Truly Dead

by Anne Frasier

  “Never wait to call or text no matter how trivial something might appear.” The document was a fingerprint report. She’d have to call David and let him know nothing had turned up from the prints lifted at her house.

  Back in her office, Elise logged into LIMS, the Laboratory Information Management System. Looked like her blood tests had been updated, the outstanding toxins identified. She was doing online research on them when her phone rang.

  The mayor. She wasn’t the only one working overtime.

  He didn’t apologize for the late call, but he did surprise her by saying he was sorry to hear about her mother. And then he jumped into a demand for results. Some things never changed. “I want you and Gould to catch this guy. Not today, not tomorrow, but yesterday.”

  “I’ll get right on that.” Sarcasm was more fun when it was delivered to someone who was oblivious to it. Mean, but not mean. She hung up and went back to her research.

  CHAPTER 33

  As soon as David got home he called the girl from Black Tupelo. Before he could change his mind, he gave her his address, and she arrived fifteen minutes later. Things continued to move fast. She stepped in the door of his apartment and attacked him. In a good way. They started going at it, as if both had been starved for a long time, even though David figured he was the only one starving and she was just a really good actress.

  They did it on the couch. They did it on the floor. They did it in the shower. And for a while he forgot about Elise.

  Until his phone rang.

  Lying naked across his bed, while the woman with the long dark hair straddled his thighs, he checked his phone.

  Elise. “Gotta get this,” he told the girl.

  She pouted and moved down his body.

  “David?” Elise asked. “Are you busy?”

  The woman touched him, stroked him.

  “Little bit.” Did he gasp? He was afraid he gasped.

  “I’m coming over. I have some things I want to talk about. Too much to discuss over the phone. Is it a bad time? You sound preoccupied.”

  He pushed the young woman away, gently but firmly. “No, this is fine.”

  “I’m actually outside your apartment building. I’ll be right up.”

  He scrambled from the bed, slipped into a pair of jeans, pulled on a T-shirt, and walked the naked girl into the shower, pressing a finger to his lips. She smiled conspiratorially and made a zipping motion over her mouth. He supposed she was used to this kind of thing.

  He started to close the door, paused, grabbed a large towel, tossed it at her. “In case you get cold.” Then he shut the shower door, followed by the bedroom door. In the living room, he scurried around, kicking the girl’s clothes under the couch, plumping and straightening cushions.

  He heard footsteps outside his apartment. Before Elise could knock, he opened the door, ran his fingers through his hair. “Hey. Hi.” He was suspiciously out of breath.

  She shot him a puzzled look, stepped inside, and dropped her bag on the kitchen counter. “Do you have company?”

  The two wineglasses. “No.” He grabbed the glasses, put them in the sink. “One’s from yesterday.” He spun back around. “Would you like some wine?”

  “No, but water would be nice.”

  He filled a glass and handed it to her. She was picking up on his odd behavior. Why had he shoved the girl in the shower? Why was he hiding her? Why did he feel like he was cheating on Elise? It had just happened so fast. He hadn’t had enough time to figure out a game plan.

  She walked to the couch and sat down. Took a long drink. “We’ve got some potential leads on the Remy composite. I want to follow up on those first thing in the morning. And I got a call from the mayor, who’s demanding results.”

  “What’s new.”

  “Also, the lab was able to lift a variety of prints from the cellophane on the fruit basket.”

  “None were Remy’s,” he stated.

  “So far, no match at all.”

  “That’s a bit of a surprise.”

  “I agree. I logged on to the LIMS, and a new lab report popped up. Two other substances were identified in the apple from my house. Barbasco vine and quinine branch. It makes sense that I was out of my mind.”

  “I think I remember something about those ingredients making a Savannah museum worker gravely ill.” It had gotten a lot of press, and criminals were known for lifting ideas straight from the headlines.

  “The substance leached through the skin and entered the worker’s bloodstream, resulting in odd and uncharacteristic behavior.”

  “It could have killed you.”

  “I doubt that was the goal, but yes. I think the idea was to do exactly what it did. Well, maybe the goal wasn’t for me to stroll around town naked, but to make people doubt my sanity and pull me from the case. And make me doubt my own sanity.”

  “That’s it? What you came to tell me?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “You could have called.”

  “I wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel.”

  “You should stay at Strata Luna’s.” He would have also suggested his place, but he didn’t want her to suddenly decide to stay tonight.

  She wandered around the apartment, seeming to make a point of avoiding eye contact. “That’s not all. About that job offer you have in Ohio. I’d understand if you took it. I would.” She turned back around, held up her hand. “Let me talk. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for a relationship. Seeing the psychologist the other day drove that home.”

  “I thought you said she helped you.”

  “She helped me see things more clearly. And made me realize this is the new me. And I don’t know if the new me will ever be ready for a relationship. And I don’t want you to wait for me. I want you to have a life.” And then she said almost exactly what his mother had said. “You could get married. You could have more children. I know you loved Christian. I know you’ll never forget him, but you could have another child. Two children. Three. You could find love again.” She looked at him. “So please don’t stick around here because of me. I don’t want you to do that.” She put the glass down on the counter and moved toward the door. “That’s really what I came to tell you. I care about you. I think you know that, but don’t wait for me.”

  David walked her to her car, ignoring her protest, watching until she drove off and her taillights disappeared. Back in his apartment, he jumped at a sound coming from the bedroom, then remembered the girl.

  “Is she gone?” The Black Tupelo girl stood in the bedroom door wearing nothing but one of his unbuttoned white shirts.

  “Get dressed, sweetheart. You’re going to have to leave.”

  “I thought you said I could stay the night.”

  “I changed my mind.” He retrieved her clothes from under the couch, made a useless attempt to brush off the cat hair.

  “You’re sad,” she said. “Why are you sad?”

  “Just get dressed.” He pressed the clothes into her hand. “Get dressed and go.”

  Shortly after she left, his phone rang. Half expecting Elise, he was surprised to see Strata Luna’s name on the screen.

  “Elise was here earlier,” she told him. “We were talking the way women do, and the conversation turned to sex. You probably know that she has some intimacy issues ever since her encounter with Tremain.”

  “We’ve never talked about it, but I suspected as much. And I don’t know if you should be telling me this.” Especially in light of what Elise had just told him.

  “I’m not one to share private conversations,” the Gullah woman said. “I keep secrets. That’s what I do. But something happened tonight that might be a sign of a problem. A deeper problem.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “She’d just come from the hospital and was upset about seeing John Casper. And she started talking about how she’d never have what John and Mara had. And I said, ‘Why, honey? I kinda think you might already have that and not e
ven know it.’ And she says, ‘Nobody can see my body. Ever.’ And I say, ‘We’ve all seen your body.’ And she says, ‘It was dark.’ Well anyway, she ends up stripping in front of me. To show me all the scars left by Tremain. I knew about the tattoo, and the scar on her hip where the Black Tupelo mojo had been. But she starts pointing out all these other areas. Deep scars. Deformities, she called them. Maybe twenty or more. Everywhere.”

  David sat down heavily on the couch.

  “Thing is, I saw some small scars. Just a few thin lines that were nicely healed. Hard to see unless you’re looking closely. Otherwise? The areas she pointed to that she called deformities? Those things she doesn’t want any man to see, especially you? Honey, there was nothing there. And I mean nothing. Elise is scarred, but those scars aren’t on her body.”

  CHAPTER 34

  After leaving David’s apartment, Elise adjusted her rearview mirror and made sure her doors were locked. A few minutes into the drive, she spotted a dark-green sedan behind her. She took some test turns. The car mimicked her.

  She made a series of rights, increasing her speed, hoping to circle the block and come up behind the vehicle, but she couldn’t shake it.

  She called in a report, giving her location and a description of the car, then headed for the police station, hoping it continued to follow.

  “Patrol unit is on the way,” the dispatcher said.

  Maybe the tail saw the light from her phone, because Elise barely finished disconnecting when the car dropped away and vanished. She was tempted to turn around and chase it, but that would be foolish.

  Instead she parked in the hotel garage, under a bright light near the elevator and stairwell. At the door to her room, she swiped her card, pulled her gun, and stepped inside, making a quick sweep of the space. No sign that anyone had been there. Confident of her safety, she locked up and typed the day’s report into the department’s secure database.

  Early the next morning, before the sun was completely up, she headed back to the parking ramp and her car. On the way, she got a call from the investigator in charge of processing her house.

  “Ban has been lifted,” he said. “Contents of the Ziploc bag matched the toxins in the apple. We also found some suspicious items around the foundation of the house, but nothing dangerous. Small cloth bundles containing ingredients wrapped in paper with your name written on it. Looked like spells.” His voice held derision he either couldn’t hide or didn’t want to. A nonbeliever. She understood.

  The new information told her the Ziploc bag and the toxic apple had come from the same person. The spells around her house? Most likely for protection, courtesy of Strata Luna, probably put in place by Javier.

  She thanked him, disconnected, and was almost to her blue Camry when she spotted a flat back tire. Upon closer inspection, she saw that the tire had been slashed. Her friend from last night? Both front and back tires on the side facing her were damaged, and she guessed she’d find the same if she were to circle the vehicle.

  She pulled her weapon. At the same time a man in a ski mask and bulky coat burst from behind a pillar. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement, ducked, and felt the breeze of a tire iron just missing her head. The man swung again. Her arm shot high in defense. The iron struck, knocking the gun from her hand with a clatter. He kicked her legs out from under her, and she hit the cement, momentarily stunned.

  Tires squealed. A dark-green sedan came to a sharp halt a few yards away. The back door flew open. Another man in a mask. Both men reached for her.

  She lunged across the floor, grabbed her gun, rolled to her back, pushing with her heels at the same time, putting distance between herself and the men as she pulled the trigger, firing a series of shots.

  Glass exploded. The men dove into the car, doors slammed, and the vehicle sped away.

  The entire encounter hadn’t lasted over a minute.

  A call followed by a short wait. Cops arrived to take her statement. Another thirty minutes and she was at the Savannah PD and arrangements were being made for her car to be repaired.

  “That’s gonna be sore for a while.” David handed her an ice pack, and she placed it on her swollen and bruised forearm as she went over the description of the car again while David and Avery leaned against desks, ankles crossed, faces serious.

  “Green,” she said. “Dark green. Four-door. No plates. I don’t know the make or model.”

  Avery unfurled his arms and gripped the desk behind him. “They’ve probably already hidden it.”

  She went into a description of the men. The heavy coat that seemed designed to hide body type. Then she told them about the car that had been following her the previous night. “I’m pretty sure it was the same vehicle.”

  “We’re hoping the hotel security cameras picked up something,” Avery said. “They’re going over footage now. I told them to pull up the attack, which should be easy to find with the time stamp.”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” David asked.

  “I’m the next target?” Elise said.

  “Other than that.”

  She watched him a moment, then got it. “I’ll call Strata Luna later today and let her know I’ll be staying there.”

  That was the answer he wanted to hear.

  With the restricted access lifted from her house, she and David stopped by that evening. Inside, she filled her suitcase with clothes and toiletries, wishing she could stay home, sleep in her own bed, knowing that would be stupid beyond stupid.

  The move to Strata Luna’s felt like the prison Elise suspected it would be. To make matters worse, Sweet hovered even more than David, announcing that he was coming out of hiding and would be driving her to work. She’d never be alone. She could walk to the market from the police station, but that was all.

  The plan was a recipe for insanity, but she was the next target. None of them doubted that. As if she weren’t even in the room, David and Avery talked about taking her off the case, removing her from the PD completely. Ordinarily she would have been thrilled at the suggestion, but not now. Not until the case was solved.

  And maybe that was the big secret, the things that kept cops on the job. Maybe a lot of them, Elise included, were addicted to the chase, to solving the puzzle.

  “I’m going to go crazy here,” she told David.

  “At least you’ll be alive.”

  “I’m hiding. I don’t like hiding.” But she’d learned her lesson about being stubborn. She’d tolerate the living situation. She’d tolerate and accept Sweet’s escort to the office, and she’d try not to be a brat about it.

  They received a simultaneous text. A message from Research. Abraham Winslow’s story about the closure of his funeral home held up. He’d filed for bankruptcy, and an investigation had been launched.

  Pretty open-and-shut case, the message read. You’ll find an extensive report in your e-mail.

  David pocketed his phone. “I’m going to make the assumption everything else he told us was true.”

  Elise agreed. “We might never know what happened in the funeral home, but this helps establish a stronger timeline. Tomorrow we start on Meg’s short list of possible Remy sightings.”

  CHAPTER 35

  It was like having her dad drop her off at school, only decades late. All Elise needed was a lunch box and kneesocks. To make it even more ridiculous, Sweet was driving Strata Luna’s big black boat of a car. Before Elise realized what he was up to, he docked it at the curb in front of the police department.

  “Keep going, keep going!” Elise slid down in the passenger seat, trying to hide from the swarming media squatting near the entrance to the Savannah PD, cameras and mics in hand.

  Too late. She and Sweet had been spotted.

  Like a kid dreading the first day of class, Elise opened the door and swung her foot to the ground as cameras clicked. “I should have worn a dress and no underwear,” she muttered.

  Sweet pulled away, and she imagined him smiling t
hat weird, secret smile.

  Questions were shouted; mics were shoved in her face. She pushed the more intrusive ones away. Most of the reporters were local, but she spotted a couple from national outlets. Elise didn’t speak to anyone and certainly didn’t respond to any of the questions shouted at her, like “What can you tell us about the cemetery incident?” And “Have you been fired again?”

  She remained focused on the door, got herself inside and through security to finally gain access to the safe zone. Upstairs David was already at his desk. He swiveled around at her entrance.

  “Quite a circus out there, right?” He had a coffee in his hand, and his eyes were bloodshot. Nobody would be getting much sleep until this case was solved.

  She put her laptop on her desk, next to another carryout coffee. “You should have warned me,” she said, picking up the hot drink. “About the mob.”

  “I thought about it, but figured you’d come in the back like I did.”

  She took a sip from the cup. “Right up to the front door. In Strata Luna’s car.”

  He laughed, and she didn’t even resent him for it.

  They got down to business.

  First was a meeting downstairs with patrol officers. Then a check with the tip line to see if anything new had rolled in. Meg Cook was already at her desk and had a short list of leads for them.

  Then it was back through the crowd of cameras and microphones to an unmarked car, David behind the wheel, air conditioner blasting away as they headed for the first address, a bakery located in a more industrial area, off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. A few times David seemed on the verge of saying something. Then he’d sigh and squirm and make some comment about the road or the weather or the traffic.

  “You’re acting weird,” she said.

  “Am I?”

  “If it’s about what I said the other night . . .” Elise didn’t regret what she’d told him. She’d meant every word. Even though it might have come across as melodramatic, it was something he needed to hear.