Pretty Dead

by Anne Frasier

  The smell. He remembered it. Like mildew and stagnant water and a long-dead past.

  David wasn’t light-headed, and no blood dripped from his fingers, which gave him hope that the bullet from Lamont’s gun had merely grazed him. With the flashlight app illuminating his escape route, he moved as quickly as he could, given the terrain, sometimes running, sometimes stopping to dig through bricks and dirt. Each time he came to a barrier, he feared the collapsed area might be too extensive for him to break through to the other side, but each time he made it.

  He wasn’t sure if Lamont would figure out his escape route, but just in case, David wanted to put as much distance between himself and his old partner as possible. Every junction and every new tunnel added to the maze and increased his chances of ditching Lamont—if the guy was even after him anymore.

  At one point David stopped and unlocked his phone, read Elise’s last message, and laughed quietly to himself.

  Run.

  He replied: Delete that. And this.

  Elise: Where are you?

  David: It’s better if you don’t know. I’ll contact you later.

  Elise: OK.

  David: Delete all of this. A reminder.

  Her reply: Be careful.

  David: Gotta go. He dropped the phone to the ground, stomped on it so it couldn’t be tracked, pulled out his key-chain light, then continued down the tunnel.

  “You tipped him off, didn’t you?”

  Two hours after David had eluded the police, Lamont confronted Elise in her office on the third floor of the Savannah PD.

  “You discharged your weapon on one of my officers,” Elise said.

  Hell-bent on intimidation, Lamont towered over her. His face was red, his hair and shirt soaked with sweat. “He’s not your officer.”

  “David Gould is on temporary suspension. He’s still an officer with the Savannah PD.”

  “That’s not how I see it.”

  “Did you hit him?”

  “If I did, it was just a graze, because he didn’t slow down.”

  “No blood?”

  “I didn’t stop to look.”

  He hated her. That was obvious. He hated them all, and he was no longer trying to hide it. “Because I was chasing a murder suspect.” He uncapped a bottled water, chugged it, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “You know what? I hope to hell I did hit him. I hope to hell he’s bleeding like a stuck pig right now.”

  Funny how she’d thought he was kind of nice-looking when they first met. Now . . . “I want to remind you that the mayor made me interim chief of police.”

  “That’s not a big surprise. He had to appoint someone until he can find a replacement. You’re just a placeholder—somebody to satisfy the press while this situation continues to unfold.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, one hip resting against her desk. Casual, relaxed pose. “As interim chief, I’m telling you to leave,” she stated quietly.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Leave. Get out of here.”

  “You don’t have the authority to dismiss me.”

  “No, but I have the authority to kick you out of my office. So get your stuff and get out of here.”

  Instead, he got in her face. She didn’t flinch or recoil.

  “I’m gonna bring you down,” he said. “I’m gonna bring your whole department down. And this place is going to see a house-cleaning like it’s never seen before.” He tossed the empty bottle in the trash can and began packing his laptop. “Crazy voodoo woman. Everybody who knew Gould at Quantico laughs about it. How he’s working down here in this backward town with the crazy daughter of a witch doctor.”

  She wanted to find out how much of a believer he was. “Maybe I’ll cast a spell on you.” She wanted to see if she could make him squirm. “Maybe a broken-mind spell.”

  He paled.

  She smiled. “Yeah, we’re crazy here.”

  Of course she wouldn’t cast a spell. She didn’t do that kind of thing, not anymore, but she liked his reaction. And she liked the feeling of power her threat carried with it. It felt good to let go of the restrictions of her station. Maybe that was where her conflict with her job came from. The rules she had to follow, whether she agreed with them or not. Well, she was done with rules. Today in the cemetery, when she’d sent David the warning text—that marked a turning point in her career. From now on she’d be true to herself. And if Lamont succeeded in cleaning house the way he threatened, so be it. It might be time to move on. Past time. Socrates said the secret of change was to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

  Lamont picked up his briefcase and strode off.

  Elise smiled to herself and thought, Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

  Someone clapped. Looking over, she was surprised to see Jay Thomas sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. Forgotten again.

  This must be how it was with those reality shows where the participants forgot about the camera. Jay Thomas had become a part of the room, a part of the furniture. She wondered how many times she’d said something she shouldn’t have said in front of him.

  CHAPTER 34

  David took back what he’d said about not being light-headed. Could be the air quality in the tunnels, which wasn’t good.

  Yeah, tell yourself that.

  Every step stirred up the dust of a million dead rats and a thousand yellow fever victims. Add to that the fact that pretty much all the entrances were sealed off, either by collapse or a solid safety barrier, and it didn’t allow for much oxygen.

  He paused, leaned against the wall, then deliberately slid to the tunnel floor. He shut off the fading key-chain light to save the battery and sat there, his head resting against brick, arms dangling over bent knees.

  In the dark he felt the sleeve of his jacket and was slightly alarmed to find it saturated with blood. He stumbled to his feet and moved on.

  Elise’s phone rang as she drove down Drayton in the direction of home. She checked the screen, hoping it was David. No, but close. David’s mother.

  Pulling in a deep breath, Elise hit the “Answer” button on her steering wheel. “Hello, Mrs. Gould.”

  “Elise, what’s going on?”

  Elise’s stomach dropped at the panic in the woman’s voice. Did the terror that was motherhood ever stop? She had this unrealistic idea that once Audrey was grown, she wouldn’t worry about her as much. But it seemed the fear and worry never went away—because your child is always your child no matter her age.

  “I just saw the news,” the older woman said. “There’s a manhunt on for my son.”

  Elise had met David’s mother one Christmas when she’d come to visit. She was a lovely woman, but nervous and high-strung. “David’s okay,” Elise said with a level voice.

  “Where is he? Can I talk to him?”

  “No, but he’s safe.”

  “How do you know?” Mrs. Gould pulled in a tremulous breath. “I swear, whenever I think things are looking up for him, something happens.” This more to herself than to Elise. “The news said he’s a murder suspect. That’s insane. David catches murderers. He doesn’t commit murders.”

  “It’s a misunderstanding. I can’t go into the details, but I’m hoping we get this straightened out soon.”

  They talked more. Elise tried to reassure her, but it was hard when you had no reassurance to give.

  “You’ll let me know as soon as you hear anything, won’t you?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  Elise ended the call.

  CHAPTER 35

  Strata Luna sat up in bed. “There it is again.” A strange sound, coming from the bowels of her house.

  “Rats,” Jackson Sweet said, stroking her thigh. “They swim the river and enter through the tunnels.”

  “I’m gonna have a look.” She pushed herself from the bed and slipped into a black gown that covered her from throat to feet. She would have had Javier chec
k on the noise, but she’d sent him away so she and Jackson could have the house to themselves.

  A month ago she wouldn’t have believed she’d ever allow Jackson Sweet into her bed again, but now they were having sex in the middle of the day like two teenagers.

  She was gettin’ soft. She didn’t like that. Jackson did that to her. He’d done that to her in the past. Made her weak; made her lose her resolve. Gave her a baby that was crazy. Got her acting like any other lovesick woman. And she wasn’t any other woman.

  “Stay,” she told him when she saw he planned to join her in her search for the noise. He was as helpless as a kitten. How he’d managed to walk to her house she wasn’t sure. A mojo, most likely. But his condition hadn’t kept him from coming inside her while she sat astride him. “Stay in bed, weak man.”

  He laughed, but the sound was breathy and spoke of illness.

  After finding out about his cancer, she’d tried another round of roots, different roots, but nothing seemed to be helping her conjurer man, and she was about to sacrifice an animal, even though she didn’t like killing of any kind. She’d had enough of killing. But for Jackson Sweet, she’d kill.

  “What time is it?” he asked, looking around the room for a clock. “I have to meet Audrey to walk her home from school.”

  “You’re too sick to walk a girl home. What she need that for?”

  “Protection.”

  Now it was Strata Luna’s turn to laugh. “Darlin’, you couldn’t protect a spider.”

  “Maybe I could if you’d quit draining my strength.”

  “I’m going to the tunnels.” She felt a flash of pain at the memory of what had happened down there, and how her own flesh and blood had betrayed her.

  “Don’t think about her,” Jackson said, aware of her thoughts.

  They’d always been that way, from the first time her eyes fell upon him and he’d made her warm between her thighs, back when he was young and strong and everybody feared him. Then he went away, and Strata Luna never stopped thinking about him, sometimes with hatred, sometimes with despair.

  Now here he was, in her bed, tamed like a sick animal was tamed, his hair long and gray, his arms unable to hold her the way they once had. But what remained was that aura of power and inner strength, and his eyes, when he looked at her, were every color, and every color made black.

  Strata Luna would never admit to having love for him. Never. Because Jackson Sweet didn’t live for anybody but himself. Of that Strata Luna was certain. He’d not only turned his back on Elise; he’d given Strata Luna a baby he’d never seen. So now she was careful. She would let him into her bed, but not into her heart. She’d learned her lesson there.

  He watched her with a silence that ran as deep as his soul, then whispered, “Marie.”

  Hearing that name on his lips made her both sad and happy. Nobody but a few cats and dogs knew Strata Luna’s real name was Marie Luna. Her dead daughter, the daughter a police officer killed to save David Gould, had been her namesake.

  Strata Luna used to call her girl “sweet Marie,” a little inside joke since the child had been fathered by Jackson Sweet. Strata Luna might have told him if he’d stuck around, but there hadn’t been much reason after he’d packed his bags and never looked back.

  He’d stopped by and told her he planned to disappear, said men were after him and that his very bones, the bones of a conjurer, were worth a fortune. He’d told her a body would be found and buried on St. Helena Island, and people would say it was the body of Jackson Sweet.

  “My woman—she’s pregnant with my child, and the men who are after me would use her to get to me. So I gotta go. And I gotta die. Once I’m dead, the child will be safe,” he’d said.

  His woman.

  His child. That child being Elise.

  Strata Luna was the other woman. His diversion.

  In that moment, she’d realized she was just the darker and false reflection of his real life, but she wasn’t his real life. And she didn’t have his heart. They’d sought each other out when the moon was full bright and drugs were singing in their young bodies, their souls needing a bit of graveyard dirt on them to satisfy the craving for a life and destiny they’d been too new to fully understand. They were more like sleek black cats born to the same litter under the same broken porch under the same meteor shower.

  He’d come to her, not out of love, but because he’d seen himself in her eyes.

  She’d kept his secret, along with her own. Maybe out of spite, maybe ’cause who needed a man, anyway? But his desertion had planted a root of bitterness deep in her bones. And she wasn’t the only one he’d damaged. Elise Sandburg had suffered too. She and Elise had been twisted by the same wind. How strange and pathetic for a man to cause such suffering just by his very absence. Didn’t seem right.

  Yet despite her resolve, Strata Luna had felt herself softening of late, even before Jackson came knockin’. She figured it was because of Elise. Funny, being friends with a detective—but Elise was different. Elise was Jackson Sweet’s kid. Which had made Elise and her Marie half sisters.

  Think of that. Just think of that.

  If he’d stayed, would things have been different? Would Marie Luna still be alive? Or would he have looked at their daughter, known her evil, and understood that the child couldn’t be allowed to draw another breath?

  These were the thoughts that went through Strata Luna’s head whenever she lay beside the old man with cancer, a man she still ached for even though she didn’t want to.

  She refused to linger, even though he urged her to return to his side. “I’ll be back,” she said, gliding from the bedroom and into the hallway to take the wide, sweeping staircase to the first floor.

  Strata Luna’s mansion had once been a morgue. It was huge and sprawling and too much house for one person, yet at the same time it was everything she needed, because more than anything she needed to lock out the world, and she needed a place to feel safe.

  She’d thought of leaving a few times, but Delilah, her younger daughter, had died here. Sometimes, on still nights, Strata Luna sat next to the fountain and reached for the reflection of the moon and stars just like her beautiful, darling girl had done the night she drowned. And she would feel a sense of peace. No, she would never leave this place.

  The sound she’d heard earlier wasn’t as strong now, almost like a cat scratching, and for a moment she thought Javier could check in the morning. Jackson Sweet was probably right. It was some rabid rat, come up from the Savannah River.

  But the sound persisted.

  She followed another set of steps, these narrow and dark, down to the wine cellar, to the wooden door with the curved top and three two-by-fours so no unwelcome visitors could enter her house through the tunnels.

  “Who’s there?” she demanded.

  “Me.”

  Human. Male. Not a rat. “Who is me?”

  “David. David Gould.”

  Now she recognized the voice. Yankee, with a hint of smooth Savannah drawl.

  She slid the boards from the brackets and tossed them aside. Then she turned the dead bolt and pulled open the door.

  David fell into the cellar, rolled to his back, and blinked at the dim lights. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  If he hadn’t spoken, she might not have believed it was him. His hair and face were covered with a layer of dirt, his white shirt was unbuttoned, sleeve torn, his stomach bare, dress pants caked with mud and filth, a tie wrapped around one bicep.

  “Is that blood?” she asked.

  He tried to look at his arm, gave up, and let his head drop back to the floor, wincing as it hit. “Sorry to be such a pain in the ass. I’ve been shot. I’m pretty sure there’s a BOLO out, and my face is probably plastered on all the news stations, so if you want to call the cops, I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “I don’t have a television.”

  He let out a weak chuckle as he rolled to a sitting position. “Of course you don’t.”

 
; “Come on upstairs. You can get cleaned up, and then I’ll look at your arm.” She held out her hand.

  He eyed it doubtfully. “You’ll get dirty.”

  “Honey, I’m already dirty.”

  He laughed again. The fact that he still had a sense of humor was a good sign.

  He grabbed her hand, and she pulled him to his feet. Once upright, he staggered backward and hit the wall.

  “Stay there.”

  While he leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, she locked and barricaded the door.

  “Put your arm over my shoulder.” She guided him into position, grasping his hand while wrapping her free arm around his waist. “How’s that?” she asked.

  “Cozy.”

  CHAPTER 36

  The morning after David’s escape, Lamont caught up with Elise in the police department parking lot. He’d obviously been waiting for her to arrive—a behavior more in keeping with Jay Thomas’s MO.

  “I’ve got a search warrant for Gould’s apartment and car,” Lamont said with relish. “If the building manager won’t let me in, I’ll break down the door.”

  Elise was sure Lamont would love a display of force. “That won’t be necessary. I have a key,” she said.

  “Knew it.”

  “You really don’t.” She turned around to head back to her car. “I’ll drive.”

  “No need. Avery’s coming with me.”

  “I’ll drive,” Elise repeated, firmly this time. No way was she turning Lamont loose in David’s apartment with no one to keep an eye on him. She’d seen him with Avery, and Avery was too easily intimidated.

  Moving back across the parking lot, she noticed Jay Thomas’s car wasn’t in its usual place. He typically beat her to the police station no matter how early she arrived. Funny how she so often didn’t notice him when he was around, but she noticed when he was gone. What would his story angle be now, with David on the run?

  It hadn’t happened yet, but she’d agreed, at the mayor’s insistence, to allow Lamont to speak at a press conference scheduled for later in the day. She fully expected the agent to share the DNA results, along with more details of David’s escape. Right now David’s face was plastered all over the local news and would surely be hitting the national media anytime. Once again, Savannah had managed to capture the attention of the rest of the country, and not for being the safest place to live.