Dead Ringer

by Michael A. Black

  “Any idea why Bayless was on that particular stretch of road?”

  He shook his head. “We didn’t really ask his family what he’d been doing down here. His work address and phone number were listed on the rental agreement, and they’re the ones we talked to mostly. Said he was down here on a business trip of some sort.”

  “The ID came through pretty fast, huh?”

  He nodded and cracked the gum as he chewed it. “The next day or two his dentist sent us down some X-rays. Matched perfectly.”

  I made several entries in my notebook. “Anything stand out as odd?”

  MacMahan blinked quickly, like the question had stunned him. “Why do you ask that?”

  It was my turn to sit back and consider what I wanted to say. “Before I went into the private sector, I was a cop. Chicago.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  I continued, “Now even though the State Police handle the accidents on the expressways, I handled a few in my time. Plus, we used to get dispatched to assist the state all the time. So I’ve seen a whole bunch of real serious crashes, and I can only remember maybe one or two that resulted in a fire.”

  MacMahan smiled. “You know, I’ve seen a whole passel of them myself, and I could probably count the number of times I’ve seen that on one hand.” He held up a big, open palm. “And one of them was this one.”

  MacMahan and I talked for a bit longer, neither of us totally comfortable with the spontaneous combustion theory of the accident. When I told him the actual reason I’d been hired to look into things he emitted a low whistle. “That could mean that instead of it just being a traffic fatality, it’s really something else, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Especially if that wasn’t Robert Bayless in that car.”

  “It was definitely somebody.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could even be a homicide.”

  “It could. Especially since Dr. Boyd was convinced from the autopsy that the victim was alive when the fire started. Had a scorched trachea. If it wasn’t Bayless, who was it?”

  “Damn,” MacMahan said. “Got any theories you’d care to share?”

  I shook my head. “None right now. Just a lot of pieces that don’t seem to fit together real well once you start looking at them closely. You got time to take me out to the crash site?”

  MacMahan grinned. “Mr. Shade, I’ll make the time.”

  Chapter 8

  Alex St. James

  Father Morales was as good as his word. Not that I’d expected otherwise. He provided disguise—clothing for me and some for Jesse as well, which we donned in the private area of the church, so that none of the homeless guests at dinner would be aware of our transformation. The bagful of stuff Bass had given me, Morales said, was too prissy, too clean. It would’ve been like wearing signs with big bold letters: HOMELESS IMPOSTER.

  Right about now, I would’ve chosen Bass’s wardrobe selection over this one in a heartbeat.

  My stomach gyrated as I pulled the first filthy garment over my head. I kept my mouth and eyes closed in an attempt to keep as many germs away as possible. The cotton shirt would breathe in the heat—that much was good news—but the long sleeves made me cringe. Father Morales had insisted that we conceal as much of our bodies as possible. “Homeless people are by and large unhealthy. It shows in their skin tone. You two look like prime American adults. Cover up.”

  I’d worn one of my own T-shirts and a pair of cotton shorts over my underwear. The less direct contact vulnerable body parts had with these second- and third-hand items, the happier I’d be. Most everything Morales provided was brown or gray or black. But he’d let me keep the big pink hat from Bass.

  “Homeless ladies like hats,” he said. “You’ll fit in better if you wear it.”

  I grimaced.

  “No lice,” he said as if reading my mind. “I’ll spray it with disinfectant. We keep that on hand.”

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  I finished dressing, resisting the screaming urge to rip the nasty clothing from my body and jump into the nearest shower. Once this evening was over, I vowed to clean out my closet and donate as much quality clothing as I could afford to part with.

  Jesse, Father Morales and I met back in the church office.

  “Very nice,” Morales said. “You could almost fool me.”

  “Almost?”

  He gestured toward Jesse. “Your dark complexion will help you blend in at night, but you,” he turned to me. “You’re too pale. Too clean. You look like a little white girl dressed like a bum for trick-or-treat. Hang on.”

  He left us then, giving us enough time to secret our equipment in our bags. Jesse carried his camera and accessories, and food for bribes. I had my Taser, a tape recorder and my own stash of bribe items.

  When Morales returned, he carried a potted plant in his hands.

  He set it on the nearby desk and dug his fingers into the soil. “Here you go,” he said, and proceeded to filthy up my face.

  His plump fingers worked the dirt over my cheeks, forehead and neck. “Gee, thanks,” I said out of the corner of my mouth to avoid a mouthful of mud. For good measure, he plastered some over Jesse’s face, too.

  Fifteen minutes later, he pronounced us done. “Dinner’s still being served—we’ve got another half hour. You hungry?”

  The last thing I wanted right now was to eat. I shook my head, and coughed when I tasted dirt. “No, we better head out. We can’t wait to get started,” I said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “I need to reserve my bed for the evening.”

  Morales shook his head, just as he’d done when I’d first informed him of the plan. “How long do you plan to stay out there?”

  “All night, if we have to.”

  “God be with you,” he said. “I know the crazies will.”

  Ron Shade

  The ride out to Highway 14 proved unrevealing. Just a winding road that curved through a section of thirty-foot-high rocks. MacMahan’s cautious brake lights ahead reminded me again that it was well known for its deadliness.

  “It’s on the IDOT traffic Web site as one of the most dangerous stretches of roadway in the state,” he said when we got there. “Plus it’s so isolated down here, somebody could crash and not be noticed for days. Luckily it was reported by that unidentified Samaritan.”

  I filed that piece of information for later. If you were going to set up a crash, it would be a good location to know about.

  “As near as I can remember it,” MacMahan said, walking along the side of the road, “his car hit this section right here.” He pointed to a jagged grouping of rocks sticking up along the shoulder like an eruption of crooked teeth. “They tore the hell out of his gas tank, and maybe a spark or a cigarette ignited the fumes.”

  “Or a match,” I said. “I remember an idiot in basic training showing me how he could put a lit cigarette out in a gerry-can full of gasoline. The flash point for the lighted square wasn’t high enough to set the liquid on fire.”

  “It’s the fumes that usually ignite,” he said. “When I was in the air force in basic we had one asshole who would light his farts while everybody watched.”

  “Every artist wants someone to appreciate his work.”

  MacMahan grinned. His radio cackled and he reached up to his shoulder mic and answered it.

  “Can you check on a ten-fifty on Higgins and Dundee Road?” the dispatcher asked. “Reported as PD only at this time.”

  “Ten-four,” he said, and extended his hand. “Mr. Shade, it’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

  “Same here,” I said. We exchanged cards and I watched him roar off, his Mars lights blazing in the late afternoon haze. I turned and studied the road some more. If I were setting up a crash, how would I do it?

  I walked Deadman’s Curve and saw the trajectory that Bayless’s car must have taken. Coming around the bend real fast and steering to the right, hitting the rocks, rupturing the gas tank, smashing into the solid rock base . . . No skid
marks, according to MacMahan. Bayless hadn’t even hit the brakes. But the report did mention there were a few yaw marks, indicating that the front wheels turned sideways as they skidded. I turned around and looked back at the curve from the point of impact, imagining the car speeding toward me. Then I imagined something else.

  I’d been in George’s office one Saturday when his partner, Doug Percy, asked if I’d seen the “good old boys” chase. Not knowing what he was talking about, he motioned me to his computer and showed me a video clip on his computer. It showed a police chase from LA that must have been filmed by a news helicopter. Several black-and-white cruisers chased a Mustang on an expressway, with Waylon Jennings singing “The Dukes of Hazzard” theme song in the background. The squad cars tapped the Mustang’s back bumper several times, sending the fleeing vehicle into a circular spin out. Doug told me that it’s a matter of making bumper-to-bumper contact, and twisting your steering wheel to the left. If somebody had been pushing Bayless’s rental around the curb, and knew how to effect this spin out technique, it could have sent the rental into the rocks. It could also explain the yaw marks the police had found on the asphalt.

  But that type of driving is very specialized. Not many people could do it. It would take someone with a lot of knowledge and a lot of skill. A pro.

  Alex St. James

  There were four of us total: Jesse, with a James Bond–like camera fashioned to look like a button on his battered hat; Rita in the sound truck, listening in on me and all the conversations under the viaduct from a thousand feet down the road; and Lew, a second cameraman, stationed in Rita’s truck, equipped a high-powered zoom lens. His job was to get both wide establishing shots and close-ups of my interactions with the homeless.

  I wore a microphone attached to my collar and reminded myself that every word would be recorded, so I’d better not speak my mind about Bass tonight.

  Or maybe I should.

  Jesse and I made our way to the inhabited underpass, I went over the plan: blend in, keep a low profile, then use my stash of goodies—foodstuffs, mostly—to encourage people to talk. My goal was to find out more about this success story—Howard Rybak—and to find out why he was able to break free of the cycle of poverty that ensnared so many. Bass may not think this was a particularly strong angle to follow, but I did. And I knew my instincts were right. What did Howard Rybak do differently, and why didn’t the rest of these people follow his lead? It was my best shot. I groped in my bag to reassure myself that I had plenty of bribe-food, and to ensure that the Taser was still there, ready for action. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt one of these folks, but . . .

  No, scratch that.

  The last thing I wanted was to get hurt myself.

  It was twilight when we arrived. Jesse walked ahead of me by several hundred feet. We decided it best to not let on that we were “together” here tonight. Up till about two blocks ago, we’d walked together and now the aloneness of my position was beginning to take its toll on me as my loafers shuffled against the pebbly sidewalk making lonely scraping sounds.

  There were more homeless gathered here tonight than there had been when Nicky and Morales and I visited. I wondered why, until a flicker of lightning flashed fast in the eastern sky. It was going to rain.

  I could smell it now, feel the prickle of anticipation in the atmosphere—and I understood. The crowd had gathered here for protection from the storm.

  “Great,” I muttered aloud, then grimaced.

  Rita would record everything I said. It was bad enough I smelled like one of these inhabitants, I didn’t want to start acting like them, too.

  As I closed the distance, eyeing the bad-luck pillar where I planned to spend most of my night, I mulled over my approach to this story. Since my early days in feature researching and reporting I hadn’t ever had a reaction to a story like the one I was having now. I loathed this assignment. Would give it up in a heartbeat.

  But that wasn’t like me.

  I shook my head, causing little dirt crumbs to drop from my face. Part of the reason for my reluctance might be the fact that Bass pandered to Gabriela. But the truth was I could accept that. She was, after all, our star, and I understood the need to keep her working on stories that kept her happy and our ratings high.

  Another tiny flash of lightning, high in the clouds.

  Maybe it was me. My own personal reluctance. After all, the last feature I’d worked on had been . . . difficult. I’d come face-to-face with a murderer, one ready and eager to kill me.

  I stared ahead at the group of zombie-like homeless folks and wondered what they’d done in their lives to bring them to this terrible place. Were they criminals, or just unfortunates with no one to take them in?

  I shuddered, groped for the Taser again. At least this time I’d come prepared.

  Twenty minutes after I sat with my back against crumbling concrete, my butt hurt. Jesse was to my far left, about halfway up the embankment, sitting on his sleeping bag, looking as wary as I felt. Three cars had gone by, one very slowly.

  For the most part, the homeless folks kept to themselves, except for a boisterous bunch up near the top of the embankment. I had one visitor, an elderly woman who asked me if my name was Monica, and who shuffled away, wiping at her nose when I told her no.

  I stood, stretching, working out the kinks in my legs that sitting on the cooling cement had so graciously provided. Next to me, a metal beam sprouted upward forty feet, to meet with the underside of the expressway above. I leaned against the metal, keeping my movements small so as not to call attention to myself. Yet.

  I used the opportunity to grab a glance at the loud men tucked into the top of the embankment. There appeared to be three of them, sitting in half shadow, passing a bottle around, taking swigs. Whatever they were drinking, it kept their spirits sufficiently high that they relished sharing their every thought with the captive audience below.

  One of them, surprising me with his pleasant tenor voice, sang out about winning the lottery tonight. The other two pulled the bottle out of the singer’s hands and wrestled between themselves as the first guy continued to croon.

  They were different than the rest of the people here. Not only were they active and rowdy, they were together. I scanned the underside of the viaduct and counted fourteen homeless folks. Every single one of them a loner. Except for the three high up above us. Maybe they would make an interesting story.

  So far, I hadn’t been branded as a faker, so I decided to explore. After all, the sooner I was able to produce a workable, hard-hitting, ratings-gathering story, the sooner I could return to my home, my bed, and most of all, my shower.

  I looked out over the human wasteland before me. Yeah. Right.

  I recognized the old black guy from earlier in the day and approached him just as he sprawled himself over a blanket of newspapers. “Hey,” I said.

  He’d just rested his head on his beefy upper arm and closed his eyes. Now he opened one, and cast me a filmy glance. “I ain’t got nothing you want.”

  “I don’t want anything,” I said, too fast. And too properly. I better watch that. “I . . . got something you might want, though.” I dug into my bag, looking for one of the snack items I’d tucked in there.

  “Don’t want nothing.”

  “How about these?” I asked, proffering two chocolate-chip granola bars.

  The guy opened both eyes and lifted his head enough to give me a stare. “You wanna give those to me?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sheeit,” he said, then turned his back.

  A woman watched our interchange and when the grizzled old guy ignored me, I turned to her. “Would you . . .” I stopped myself mid-speech, knowing how polite I sounded. “You want some?”

  Her eyes grew wide and she scooted herself away from me, mumbling something to herself about going to heaven.

  Great, I thought. Two down—a dozen more to go.

  Jesse had taken the opportunity to meander over, no doubt hopi
ng to catch as much interaction as possible on tape.

  This wasn’t going anywhere, so I decided to take a different tactic with the bent-over man I’d seen earlier. I strode up the embankment to his “home,” a portion of cyclone fence that someone either never finished erecting, or never got around to fully tearing down.

  He lay on the ground, a filthy plaid blanket beneath his head. Even in repose, the poor man couldn’t straighten out. He looked like a Muppet trying to form the letter “L.”

  “Hi,” I said, for want of anything more pithy.

  His body didn’t move, but his eyes sought mine. “What ya want?” he asked in a nasally voice.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  It took a minute to realize that the high-pitched squeals were laughter.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Am I hungry?” he said, practically hugging himself with mirth, nearly rolling on the ground. “When ain’t I?”

  “Here,” I said, holding out the granola bars. “Take these.”

  It took every ounce of his effort to sit up, but sit up he did. With his legs straight out in front of him, his torso bent forward, he seemed stuck always looking down. “Whaddya want for them?”

  I shoved the two granola bars at him so fast, he sat back in alarm. Which meant that his feet came up off the ground. Right about now I was feeling so white-bread, so pampered, so guilty for ever wasting a morsel of food that I wanted to empty my bag onto this guy’s lap if he’d take it. “I don’t want anything,” I said, “I mean . . . nothing. I don’t want nothing.”