Truly Dead

by Anne Frasier

  “How’s that good news?”

  “Avery’s girlfriend—or maybe ex-girlfriend now—is going to try to discredit you and get you pulled from Homicide. This is all we need to prove you aren’t dealing with a mental issue.” And the tetrodotoxin . . . Sweet had been on the right track. David needed to call and tell him about Loralie, but he had something else to take care of first.

  CHAPTER 26

  David tracked down and found the cop from the cemetery in the break room. Without speaking, he strode across the room. In front of everybody, he grabbed Officer Freeman by the shirt and shoved him against the nearest wall, aware of chairs scraping behind him, aware of Freeman’s bulletproof vest beneath his shirt, aware of the surprise on the young officer’s face.

  “Did you post that video?” David demanded.

  The cop made no attempt to fight back. “I had nothing to do with it,” Freeman said. “Nothing. I wouldn’t do anything like that. It must have been the kid who made the 911 call. I’m going to look into it.”

  “Damage is already done.” David released him. “Sorry for jumping to conclusions.”

  “It’s okay, man. I understand getting mad. Your partner and all. We tried.”

  David left the room while officers on either side fell away. He returned to the office to find Elise gone. He started to send her a text, then remembered she didn’t have her phone. It was at her house, next to the couch, or possibly collected as evidence. In any case, if she was avoiding him, he knew it was best to let her cool off.

  He went online, got the contact number for YouTube, and called the company. A brief intro and he was passed to someone in charge. Five minutes later the video was gone.

  For now.

  Sweet picked up when David called, but somehow he’d already heard the news. His voice was emotionless as he asked how Elise was handling the death of her birth mother and the cemetery video.

  “I’m on her shit list right now,” David said.

  “Join the club.”

  “I’ve got another call. Gotta go.” They disconnected, and David checked his screen. Odd. It was his mother. Maybe she’d been following the news. Hell, she might have seen the YouTube video. He answered.

  She didn’t mention the video or Elise, and she didn’t mention what had happened at the morgue. “I’m at the airport,” she told him in a cheerful voice. “Can you get away long enough to pick me up and have lunch?”

  He drew a blank. “Airport?”

  “The Savannah / Hilton Head International Airport, silly.” Her voice lost some of its cheerfulness, and he tried to recall if she’d told him she was coming. Had they made plans? Had he forgotten?

  “I’ll take a cab if you can’t pick me up.”

  “No.” He needed to step away from Elise and the department anyway. Even an hour would help. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Same car?”

  “Yep.”

  He picked her up, and even though he didn’t have time, he took her to the Crab Shack near Tybee Island, and they ate outside. Halfway through the meal he pulled off his tie and rolled up his sleeves. A fan blasted air at them and he gulped down ice tea, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from sweating through the back of his shirt.

  Throughout the meal his mother acted as if she’d been expected, and he was afraid to ask, because he didn’t want her to know he’d forgotten. But she finally admitted she’d wanted to surprise him.

  He couldn’t decide between being pissed or relieved.

  People always wanted to see the Atlantic when they visited, so when they were done eating David drove to the beach, where they got out of the air-conditioned car and walked to the ocean, stopping in the area where waves had packed the sand cool and firm. No need to mention that this had been a crime scene a few months ago.

  They stood in silence and watched a cargo ship in the far distance, David with his hands in the front pockets of his pants, his mother dressed in clothes from the foreign land of Ohio. Dark knit slacks and one of those loose, draped tops that seemed to be so popular among women over fifty. Her hair, which at the moment was whipping about her head, was still a medium brown, but she’d been dyeing it for years, so it was hard to say what her color would really be today.

  “How do you stand the heat?” she asked. The wind blowing off the water plastered their clothes to them, the strong breeze not quite enough to make the ninety-eight degrees tolerable.

  “I kinda like the way it makes my legs feel heavy and my brain feel sluggish. Like a natural sedative.”

  She didn’t respond, and he glanced over to find her staring at him without a flicker of appreciation on her face. He obviously hadn’t gotten his sense of humor from her.

  He shrugged. “Once the Ohio gets out of your blood, you get used to it.”

  “I don’t think I could ever get used to it. I wouldn’t want to get used to it.”

  David considered himself a patient man. Only a few people in his life had caused him to take steps he should never have taken and do things he should never have done. But his mother . . . She pushed buttons only a mother could push. He loved her, but good God. And he was glad to see her, but what worried him was the agenda behind her surprise visit, which she still hadn’t gotten around to sharing.

  He’d mentally reviewed a list of possibilities, starting with a serious illness she wanted to reveal in person and ending with a plan to revamp his life. He suspected the last one but feared the first.

  He bent down and picked up a small pink shell, brushed it off, and handed it to her. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes, and no. I’m worried about you.”

  “You could have called to ask how I’m doing. And you could have let me know you were coming. Not that I’m not glad to see you.”

  “I was afraid if you knew I was coming . . .” Her words trailed off.

  “I’d have a chance to sober up and hide the drugs?”

  “David.”

  “Come on, admit it.”

  She shrugged—a sign of admission. “This way I’ll know for sure that you’re okay. That you haven’t just hidden the empty bottles and told your prostitutes and pimp friends to stay away for a few days.” In answer to his expression, she added, “Yes, I knew about that. I’ve been around people with drinking and pill problems. I can read the signs.”

  “I’m clean. I’ve been clean for a while now. Look at me.” He spread his arms wide. “Picture of health.”

  “You look tired.”

  “I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep lately.”

  “I know it’s unfair of me to say I wish you were in another line of work, but I do. And ever since Christian—” The sudden change in his expression caused her to stop abruptly and downgrade her choice of words. “Well, I worry all the time.” Then the blunt honesty came. He didn’t like her blunt honesty. “I feel like I’m losing you. I lost Christian, and now I’m losing you.”

  He had to admit he’d distanced himself from her after Christian’s death. He’d been so messed up. He could fool a lot of people, most people, but he couldn’t fool his mother, so he’d pulled away. “You aren’t losing me.”

  “Murders in our city have increased twenty percent over the past five years,” she told him. “The mayor and his team have decided to hire someone seasoned to run the homicide department. And the chief of police contacted me to ask if you were available. This was before the mayor was shot. They’d heard you’d been fired. You’re number one on their list, David. And you wouldn’t be in the field or on the street. You wouldn’t even have to carry a gun if you didn’t want to.”

  His mother, who’d been a stay-at-home mom years ago, was the mayor’s secretary and assistant . . . and had been more than that at one time. She didn’t know he knew, but he was a detective, for Chrissake. And he’d experienced adultery firsthand. Not as the one who dealt it, but as the victim. David had never cheated on his wife, never even thought about it, and he’d never cheated on a girlfriend. That kind of thing wa
sn’t in him. He saw it as a character weakness, and it bothered him that his mother had been involved in such behavior.

  Sometimes he found himself wanting her to explain it to him, the reasoning and self-deception that went along with people who had affairs or even short flings. He wanted to know. But most of the time he just tried not to think about it. Now, when she was telling him the mayor wanted to give him a job, he couldn’t help but wonder if the two of them were still a thing.

  “You want me to take a desk job,” David said.

  “A safe job. Come back with me. Talk to the mayor and chief of police. Just talk to them.”

  “It would be a waste of all our time. I’m not leaving Savannah.”

  “Why not? What do you have here? You left Ohio because you were in pain, because you needed to get far away from everything that had happened there, all the reminders. I understand that. But you’re better now. Savannah has been good for you, up to a point, but I think it’s time to think about leaving. You aren’t appreciated here. You don’t belong here, in this strange place. You were fired, for Pete’s sake. Why stay? And think about being safe. A safe job. Don’t you want a safe job?”

  “Please drop this.”

  “Is it because of Elise? Are you two finally a couple?”

  “No.”

  “But you like her. You’ve liked her for a long time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t wait too long. Don’t waste your life here waiting for her. You’re still young. You could remarry. You could have more children.”

  “I don’t want any other children.” His voice cracked a little.

  “It’s cruel of her to lead you on.” Her voice rose. “You could have anybody. Anybody.”

  “She’s not leading me on.”

  “I don’t know what else you’d call it. I don’t think she’s good for you, David. I really don’t. She and the city of Savannah and that Strata Luna person have cast a spell over you. Not that I believe in that nonsense, but you know what I mean. Elise attracts bad things, dangerous things. That’s probably why you find her so fascinating, but I’m afraid she’s going to get you killed.”

  “Elise saved my life.” He wouldn’t explain that she’d saved it in more ways than one.

  “A life she put in danger to begin with.”

  “Oh my God.” He put a hand to his head and turned away, then back again. “I can’t have this conversation with you.”

  Then she hit him with the big stuff. Oh, she was smart. She knew how to get to him. “If you came home, you’d be closer to Christian.”

  He’d been doing pretty well until that point. But her words hit him like a punch in the gut. She was talking about Christian’s grave, talking about the flowers he never left there and the visits he never made. To help alleviate the guilt he felt over his avoidance, he’d always reassured himself that Christian had his grandmother, had her.

  And the child was dead. The dead knew nothing. Dead was dead. And yet he felt ashamed. He was a horrible father.

  “He doesn’t know that I don’t visit his grave.”

  “No, of course not.” She pulled in a deep, stabilizing breath and straightened her shoulders. “It never stops hurting, does it?” Her question was delivered with pain and fear.

  He knew that fear. That fear had been the driving force behind his descent into drug abuse as he’d attempted to drive away the acute and unrelenting pain of absence and loss. He’d seen the same fear in the faces of victims’ parents. He knew that fear inside and out.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  Above their heads seabirds swooped and called and dropped to the sand, heavy and straight. The sound always reminded him of the bird cries in a song he couldn’t fully recall. “Pretty sure it never stops.”

  It wasn’t something he told people when they were faced with the loss of a loved one. Because it wasn’t what they needed to hear at the time. They had to have hope and something to reach for; otherwise life would be too cruel and brutal to face. And damn it. This . . . this was why he didn’t go out of his way to retain a stronger relationship with his mother. She brought the pain with her. And she brought him to the surface, and he didn’t like it there. He’d fought long and hard to stay fathoms deep. And he’d been doing it, drug-free and mostly alcohol-free.

  She was right. She was losing him. She’d started losing him the day Christian died and David blocked out everybody. The breach had widened the day he found out about her affair. Their only common ground was his dead son. How screwed up was that?

  “It feels so foreign here.” She was looking to the horizon, and her clothes were billowing, and with a start he realized she was getting older but also getting more beautiful. “Like another country,” she said. “Does it still feel that way to you?”

  “I wanted different. Needed it. As far as foreign . . . I think it will always feel foreign to me, but at the same time it feels like home.” But would it feel like home if Elise didn’t live there? He had to be honest with himself. Probably not. No, definitely not. Without her, he would still feel untethered and deeply wounded.

  “It’s so hot. Too hot to breathe. And the beach . . . Why do people like the beach?” she asked. “It’s nice, but once I look at it a minute or two, I’ve seen enough.”

  Should he try to explain the draw of the ocean? How it was hypnotic and soothing and scary and powerful? How it was like staring at the majesty and wonder of stars, only the ocean was something you could actually touch? And underneath that water . . . There was no telling what was underneath that water. Marvels and mountains. “Being near a body of water has been scientifically proven to reduce stress.” He didn’t mention that she was compounding his stress at this very moment.

  “Think about the job offer,” she said. “I’ll be in town for a couple of days. I’m staying at a darling place on one of the squares. Better yet, come back with me to Ohio. Just talk to the mayor. That’s all I’m asking. And wouldn’t it be nice to come home for a few days? You can visit Christian.”

  He hadn’t thought about his favorite prescription cocktail, washed down with vodka, in a long time. But now, listening to his mother, he ran a tongue across his lips and imagined digging into his stash when he got back to his apartment. Just a fantasy, because he refused to allow her to send him over the edge.

  His phone rang.

  Thank God.

  But his heart sank when he saw it was Elise. He answered.

  “I would have sent a text, but I don’t have my phone. I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, but I’m leaving the office. I’ll be back in an hour.” She didn’t even wait for a reply before disconnecting.

  Still mad.

  “I gotta get back to work,” he told his mother.

  “Elise?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her eyebrows lifted, but for once she didn’t say what she was thinking. She didn’t have to. And no matter how much she was annoying him right now, he had to admit that she’d made some valid points about his relationship with Elise.

  In the back of his mind he’d always imagined himself eventually “with” Elise. Maybe not married. Marriage didn’t matter to him, but living together, sleeping together, sharing a life. Was he out of his mind? Delusional? Was he clinging to the idea because Elise had been the first thing he’d seen when he’d come out of his self-medicated fog? But if a real relationship was never going to happen . . . What if things didn’t change? What if everything was just the same five years from now?

  He didn’t want that. All along he’d had this idea that if he waited long enough things would change. And maybe that was because all his life he’d been able to have any woman he wanted. And that set up the next question. Did he want Elise only because he might never be able to have her?

  No.

  That wasn’t it.

  He loved her. Love. That really wasn’t the right word. She was his best friend, the person he thought of most of the damn time. Like now. And now. And now.r />
  “This isn’t your world, sweetheart,” his mother said. “And Elise isn’t your girlfriend or wife.”

  They strolled toward the boardwalk, their pace slow in the loose sand. He took her arm and helped her over a small dune and up the wooden stairs.

  Minutes later they were in his car heading back to Savannah on the Islands Expressway. He thought about the case. Thought about how everybody close to him and Elise was in danger, and he made a decision. He drove straight through downtown and took Interstate 16 west toward Garden City.

  “Where are we going? This isn’t the way to the bed-and-breakfast.” His mother looked at her watch. “I can check in now.”

  “I’m doing something you aren’t going to like, but just remember it’s because I love you.”

  She eyed the highway signs. “Is this the way to the airport?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s going on, David?”

  “I’m putting you on the next flight back to Ohio.”

  “Are you insane? And I don’t have a ticket.”

  “We’ll get you one. And if we can’t get one to Ohio, we’ll get you one heading anywhere but Savannah.”

  “I’m not boarding a plane. Not now. Not today. And I’m certainly not getting on some random plane going who knows where.”

  “Be adventurous.”

  “I like to plan. Why are you doing this? I came to see you. Do you hate me so much?”

  Traffic was heavy. As he drove she kept up with her questions, hurt in her voice. He finally exited the interstate and stopped at a red light. Arm on the steering wheel, he turned to look at her. “Mom, I love you. Never doubt that. And that’s why you have to leave.”

  “This has something to do with your job, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those murders. Of children. The fire at the morgue and the death of that young woman.”