiss him for fear of waking him. If she woke him, she’d have to do all the talking she had avoided last night, like how she had met Cain on her own, how she lost her gun. And she didn’t want to listen to lectures.

  Last night at the warehouse was a blur. There had been an officer down and she hadn’t called it in. The feeling of doom and death were gone. She dismissed it as the shots that had been fired at her. Nothing more.

  Right now, she needed to get home before Abby woke up, and then get to the precinct as soon as possible. If anyone questioned her whereabouts last night, she was sure Abby would cover for her.

  Slowly she bent down until she was within eye level of Jake’s broad, strong shoulders. She resisted the urge to climb back into bed. Her eyes traced the map of scars on his back. Softly, she kissed one of the scars.

  The moment Sam climbed into her Jeep and turned the key, that feeling of impending doom reared its ugly head. With each block she drove, the feeling intensified, gripping her with a fear she had never experienced before. She told herself to fight it, concentrate. If she could figure out the source of the fear, she could eliminate it. Abby would help.

  She chose whichever streets were the least crowded, not exactly sure how to get to a main street, but needing to get home as quickly as possible. She avoided a city street cleaner on Superior Avenue only to be delayed at a railroad crossing while an Amtrak train rumbled by.

  Her thoughts turned to Cain, Preston, the warehouse, the dead cop. Doom hung over her like a black umbrella. The realization that Cain was nearby struck her full force. He was going to try something in broad daylight.

  She found herself searching the faces in the vehicles around her ... the pickup truck driver with the black Stetson; the yuppie with the starched white shirt and wide floral tie driving a red Beemer; the elderly man in tattered clothing bending over a wire trash can looking for aluminum cans. Cain was around somewhere. She could feel his presence.

  Someone familiar ran over to her Jeep. It was Chief Connelley.

  “Uncle Don, what are you doing here?”

  “Slide over, Sam.” He gave her no choice but to climb over the console to the passenger seat. “I tried reaching you all night. I’ve tried your portable phone, your house. I pulled my car over as soon as I saw you.” Chief Connelley’s tie was loosened, his hair disheveled. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead.

  The train passed and traffic started moving again, people heading to the train station, others toward the expressway. He stole a quick glance in the rear view mirror as he turned the corner.

  “I lost my portable. I left early for a jog and was just headed home to shower.”

  “I want you and Abby to go out of town for a while, maybe the reservation.”

  “We already went over that.”

  “Your life is in danger.” He stole a quick glance toward her. “You have to trust me on this.” Connelley’s fingers and knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel. His breathing came in short, asthmatic bursts.

  Sam stared at his hands. Her eyes were drawn to his cuffs which protruded from his suit coat. A scene played over in her mind — Hap lifting her up on his lap to trace the lightning bolt pin. But something never seemed right. Now she knew it couldn’t have been Hap. The skin wasn’t dark. The skin was light. And the person holding her had cuff links shaped like bullets.

  “Oh, my god,” Sam whispered. “It was you!”

  “Listen to me,” Connelley yelled. He had to apply the brakes quickly as a traffic light turned red. “He is going to kill you if you don’t get out of town.”

  Sam wasn’t listening. She was too busy remembering. “YOU were the one who lifted me on your lap to draw the pictures of the lightning bolt pins. My father told you about Hap Wilson. You KNEW! YOU were the friend who he entrusted with his copy of Hap’s affidavit.

  “Honey ...” Connelley reached for her, grabbed her hand. “Let me explain.”

  Sam pulled away and reached for the door handle. Every instinct in her body told her to get out of the Jeep — NOW!

  Chapter 80

  Jake stretched and reached his arm across the bed. It touched sheet, not Sam. He swiveled his head toward the bathroom. The door was opened. He called out Sam’s name. Silence.

  Maybe last night was just a figment of his imagination, like the night he was in the whirlpool. After all, he hadn’t even buzzed Sam upstairs last night. She simply appeared at his door, just as she had appeared floating through the whirlpool.

  He pulled a pillow over and pressed it to his face. The subtle scent of Sam’s perfume still clung to the fibers. He shoved the pillow behind his head and glanced over at the wing-backed chair sitting in the corner. Last night he had sat on that chair wrapped only in a towel. He remembered Sam coming out of the bathroom in one of his shirts, unbuttoned, but she held it together with all of her refreshing naivetE9.

  If it was all a dream, it was one of the most fantastic dreams he had ever experienced. Sam straddled him, his towel fell open. She pulled some yin-yang thing on him that she said she had read about in a magazine. Told him to stare into her left eye, to inhale when she exhaled and vice versa. And to not move. They stayed that way, inhaling, exhaling.

  For the first time in his life he cried out. When they wrapped their arms around each other she had whispered in his ear, “Strong, silent type my ass.”

  Dream? He refused to believe it had all been his imagination. Propping himself up on one elbow, he felt something solid hit his chest. He looked down and saw Sam’s medicine bundle.

  The buzzer rang just as Jake stepped out of the shower. Jake pressed the buzzer to let Frank in, then quickly slipped into a blue dress shirt and navy blue pants, official clothes for arresting a state representative. He had told Carl he would meet him at his hotel and they would go together to the Jenkins Art Center.

  “Jake.” Frank was breathless from running up three flights of stairs. “Did you hear about Stu Richards?”

  “Who?” Jake closed the door behind him. Frank followed him into the bedroom.

  “He’s only been on the force one month. He was killed last night while patrolling that industrial site on Cornell.”

  “Gang shooting?” Jake pulled a blue tweed sportscoat from his closet and tossed it on the bed.

  “Have you talked to Sam this morning?” Frank trailed Jake from the bedroom to the kitchen.

  Jake turned from the counter and studied Frank’s face. “Why? What’s going on?”

  Frank looked at the phone and answering machine on the counter sitting next to the toaster. He lifted up the cord which had been unplugged from the wall.

  Jake did not remember doing it. “I must have knocked it out when I cleaned off the counter last night.” He took the cord from Frank and plugged it back in.

  “Guess you’ve really been out of touch. You probably don’t know about Cain Valenzio either.”

  Jake blinked, his eyes drawn back to the telephone as if trying to remember if he or Sam had unplugged it.

  “Cain was shot and killed.” Frank slapped Jake on the forearm. “Hey, stay with me here, buddy. Did you hear me?”

  Jake leaned back against the kitchen sink. He had never asked Sam where she had been last night. They had gone from the living room to the shower, where the lingering smell of smoke in her hair was washed out before he had a chance to ask her about it.

  “Preston’s security guards shot and killed Cain last night.”

  Picking up the phone, Jake aske
d, “Have you tried calling Sam?”

  Frank placed his hand on top of Jake’s.

  “The cops haven’t been able to reach her at home. There’s no answer and Abby hasn’t seen her.”

  Jake wasn’t sure what time Sam had left. When his alarm had gone off at six, she wasn’t there. But she should have been home by now.

  Frank moved his hand to Jake’s shoulder, saying, “Word from Ballistics is the bullet that killed Stu Richards came from Sam’s gun.”

  Chapter 81

  While Frank drove them both to the Suisse Hotel, Jake again tried to reach Sam’s cellular phone. Then he called Abby who said she hadn’t seen Sam this morning. Abby was tactful enough not to say that she hadn’t seen Sam all night. It was while Jake was talking to Abby that the call came in about Sam’s Jeep.

  They could see the flames and smoke from blocks away. Frank couldn’t drive fast enough to suit Jake. The words Sam spoke last night came back to haunt him.

  If anything happens to me, she had said.

  Wooden horses were set up around the perimeter to keep traffic and bystanders as far away as possible. It was a busy intersection with strip malls lining the street, a Burger King, lumber company, and mom-and-pop stores. As though frightened by the explosion and debris, the sun had slipped behind a large dark cloud.

  Jake ran around the barricades toward the Jeep, but the heat from the explosion was too intense. Frank caught up with him and pulled on his arm. “Jake, it’s too late.”

  A blue door lay fifty feet from the flaming wreckage. There was so much smoke, it was difficult to tell how much of the Jeep was still intact. Grief-stricken, Jake turned away and leaned against the side of a brick storefront. He felt Frank’s hand on his shoulder. His senses were numb. Reality wasn’t quite setting in. He felt something flutter under his shirt and realized it was Sam’s medicine bundle, the one thing that was to protect her from harm. In his anguish, he slammed his fist into the building.

  Refusing Frank’s suggestion that he have his hand X-rayed, Jake slipped around the back of a two-story renovated courthouse where he found a shaky fire escape leading up to the roof. His gnarled right hand hung limp, sending searing stabs of pain up his right arm. He didn’t even wince. The pain was nothing compared to the grief.

  He couldn’t handle the press right now much less listen to eyewitnesses recount details about the explosion and the victim caught inside. Reaching the four-foot ledge, Jake stopped and peered down. He saw Russo directing Civil Defense cars around the wooden horses and Frank writing down names of eyewitnesses. Clusters of curious bystanders pressed against the barricades

  Slowly Jake turned, sliding his body down the brick wall until he was crouched in a catcher’s position. Holding his left hand out to catch some of the ashes, he remembered Sam’s smooth skin, the feel of her body under his. How synchronized were their movements, as though in a previous life they had been lovers and knew every curve of each other’s body.

  The last time Jake cried he was ten years old. His earliest recollection of his father’s fury was at age three when he had dumped a glass of milk on the floor. His father had picked him up by the back of his corduroy bib overalls and held him over the mess making him wipe it up with a paper towel.

  His father never showed affection, never played ball, never took him to Cub Scouts like other kids’ dads. All he knew was how to hit. His mother told him it was the liquor that made his father mean, that made him want to strike out. He doesn’t mean it, Dear. He really does love you, she would say.

  At age ten, Jake decided he wouldn’t give Evan Mitchell the satisfaction of seeing him cry. Evan Mitchell, who played poker with the boys in the back room of the Frolick Club, who played Santa for the kids at Mercy Hospital. There were two sides to Evan Mitchell. Gradually, the drinking cost him his friends, his job. It reduced his two-hundred-pound bulk to one hundred and sixty. But Ann Mitchell stuck by her man.

  She would comfort Jake after his beatings. She would argue with Evan not to hit the boy. Then Evan would hit her. Jake tried to protect her, tried to fight him off. He realized too late how weak his mother really was. Too weak to stand up for herself much less her son. Jake hated her for that weakness.

  When he was fifteen, Jake suddenly sprouted up and filled out. It seemed to happen overnight, something Evan hadn’t counted on. When Evan smashed a hammer against Jake’s head and split his forehead open, Jake hauled off and punched him, sending his father flying down the back stairs of their rented town house. Rather than tending to Jake’s bleeding skull, Ann ran down the stairs and cradled her husband’s head in her lap.

  Jake didn’t cry at his father’s funeral one year later. Nor did he cry when his mother passed away three years after that. He hadn’t thought about his childhood since his mother’s funeral, as though burying the last of his parents also buried his past.

  Each year of his life from age ten on, Jake added another brick to the wall around him until it was so high even he couldn’t see over it. He vowed that nothing would ever get through that emotional barrier. Until Sam. Now he could feel that wall building up again, brick by brick. He had opened up, only to feel pain.

  Jake stared at the ashes accumulating in his palm. He closed his fingers around those ashes as if they were the last remnants of Sam he would ever touch. Pressing his fist to his forehead, he wept.

  Chapter 82

  Jake stood on the bottom step of the patio. The sun was shining brightly, too brightly. He expected the skies to be crying, mourning his loss.

  He had sent Frank to the Suisse Hotel, saying he would meet up with them at the Jenkins Art Center. Anger and revenge had propelled Jake down those grated stairs, off the rooftop. He had thought briefly of driving over to Preston’s house and placing his Colt 9mm to the back of the politician’s head, execution style. But there was something more pressing he had to do. Someone had to tell Abby and he wanted her to hear it from him.

  How damn clever Preston was. Smarter than Jake gave him credit for. In his statement to the press, Preston had shown them the picture of Cain Sam had given him. Told them she had warned him he might be Cain’s next target. Preston’s hands were lily white — in Cain’s death, Hap’s, Samuel Casey’s, and now Sam’s.

  Jake stood by the patio table and thought back to the first time he had stood in this same spot. So smugly he had clung to that videotape, congratulating himself for out-maneuvering the clever Sergeant Casey.

  But he was the one who had been blind-sided. When he saw her with that mass of long, spiraling hair daring to be touched, the trace of wine clinging to her lips, that defiant glare in those blue eyes, he felt that first brick fall. And in succession they fell like squares of dominos.

  “Jacob.” Abby’s face brightened as she stepped out of the house. Her gaze dropped down to his swollen hand. “What happened?” Gently she cradled his injured hand. Jake winced. He wrapped his good arm around her and held her close.

  “I promised you I’d watch over her,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

  Abby pulled away from him. She frowned when she saw the anguish in his eyes. She turned her attention back to his hand. “You should really have this looked at, Jacob. Come, sit down.” They sat at the patio table. Abby turned away from him and looked out toward the flowering garden. A soft spray from the underground sprinkling system misted the flower beds. “I’ll have to show you Alex’s roses. They are finally opening up.”

  Jake pulled her to him, kissed the back of her head. She turned toward him, placed his left hand between hers and squeezed tightly. And waited.

  “There was a car bomb.” Jake could barely get the words out. All he knew was that three hours ago Sam was alive. For seven hours last night they had lived and loved for a lifetime. He wondered now if that had been Sam’s idea all along. Sensing her impending death, she wanted to experience it all.

  “Sam?” Abby searched his face.

  He expected her to get hysterical, be emotionally overwrought. He
didn’t expect her cool detachment. She straightened up and lifted her face as though listening. Her eyes closed briefly. When she opened them, she spoke in a calm, confident voice.

  “When I lost my first daughter, I knew the moment I awakened that she was dead. I could feel that her spirit was no longer of this earth.” She cupped his face, stared so deeply into his soul that he almost felt her hopefulness, her certainty. “Not this time, Jacob. I can feel her spirit. My Samantha is still alive.”

  Chapter 83

  Preston glanced over his speech as he stood backstage at the Jenkins Art Center. Already an hour late, he moved as if he had all the time in the world. The waiting area was small but lavishly decorated with burgundy velvet upholstered chairs and solid oak flooring which was carried through to the stage.

  “Mr. Hilliard.” A man in full military regalia greeted Preston at the door. Ivan Lambert was a World War II veteran. He offered a pale, veiny hand to Preston. It looked as if a strong wind could blow his frail body from here to Chicago.

  “Sorry, I was up late last night giving a statement to the police.” Preston peered behind the curtains at the sea of veterans, most in uniform. The first two rows were filled with reporters and cameramen. “Nice crowd.”

  “About four thousand, Sir.”

  Preston looked toward the exit door and saw a dark-suited man wearing sunglasses, his hair cut short. A cord snaked around the side of his neck to his left ear. A man dressed identically was positioned at the doorway to the auditorium. Preston assumed they were there for his protection.