Truly Dead

by Anne Frasier

  They bailed from the car, doors slamming, slipping past the police cruisers to jump into the heart of the scene. A female first responder broke away from a huddle of officers, looking pleased and surprised to see them. But she had a special smile for Avery he didn’t seem to notice. The officer was blond, a little on the heavy side, with a kind face. Was this the jogger? No, Avery said Lucille wasn’t a cop.

  “Good to see you back,” the woman said.

  Elise checked her badge. Jo Palmer.

  Elise and David had left Savannah almost immediately after being fired. Their sudden departure hadn’t allowed for good-byes, or sympathy, or gloating from anybody in the Savannah PD. They’d just packed their bags and boarded a plane to Chicago. Until this moment, Elise hadn’t thought about how their sudden absence might have impacted people in and out of Homicide, but now she knew they’d been missed, at least by a couple of people. “Thanks, but we’re just tagging along.”

  “I wouldn’t call it tagging along,” Avery said. “Elise fired the shots that hit the gas tank.”

  “Did anybody get a look at the perpetrators?” David asked. It was hard, if not impossible, for him to take a backseat, badge or no badge.

  “No, but we’re canvassing the area, trying to find witnesses. Perps seem to be two men, but we aren’t even positive about that.” The conversation continued as all four of them moved in the direction of the flatbed. “Offenders were gone by the time patrol units caught up with the vehicle.” Palmer pointed to the river of liquid darkening the street, silently motioning for them to watch their step. It wasn’t hard to identify the overpowering scent of spilled diesel, a cleanup that would involve a toxic-waste crew.

  “You’ve got a good footprint here.” Elise noted that the diesel print hadn’t been left by a regulation sole, which meant it shouldn’t belong to any of the cops on-site. She pulled out her phone and took a photo. “You might not have a description, but somebody’s going to smell strongly of fuel. Get a media warning out to people in the neighborhood,” she continued, hardly noticing that both she and David had dropped into their old roles. “Residents need to be told to lock their doors, stay inside.”

  “I don’t get it,” the officer said. “What do you think they wanted?”

  “That.” Avery pointed to the cargo on the flatbed truck.

  She rolled her eyes, annoyed by his implication that she might be too dense to figure out the obvious. Romance over. Sometimes things could be a little tense between Patrol and detectives. “Why?” she asked.

  Elise moved toward the truck. The lid to the vault was askew, the gummy seal broken loose, possibly occurring when the vault had been lifted from the ground.

  Using the metal step under the truck’s license plate, David climbed onto the flatbed, extended his hand, and pulled Elise up behind him. While Avery waited below, she and David examined the vault. With no crime-scene team in sight, David said, “Toss me some gloves.”

  From the ground, Palmer pulled out a pair of black exam gloves and handed them to him. He snapped them on.

  Bracing himself, he shoved the heavy lid of the vault aside, levered it, and jumped away as it crashed against the metal flatbed cage that protected the truck’s back window.

  Elise stepped closer, shooting him a silent question. Why was he actively proceeding? They were here to watch, nothing more.

  “Aren’t you curious?” he asked. “Don’t you want to know what they were after?”

  “I’m betting drugs or money.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” He was bent over the vault, looking at the casket inside, hands on his knees, hair hanging over his forehead. “Why would it still be here? Why not dig it up years ago?”

  “Too risky? Forgotten until now? Whatever they were after, it has to be valuable. Nobody kills a detective and wounds the mayor unless the stakes are high.” But there were other things that might be considered just as valuable as drugs and money. The ground bones and organs of certain people could be worth a fortune. Elise knew that all too well. But the body of Frank J. Remy? Were the bones of killers now a commodity?

  “Ready?” David asked.

  Elise nodded and watched as David lifted the lid of the cheap pine box, revealing the contents.

  No money. No packages of white powder. Instead they were looking at a man dressed in a too-large vintage suit, lying as he should be, on his back, hands resting on his abdomen, eyes closed and held in place with a large amount of glue, out-of-date dark hair slicked to one side while the overpowering stench of embalming fluid wafted from the box. David blinked and recoiled.

  Elise turned her head, pulled in a breath, then went back to staring at the corpse as Avery clambered up beside them and peered in.

  Three living people, hands on hips, stared at a well-preserved dead man who’d been buried decades ago.

  Avery, bless his heart, said what David and Elise were both thinking. “Who the fuck is that?”

  CHAPTER 9

  It wasn’t Remy. This man and Remy were both white, but that’s where the similarity ended. Remy had been robust, with a face that made Elise guess a Scandinavian heritage. This guy was thin, with dark hair, possibly some Italian in his genes.

  “That blows our drugs and money theories,” David said.

  “They were pretty weak anyway.”

  “Agreed.”

  Elise asked the obvious question. “Does this mean Frank J. Remy is still alive?” And if so, had her father known they wouldn’t find Remy in the coffin?

  From ground level came a familiar series of clicks. Elise looked down in time to see a female reporter wearing a Savannah Morning News press badge on the lanyard around her neck, her face half-hidden by a thirty-five-millimeter camera.

  “Don’t say anything else.” Elise had distrusted reporters before meeting the man who’d almost killed her daughter, but she really distrusted them now. Not her case, but nobody would want this odd twist hitting the press until the PD was ready to release the news.

  The woman lowered her camera and looked up at them with sober intent. A vaguely familiar face, someone Elise had clashed with in the past. Tall, close to forty, light hair parted in the center and pulled back in a severe ponytail, big black sunglasses resting on top of her head, no makeup, dressed in jeans and a vest with a multitude of pockets. She projected that specific attitude seasoned reporters had. Elise guessed it came from years of insinuating themselves into situations where they weren’t welcome. It was marked by a bold defensiveness, a drive to get the story no matter who was mowed down, all in the pursuit of what the reporter claimed as truth when in reality most of them were after one thing—a byline. There was a good chance any story having to do with Elise and David would be big news and of interest beyond Savannah.

  From the flatbed, Avery said, “Hey, Lucille.”

  Oh, that Lucille.

  Elise looked at David. David looked at Elise.

  Oh yeah. He knew how she felt about reporters, and she was sure he could read her dismay at discovering this reporter was the very woman she’d invited to dinner minutes earlier—Avery’s girlfriend and yoga pal. Instead of shooting Elise the look of sympathy she expected, David smirked, then actually laughed out loud.

  The woman on the ground took another photo.

  Pretty soon there would be enough documentation of David’s inappropriate behavior to fill an entire scrapbook.

  CHAPTER 10

  All three of them back on terra firma, David couldn’t help but notice that the presence of two fired homicide detectives was making some officers uncomfortable, most of them probably wondering if someone should tell them to get the hell out of there.

  Not David and Elise’s case.

  David was good at multitasking, and he had the ability to pick up distant conversation while engaged in something else entirely. As he listened to one of the first responders, he kept an eye and ear tuned to the exchange taking place a few yards away. Avery was introducing Lucille and Elise. This would typical
ly be Elise’s cue to tell the reporter to stay out of the way. She didn’t. Instead she just kind of stared while trying to keep a pleasant expression on her face. He knew that pleasant expression. He’d been on the receiving end of it.

  “We’ve been invited for a cookout,” Avery told Lucille. “At Elise’s.”

  The reporter shot him a look of surprise. Even she knew things were suddenly weird. For a detective, Avery could sometimes be oblivious to what was going on right in front of him, especially where women were involved.

  Elise backpedaled as best she could. “Once we get settled. We just returned to Savannah.”

  Lucille pulled out her tablet, and Elise stiffened and dropped the pleasant façade. “This isn’t an interview,” she said, glancing at the press ID around the woman’s neck. David looked too, getting a full name. Lucille Bancroft. Now he recalled seeing her byline. Funny how a last name fleshed things out. “Our personal lives aren’t for public consumption,” Elise added. David liked that she said “we” and “our.” Did she realize she was doing that? Probably not.

  He couldn’t deny that he got a kick out of tormenting her, and he knew his actions were similar to those of a grade-school kid with a crush. He was unable to make an adult move, so he pulled her pigtails just to hear her scream. But right now he was feeling a little sorry for her. She knew how to boss people around and put people in their places, but when it came to the normal things people did, she was at a loss. He could see her struggling for a way to extricate herself from the awkward exchange. It was especially hard when their days now loomed before them with no real direction. She couldn’t just say she had to get back to the office. Or she had detective stuff to do. Or her mom wouldn’t let her. The unfocused thing wasn’t the best for him either. He needed structure, or he risked falling back on bad habits. Sex, drugs, and very little rock ’n’ roll.

  The conversation with the first responder over, David broke into the threesome. “I need to get home.” Simple as that. The damsel was saved. He and Elise excused themselves and headed for her car.

  Moments later Elise was behind the wheel and he was in the passenger seat, AC cranked, windows down. Rinse and repeat and hello to the sweltering summer heat.

  They were halfway to Elise’s when her phone rang. Without looking at it, she passed it to David. The screen read Office of the Mayor. He hit “Answer.” “Gould here.”

  The call was from the mayor’s assistant, a woman normally humorously deadpan. She wasn’t deadpan now; instead she spoke fast, her voice barely recognizable. “The mayor is at Saint Joseph’s/Candler,” she said, “and would like to see you and Elise immediately, before he goes into surgery.”

  David knew where this was going. Lamont dead, Homicide short on officers. He was half tempted to say he couldn’t come because he was getting a manicure, but that would make him the asshole. “Be there in fifteen minutes.” He ended the call and stuck Elise’s phone in the compartment between the seats. “Head to Candler.”

  She raised the windows and picked up speed. “Mayor Chesterfield isn’t dead, is he?”

  “Worse. He’s alive and wants to talk to us.”

  She didn’t laugh or chastise him. Her hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. “Sucked right back in,” she said.

  Then he noticed something else. “Are you shaking?” Elise rarely lost her cool.

  She held up a hand, giving it a quick glance. “Yeah.” Surprised, yet not surprised.

  “Pull over. I’ll drive.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Shaking isn’t fine.”

  She ignored him and merged onto Harry S. Truman Parkway. “Sweet knows something,” she said. “I want to see his face when I tell him the body in the coffin didn’t belong to Remy. I’m betting he won’t be surprised. And we need to get the name of the mortuary that handled the embalming. Talk to the person who did it, if he’s still around and still alive.”

  She seemed to suddenly realized what she was saying. “What am I doing? This has nothing to do with us.” Traffic slowed. She hit her blinker and pulled into the left lane, passing a string of cars, somebody’s shrunken mema leading the pack.

  “You’re already involved,” David said. “We’re already involved. Mayor or no mayor.”

  “You think Remy might have faked his own death forty years ago?”

  “That seems the most obvious theory,” he said.

  “Consider the timeline for the disappearance of Zane Novak. He vanished a few months after my father returned to Savannah.”

  “You aren’t saying your dad is behind the boy’s murder?”

  “Why am I always being accused of blaming him for everything?”

  “Uh, because that’s your MO?”

  She veered back into the right lane. “What I’m saying is what if Remy was living in Florida, continuing to commit murders, he reads about my father’s return from the dead, and decides to come back to Savannah. Maybe to enact some form of revenge.”

  “I’ll buy that. I’ll totally buy that. But why the shootout at the cemetery? The guy would have to be pretty damn cunning to have escaped prison the way he did, and today’s stunt seems a bit extreme and reckless. Why not just stay under the radar and let the body switch play out?”

  “Whoever stole the vault didn’t want anybody to know Remy might still be alive, but the question is, why?”

  David turned down the AC a notch. “The obvious answer is because a manhunt would be launched.”

  “Exactly. Makes me wonder if he’s been living fairly visibly. Didn’t want his cover blown.”

  He riffed on her idea. “He could even have a wife and kids. Some serial killers do. He definitely has to have a lot at stake if he was the one behind today’s stunt. Maybe he didn’t want your dad to find out he’s still alive.”

  “That could be it. Which is why we’ve got to find Sweet.”

  “We might have a problem if he doesn’t want to be found. He’s pretty good at lying low. I mean, he vanished for decades.”

  “Lamont was a kill shot,” she said, returning the conversation to the immediate case. “I have no doubt about that. Why take out Lamont?”

  “To weaken Homicide?”

  “And maybe the bullet that hit the mayor was meant for Avery?”

  “Maybe.”

  At the hospital Elise parked in the adjoining garage. Inside the lobby David punched the elevator button. While they waited, he said, “I was kidding earlier in the car. You know that, right? About the mayor?”

  “No need explain yourself.”

  “It was kind of a shitty thing to say.”

  “But funny.”

  They entered the elevator, and Elise pushed the button for the second floor, where the mayor was being held pre-op.

  “Sometimes I get a little carried away,” David said.

  “I can’t imagine you any other way.”

  “Is that a weird compliment?”

  “Pretty sure it’s not.”

  “O-kay.”

  Upon exiting the elevator, a nurse led them to a private room. Hard to miss the two male cops standing on either side of the door, fig-leaf pose. Both gave the detectives a somber nod.

  Up until this point, David thought the mayor had simply been in the line of fire, an unfortunate victim of collateral damage, but was it possible that he, along with Lamont, and both been deliberate targets?

  The man who’d always come across as a good ol’ southern white boy, kind of reminding David of President Bill Clinton, was pale, his face tight, IV needle taped to the back of his hand in preparation for surgery. His wife had “trophy” written all over her—it was another shitty thought David regretted as soon as it entered his head. It was a good thing no one could actually read his mind. He’d have to go into seclusion simply out of shame.

  Mrs. Chesterfield excused herself, leaving them alone with the mayor.

  “Thanks for coming.” The mayor stoically bit out the words as he attempted to re
main as immobile as possible. “I’ve got a damn bullet in me, and it hurts like a son of a bitch.” He hardly seemed to breathe. “Guess you two know the feeling.”

  “It’ll be better once they get that metal out,” David said. They were probably all thinking about the last conversation they’d had. Not a pleasant memory.

  Elise stepped closer. “We’re glad you’re alive. Glad you’re going to be okay.”

  “They say I’ll be fine, but all surgery comes with risk. I didn’t want to be put under until I talked to you two. And I’m guessing you know what I’m going to say.” He paused, pulled in a shallow breath in preparation for his next words. “You need to come back.”

  Didn’t get much more direct than that. David thought he would have given them a soft sell, then reeled them in. But the clock was ticking. He tried not to feel annoyed by the mayor’s phrasing, which made it sound as if they’d left of their own free will.

  “My assistant’s on the way,” the mayor said. “As you’re aware, this kind of thing typically goes through the board, but in cases of urgency I can make an executive decision. We’ll get the papers signed and notarized so it’s official. Get you sworn back in. Follow up on anything that needs to be done later.”

  “No.” The word came from Elise.

  Both men stared at her in surprise.

  “I can’t come back,” she said. “I’m willing to consult, but I can’t come back to Homicide.”

  Elise could hold a grudge. David wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive her father, but he didn’t think this was about their being fired. Well, not completely. It probably had more to do with Audrey and with Elise’s need to distance herself from danger, as well as the long hours that would keep her away from home.