Chasing The Dead (An Alex Stone Thriller)

by Joel Goldman

  And now Bonnie wanted to bring a baby into their lives at the very moment that Robin’s killer might have set his sights on her. Overcome at the image of Bonnie standing at her grave, holding their baby in her arms, she began to cry, pounding the shower walls with both fists, turning her back to the wall and sliding to the floor, letting the water beat down on her.

  “Are you drowning in there?” Bonnie said, knocking on the bathroom door a few minutes later.

  Alex pulled herself up. “Not yet. Be out in a second.”

  She put on faded denims, a untucked pale blue checked shirt beneath a gray and blue wide-striped sweater, and a pair of black Kick Hi boots, ran her fingers through her damp hair, applied ChapStick to her lips, and pronounced herself ready.

  Minutes later they were in Bonnie’s Audi, the satellite radio playing Billy Joel’s “Just The Way You Are,” a song they claimed as theirs, repeating the promise not to change they’d made to each other when they fell in love. Settling back in her plush leather seat, inhaling Bonnie’s perfume and surrounded by tons of high-performance German engineering, Alex felt cocooned and safe. For the first time all day, she thought they would survive all of this, though she had no rational reason to think so, only that she would find a way. When they stopped for a traffic light, she leaned over and pulled Bonnie toward her for a long, deep kiss.

  “Boy!” Bonnie said when Alex let go. “I guess I’m buying dinner.”

  **

  Robin had lived in Overland Park, which was on the Kansas side of the Kansas City metropolitan area. The state line was a convenient geographic demarcation that allowed Kansas residents to claim the attractions on the Missouri side—professional sports teams, high-end stores and restaurants, art galleries and museums—as their own while disavowing Kansas City’s failing public schools, persistent crime rate, and gangs as someone else’s problem. Except for Robin, who’d taken the good with the bad, dedicating herself to representing the dropouts, drug addicts, and gangbangers who’d found their way to her public defender’s office.

  She’d lived on a quiet, tree-lined street in a modest stone and stucco house with a two-car garage, a semiparched lawn, and a basketball net mounted on a steel post on the side of the driveway. Four cars were parked in front of the house, two others in the driveway.

  Bonnie slowed as they approached the house. Two men got out of one of the cars in the driveway, one of them limping.

  “Don’t stop. Keep going,” Alex said.

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “That’s Rossi,” she said, pointing at the men, “and the one with the limp is a detective named Wheeler.”

  “So? I’m no fan of Rossi, but why should we let him keep us from offering our condolences to the family? If they can, we can too.”

  “Just keep going. I’ve had enough Rossi for one day, and they aren’t there to offer their condolences.”

  Bonnie drove past the house, glancing at Alex. “How could you know that?”

  Alex took a deep breath, her stomach churning. “Because Robin was murdered. It’s Rossi and Wheeler’s case. They’re probably there to tell the family, which makes it the wrong time for visiting.”

  Bonnie stopped the car at the end of the block, turning to Alex, her eyes narrowed, her mouth tight.

  “And you were going to tell me this when?”

  “Soon,” Alex said, her face reddening. “Tonight, okay? I just found out this afternoon, and when I got home, you were ready to go and you told me to jump in the shower and then next thing I know, here we are.”

  “No. There’s no ‘next thing I know here we are.’ Not after we’ve been in the car for twenty minutes. You couldn’t have mentioned it?”

  “I know. I know and I’m sorry. It’s just that . . .” She stopped, blinking, shaking her head and then staring out the window. “This has been . . .” She hesitated again, turning back to Bonnie, swallowing hard, and letting out a deep breath. “Some kind of day.”

  Bonnie eased up, putting her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  Alex nodded.

  “About Robin or something else?”

  “Both.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to worry without knowing what I’m worrying about?”

  Alex looked at her, torn between adding another brick and knocking down the wall. Her eyes filled; a tremor rattled outward from her belly. She’d been holding so much back, and all she wanted was to let it go.

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice thick. “I’ll tell you everything. Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “WHO’S GOING TO TELL THEM, you or me?” Wheeler asked Rossi as they walked toward Robin’s house.

  “I’ll take the lead,” Rossi said, “then you can fill in the details. What do we know about the family?”

  Wheeler shrugged. “Five kids, bunched together, ages sixteen to twenty-one, I think.”

  “Father?”

  “Out of the picture. They’ve been divorced for years.”

  Rossi rang the bell. A young man wearing jeans and a Kansas Jayhawks T-shirt answered the door. He was average height with an average build and light brown, almost blond, hair, a round face, and soft features, his connection to his mother apparent.

  “Yes?”

  Rossi and Wheeler showed their badges. “I’m Detective Rossi. This is my partner, Detective Wheeler. Are you one of Robin Norris’s children?”

  “I’m Donny, the oldest. What’s this about?”

  “We want to talk with you about your mother’s accident. May we come in?”

  He furrowed his brow, hesitating. “What’s going on?”

  “We’d rather talk about it inside, if that’s okay with you.”

  He nodded. “Sure. Sorry. Come on in.”

  Donny led them into the den. It had a high ceiling and was furnished with comfortable, overstuffed chairs and an L-shaped sofa. There was a fireplace on the back wall flanked by windows and surrounded by inlaid stone rising to the ceiling. The lighting was soft, the fabrics warm, the ivory carpeting accented with a maroon oriental rug beneath a mahogany coffee table, the top of which was covered with two large pizza boxes and a half-empty carton of Coke.

  A couple Rossi guessed to be in their late fifties or early sixties was sitting on the long side of the sofa. He had silver hair, blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion and was wearing a navy blazer, gray slacks, and a blue oxford-cloth shirt. Her blond hair was cut in a shiny bob. Her short-sleeved lavender dress showed off her toned arms and well-defined calves. They were a handsome, prosperous-looking couple.

  An unshaven man around their age wearing Dockers and an untucked polo shirt leaned against the wall by the fireplace studying his smartphone. A boy and two girls who looked to be in their late teens stood in the middle of the room talking while juggling slices of pizza and sodas. A fourth child, a girl closer to sixteen, was leaning against a wall near the unshaven man, pecking away on her smartphone.

  “Everybody,” Donny said, “this is Detective Rossi and Detective Wheeler. They want to talk to us about Mom’s accident.”

  “Well, actually,” Rossi said, “we’d like to talk to Ms. Norris’s children.”

  Donnie and the older kids formed a line, shoulder to shoulder, as if they were used to being introduced as a group or answering roll call. They all shared the same features gifted to them by their mother. The youngest girl had dark hair and angular features similar to the man at the fireplace. Donny made the introductions.

  “These are my sisters Carrie and Rachel and my brother Josh. And that’s Kim over by the fireplace.”

  Carrie, Rachel, and Josh shook their hands. Kim stayed where she was, silent, grim faced, and sullen.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Rossi said, all the kids nodding except for Kim, who shook her head and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “And I’m their dad,” the man at the back o
f the room said as he walked toward them, chest puffed out. “Ted Norris,” he added, shaking both Rossi’s and Wheeler’s hands.

  He was half a head shorter than Rossi, his nose crooked like it had been broken at least twice. His hair had once been dark like his daughter’s but now was a slicked-back muddy gray. He had the red-speckled cheeks and rheumy eyes of a man who’d spent a lifetime getting the last drop out of the bottle. Rossi could smell the whiskey evaporating through his skin along with the stench of cigarettes in his clothes.

  “Helluva thing,” Norris said. “Robin was a great gal and these are great kids. Gotta give her credit for that. Everybody knows I didn’t have anything to do with it, not that I didn’t want to or didn’t try. We had five kids in six years before she gave me the boot. My little Kimmy was only five years old, but she turned out okay in spite of her no-account old man.”

  He flashed yellow teeth in an expectant grin, waiting for his kids to contradict him and tell him he wasn’t so bad after all and that he deserved some of the credit, but none did. Instead, they shifted their weight from one foot to the other, heads down or turned away, avoiding eye contact with their father.

  The couple on the sofa rose, the man clearing his throat. “Ted, why don’t you get going and let the detectives do their job.”

  Norris shot a hot look at him, eyes flashing, teeth bared. “Why don’t you hit the road, Tony? You’re not family.”

  “I’d like Uncle Tony and Aunt Sonia to stay,” Donny said, turning to Rossi. “Uncle Tony is a judge and Aunt Sonia was our mom’s lawyer.”

  Norris glared at his son, squeezing his arm. “You always took your mother’s side.”

  Donny yanked his arm free, his jaw clenched. “That’s because there never was another side.”

  “You little punk! I oughta . . .” Norris raised his hand, palm flat, his face crimson.

  Rossi grabbed Norris’s wrist before he could hit Donny.

  “I’d take the judge’s advice if I were you, Mr. Norris.”

  Norris raised his other hand, this time in surrender. “Okay, okay. Let’s not everybody get excited.” Rossi released him. Norris brushed his hands down his sleeves and straightened his collar. “So I’m getting thrown out of my own house again. I guess some things never change.”

  Rossi walked outside with him.

  “I don’t need a damn escort,” Norris said.

  “Just want to make sure you get to your car okay.”

  “So I don’t come back inside and kick your ass?”

  “So I don’t cuff you, throw you in the back of my car, and let you spend the night cooling off in jail.”

  “Big man when you got a gun and all I’ve got is a . . .”

  “Hangover and a bad attitude,” Rossi said. “So shut the fuck up and get your ass out of here while you still can.”

  Norris climbed into a white Ford Escort parked on the curb and drove off. Rossi waited until he was gone, memorizing the license plate.

  Everyone, including Kim, was gathered around the dining room table when Rossi returned. The judge rose to meet him.

  “I’m Anthony Steele, and this is my wife, Sonia,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder.

  She looked up at Rossi. “You handled that very well, Detective. Ted Norris is a nasty drunk.”

  “I’m convinced,” Rossi said. “What’s your relationship to the family, Your Honor?”

  “No need to be so formal, Detective. We’re not in court. Robin was one of our closest friends. Sonia and I were young marrieds when we started law school. Robin was in our study group and we’ve been friends ever since.”

  “We’ve known them all our lives,” Donny said. “They’ve always been Uncle Tony and Aunt Sonia to us.”

  “I’m a trusts and estates lawyer,” Sonia said. “I wrote Robin’s estate plan and I’m helping the kids sort through the process. Fortunately, Robin took out a substantial term life policy when she was young enough to afford it. There will be enough for all the children’s education and a little something to get them started after they graduate.”

  “Did their father know about the policy?” Rossi asked.

  “At the time, yes. They both had policies making each other the beneficiary. Robin made the kids the beneficiary after the divorce. I don’t know whether she ever told Ted.”

  “So,” Judge Steele said, “what brings two detectives out on a Friday night to talk about a traffic accident?”

  Rossi had delivered enough bad news to know that people responded to it in many different ways. Some were so shocked they couldn’t speak. Some fell apart, crying or fainting. And some buried their reaction under a masquerade of calm that others mistook for grace under fire but that Rossi knew, more often than not, was the calm before the storm.

  He took a seat at the table and looked around, making eye contact with each of the children. Donny and Rachel returned the look, their hands folded on the table and steady, oblivious to what was to come. Carrie blinked away tears, hands in her lap. Josh shifted in his chair, unable to get comfortable. Kim stared at him, dry-eyed and expectant, as if she knew what he was going to say and that it was bad. He didn’t disappoint her.

  “Your mother was murdered.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ALEX SAT AT THEIR KITCHEN TABLE watching the dawn break. She’d been there all night after confessing to Bonnie, sleeping in fits and starts, her head on her arms, jolting upright at her latest nightmare. She’d left nothing out, telling Bonnie everything beginning with her confession that she hadn’t killed Dwayne Reed in self-defense and ending with buying the burner phone. Bonnie had listened, drawing out the details like she was taking a thorough history from a reluctant patient, not editorializing, just making certain she got the information she needed for a diagnosis.

  Alex didn’t cry and Bonnie didn’t yell. They were more than civil. They were professional, Bonnie going over everything again and again, Alex reminding her they’d covered all of that, Bonnie saying yes but she was just trying to understand. They’d opened a bottle of wine when they began but neither took a sip. Bonnie turned to coffee as the enormity of what Alex had done became apparent.

  “Is that it? Is that everything?” Bonnie asked after three hours.

  The knots in Alex’s back and neck had unraveled the more she talked, draining her tension and anxiety, leaving her limp and depleted. But now that it was Bonnie’s turn to react, whether to console, condemn, or forgive, her muscles began to tighten and twist again.

  “Yes,” she said, stiffening. “That’s all of it.”

  Bonnie sat back in her chair, cradling her coffee cup, eyebrows raised, mouth pursed in contemplation.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I know,” Alex said.

  Bonnie set the cup on the table, running both hands through her hair, then around her neck, crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head, letting out a long breath.

  “I mean, I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “You don’t have to begin. This is all on me.”

  “What’s that even supposed to mean?” Bonnie asked, her flat-faced clinical detachment giving way to anger and anguish. “How could this all possibly be on you? You could lose your job, your law license, and probably go to jail, and, oh, by the way, someone may try to kill you, and you don’t think this doesn’t affect me? Or us?”

  Alex wrapped her arms around her middle, rocking back and forth. “Of course it does. But I’m taking the responsibility.”

  “How?” Bonnie asked, throwing up her arms, her voice rising. “Are you going to start packing a gun and wearing body armor until Rossi catches Robin’s killer? Are you going to turn yourself in for murdering Dwayne Reed? What would be the point of that? It’s not like I haven’t heard of double jeopardy. Are you going to turn in your law license and rat out Judge West? Are you going to quit your job and check into rehab like politicians and celebrities who totally fuck up their lives? Maybe you’ll find a twelve-step progr
am for people who make the biggest fucking mistakes! Hi, my name is Alex and I’m a moron! Just exactly how are you going to take responsibility, because I’d really like to know?”

  Alex stopped rocking, dropping her hands in her lap and hanging her head. She was too worn-out to cry. All she could do was take Bonnie’s body blows like a punching bag.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what about us? Are you planning some grand noble gesture like breaking up with me so when this shit storm hits—and it is going to hit sooner or later—none of it blows back on me?”

  Alex raised her head. She’d thought of nothing else during her confession because it was the only thing she could think of to protect Bonnie.

  “I’ll be out today.”

  Bonnie stood, planting one hand on the table, cupping Alex’s chin with the other and squeezing.

  “Like hell you will. No way am I letting you off that easy.”

  Bonnie’s cell rang before Alex could respond. Bonnie answered, listening and shaking her head.

  “Christ! I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She clicked off the call. “School bus carrying a bunch of kids back from a high school football game got T-boned by a fire truck. I don’t know when I’ll get back, but you better be here when I do.”

  She picked up her purse and ran for the door, racing back to kiss Alex on the forehead.

  “We’ll figure this out. Don’t ask me how, but we will.”

  In the morning light, Alex knew Bonnie was wrong. Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, she could see clearly enough to know that much. She wouldn’t expose Bonnie to a killer, but that wasn’t the only harsh reality they faced. No one’s well of forgiveness was that deep. No one could live with someone who’d done what she’d done. And even if Bonnie never uttered a word of reproof, never brought up any of her sins again, Alex knew she’d forfeited Bonnie’s trust. That would corrode their relationship as surely as anything else, and Alex wouldn’t put Bonnie through that. She wrote her a note, packed a bag, and walked out.