A Hard Day's Fright

by Casey Daniels

  My voice was as sour as my mood. “Got anything else you want to say to boost my self-esteem before I send you packing back into whatever nightmare you stepped out of?”

  That look of his—the one that had been so serious and careful only a moment before—softened into something more tender. “I guess I don’t blame you for being mad, but really, you’ve got to see things from my perspective. When you told me you talked to the dead…Come on, Pepper, what did you expect me to do, jump up and down and tell you how cool it was? It sounds crazy. Even you have to admit that.”

  “Even me.” He had a way of making those two little words sound like a condemnation. Honestly, I thought about marching over to the door, throwing it open, and telling him to get the hell out of there, but I figured that wasn’t the way these things worked. If I couldn’t get him out of my dream, maybe I could work things the other way around.

  I commanded myself to wake up and squeezed my eyes shut, sure that when I opened them again, I’d be back on the couch. Alone.

  It didn’t work.

  I swear my eyes were open. But there I was, still standing next to my couch, face-to-face with Quinn.

  I propped my hands on my hips. “So it looks like the only way I’m going to get rid of you is to get this over with. Tell me what you want me to know. About Winston Churchill.”

  “Who?” Like he was the one pulling himself out of a dream of his own, Quinn shook his head. “Oh, Churchill. Yeah. That guy. I do need to tell you something about him only…” Frustrated, he grumbled and twirled around to pace as far as the kitchen door and back again. On his second time by, he stopped, just out of arm’s reach.

  “There’s a whole lot more we need to talk about that’s more important,” he said.

  “Maybe some other time. Like when I’m not trying to get my beauty sleep.”

  A smile glimmered over his lips. “You couldn’t get any more beautiful.”

  “That’s it!” I threw my hands in the air. It was my turn to pace, and I stomped for all I was worth. If I was actually awake, I would have felt sorry for the people who live downstairs. Once around wasn’t enough to get rid of my anger, and I knew twice wouldn’t help, either. I stopped right back where I’d started and pointed a finger at Quinn’s nose. “You. Get out of my head. Right now.”

  “Can I come back?”

  I growled and took a step closer. “You can come back when hell freezes over. And that would be when—”

  He knew exactly when I realized what was really going on. But then, it was kind of hard to miss me turning into a block of ice in the middle of my living room.

  That might have been from surprise.

  Or because I was finally just close enough to feel the frosty aura that surrounded Quinn.

  “Quinn?” I reached out a hand for him.

  He stepped back. “You know you can’t touch me.”

  I tried, anyway. “Quinn? This is some kind of crazy dream, right? You’re not—”

  “I need you to do something for me. I need you to tell the guys I work with that I went around to the back of the warehouse. There was a door back there that led into the basement. That’s how Churchill got out. He jacked a car and took off. Dark-colored sedan. Ohio license plates AOY 6990. He headed toward the freeway, and that couldn’t have been more than a couple minutes ago. If they’re quick—”

  “Quinn?”

  Oh yeah, I sounded like a complete moron. I couldn’t help myself. By this time, tears streaked down my face and my chest hurt so bad, I couldn’t take another breath. I blinked and told myself my eyes were playing tricks on me because of the tears. Quinn couldn’t really be fading right in front of me.

  “You’ve got to get there and tell them,” Quinn said. “Churchill is dangerous, and we can’t let him get away. If he does, more innocent people are going to die. You’ve got to promise me you’ll help, Pepper.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “Sure you can. You…” He swallowed hard and the green fire in his eyes tamped into a look far more smoldering. “I know the truth now. I know you’re the only one who can.”

  It was the last thing he said before he faded away completely.

  I’m not sure how long I stood there, staring at the spot where he’d been and wondering what had just happened. I only knew that the first thing I did was admit that I wasn’t sleeping. No matter how much I wished I was.

  The second thing I did was turn on the TV.

  One of the local news channels was just cutting into a Friends rerun with breaking news.

  Winston Churchill had escaped. But not before he’d had a gun battle with one of the cops who was after him. There was an officer down. They weren’t releasing any names yet, but they didn’t have to.

  I knew Quinn was dead, and I’d just had a conversation with his ghost.

  I may have ignored a couple dozen red lights on my way to the hospital where they said they’d taken the person they were calling “the wounded officer.” I parked in a zone where it was clear I shouldn’t have, and by the time I got off the elevator at the ICU, I wasn’t just shaking, I was quivering like a bowl of Jell-O in an 8.2 magnitude earthquake.

  “Police personnel only,” the young uniformed cop just outside the elevator door told me.

  “I’m…I’m not…” I was wearing what I’d changed into when I’d gotten home from the park visit with Ella and Will, the running shorts I never ran in and a T-shirt my mother had once brought home from a medical conference in New Orleans. I was just as surprised as the officer was to see I hadn’t put on my shoes. “I just have to…I mean, I need to…”

  It obviously wasn’t my eloquence or even my tears that finally convinced her to step aside. It was the voice that came from behind her.

  “It’s OK, Barinski, I’ll take over.”

  The man who stepped up was a middle-aged, balding double for the Incredible Hulk. Big shoulders. Square chin. He even looked a little green, but I suppose considering the circumstances, I couldn’t blame him. He was someone I’d met before at a Fraternal Order of Police picnic. Or a fund-raiser for the Police Museum. Or something. In better circumstances, I might have even remembered his name. He was wearing a suit and a badge on a chain around his neck. He took both my hands in his.

  “Len Cranston,” he wisely reminded me. “Pepper, how did you hear?”

  “Quinn…” There was a flurry of activity outside one of the rooms down the hall, and I looked over his shoulder but once it was over and there was nothing to distract me, I had no choice but to talk to Len. And face the truth. “Quinn, he told me—”

  “I know.” Len patted my hands before he gave them back to me. “He told me you two were on the outs, too. This is a hell of a way to get back together.”

  “That’s not…” I raked my trembling fingers through my hair. It was the first I remembered I hadn’t bothered to comb it before I ran out of the apartment. “That’s not why I’m here. I have to tell you…” I did my best to gulp down the ball of emotion that blocked my breathing and tried to sound calm even though it wasn’t how I was feeling. Like cops everywhere, Cranston would be far more inclined to listen to a calm woman than he would to a shocky one who wasn’t wearing shoes.

  “I know how Churchill got out of that warehouse,” I told Cranston. “He stole a car, too. He’s in a dark-colored sedan and—”

  “Quinn called you? He told you? Before that slime-bucket Churchill shot him?”

  It seemed easier just to agree so that’s what I did. Right after I gave Len the license plate number Quinn had given me.

  He sat me down on a bench against the wall and went into action instantly, making all the right calls, getting a bunch more. It was five minutes or more before he remembered I was there. It felt like five years.

  “Sorry.” He didn’t need to say it, but really, it’s the sort of all-purpose word people use at times like this. “You want to go in and see Quinn?”

  I was tempted to tell him I already had, but even if I
was so inclined, I was sure the words wouldn’t make it past the lump in my throat.

  “Come on.” He made the decision for me, tugging me to my feet at the same time he asked one of the nurses for a pair of those funny, stretchy hospital slippers. “I’ll take you in.”

  I hung back. No easy thing to do considering the guy is as big as a building. Still, I was determined. Talking to the dead is one thing. Seeing a body…it wasn’t like I hadn’t done it before. But before, it had never been Quinn, and my heart had never been smashed and my legs paralyzed.

  Cranston wasn’t taking no for an answer. Before I knew it, I had a pair of limey green slippers on my feet, and he was half walking, half dragging me down a hallway. He stopped just outside one of the rooms and stepped aside.

  And me? I stood frozen to the spot, my chest aching like somebody in thick boots had kicked the hell out of me, my mind racing, grasping for any straw of logic in a situation that was anything but.

  I’d done what I came to the hospital to do. It was time to run home and lose myself in the misery that made every breath a chore. When I flinched and turned to hotfoot it to the elevator, Cranston put his hands on my shoulders, spun me back the other way, and gave me a nudge inside.

  The room was empty except for the body in the bed, a single light shining down on it.

  It was quiet except for the swishing of some machine over on my left.

  Rather than do what I had to do, and face the truth, I concentrated on details. Quinn’s charcoal suit, his striped shirt, and that damned sexy tie of his were lying over a chair at the foot of the bed. There was an ugly maroon-colored stain on the shirt.

  “Last time…I go anywhere…without…bulletproof vest.”

  I nearly fainted when I heard the raspy whisper from the bed.

  “Quinn?” It wasn’t a big room, but I closed the space between us in record time. “You’re alive. Oh my gosh!” I grabbed his hand, which I probably shouldn’t have considering there were IV tubes in it. His skin wasn’t hot. I mean, not like the hot I was used to feeling when his skin met mine. But it wasn’t ice, either. Not like the Quinn who’d been in my apartment. I hung on tight, even when I figured I was cutting off his circulation. Heck, we were in the ICU. They could fix things like that.

  Quinn’s eyelids fluttered. “Pepper…I think…” There was a smudge of blood in one corner of his mouth, and I found a cloth and wiped it. “I didn’t think…”

  He closed his eyes on a wave of pain, and I squeezed his hand tighter before I realized me hanging on like a limpet might have been what hurt so much. I loosened my hold, but I didn’t let go.

  I coughed around the tightness in my throat. “They said on the news that you were—”

  For just a second, his eyes sparked with that old familiar flame. “Heard them talking…Nurses…Doctors…brought me back.”

  “But not before you told me where Churchill was.”

  The shake he gave his head was so weak, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if the tubes going in his mouth and nose hadn’t moved. “Not possible.”

  “You know it is.”

  Another shake. “I was…just…dreaming.”

  “And you picked that particular moment to dream about me?” Like I hadn’t smiled in a lifetime and didn’t remember how to even begin, I tried for a bright expression. It hurt. “It wasn’t the drugs, either, so don’t try to tell me it was. You were there, Quinn. You were dead, and you were in my apartment. You remember, don’t you?”

  I thought he was drifting away, but actually he was looking me over. “Same T-shirt,” he said. “Norleans. But…no. Can’t be.”

  Recently dead and looking very much the worse for wear, and he could still make me mad enough to scream. I controlled the urge, but only because I didn’t want to bring half the Cleveland Police Force running. “You were there. I talked to you. And you told me Winston Churchill escaped through the basement door of the warehouse. You said he got into a dark-colored sedan. You remember that happening?”

  He did his best to nod.

  “Then tell me how I knew about it if you didn’t tell me.”

  “Not…possible.”

  If I could have ignored the tubes, the bandages, the machinery beeping around us, and the sickly smell of blood, I might have been able to remind myself to go easy on him. Quinn had had a rough night, being dead and all. In my book, that wasn’t much of an excuse.

  I leaned in nice and close so that one of these days when he was up and around again and arguing with me about what a nutcase I was, he’d remember this moment.

  “Ohio license plate,” I said, slowly and carefully, “AOY 6990.”

  He shook his head.

  And I guess we would have gone on just like that—me being the logical one for a change and him denying it for all he was worth—if Cranston hadn’t poked his head into the room. “Highway Patrol just picked up Churchill outside the county line,” he said. “He was driving that dark sedan, all right. That license number you gave us, Pepper, it was right on.” He gave us the thumbs-up.

  And I smiled down at Quinn in a very superior way. But then, I could afford to be self-righteous. I’d just helped capture a dangerous serial killer.

  “Believe me now?” I asked him.

  “Don’t know…what to believe.” He closed his eyes, and just at that moment, a nurse walked into the room.

  “He needs to rest,” she said.

  And I knew a get out of here when I heard one. Even a polite one.

  My knees were Silly Putty and my head was spinning, but I wasn’t imagining it when I heard Quinn say my name just as I got to the door.

  I turned in time to see the smallest of smiles lightly touch his lips. “I guess…” He pulled in a breath and a wave of pain crossed his face. “The dead do talk.”

  18

  I spent the next couple days ping-ponging between relief that Quinn was alive and panic when I relived that awful time before I knew the truth, and yes—in my worst moments when the warm and fuzzies I’d felt at the hospital wore off and I was back to thinking about Quinn the way I had been thinking about him in the previous months—jealousy. That would be because I wasn’t the lucky one who’d had the chance to take that potshot at him.

  I cried a lot, too. Ella insisted that was just all the stress working its way out of my body.

  It was more than enough to keep me busy, but not enough to turn off the thoughts constantly pounding through my head. No big surprise, they were all about Lucy and that empty spot at the park where her body had originally been dumped. While I was at it, I spent a lot of time obsessing over how I was never going to get at the truth.

  And then there were Quinn’s parting words to me, of course.

  The dead do talk.

  The phrase had become something of a mantra, and not because I wanted it to be. Every time I tried to work my way through the Lucy problem, my head was filled with memories of my visit to the hospital. There was Quinn, lying in that bed looking like nobody should ever look and scraping out those few words.

  “The dead do talk.”

  “What’s that?”

  I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud. In fact, I’d forgotten that Ella was sitting not six feet away. Like I said, I’d been preoccupied.

  “Nothing.” I shoved aside the new brochure about the cemetery’s horticultural treasures that I was supposed to be checking for typos and looked across the desk at her. She was there in my office because she was—allegedly—convinced it was the best place for her to remove old paper clips from stacks of ancient interoffice memos. At least that’s what she said. Since the conference room was just down the hall, no one was using it, and she could have spread her oldy moldy papers all over the table in there rather than keeping them balanced on her lap, I wasn’t buying it. Ella was keeping an eye on me. I guess the least I could do in return was tell her what I was thinking.

  “It’s what Quinn said,” I told her. Of course I’d already reported almost my entire conversat
ion with Quinn to her. A couple dozen times. But I’d left out all the parts about how I thought I was dreaming about him when I wasn’t, and about how he didn’t believe me at first when I told him what he thought he dreamed was real. It took that license plate number to convince him. Yeah, it seemed best to gloss over that stuff.

  “At the hospital. He told me the dead talk.”

  “He was delirious.” Ella plucked off paper clip after paper clip and dropped them into an empty coffee filter box. “The poor guy. He must still be on some major medications, and I can only imagine it was worse the other night. You know, right after it all happened.”

  It was her way of sparing my feelings. Yeah, like substituting it all happened for Quinn died would make me forget that it all happened.

  “I’m sure that was some of it,” I said, even though I wasn’t. “He was mumbling stuff about Churchill and all. But when I was leaving, that’s when he said that stuff about the dead talking.”

  A shiver snaked over Ella’s shoulders. “Well, I suppose he would know. You know what I mean, since he was gone for a little while. Has he said anything like it since?”

  He hadn’t. But that’s because the couple times I stopped down at the hospital to see Quinn, he was always sleeping. Or maybe he was just pretending to be sleeping. On death’s doorstep or not, I wouldn’t put it past him. That way he wouldn’t have to face me and the new reality that had dawned on him the night he died.

  The dead do talk.

  I drummed my fingers against my desktop, considering the words. It wasn’t like it was some big revelation. I’d known that the dead could talk to me ever since that day I took a spill and clunked my head on a mausoleum.

  So why wouldn’t the thought leave me alone?

  “What do you suppose he meant?” Ella asked.

  I shrugged. It was a better strategy at this point than mentioning he’d visited me while his spirit hung suspended between this world and the next. “It’s just that every time I try to think about Lucy, I keep thinking about what Quinn said, and it’s driving me crazy.”