“Can I call her?” Paul picked up his cell phone.
“You’re welcome to try,” Ed said. “I’m sure she’ll pick up if she can.”
Lacey answered on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Lace … uh, it’s good to hear your voice. What’s going on?” he asked.
“Not much.”
“You sure about that?”
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t budging.
“Anything new?” Paul said. The relief he’d felt a few minutes before was being replaced by familiar irritation.
“We need more milk,” Lacey said.
“Anything else?”
“Cereal,” Lacey replied.
“Lace, are you in shock? I know where you are. I’m in Sheriff Ed’s office right now.”
Paul held up the phone awkwardly.
“Hi, Lacey,” Sheriff Ed called out.
“What were you doing in Birkton with that creepy doc?” Paul asked.
“Investigating. Tell the sheriff I think Doc Holland is suspect number one right now.”
“Lace, please. You’re putting yourself in danger. This has to stop.”
“It will stop when the murders stop,” Lacey replied, disconnecting the call.
Paul stuffed his phone back in his pocket.
“I’d tell you to talk some sense into her,” Ed said, “but that train has clearly left the station.”
Paul didn’t know how to respond to that. “Yep,” he said.
“This keeps up, we’re gonna have to change the population sign,” Ed said, shaking his head. His attempt at a light tone didn’t quite come off. He seemed shaken up.
“I guess so,” said Paul.
He wasn’t comfortable hanging around inside a law enforcement office, especially when it wasn’t quite clear what was expected of him.
“So, can I go?” Paul finally said.
“Yep,” Ed said, and stood up. He walked around the desk to Paul and took him by the shoulders, looking him in the eye. There was no sense of threat, only genuine concern. “Get some rest. And try to stay out of trouble. I’ll make sure Lacey gets home safe.”
For a second Paul forgot that he was a pot grower inside a sheriff’s office.
As Paul started toward the door, Ed said, “Remind Lacey to bring that letter to me tomorrow.”
“What letter?”
“From Doc Holland.”
“Right,” said Paul, like he knew what Ed was talking about. “Will do.”
When Paul got back home, he saw a familiar shape in the rocking chair on the porch.
“Irving!”44
Paul picked him up and gave him a squeeze. His thick fur was tangled with thistles, burrs, and even part of a cigarette filter. He’d apparently been on quite an adventure. Paul took him inside for some milk and tuna, then cut the reunion short to start looking for the Doc Holland letter. It was for Lacey’s own good. Keeping stuff to herself seemed to have a way of putting her in the vicinity of dead bodies.
He was about to lift Lacey’s dresser when Brandy called his cell.
“You want to come over? I made mac ’n’ cheese. Don’t worry—it’s from a box. I figure you could use some quote-unquote home cooking.”
“That sounds delicious,” Paul said.
“You sound distracted,” Brandy said. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a letter. Lacey has apparently heard from Doc Holland. Ed wants it. Not sure why. Maybe to test it for DNA or something. I just don’t know where she’d be keeping it. For all I know she might be carrying it around with her.”
“You’ve tried the obvious places, right?” Brandy asked.
“Probably. Like what?”
“Like between her mattress and box spring?” Brandy said.
Paul lifted the mattress. There it was, still in its envelope. He put the phone down and read the letter. He was surprised to find that it was addressed to Sook. He didn’t know the old man had been involved in the whole blackmail scheme. Yet another one of Lacey’s secrets.
“How’d you know?” Paul asked.
“Sometimes you have to dumb yourself down a little to find what you’re looking for,” Brandy said.
“I’ll be over right after I drop the letter off at the station.”
“I’m not sure that’s the right move, Paul.”
“Why?”
“Getting official DNA test results can take months around here. Bring the letter over with you.”
“Why? What will you do?”
“Let’s just say I know someone.”
“Of course you do.”
“See you in a bit, buttercup,” Brandy said.
After their preliminary talk at Verducci’s, Sheriff Staley took Lacey to the Birkton station for more questioning. At the restaurant, sipping stale coffee, she’d seemed barely capable of hearing his questions, but now she was coming out of her daze.
Since there were only a few drops of blood on Lacey’s clothes and the waitresses could place her outside the men’s restroom until the moment the body was discovered, Staley knew it would have been impossible for Lacey to have committed the crime. Besides, no weapon was found. But she was the closest thing he had to a witness. Lacey told Sheriff Staley about the missing Doc Holland and how Egan had arranged a meeting with him. While she hadn’t seen Holland in the vicinity, she made it clear to Staley that she was certain Doc Holland was behind the murder.
Staley asked her why she seemed to be the common denominator in the murders.
“I wish I knew,” said Lacey, her voice breaking. “You’d think someone at the center of the whole mess could figure out what tied it all together. But I just can’t. And believe me, I’ve been trying.”
With the letter in his pocket, Paul got into his truck and started toward the freeway and Brandy. But as he approached the on-ramp he veered toward downtown. An hour ago, he’d been seized by the certainty that his sister had been murdered—and the knowledge that he hadn’t done anything to prevent it. Whatever she’d gotten herself entangled in, he thought, the only way he could protect her now was to risk entangling himself. No, that was bullshit. What he had to do was accept that he was already neck-deep in it, whether he liked it or not.
Paul realized he could no longer stand above the fray and hope things worked out. He also couldn’t count on Lacey to share what she knew—or on anyone else to help him out. Who could he really trust when Sook was a blackmailer and Sheriff Ed was a pal? He had to finish the investigation of Doc Egan, and he had to do it alone.
He parked his truck around the corner from Egan’s home and office. No sheriff’s cruiser was out front, but he knew that would change soon. He got out and strolled down the leafy street toward Egan’s driveway, and then hopped the fence into his backyard.
Paul opened the screen door and found a locked but not bolted back door. Terry had taught him how to do it when Paul was a teenager, but he’d never done it in real life. He took a credit card out of his wallet and slid the lock open. In a few seconds he was in a mauve kitchen littered with takeout cartons and menthol butts.
Paul headed to the bedroom first. He was looking for any clues about who this guy really was, and maybe what his connection was to Doc Holland. But mostly he had no idea what he was looking for. He just knew he had to do something.
He opened the closet door because he figured that’s where most people hide things. On the top shelf he spotted an old shoebox. He pulled it over the shelf so it nearly came crashing down on him. It was just receipts and software manuals and office debris, but at the bottom was a single photo, facedown. He held it up. In faded purple cursive, it said “Dad & Matthew, Summer ’75.” He flipped it over. A smiling kid with a bowl cut stood on a pier. Behind him was a middle-aged man with a crooked smile who rested one hand playfully on the boy’s head. A tiny fish hung from each of the boy’s outstretched hands. The man’s distinctive crooked smile looked familiar. After a moment Paul realized why. It was Doc Holland.
A heavy car door shut somewhere near the front of the house. Paul shoved the photo in his pocket, next to the letter, and went out the back. He peeked around the corner of the house. The front bumper of the cruiser was only a few feet away. Paul took off toward the back fence, hopped it, and ran through a lot covered in clover. He came out the other side and walked around the corner to his truck.
NOTES:
Lisa,
I thought it was time we had an actual revelation to balance out the bloodshed. If you can find it in yourself to just let things unfold naturally from here on, I think this book can still work. Of course, that’d be an unprecedented development for you, on or off the page.
Dave
P.S. One last question about the authors who rejected you: Why all men?
Dave,
Yeah, Paul’s convenient discovery of the photograph in the closet was totally natural. I’m starting to think you never took this project seriously. I’m also starting to think if a dead body turned up at your door, you’d step over it and go out for a burger. If we weren’t so close to the end, I’d forfeit this “game,” because that’s what it’s starting to feel like.
But in the interest of finishing what we’ve started, I have a gift for you: I’m going to let Irving live. You know why? So you have a character to jump-start your cat mystery series. It’ll be awesome—bodies piling up on the streets and no man or feline giving it a second thought.
Lisa
P.S. I wasn’t rejected, I was politely declined. I asked men because I wanted my book jacket to use colors outside of the pastel palette for once. End of discussion.
CHAPTER 29
That night, Paul returned home still reeling from his discovery that Doc Holland was Doc Egan’s father. He didn’t want Lacey to be alone after discovering a corpse, but he certainly wasn’t going to share the news with her. He still didn’t know what to make of the connection, and after everything Lacey had survived that day, he figured she didn’t need any more information to fuel her investigative urges.
“Mac ’n’ cheese from a box,” Paul explained, sliding the dish in front of her. “You should eat something.”
“Who made it?”
“Brandy.”
“No thanks.”
“It’s not poison. I had it for dinner.”
“Well, I’ll wait a few more hours to be sure.”
“Cereal?” Paul asked.
“You never got the milk.”
“Right.”
Lacey took a beer from the fridge and sat back down at the table. “What if Big Marv was the killer?” Lacey asked.
“Of who?”
“One or all of the victims.”
“Then he should go to prison for a very long time,” Paul replied, not sure what answer Lacey was hunting for.
“Well, of course. But my question is, we’ve agreed to take this man’s money. Should we take it if he’s a murderer?”
“I’m more inclined to take it if he’s a murderer,” Paul replied. “If you think about it, we’re swindling him.”
“But he thinks he’s swindling us.”
“Right,” said Paul. “When did our lives get so complicated? We used to grow plants. Now you’re hunting a serial killer and we’re engaged in shady million-dollar business deals.”
“So, we’re taking the money,” Lacey said, ignoring Paul’s comment. Her mind was crowded enough, she didn’t need to worry herself about what was crowding his. She took her beer and went to bed.
In the morning Paul was gone. Sheriff Ed called Lacey and reminded her about the letter. She searched for three hours until she gave up. Was it possible that she’d hid it from herself? With all that had transpired, the idea crossed her mind, but then she figured something more sinister was going on. Mercer used to seem like a nice place, but the town had splintered into jagged shards right in front of her.
Up in Tulac, Paul lounged around Brandy’s apartment all morning. He picked up that Wittgenstein biography, but lost interest after the introduction. He stuck a bookmark on page three and headed to the Timberline.
At 3:15 in the afternoon, Tate called Lacey’s cell and said, “Your brother’s drunk and out of cash.”45
“We have iddall figged out,” Paul slurred, when Lacey arrived and took a seat next to him and Rafael.
Apparently even just a sliver of a biography on a major philosophical thinker had gotten Paul’s mind working in overdrive. Unfortunately, none of Wittgenstein’s intellect was passed on to Paul. He was as logic-challenged as ever.
“What have you got figured out?” Lacey replied.
“The two docs were innit together.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Most def-in-ite-ly,” Paul replied, forming the word as if for the first time.
“What’s their connection?” Lacey asked.
Paul leaned in close and whispered Budweiser breath into his sister’s ear. “Doc Holland was Doc Egan’s father.”
“What?” Lacey asked, grabbing her brother by the shoulders.
“The fake doc was the father of the dead doc,” Paul said.
“How do you know this?”
“I investigated. I have proof.”
“Then prove it,” Lacey replied.
Paul pulled the photo from his pocket and smacked it on the bar. Lacey picked up the photo and studied the front and back.
“Where did you find this?” Lacey asked.
“In Egan’s closet,” Paul replied.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You don’t need to know everything.”
“What does it mean?” Lacey asked.
It was more of a rhetorical question, but Paul answered anyway.
“I think that the docs were plotting something.”
“What were they plotting?” Lacey asked.
“Don’t know, don’t care. But now that Egan is dead there will be no more murder.”
“Think about it, Paul. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Let me sleep on it,” Paul replied. “Wake me in fifteen.”
Paul then rested his head on the bar and within moments his distinct snore layered another sound track over the Steve Earle album playing in the background. Lacey ordered a beer and scowled at Rafael.
“How many has he had?” she asked.
“I lost count at eight,” Rafael replied.
Musings on murder suspects now qualified as small talk in Mercer. Rafael proceeded to inform Lacey of all Paul’s theories, both standing and debunked. As Rafael spoke, Lacey’s suspicion of him grew—in part because he was spending too much time with Paul, nosing around their investigation, but also because she had not yet investigated him herself. But Paul insisted that Rafael had an airtight alibi. Or at least a receipt.
Paul’s cell phone rang, which caused him to stir and changed the tone of his snore. But he didn’t wake. Lacey pulled the cell from his pocket and answered.
“Paul’s phone,” she said.
“Lacey?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Big Marv.”
Lacey’s heart skipped a beat when she heard his name. Ever since the verbal land agreement was struck, Lacey had feared the worst.
“What can I do for you?” she said, in an atypically polite tone.
“My lawyer has just drawn up the paperwork. When can you and Paul sign?”
Lacey glanced at her comatose brother.
“Give me an hour.”
Rafael helped Lacey load Paul into the back of his pickup truck. Throughout the ride home, blasts of cold air and carefully targeted potholes jolted him awake. Paul managed to walk without too much assistance into their house, where Lacey plied him with half a pot of coffee and a quart of Gatorade, and then made him perform a round of calisthenics. An intriguing phenomenon with Paul was that when he was stoned you couldn’t get him to budge, but drunk he’d follow orders like a private in boot camp. Once, in high school, when their parents were out of town, Paul drank a six-pack of beer and La
cey dressed him in a jacket and bow tie and had him play her butler until he sobered up and lost interest. “Mr. Paul” made many cups of tea and sandwiches that afternoon.
After Paul had sweated out some of the booze, Lacey told him to take a cold shower, and by the time Paul was finished, he was still drunk but could walk on his own and sign his name. Lacey had him practice a few times to be sure.
On the drive to Marv’s office, Paul started nodding off again. Lacey had brought along a spray bottle for that very eventuality. She used it unremittingly. Paul’s anger proved to be the most sobering elixir yet.
When they entered Big Marv’s office, the siblings were introduced to a bespectacled man named Franklin Fisher. Marv referred to him as his lawyer.
“That name rings a bell,” Paul slurred. “How do I know that name?” The memory that eluded him was that he’d heard it during his night of surveillance with Terry, when Jay was asking for a fat check from his patient. Lacey, of course, hadn’t heard the name—it was just one of many pieces of evidence her brother had withheld from her.
“Have we met?” Paul asked Mr. Fisher.
“I don’t believe so,” Fisher replied.
“That name sure rings a bell.”
Lacey smacked Paul on the head. “Has the ringing stopped?”
At the very least, Paul stopped mentioning it.
Lacey waited until the bank confirmed two wire transfers in the amount of $500,000 before she agreed to pick up the pen.
“Sign here and here and here,” Franklin Fisher said.
The siblings passed the gold fountain pen back and forth until they’d worked their way through the inch-thick pile of papers. When they were done, a series of handshakes followed, and some sighs of relief.
“See you around,” Big Marv said with a Cheshire Cat grin.
“We’ll see about that,” Lacey replied, as she and her brother departed.
On the drive home, an awkward silence set in. So much had gone on in the last few weeks, so many ugly thoughts and images that would be forever imprinted in their minds. A deal like this was once in a lifetime, but they both felt empty. Lacey knew her time in Mercer was coming to an end, and yet, if pressed, she couldn’t tell you where she was going.
Heads You Lose Page 23