Truly Dead

by Anne Frasier

  “Get you anything?” the young man asked as Elise sat down.

  “Sweet tea.”

  “Got the best in town.”

  “I remember that.”

  A few moments later Avery appeared with a tray of drinks. “I was heading this way anyway,” he said, explaining his role as waiter as he placed the tray in the center of the round table and grabbed a beer. He gave Strata Luna and Sweet a wide berth, choosing to sit next to Elise. Shifting uncomfortably, he spoke in a low voice meant for her alone: “I’d planned to say this at the hospital, but sorry about that stuff at the press conference.” Words out, he took a quick swig of beer, then another, relieved that he’d gotten through his apology and could move on with his life.

  Strata Luna didn’t even try to pretend she hadn’t overheard. “You looked wonderful, baby,” she told Elise. “Beautiful. You should pose. I should have one of my artist friends paint a nude of you. Have you seen the one of me in my home?”

  “I don’t think I have.”

  “It’s gorgeous. Isn’t that right, Jackson?”

  Chin down, Sweet smiled at Elise.

  The smile confused her. It was friendly, two people sharing amusement at the way Strata Luna applied her own standards to the somewhat uptight morals of the detective sitting across from her. A secret smile was something Elise would have expected from David, not Sweet.

  “Could we not talk about that?” Elise asked. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

  “You white people have so many hang-ups. About sex. About nudity. A body ain’t nuthin’ to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m not ashamed. But I am a detective.”

  “Oh, do detectives not have sex?”

  Two servers appeared with overflowing trays held high. Steaming bowls of shrimp ’n’ grits were placed in front of the people seated at the table. Lima beans, okra, and candied yams went in the center, family-style. Plates and silverware were passed. Casual, but somehow elegant.

  One of the servers, a young Hispanic woman, handed David a note, not even trying to be discreet. He looked at it, gave her a wink, and tucked it into his breast pocket. The servers vanished as silently as they’d come.

  “We weren’t expecting this,” Elise said.

  “I wanted to feed everybody,” Strata Luna told her. “You’ve all been busy. All had a hard day.”

  David waited until they were well into the meal before telling them about the fingerprints and the confirmation of Remy as the prime suspect in the murder.

  Elise brought up Loralie. Sweet grew very still and put down his fork. Then he got that look on his face Elise had seen at the airport. Cold, murderous, resolute.

  “I never once thought to contact Loralie,” Elise said. Would it have done any good? she wondered. Could a warning have saved her?

  David handed her a bowl of candied yams. “Don’t beat yourself up. I didn’t think of Loralie either.”

  “This is what I was talking about,” Sweet said. “I tried to warn you. I told you to look the other way and mind your own business.”

  Elise stared. “Looking away is not an option.”

  “It should be. You have to weigh everything. You can’t just think of yourself.”

  Strata Luna put a hand on Sweet’s in a silent attempt to shush him. Elise leaned heavily against the back of her chair, her stare turning into a glare. “I’m not just thinking of myself.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “What about your aunt?” Avery asked, trying to defuse the situation. “She still in prison?”

  Elise continued to stare at Sweet but answered Avery’s question. “Yes.”

  “We should all be so lucky.” Avery got to his feet and left the room, rejoining the group a couple of minutes later, another beer in hand. Elise glanced at the tray he’d carried in earlier and realized he’d finished most of the bottles himself. He seemed to be running hot tonight, and he didn’t handle alcohol well under the best of circumstances.

  “Let’s face the obvious.” He settled back down in his chair and used the bottle to point around the table, his voice rising in agitation. “We’ve been dealt the death card, and the killer is moving fast, with hardly a lull between incidents.” He glanced at Strata Luna. “And no mojos are going to help.”

  “Calm down,” Sweet said. “You’re hysterical.”

  “Damn right. Know why? Because we’re all screwed, but you’re the one he’s performing for. When it doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of us.” He took a dramatic swig of beer. “We should all move to some high-security commune somewhere. Every one of us here. To a place with a guard tower and a razor-wire fence, because I don’t think we can stop him. This is like some damn horror movie. We know the enemy, but we have no idea where he is, what he looks like, or who’ll be next. And he just keeps coming.”

  “I agree that you might be the only person here who isn’t in danger,” David said, addressing Sweet. “He’s torturing you. Getting back at you. He’s after the people associated with you. He knows you aren’t scared. Not of him. But he’s figured out your Achilles’ heel. The people you care about, and the people they care about. This is his form of torture. Taking us out one at a time.”

  “Then I need to meet him face-to-face,” Sweet said. “Kill him, and if I fail, let him kill me. One or the other and this will stop.”

  Strata Luna slammed down her glass. “Absolutely not.”

  “I don’t think he’d be tempted by you,” Elise said. “That would spoil his fun. If he killed you, his game would be over. He doesn’t want it to end.”

  “I like the idea of a commune,” David said, returning to Avery’s idea. “Just in general. Think of all the brainstorming we could do.”

  Strata Luna sat back in her chair and considered him. “You’re just lonely in that tiny apartment.”

  “I’ve got a cat.”

  “You need a woman.” She glanced toward the door, in the direction the server had gone. “Even for just a night or two.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Strata Luna and her fixation on sex. She wanted everybody to be doing it several times a day. And if they weren’t, she felt it her duty to make it happen. Elise now saw that Strata Luna had probably encouraged the girl to approach David. She shouldn’t care, but her brain kept flashing to an image of the two of them together. He hadn’t seemed at all interested in staving off her advances. And why should he?

  Elise took a swallow of tea. “Sex isn’t everything.”

  Heads swiveled. Four pairs of eyes stared at her in horror.

  “Well, it isn’t.”

  Sweet finally cleared his throat and said, “There’s an upside to all this.”

  “Really?” Avery was speaking in his beer voice, with his beer attitude. “I’d like to hear how there can be an upside to being a psychopath’s target.”

  “While he’s concentrating on us he’s not harming and killing children.”

  Another swallow, some thought: “It’s a stretch, but I guess that’s something,” Avery admitted. “Didn’t expect you to go all Pollyanna on us and start looking for the bright side in something that has no bright side.”

  Sweet fixed him with a hard stare. “It’s just fact.”

  “Whatever.” Avery shifted in his seat, seemed to struggle with something new he’d only just remembered, and finally blurted it out, the confession explaining the need for him to down beers very quickly. “You guys don’t need to worry about Lucille anymore. We broke up.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking, dating a reporter. Out of my mind, that’s what I was.”

  Elise shot him a look of sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “And now of course I suspect she was just using me to get the inside scoop.”

  “I doubt it.” Elise wouldn’t admit she’d had the same thought. She gave his arm an awkward pat. “You’ll meet somebody someday.”

  “That’s what I used to tell Casper, and look how that turned out.”

/>   That ended in a round of grim silence.

  Phones vibrated and buzzed. Elise, David, and Avery checked their screens.

  “Speaking of John,” David said.

  Avery filled in Sweet and Strata Luna. “He’s opened his eyes again.”

  All three of them excused themselves, thanking Strata Luna for the meal.

  Outside Black Tupelo, David borrowed Avery’s phone, tapped at the screen, passed the phone back. Elise didn’t understand until a car pulled to the curb in front of them. The passenger window dropped, and the driver asked if someone had called an Uber.

  David stuffed Avery in the backseat. “Go home. Get some sleep. I’ll text you if we have any new information.” Before Avery could protest, David slammed the door and the car shot away.

  Elise crossed her arms, admiring how smoothly David had executed his friend’s exit. “That’s one way to get a drunk Avery out of the picture.”

  CHAPTER 31

  At the hospital David and Elise learned that John had been downgraded to stable condition and moved from intensive care to a private room.

  “A second rousing so close to the first is an excellent sign,” a young female intern told them as they stood near the nurses’ station. “Chances of his lapsing into a coma again are remote.”

  “What about recovery?” Elise asked.

  “His prognosis is guarded, but hopeful. It’s possible he’ll be fully functional in a year or so, with the proper therapy. But he has a long way to go, and he won’t be back to work anytime soon. He’s most likely going to need home health care or a nursing home. I was told his parents are talking about taking him to California to keep an eye on him.”

  Nursing home. David didn’t like the sound of that. California. He didn’t like the sound of that either.

  “He’s asking about his wife,” the intern added, her voice dropping. “Getting agitated, threatening to go looking for her. We thought it might be best if one of you broke the news.”

  “I’ll tell him,” David said once he and Elise were alone outside John’s door. He could see she was struggling. They shared a moment of compassionate silence while David steeled himself before leaving Elise in the corridor, door shut behind him.

  He made small talk. Told John about his hard-nosed replacement at the morgue. “We can’t wait to have you back.”

  John smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. It didn’t reach his eyes, didn’t light him up. “Did you see these staples?” He felt his bald head, gingerly touching the metal surrounded by healing red tissue. Beside him on the bed were semitransparent oxygen tubes he’d pulled from his nose to more easily converse. The oxygen machine was silent, too silent.

  John knew. He had to know. Mara was gone. His love was no longer on the planet. That hole, that absence, had to be felt. She was his phantom limb.

  David’s throat tightened. He turned away so John wouldn’t see the anguish in his face, feigning interest in what was going on outside, staring at the Savannah River and the freighter in the distance. He’d told his mother water soothed, but that wasn’t always the case. God, no.

  He took a deep breath, got his face under control, turned around, fake coughed into his fist. “I’ve got something I need to tell you.”

  John reached for the bed control, hit a button, raised his head several inches. Waited.

  He knows.

  “You’re a good friend.” John’s words came slow and thick, his speech and thought processes not back to 100 percent. “I know what you’re going to say. It’s Mara.”

  David made an involuntary choking sound—someone trying to swallow his own despair. He was the wrong man for this job. John needed someone cool and collected. Someone removed from the situation. Maybe a priest or chaplain. “I’m sorry, John. I’m so sorry.” What else was there to say? Tears burned his eyes, but he couldn’t turn coward now. Instead he used the technique that had served him well over the years. Just say it. “Mara’s gone.”

  At first David wondered if his friend had heard, or if he’d tapped out. But John finally turned his head toward the window even though he was too low to see anything but a sliver of sky. His lip trembled as he pulled in a shaky breath and said, “Well then.”

  Minutes passed, and finally John spoke again, his eyes still focused on the sky. “Nothing else really matters, does it?”

  “We’ll catch him,” David promised. “Whoever did this. I know it won’t bring Mara back, but it will bring you some closure.”

  John looked back at him with flat eyes. “How will closure change anything?”

  “I know it doesn’t seem important right now. Mara is gone. That’s all that’s real. But one day, if he’s not caught, the idea of his still being out there will eat you alive.”

  David’s words, as odd as they sounded, seemed to help John a little. “Tell me everything,” he said. “Don’t leave any of it out. Not matter how awful, how brutal.”

  David suddenly wished Elise had come into the room with him. He needed her there, had to have her there. “I’m going to leave you alone for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  He found Elise waiting in an alcove down the hall. He must have looked like hell, because she pressed a plastic cup of water into his hand.

  He tossed back the water like a shot of whiskey.

  “What happened?”

  “I told him, and he wants to know everything.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Oh man.” He paced. He threw the cup in the trash and looked up at the acoustic-tile ceiling. “I’ve delivered a lot of bad news to people, but it’s almost always been to someone I didn’t know.”

  “You broke the news. I’ll tell him the rest.”

  “We’ll both do it. Now. I don’t want to leave him alone too long.”

  “One thing I want to make clear,” Elise said. “There’s no way I’m going to allow John to be taken to some town over two thousand miles away to live with people who don’t understand him. Who, I even suspect, might have mistreated him as a child and as an adult.”

  “He can’t go back to the house he shared with Mara. Even if he could take care of himself, his life will still be in danger.”

  “Maybe we can use that as leverage to keep him in Savannah. I have the feeling his parents won’t want him around if his presence poses a threat to them. We just highlight the danger issue, letting them know that in addition to care he’s also going to need someone looking out for his safety.”

  “That should work.” John’s life was still in danger. Not only from Remy, but maybe from himself. “I’m not sure he can get through this,” David said.

  “Me either.”

  Inside the hospital room, David hung back and Elise worked her magic. She smiled just the right amount and in the right way as she approached the bed and took John’s uninjured hand. “I’m so sorry,” she told him. “We know how much you loved her. And how much she loved you.”

  He blinked, tried to pull himself together. “I need to know everything.”

  They told him. All of it. Everything that happened that night, at least everything they’d pieced together so far.

  “I think I knew,” John said. “Even when I was unconscious. I kept feeling like there was no reason to wake up, you know?”

  David did know. It was a pain that never went away. Never. The next year, the next several years, were going to be hard as hell.

  “What do you remember?” Elise asked. She narrowed down the following question. “What were you trying to tell me last time we were here?”

  He frowned. “Were you here before?”

  Not a surprise that he didn’t remember their last visit even though it had been less than twelve hours ago.

  “That’s okay,” Elise said. “Let’s just start over. Do you remember anything about the man or men who did this to you?”

  He thought about it, shook his head. “No.”

  “Don’t worry,” David said. “It might come to you eventually. Let’s go back
to before your assault and injury. We want to know how your attacker got inside. That could give us some insight. Do you recall what happened?”

  “Someone was waiting for me. Like waiting for me to unlock the building. The door was forced open behind me. I’m not sure, but I think that’s when I was hit over the head.”

  “I hate to ask you this,” David went on to say, “but I wonder if you’d mind talking about Mara. Her car was in the parking lot, so you must have driven separately. Was she already there?”

  “I think I was there first. I remember her opening the door, calling my name.” His voice cracked.

  “That’s enough for now,” Elise said.

  She was right.

  “Where’s Mara’s body?” John’s question took David by surprise. He hadn’t prepared for it. Apparently Elise hadn’t either.

  “Still in the morgue,” she said. There was not much else to say other than explaining about Mara’s parents, and how they’d been unable to take the body back to Texas.

  “She’s not in my morgue, though.” The words were a statement. John knew his morgue would be out of commission after the fire even though part of the building was now up and running.

  “No.”

  John raised the head of his bed more. He untangled the IV line from the safety rail. He was getting up, and David was afraid it wasn’t to take a stroll to the restroom. “Bring me a wheelchair,” John said.

  “Not a good idea.” David tried to buy time. John shouldn’t be standing, and he certainly shouldn’t visit the morgue, not now, not in his present condition.

  “If she’s not at my morgue, that means she’s here. Her body is in the basement.”

  “Give it a day or so,” Elise said. “Please. Lie back down.”

  “Get the wheelchair. If you don’t take me, I’ll do it by myself. I know the way.” No use trying to stop him. And it would be better for him to go downstairs with them.

  David stepped from the room and returned with a wheelchair. He positioned it next to the bed, locked it, and folded the metal footrests out of the way. Then he took one of John’s arms, Elise the other, careful of his injured hand. Once John was settled, David lowered the footrests and placed John’s nonskid socks on them while Elise attached the IV rack to the chair. Then, like a pack of criminals, they left the room and headed in the direction of the elevator.