Truly Dead

by Anne Frasier

  “I’m glad you let me know where you stand, where we stand.”

  “So are you thinking about Ohio? Does that explain the heavy sighs?”

  “Actually I got a call after you stopped by my place the other night. Nothing about the current case. Just a friend sharing some rather disturbing news. If I seem preoccupied, that might be why.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No big deal.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Can’t. Confidential. Still trying to figure out how to handle it.”

  Meg Cook’s short list was made up of five white men in their sixties who’d moved to Savannah in the past year. Not unusual. People retired and moved to Savannah. Not quite the retirement destination Florida was, but a destination all the same.

  The street-level bakery located in a brick warehouse was one of those places that felt like a throwback to the sixties, either intentionally or through apathy. Parking area of cracked cement, weeds, oil stains, and the crushing sun. Inside, no Wi-Fi, no espresso machine. Just bakery items and straight-up coffee served in white ceramic mugs.

  They spotted their guy immediately. Name: Marshall Hughes. In his sixties, a little on the heavy side, white. Check, check, check. He wore a chef’s apron, tied high over his belly. A cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth would have been a nice touch.

  At the cash register the detectives pulled out their badges and asked to talk to him privately. He gave them a concerned nod, slid the register drawer closed, and motioned for them to follow him to the back room.

  Ovens, vats of oil, racks of cooling doughnuts, long tables with white boxes waiting for product. The place wasn’t air-conditioned, and giant industrial fans blasted hot air in their faces. Elise could feel the sweat forming on her scalp and back.

  “Coffee?” The guy grabbed a couple of cups from the drying rack near the sink and placed them on a round break table littered with dirty plates that he swept aside with his forearm.

  Elise sat down. “I’m fine.”

  David eyed the cup in front of him. “Me too.”

  “Sweet tea?” The guy hovered. “Some people drink coffee all the time, but maybe something with ice?”

  Again they both declined. Elise pulled out a small tablet, mentally noting that he was being a little too nice.

  He joined them at the table. “So what can I help you with?” He seemed worried, but he wasn’t acting nervous.

  “Have you been following the local news?” David asked.

  Elise produced a copy of the eight-by-ten composite. “If so, you’ve probably seen this.”

  “Sure.”

  David was sweating too, his hair hanging damp over his forehead. “Some good citizens called our tip line to tell us you bear a resemblance to our suspect.” He pushed the image closer.

  The guy examined it. “That doesn’t look anything like me.”

  David leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think it does either.” He was playing good cop.

  “How long have you worked here?” Elise asked.

  He shrugged. “Six months, maybe.”

  “How long have you lived in Savannah?”

  “Moved here shortly before that.”

  The questions continued. Elise asked where he’d lived before (Indiana), what had brought him to Savannah (warmer weather and the recent death of his wife).

  “There aren’t many jobs for guys my age,” he told them. “It was either here or McDonald’s.”

  David asked him where he’d been the night of the morgue fire and during the period of time they suspected Loralie had been murdered.

  Elise documented his reply, then leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Have you ever been to Florida?”

  “Coupla times.”

  “Within the last year?”

  “Not for maybe fifteen years. Went to Disney World.” He seemed to remember something. Elise was hoping for information, but in the end he was just playing host again. “How about a doughnut?” He got to his feet and gestured toward the cooling racks. “These are so fresh they should be slapped.”

  He laughed at his own corny joke, snapped on a pair of kitchen gloves, and pulled out a stainless-steel tray, grabbed two doughnuts with orange icing, and placed them and a heavy plate in the center of the table.

  “We’re trying this new line that we’re going to launch on Johnny Mercer Day.” Hands at his waist, legs wide, Hughes said, “This particular one is called ‘Tangerine.’”

  David picked it up and took a bite. “Not half-bad.”

  Hughes looked pleased. “We’ve got another one called ‘Moon River.’ It’s chocolate with a blue river and yellow moon. Dough is rising for those right now.”

  “You should do one of Johnny Mercer’s more obscure songs, like ‘Loralie.’” David kept eating the doughnut, acting casual, but he was really watching Hughes for a tell, a reaction to the name of a woman he might have killed.

  Hughes frowned. “I’m not familiar with that song.”

  “No?” David finished the doughnut. “Maybe I’m thinking of another one.”

  Hughes handed him a napkin. “‘Lorna’? He wrote a song called ‘Lorna.’”

  David wiped his hands on the napkin, then squeezed it into a ball and dropped it on the table. “That must be the one. Anyway, you’ve got a great product here. And a great idea.”

  Elise broke in. “Would you be willing to stop by the police department and have your fingerprints taken?”

  “So I’m a suspect?”

  “No,” Elise said. “We’re just ruling people out who fit the demographic. That’s how we do it. Fingerprints, sometimes DNA.”

  He thought about it a moment, then shrugged. “Sure, if it’ll help. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  From the front of the store, a counter bell rang angrily.

  “Gotta go.” Before leaving, he grabbed a cardboard box, filled it with doughnuts, passed the box to David. “On the house.”

  “What do you think?” David asked once they were back outside in the glaring sun. He hit the unlock button, and they got in the car.

  “I think it’s actually cooler out here than it was in there. But as far as he goes . . . I don’t know. I wasn’t picking up on anything. Didn’t seem nervous, didn’t seem like he was trying to hide anything. And there was not a hint of a tell when you mentioned ‘Loralie.’”

  “Remy isn’t going to respond to situations the way most criminals respond. He kills children. He kills women. Let’s give this a day or two, but I’m betting that guy doesn’t come in for prints. If not, I’m making a trip back here.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  He shrugged and passed her the box of doughnuts.

  Elise called Meg Cook to tell her their first lead claimed to have never lived in Florida. “Can you verify that? And once it is verified, dig a little deeper to make sure his story holds up.”

  “Will do.”

  More stops, more white guys in their sixties. One panhandled for a living and said he’d made fifty dollars so far that day. He lived in a shelter. Elise wrote down the name and address of the place. David gave him a twenty and the box of doughnuts. The third person was a married man who worked part-time at a sporting-goods store at the mall. Nervous, wouldn’t look at them, but agreed to be fingerprinted downtown.

  Suspicious, but it could be he just had poor social skills. Or cops scared him. Regardless, Elise moved him to the top of their list. On paper, the fourth guy seemed the most promising. “Piano teacher,” Elise said. “Private lessons in his home.”

  “A little too obvious,” David said as they headed for the address. “But you never know. What about the fifth guy?”

  “Professional clown.”

  “Oh man.”

  “Too obvious again, I know.”

  “What’s Meg doing? Pulling up anybody who shares characteristics with past serial killers? Keep this up and we can have a serial-killer version of the Village People, complete with
a clown.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Lucille wasn’t taking the breakup with Avery well. Not the type to chase a man, she’d nonetheless gotten up the nerve to invite him to a yoga class. And then, when it didn’t seem he’d ever take the hint, she asked him out for coffee, then jogging—and quickly found that he talked way too much about Elise.

  Lucille had never liked Elise, mainly due to her dismissive attitude toward reporters, but she’d begun to loathe her once she and Avery began dating. And now she blamed Elise for the breakup. Damn her. Beautiful. Tragic, with this trail of mopey men behind her, the biggest being her own partner. She was like that one girl in school every single guy wanted. And once they realized it would never happen, they moved on to the second- or even third-tier girls. Lucille was a third tier. She’d accepted that long ago, but it didn’t mean she didn’t want all first-tier women to die. Not really die, but just step out of the damn spotlight for a while.

  Third tiers dated and married third tiers. That was the way it worked. Avery was third tier too. He just didn’t know it. Most guys didn’t know their own tier.

  With a start, she realized she’d drifted off again, and looked up from her cubicle. She hadn’t been able to write a damn thing for the past twenty-four hours, and she was beginning to worry. She wanted to go to a bar and get drunk. Meet a new guy. Feel attractive again, wipe Avery from her mind. But going to a dive and getting blind drunk was foolish. She should do yoga instead. Or jog. Eat a healthy meal. Drink plenty of water. Get a good night’s sleep. In other words, love herself, not beat herself up.

  Still immersed in her pity party, she opened her e-mail and sifted through the most recent messages, hoping for a hook or lead, something easy, something she could throw together in less than an hour with very little thinking.

  Days ago she’d gotten the bright idea to circumvent the cops and do her own investigating. On her website, she’d put out a request for info, along with the composite image of Remy. So far she’d received several e-mails with tips and possible sightings, but she’d been too depressed to follow up on anything. One e-mail now got her attention because the subject line contained the name of someone she considered her nemesis, Elise Sandburg. Sent from a Gmail address. No attachment.

  She opened it.

  It turned out to be from a man who’d witnessed the press-conference fiasco, someone who claimed to have dirt on Detective Sandburg. And he wanted money for that exclusive dirt.

  Paying for a story was unethical behavior for a reporter, but she’d been desperate enough to do it a couple of times. And this was dirt on Sandburg . . .

  She replied to the e-mail, waited, and within five minutes had a reply and a plan. She closed the browser, grabbed her bag, and left the building. “Checking a lead,” she told a couple of curious faces.

  Outside, she broke down and sent a text to Avery, asking if he wanted to get together to talk, just talk. He didn’t reply, but that wasn’t unusual. Even when they were dating he often didn’t reply for a few hours.

  She swung by the bank for cash, then drove to meet the informant in a location that wasn’t a high-traffic, public spot, but wasn’t something she’d consider remote or dangerous either. That didn’t mean she wasn’t careful. She jogged by herself at night. She knew how to watch her back.

  Pulling into the park off Skidaway Road, she made sure her phone was in her bag. As an added precaution, she turned on the voice-memo app. Then she felt for her little handgun. It was pink. Ridiculous, but somehow it seemed a less threatening thing to carry.

  Dusk was hours off, and the park wasn’t empty. She met a jogger and a couple of walkers. Their presence reassured her, and she turned where she’d been instructed to turn, to a pretty area shaded by live oaks and Spanish moss. A couple of minutes more and she came upon a man standing in the middle of the trail, his back to her.

  The hair on her arms moved, and her scalp tingled. Call it a sixth sense, but she immediately worried that she’d made a mistake. She felt for her gun, taking little comfort in the weight and feel and shape of it. Maybe this wasn’t her contact. She’d just leave. Quietly, so the man wouldn’t even hear her.

  He turned around.

  Her brain struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. She tried to find a face in the mess in front of her. There was a mouth and two eyes, but between those eyes was a crater where his nose should have been.

  The eyes watched her without blinking.

  She heard someone on the trail behind her. Before she could look, something slammed into her back. At the same time, bark exploded from the tree in front of her while hot pain ripped through her center. She looked down to see blood blooming on the front of her T-shirt.

  The man with half a face hadn’t moved. He was still standing there staring at her. It was hard to say if he was expressionless, but his eyes didn’t register any kind of response, certainly no surprise. But as she began a slow fall to the ground, she saw one side of his mouth twitch in what might have been a smile.

  CHAPTER 37

  Abe Chilton, head of the local crime scene team, was on-site when David and Elise arrived. Even though they didn’t hang out, David had always liked Chilton. The forty-five-ish Chilton had a wife, kids, seemed to love his job. In other words, he was surprisingly well adjusted for someone in his field.

  Ten minutes earlier, data had scrolled across the dashboard monitor of David and Elise’s unmarked car. Unidentified female body, location included. A moment later David’s phone had rung. Avery.

  “Shit just got even more real.” He’d sounded out of breath. “Lucille is dead.”

  And now here they were, the situation, the body count, the targets themselves feeling more unreal by the hour, and it seemed even breaking up with an acquaintance of Sweet’s didn’t save you.

  Chilton met them halfway, ducking under the yellow tape, sealing a clear evidence bag as he walked. “Single bullet through the heart. And check this out.” He motioned for them to follow, all three careful of the numbered evidence cards littering the ground. “I don’t think the victim even saw it coming. Looks like the bullet went through her back and out her chest to strike that tree.” He pointed. Anticipating their next question, he said, “Bullet was removed before we arrived.”

  “Cool and calculated,” David said.

  “Yep.”

  “Anybody hear anything? See anything?” Elise asked, her eyes scanning the crowd.

  “A couple saw a woman alone, but they didn’t hear a shot. A mother and her two kids came upon the body.” He winced upon mention of the kids, probably thinking of his own in such a situation.

  “Silencer?” David wondered aloud.

  “That’d be my guess,” Chilton said. “I heard Lucille Bancroft launched her own investigation of the Remy case and was asking for tips on her website.”

  David wasn’t surprised. “So maybe she was lured here. We’ll see what our forensic techs can dig up. Did she have a phone with her?”

  “Yep. Got it bagged. Marilyn has it if either of you want to take a look.”

  “There’s Avery.” Elise nodded. “I’m going to see how he’s doing.”

  “Brutal,” Chilton said once she was gone. “We didn’t know who the victim was at first. Avery shows up thinking it’s a routine homicide, or not so routine, depending upon how you look at it. Woman alone. I brief him, and we both figured she was killed by a boyfriend, or maybe it was a drug deal gone bad. We chat awhile; then one of my assistants turns the body slightly so we can see her face.” Chilton shook his head. “Poor Avery goes white. I look closer, recognize her.”

  David knew what Avery was going through. He considered excusing himself to talk to him, but it looked like Elise had things under control. She was touching the detective’s shoulder, and he was nodding, hand to his face. No need to intrude.

  “How’s John?” Chilton asked.

  David was glad to be able to share some positive news. “Doctors think he has a chance of a full recovery with time.�
�

  “That’s great. Shame about Mara, though. She was a sweet kid. But I sure as hell hope John gets back soon. That ass they sent down from Atlanta might be the end of me. She’s around here somewhere, so watch out.”

  “I’ve had a few run-ins with her over the past couple of years. She seemed a tad too militant for Savannah.”

  “You’re being generous. I’ve never been around anybody who speaks so little but still manages to be overbearing.” Chilton held eye contact a little longer than he should have. “You okay? Because I have to say you look like you could use a good night’s sleep.”

  David rubbed his face, surprised to discover he hadn’t shaved. Again. “Not much sleep lately.” The sleeplessness should have been due to their unsolved case, but in truth he was also worrying about Elise. Over what Strata Luna had told him and the attack in the parking garage. “In fact, I’m not sure when I last got a full night’s sleep.” He’d pressed Strata Luna about Elise’s scars, wondering if the Gullah woman had misunderstood and Elise had been talking about the tattoo that covered her back. He hadn’t mentioned that he’d seen Elise in her underwear and had never noticed any deformities. But Strata Luna convinced him that Elise had been talking about scars, big scars, deep scars.

  Everybody had a tipping point. He could only guess that their return to Savannah and the police department, plus the attack on John and murders of Mara and Loralie had been Elise’s. No wonder she’d finally decided to see a shrink.

  It was his turn to scan the crowd. Elise was no longer with Avery. David spotted her talking to a tech, both of them looking at a clear evidence bag.

  And Avery . . . Someone probably should have stuck with him, because he was flipping out in front of the press, shouting, gesturing wildly, unaware of an audience, basically out of his mind. Before David could intervene, Avery pulled out his badge, tossed it to the ground, and stomped away, all of it caught by cameras. As one who wasn’t immune to public meltdowns, David internally applauded Avery’s behavior.