His boss and second cousin—or was it first cousin, once removed? He’d never understood the whole cousin thing—rested a big, gentle paw on his shoulder and said, “Son, that wasn’t a request. It was an order. I want you to hand over your badge, your weapon, and the keys to the cruiser. You can have them all back when you’re a little more stable.”
“Stable? What the hell, do you think I’m suicidal, like he was? For Christ’s sake, Ted.”
The EMTs, who’d been called in because the coroner was at an all-day meeting in Portsmouth, chose that moment to trundle the rattling gurney with its black zippered body bag through the kitchen and down the staircase. He and Teddy watched in silence, then the chief held out a hand and waggled his fingers in a ‘gimme’ gesture. “Keys, badge, firearm. I’ve asked Roy to give you a ride back to the station to pick up your truck.”
Five minutes later, he and Spike were neatly buckled into the passenger seat of Roy Crane’s Kia. The five-minute drive was accomplished in silence. Roy pulled up beside Mikey’s truck, said, “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Tough as nails.” He pretended he didn’t notice Roy’s look of concern as he climbed out of the car with the dog tucked under one arm. He opened the rear door of the Kia and took out Spike’s bed, his stuffed toy, his leash, a bag of dog food. “Thanks for the ride.”
Roy watched while he loaded Spike’s belongings in his truck. Mikey lifted a hand in dismissal. Roy returned the wave, then left him there. With the dog still tucked into the curve of his elbow, he went inside the station.
Greta saw him coming. She looked at him, at the dog, then back at him. Opened her mouth to speak. He stared at her, cool and hard, for a long moment. Nobody’s fool, Greta took the hint, turned away and busied herself with something. It was a good thing. The next person who asked him if he was okay was going to get cold-cocked.
Mikey shut down the computer, grabbed his lunch bag, and realized he’d left his travel cup in the cruiser. Snatching up his truck keys from the desk, he nodded to Greta, who’d returned to staring, and strode back out of the building.
He sat in the driver’s seat, fitted the key into the ignition. Suddenly drained, he closed his eyes and leaned his head on folded arms on the steering wheel, fighting off waves of nausea. Maybe he wasn’t as okay as he thought. This had been the longest day of his life. And it wasn’t yet noon.
A sharp rap at the window startled him. Teddy was standing next to his door. He straightened, lowered the window. “Yeah?” he said wearily.
“I thought you’d want this.” Teddy held up the envelope Gunther had left for him.
He stared at it dully, not sure he wanted it. “Isn’t that evidence?”
“This is a small town, Lindstrom, and the facts in this case are pretty clear-cut. We don’t have the budget or the need to check it for prints. Roy confirmed that the handwriting is Gunther’s. It’s highly doubtful that you shoved those pills down his throat in the middle of the night and then came back to ‘discover’ his body a few hours later. Especially since the word around town is that you and Paige MacKenzie enjoyed a particularly intimate farewell in your driveway ten minutes before you got to work this morning. Might as well take the thing. It was meant for you.”
He took it. Mumbled his thanks, although at the moment, he couldn’t think of a single reason to be thankful.
“If there’s anything in there you think I need to know about, officer, I trust you’ll tell me. Otherwise, whatever he had to say to you is private.”
“Yes, sir.” After a decade in the military, the response was automatic.
Teddy beat a little tattoo on the door and stepped away from the truck. “I’ll see you in a week,” he said. “If you need more time, you let me know.”
* * *
WHEN PAIGE CALLED, he thought about not answering. But if he didn’t, if he ignored her, she’d probably be knocking on his door next, and he wasn’t ready for that. “I just heard,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do? I’ll come over if you’d like.”
There was nothing he’d like more than for her to come over. He wanted it so bad he ached with it. Wanted her cool hands and her calming presence to take away some of the fury and the pain. But he couldn’t subject her to his despicable mood, or to the black thoughts that circled his head like vultures closing in for the kill.
“Look,” he said, “I’m really not good company right now. Can I call you tomorrow?”
“You can call me anytime, day or night.”
He disconnected the call, thought about putting his foot through a wall, decided instead to pull out one of his rifles and go to the gun range, to work out his aggressions there in a socially acceptable manner.
It didn’t help much. Those black thoughts just kept circling, and circling. This is your fault. You did this. You failed again. You’re a poor excuse for a human being. You’re a failure, failure, failure.
He’d read somewhere about how many U.S. veterans committed suicide every day. He wasn’t sure of the number, but it was uncomfortably large. A lot of them, like Gunther, were older, had fought in the steaming jungles of Vietnam, and believed they had nothing left to live for.
He should have known, damn it. He wasn’t a stranger to suicidal thoughts. After Rachel died, there’d been a time or two when he’d debated the advisability of blowing his brains out. It had been Rachel who stopped him. He’d heard her voice in his head as clearly as if she’d been standing beside him. If you do it, Mick, I will never, ever forgive you. And never is a very long time.
He went to bed early, took Spike with him. Instead of sleeping, he spent hours dealing with his demons, unable to shut down. He finally fell asleep sometime after three, but his sleep was splintered, broken by a swirling montage of dream images. Gunther. Paige. Rachel, interwoven with the others. Always Rachel. His voice, calling her name. Those final moments, played out in slow motion. Panic turning his intestines to liquid as he hoarsely shouted out her name. Her face, turning to him in surprise, a half-smile that faltered as she saw the terror on his.
Then, the impact. The feel of her sweet young body against his as he knocked her to the ground, tried to protect her with his much larger body. The flash, the noise, a noise so loud it filled the whole world.
And then, the silence.
Three hours of fractured sleep, with Spike curled up against his side, hadn’t prepared him for what he faced when he opened his eyes. Mikey stumbled out of bed and into the clothes he’d worn yesterday, then went to the bathroom and vomited until there was nothing left to come up but clear liquid. He flushed the toilet, stood at the sink to rinse out his mouth, cringing at his drawn and sallow reflection in the mirror. Then he took the dog out to do his business, and went in search of coffee.
At the drive-through at Dunk’s, he traded a fistful of bills for a cup of fresh, hot brew, then pulled away from the window. His phone rang, sending daggers of pain shooting through his head. The number wasn’t familiar. Mikey took a sip of hot coffee to settle his stomach and answered the call.
“Mr. Lindstrom?”
He started to respond, cleared his throat, tried again. “Yes.”
“This is Lila from Brendan Bedard’s office. Gunther Anderson’s attorney.”
“Okay.”
“Is there any chance you could stop by the office this morning? Mr. Bedard’s free until nine-thirty. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Since he was a half-mile away from the address she gave him, he agreed, without bothering to ask what this was about.
The lawyer’s office was located on a quiet side street in town, where old New Englander-style homes sat shoulder-to-shoulder, fronted by mature maples that rustled their leaves in the breeze. Mikey pulled in at the tidy white house with the black shutters and a hanging sign that read Brendan Bedard, Atty. at Law. He angled the truck into a parking space and got out.
Mikey chugged coffee, wiped his mouth, belatedly remembered that not only was he wearing the clothes he’d
picked up off the floor, but he hadn’t yet brushed his teeth. Goat breath. Great. He followed a path of neatly arranged paving stones to the front steps of the house. The inner door was open, a discreet sign saying “COME IN” taped to the glass of the storm door.
The layout was identical to every New Englander he’d ever been inside. Stairs against the wall to the right, hallway directly ahead, front parlor to the left. He turned left, where the young woman behind the reception desk looked vaguely familiar.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m—”
“Mike Lindstrom. I remember you from high school. Have a seat. Mr. Bedard will be out in a minute. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”
He raised his cup from Dunk’s and found a vinyl-upholstered chair. While he waited, he nursed his coffee and studied his surroundings. Built-in bookshelves flanking the receptionist’s desk held somber-looking tomes. A plaster replica of Lady Justice, toting her scales, sat on a pedestal in front of the window that faced the driveway. A pair of framed Norman Rockwell posters hung on the wall. Reminiscent of the innocence of a bygone era—had it ever been real?—they introduced a whimsical note into what would otherwise have been somber and stodgy.
A door opened. The man who emerged was about his age, dressed in a white button-down shirt, gray trousers, and red suspenders. “Come in,” he said, extending his hand to shake. “Brendan Bedard. I’m sorry for your loss.”
The words were meaningless. Superficial. Nothing more than social civility. They didn’t begin to reach into the part of him that was numb and dead. But because he’d been raised to embrace the same social conventions, the same civility, he shook, and followed Bedard into his office.
Facing him across a big desk, Bedard opened a file folder. “Thanks for coming on such short notice. Mr. Anderson asked that I speak to you as soon as possible after his passing.”
Mikey balanced his coffee cup on his knee and jiggled his foot up and down. “Wait,” he said. “Did you know? That he was planning to kill himself?”
Bedard looked up from the folder, met his gaze, and said, “No.” The lawyer’s eyes were kind. For some reason, that irritated him.
“Why am I here?”
“You’re here because I have his last will and testament, and he named you as his sole heir.”
He tried to make sense of Bedard’s words, but they didn’t add up. “Me? Why me?”
“I couldn’t say. I really didn’t know him. He came in a few months ago, we made up the will, he paid me, and that was that. Until I got a call from Chief Burns this morning, telling me he’d passed on.”
“What about his daughter?”
It was the attorney’s turn to look surprised. “There was no mention of a daughter.”
“They had issues. He was pushing, trying to reconnect with her. She kept pushing back. I don’t want anything from him. I don’t know what he has that’s worth anything, but Jenell’s his true heir. Not me.”
“Actually,” Bedard said, “his net worth is nothing to sneer at. He owned the store, the business and the building, outright. His car was paid for, and he had several bank accounts, scattered around here and there. A tidy nest egg when you add them all together.”
“How the hell is that possible?”
“I have no idea. I’m just the messenger. But his estate has to be worth, at best estimate, a quarter of a million dollars.”
“I don’t understand. He told me stories about being homeless. About the years he spent in an alcoholic stupor. How could a man like that get his hands on enough money to pay cash for that place?”
“Beats me. But somebody—whether it’s you or his daughter—stands to inherit a significant amount of money.”
“I already told you. I don’t want it.” Bad enough that he was fully responsible for Gunther’s death, as responsible as if he’d emptied those pill bottles down Gunther’s throat himself. Now this yahoo was telling him that in payment for killing his best friend, he was about to become a rich man? Fuck that.
Bedard cleared his throat, leaving Mikey to wonder whether he’d said those last two words aloud. “Let’s just read the will, shall we?”
“Fine.” He sat back, the ankle of his good leg propped on the opposite knee, and listened while Bedard read Gunther’s last will and testament. It was pretty cut-and-dried. Gunther had left the store, and the property on which it sat, to him, to do with as he saw fit. He’d left a healthy sum of money in a special account to cover the cost of Spike’s needs for the rest of his life. If Mikey couldn’t keep him, Gunther asked that his dog be given to a kind and loving home of Mikey’s choosing.
“His funeral’s prepaid,” Bedard said, setting down the will, “and he wrote his own obituary. All you have to do is meet with the people at the funeral home to make the arrangements. He asked to be cremated.”
He stumbled out the door in a stupor, furious with the world, with Gunther, for placing him in this position. He didn’t want the responsibility. He was bone-weary, depleted from having to be accountable for so many damn people.
The funeral director was, to his surprise, a woman. Sexist much, Lindstrom? She introduced herself as Audrey Benner, and got right down to business.
“We’re already in receipt of Mr. Anderson’s remains. The investigation found no circumstances that would necessitate an autopsy, so the body was released to us yesterday afternoon. We’ll send the remains out to the crematorium this afternoon. We should have the ashes back by Friday. We could schedule visitation for Friday afternoon, say, from two to four, and the service for Friday morning at ten. If that’s convenient for you.”
Audrey Benner was an idiot. There wasn’t a damned thing about this that was convenient. He opened his mouth to tell her so, realized she was sitting here, waiting for a response, and what he’d been about to say fell on the wrong side of uncivilized. “Fine,” he said.
“And do you have anyone in particular in mind for the service? Did Mr. Anderson belong to one of our local churches?”
“No. Whoever you can find is—wait a minute. Try Reverend Jonas Moody. I played football with his son. I’ve known him for decades. Tell him I asked for him. If he can’t do it, that’s fine. But if he can, I’d like him to.”
“I’ll give him a call. Now, if you’d like, I can show you the casket Mr. Anderson picked out. It’s really quite nice.”
He just wanted this to be over with. “If he’s being cremated,” he said irritably, “then why does he need a casket?”
“Standard procedure. It’s already paid for.”
Quite a racket they had going. “Fine,” he heard himself saying. It seemed that everything today was fine. Except for the screaming inside his head.
“All right, let’s see. We already have the obituary, Mr. Bedard faxed that over. We’ll need you to bring in a set of clothing. He didn’t specify what he wanted to wear, so use your own judgment.” Her eyes were a little too shiny. A little too eager. She was enjoying this a little too much. “One more thing,” she said, “and then we’ll be done. Would you like to see him before the crematorium people come and pick him up?”
In his lap, his fists clenched. The last thing he needed was to watch some stranger unzip a body bag so he could look at Gunther’s bloodless face. Again. “No.”
It was possible that he’d spoken with more vehemence than he should have. She blinked once, then twice. “Very well,” she said, and held out her hand. He loosened his fist, watched the blood pour back into his fingers. Shook her hand woodenly. “My condolences on your loss,” she said. “We’ll see you on Friday.”
And without another word, he escaped.
PAIGE
MIKEY CALLED TO ask if she could meet him at Gunther’s to help pick out suitable cremation attire. “I don’t know clothes,” he said. “I’ve worn a uniform of one kind or another since I was eighteen.”
“Of course I’ll help,” she said. “But if he’s being cremated, why does he need clothes?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not as
king any more questions. I’m just rolling with it.”
When she pulled into the driveway behind the store, Mikey was sitting in his pickup, fingertips tapping rhythmically on the steering wheel. Nervousness? Impatience? She parked beside him, and he swung down out of the cab. “Thanks for coming,” he said, as though they were simply acquaintances who didn’t share a long and checkered history.
She followed him up the steps onto the porch. “Is this the first time you’ve been in since…?”
“Yes. And before you ask, I’m perfectly fine with it.”
He spoke the words with such offhanded ease that she would have believed him, if she hadn’t seen the telltale tremble in his wrist when he fit the key into the lock. Going back into the place where he’d found his best friend dead was not something he looked forward to. But Mikey Lindstrom would rather walk on fire than admit to any vulnerability. She’d seen him naked. She’d seen him bloody and battered and loopy on pain meds. She’d seen him moaning in ecstasy, had seen what was left of his wounded leg. Yet the wounded places inside, the parts that really mattered, he still kept hidden from her. It was maddening. It was heartbreaking.
She hated feeling helpless. There were times when she could bully him into yielding ground, into revealing a little more of himself than he’d planned. Times when tough love was the order of the day.
This was not one of those times.
She’d expected that being in the place where Gunther had died by his own hand would leave her creeped out. But it didn’t. The clock still ticked in the kitchen, and fresh air still billowed the curtains at the window. The bed had been stripped, the bare mattress left to air out. “He left everything to me,” Mikey said.
“To you? What about his daughter?”
“You should have seen the lawyer’s face when I asked that very question. Gunth conveniently forgot to tell him there was a daughter.”
“Can’t she sue you for her share of the estate? I’d think that will or no will, she’d be entitled to at least half. She’s his biological kid. Doesn’t that automatically make her his rightful heir?”
Face the Music: Beyond Jackson Falls Book 1 Page 27