Slumbered to Death

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

  She cupped her hand to her ear “What was that, Gideon? I couldn’t quite hear your critical prediction of my failure. Could you repeat it for the whole neighborhood?”

  Luke winced at the barb. He didn’t sound like Gideon, did he? Sadie could never do anything right in her father’s eyes, but he wasn’t like that. He was supportive in anything that didn’t have the potential to devastate or wound her. Either she would fail miserably at her new career or she would get hurt trying to prove herself. There were ten feet between them. He took a couple of steps closer. “Sade, come on. You know I’m only looking out for you here.”

  “Why does you looking out for me always feel like you trying to make me into someone else? Maybe I’m going to fail at this, Luke. It wouldn’t be the first time I fell flat on my face. But Abby needs this, she needs me to try my best. We haven’t reached the end yet, and I’m not ready to throw in the towel. You can get behind us and be supportive or you can join Gideon and throw rocks. Your choice.” She crossed her arms over her midsection, but they were wrapped too tightly for defiance. Instead the gesture looked self-protective and he melted.

  “All right. From now on, I’m the guy who will bring the pom-poms to your cheering section.”

  Her smile had the same effect as the sun coming from behind the clouds. “It works both ways, you know. I’m front and center cheering for your doctorate stuff. Maybe I could help you. Do you want me to lure some hapless victims in here so you can do experiments on them? Nobody lures better than me.” She took a couple of steps forward. Six feet—still safe.

  “I’m well-acquainted with your luring skills,” Luke said, his tone dry. “You used them on the paperboy and now we’ve been getting a free paper every day.”

  “Two, actually. I take one to my room and leave the other for you and Abby.”

  “Sadie, he’s seventeen.”

  “So? When I was seventeen, it was a very good year. I’m making his a little better. It’s not like I actually flirt with him. I say hi and wave. Not my fault he has a crush.”

  “For the sake of keeping you honest, I must point out that you waved to him while you were sunbathing in a bikini. The poor kid fell off his bike and chipped a tooth.”

  “My burqa is being dry cleaned, but when it comes back, I’ll make sure to cover up at all times. Honestly, Luke, you are such a prude. And it wasn’t a bikini; it was a tankini.”

  “A what? What are you talking about? Are you making up words now?”

  “A tankini. It’s a tank top. Like this.” She reached out and traced the outline of a tank top on him, and that’s when he realized they had meandered within touching distance of each other. Danger, danger, danger.

  “Don’t try to make it sound modest. Your midriff was bared.” His fingers grazed her stomach.

  “I have a bellybutton; now you know.”

  “I learned that the day you made me see how far in I could shove a jellybean. Surprisingly far, I remember. You’re definitely an innie.”

  “Don’t say innie ever again. It disturbs me. Luke?”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets to remove them from temptation. “Hmm?”

  “You said you had work to do.”

  “So did you.”

  “You should go to your office,” she said.

  “You should go to your office,” he said, but neither of them moved. They lingered in the hall, inches apart, looking but not touching. Luke could feel himself standing on the precipice, dangling a foot over the edge. One hand eased out of his pocket, and the doorbell rang. He slouched in relief as Sadie jumped away from him and sprinted to answer, skidding to a halt with her fingers on the handle.

  She never looked before she opened the door, of course. Leap before looking, that was Sadie’s motto. She ripped open the door and stared at a well-dressed middle-aged man with a benevolent-looking smile. “Hello, I’m looking for Atwood and Cooper Investigative Services.”

  Was that the name Sadie and Abby had chosen for their business? It had a nice ring to it; Luke liked it. “I’m Sadie Cooper, the Cooper half of the duo.” She plunged her hand out and the man shook it before glancing at Luke.

  “I wondered if I could talk to you. I think I may need to hire you.”

  “Of course. Come in. Please forgive my informal attire.” She plucked halfheartedly at her t-shirt. “I was preparing to do some heavy lifting in the office today. Usually I dress more professionally.”

  Liar, Luke thought. The day before she had dressed like a pirate complete with a fake bird on her shoulder. When questioned, she said she was testing Halloween costumes. The man’s gaze landed appraisingly on Luke again.

  “Is that the Atwood half of your company?” he asked.

  “No, he’s a silent partner, and by silent I mean that he’s deaf and mute. Childhood accident, very sad.” She turned to Luke and began making random hand gestures. “This gentleman and I are going into the office to talk.”

  In return, Luke made a gesture that would have been considered very rude if they were in Italy.

  “Go put a dollar in the swear jar, potty mouth,” Sadie said as she made some more hand gestures and pointed to the kitchen.

  He rolled his eyes as he turned and left them alone.

  “Right this way to my office, Mr., I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “White, Ben White.”

  Bond, James Bond, Sadie thought before quickly admonishing herself not to make fun of potential customers. Who gives their last name first? This guy, apparently. “Mr. White, have a seat. Would you mind very much if I call you Ben? Because I probably will anyway. We’re too close in age for me to remember formalities.”

  “Ben is fine,” he said. He moved a pile of magazines and sat down. Seeing the office through an actual client’s eyes made Sadie cringe. She definitely needed to redo some things and become more professional, but she hadn’t expected anyone to show up. Perhaps she needed to take some of her own advice to Luke and have a little more faith in her new venture.

  “How may I help you?” she asked as she sat behind her desk. The chair was too low and she probably looked like a little girl behind the massive oak expanse. As casually as she could, she stood and perched on the edge of the desk, folding her hands to strike a more conservative pose. She wasn’t sure what she expected him to say. After so many days of finding Mr. Mason’s pills, Ben White could have asked them find a lost dry-cleaning stub and it would be an improvement. Nothing could have prepared her for what he actually wanted, though.

  He took a breath, stared at his hands, mustered his courage, and looked in her eyes. “I think I may have murdered someone, and I need you to help me figure out who it was.”

  Chapter 2

  After so many years with a father who routinely picked her apart emotionally and then with a husband who finished the job physically, Sadie had developed an excellent poker face. She needed it now as the man across from her copped to murder.

  “Can you explain that?” she asked, tilting her head to offer a sympathetic ear. On the inside she was mapping her escape routes and picturing Mr. Crazy McCuckoopants being led off in a giant net by men in white coats.

  “It started when I was in the army, I guess. I thought I was career, but it began to be too much. As embarrassing as this is to admit, I had something of a breakdown and received a disability discharge. Since then, I’ve had horrible insomnia, sometimes to the point where I don’t sleep for days at a time. Last year, I tried a new prescription and I was finally able to sleep. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to find something that worked after so many years of not being able to sleep. For a few months, everything was great. I was in a regular routine, sleeping eight hours and waking up refreshed. I was like a new man. And then the dreams started.”

  He paused as if he were waiting for her to comment. Sadie didn’t want to interrupt; she wanted him to keep going. “The dreams,” she prompted, trying hard to keep any irritation out of her tone.

  “Vivid, horr
ible dreams of me committing despicable acts. At first I thought I was reliving things that happened in the army, but no one was wearing fatigues. I began waking up drenched in sweat. I called my doctor, and he assured me that a side effect of the medication was sometimes night terrors. For a while, I was reassured. And then…”

  Sadie bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to stop a retort. Spit it out already. “And then,” she coaxed.

  “And then one morning there was blood on my hands, lodged under my fingernails.” He had been staring off into space while he recounted his story. Now he looked at her and she read all the fear and agony in his expression. The man really thought he might have killed someone.

  “I’ll admit that waking up with blood under your fingernails is strange and disconcerting, but I don’t see why you automatically believe you may have murdered someone,” Sadie said.

  “In the army I was a ranger. Do you know what that is?”

  “Vaguely,” Sadie said.

  “Rangers are special forces, an elite team. We were sent to do jobs that no one else could, lots of black ops. I’m breaking confidentiality by revealing this to you, but I killed people. It was part of the job, but I could never see it that way, and that’s what led to my breakdown. The nightmares are vague, but I remember screams and inflicting terrible pain, and then I woke up bloody. How could I not think that I did something horrible?”

  “Forgive me for asking because I’m not trying to seem unsympathetic, but why don’t you go to the police?”

  “Because I know how the police work. They say they’re not biased, but they are. If they believe I’m a murderer, then they’ll work toward that end. Or they’ll think I’m a crackpot and write me off. Believe me, Sadie, if I’m guilty, then I’ll turn myself in and take whatever punishment they deem appropriate, but I want to know if I really did something before I go to that extreme. I need your help.”

  Sadie’s face remained impassive as she studied him and weighed her decision. This was their first real client. She couldn’t say no. On the other hand, his story was insane. Did she really want to get involved with something so risky? It would have to be worth a whole lot of money. “I have to warn you, Ben, that our fee is steep for cases involving murder.” So far their cases had involved missing ibuprofen, and they had been paid in mashed potatoes. She hoped he bought her bluff.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Ten thousand dollars.” Even she was impressed with how steady her voice was when she named the outrageous fee.

  He reached for his wallet, counted five thousand dollars, and laid it on the desk. “I’ll pay the balance when the case is finished,” he said.

  Sadie stared at the money and knew there was no way she could say no. “What do you do?” she asked. Certainly he couldn’t make so much from army disability.

  “I’m a writer,” he said.

  “Of what?” she asked. No writer she knew made so much money.

  “Technical manuals. It’s not fun, but it pays the bills well. I’m also an engineer. I write manuals that require a high level of skill and knowledge, and I’m paid accordingly.”

  “I need to talk to my partner, Ms. Atwood, but I don’t see any problem in taking your case.” What she meant was that she didn’t see any way they could say no to the pile of money she was still staring at with hungry eyes. “If there is a problem, I’ll call you. In the meantime, please leave me all your pertinent information including your social security number.”

  “What for?” he asked.

  “Because I’m going to check your story. Please don’t be offended, but I need to know who I’m dealing with, I need to know that I can trust you.”

  “Of course,” he said. “But I have to warn you that you won’t be able to tap my army records. They’re sealed. As far as the army is concerned, I don’t exist.”

  “Fair enough,” Sadie said. She provided him with a piece of paper and a pen and waited while he wrote down all of his personal information.

  When he was finished, she walked him to the door and stood on the porch waving until he drove away. Long after he was out of sight, she counted slowly to ten to make sure he was really gone and then sprinted back to her office. The pile of money was right where he left it. Sadie sat and rested her chin on the table, staring.

  “You can’t keep that money,” Luke said. He entered the office and took the chair Ben White had vacated.

  “Shh, it will hear you. He didn’t mean it, baby,” she cooed.

  “Sadie, I’m serious.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time you said that, I would have no need for this wad of money.”

  “That man is insane and dangerous and you sat in here with him alone like you hadn’t a care.”

  “I wasn’t alone. I knew you had your ear pressed to the register upstairs, lurker. By the way, you might want to take off your shoes next time you skulk, Herman Munster. Your step is so heavy it’s like you’re trying to stomp holes through the floor.”

  “Let’s get back to the issue at hand which is the impossibility of you taking this case.”

  “Luke, come on. You cannot expect me to say no to him. He needs our help.”

  “Sadie, stop trying to pretend you’re being altruistic when you haven’t stopped staring at the money since I entered the room.”

  “It’s so pretty,” she said.

  “You can’t keep it. The guy thinks he murdered someone. Either he did and he’s dangerous or he didn’t and he’s crazy.”

  “Or a third option: he has terrible nightmares. I think that’s what is going on here. He needs reassurance, and I plan to be a human nightlight. Abby and I will prove he’s having bad dreams, and then we can afford a real turkey for Thanksgiving instead of the paper maché one I was planning.”

  “How do you account for the blood under his fingernails?”

  “Maybe he was gardening with his hands or maybe it was paint. I don’t know. What I do know is that no one murders people in his sleep.”

  “Remember all those Ambien cases with people doing weird things while they were medicated?”

  “They did weird things like walk, eat, drive, things that are woven into our subconscious. Murder is not a rote activity.”

  “Except for an army ranger who was trained to kill.”

  She waved her hand. “Oh, please. Every army guy wants to believe he’s Jason Bourne, but an elite army ranger murder squad? I don’t buy it.”

  “So you think he’s lying,” Luke said.

  “I think he has an expansive imagination, as proved by his vivid nightmares.”

  “There’s no way I can convince you not to do this, is there?”

  “No,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I’m meeting Abby at Mr. Mason’s to look for his pills. Do you want to come? It’s green Jell-O week, so there’s that to look forward to.”

  He was going to say no until he saw her scoop the money into her pocket. “What are you doing with that?”

  “I thought I would try putting it in the bank. Burying it in the back yard is so déclassé.”

  “You’re going to carry five thousand dollars in your pocket?”

  “Until they invent a teleportation device that will let me beam it directly to the bank then, yes, my pocket is the preferred mode of transport.”

  “Sadie, you can’t sashay around with five thousand dollars in your pocket.”

  “Sashay? You mean like this?” She shimmied around the office a few times and checked her pocket. “Look at that—it stayed in there. I guess it’s safe for me to sashay all the way to the bank.”

  “I’m coming with you for protection.”

  “Protection, right. Don’t worry, if that Girl Scout starts eyeballing you again, I’ll step in.” She pounded her fist in her palm a few times for emphasis.

  “I don’t need you to protect me; I’m going to protect you.”

  She laughed and linked her arm through his. “Luke, it’s so cute when you go all caveman.”

&nb
sp; “Laugh all you want, but you are five feet tall. To a predator, you look like an hors d’oeuvre. Not only am I a man, but I’m six feet tall. Someone might attack you when you’re alone, but they would never do it with me here.”

  “Who is going to attack me?” They stepped outside. Sadie screamed and propelled herself at him.

  “What? What is it?”

  “That squirrel, it had a gun. I think it was after me. Then it saw you and ran up that tree. I’m so glad you’re here, Luke.”

  “You’re not half as funny as you think you are,” he said as he peeled her off him and gave her a shove.