Dead in the Water

by Annelise Ryan

  I shrug. The truth is there’s no way to know for sure. But at least we know the cases are connected and that might help us find more clues. Hurley takes out his phone and calls Bob Richmond. After filling him in on Arnie’s findings, he says, “I need you to dig up anything you can find on Keith Lundberg, and Jeremy Prince. And dig deep. I’m starting to get a really bad feeling about this case.”

  CHAPTER 21

  It takes Jonas nearly an hour to dust the interior surfaces of Carmichael’s car—as well as some of the exterior surfaces and the trunk—and when he’s done, he has over fifty different sets of prints.

  “We need to get a set from Carmichael for comparison,” Hurley says.

  “No problem,” Jonas says. “I have the tablet with me so it should only take a couple of minutes.”

  The tablet is a newfangled gadget the police department has had for a couple of years. It allows them to scan prints directly into a database simply by having a person set his or her hand on the tablet’s screen. As soon as Jonas has packed up all his stuff, we climb the stoop to Carmichael’s back door and Hurley knocks. It takes Carmichael a couple of minutes to answer, and as we wait, Hurley mutters, “I hope the guy didn’t skip out the front on us.”

  Carmichael doesn’t look happy about the fingerprint request, but he complies. His willingness to let us do this, along with examining and printing the inside of his car, makes me think he’s not involved in anything nefarious, at least not knowingly.

  When we’re done, Jonas heads back to the station and his lab. Hurley and I return to his car. Just as Hurley is about to pull out, Alison Miller pulls up alongside us.

  “What did you find out?” she asks when Hurley rolls down his window.

  “Carmichael says he loaned the car to someone else,” Hurley says.

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter since the name is almost certainly a phony.”

  Alison cocks her head to the side and gives him an impatient look. “Come on, Hurley. I promise I won’t print anything you don’t okay first. And I have a lot of resources. I might be able to help you figure out who the guy is.”

  “I don’t want to give it out yet,” Hurley says, soliciting a petulant pout from Alison. “When I’m ready, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Alison is clearly ticked and I can’t say I blame her. She did what we asked of her and now Hurley is cutting her out of the loop. Plus, knowing Alison, it’s a wasted effort. I lean over and whisper into Hurley’s ear.

  “As soon as we leave, she’s going to come back here and knock on Carmichael’s door. She’ll get the name out of him. So you might as well give it to her and appease her. If you make her mad, there’s no telling what she might do.”

  Hurley frowns as he debates what I’ve told him; for a moment, I think he’s going to stick to his guns. But then he sighs and looks back at Alison. “Mattie has convinced me to tell you.”

  Alison looks smugly pleased, and she gives me a little nod of thanks.

  “The guy’s name, at least the one he’s using with Carmichael, is Walter Scott.”

  “Like Sir Walter Scott?” she says, and I nod. “And this Walter Scott guy fits the description of the man the neighbors saw lurking around Hal’s and Tina’s houses?”

  “It would seem so,” Hurley says, his frown deepening.

  “I saw Jonas arrive. I’m guessing that was so you could search for evidence in the car?”

  I have to give Alison credit. She doesn’t miss much.

  “Yes,” Hurley says impatiently. “We didn’t find anything other than some prints, and we haven’t had a chance to run them yet.”

  “Will you let me know if you get a hit?”

  Hurley looks over at me with an expression that implies, “See what you’ve done?” “I’ll let you know as soon as I can,” Hurley says aloud, looking back at Alison and forcing a smile onto his face.

  This seems to satisfy her because she nods. After a moment’s thought, she says, “Okay. And if I find anything, I’ll let you know right away.” With that, she drives off down the street.

  Hurley shakes his head in dismay. “I feel like our arrangement with her is a deal with the devil,” he says.

  “Oh, come on, it’s not that bad. Give her a chance. Besides, we didn’t tell her about the other stuff.”

  “Speaking of which,” Hurley says, “I’m going to have to delve into Carolyn Abernathy’s life a lot deeper,” he says. “If she’s connected to Hal’s case, we need to figure out how, and we need to do it fast.”

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “It seems pretty clear that your father is involved with this somehow, so I think we should start there. It’s time we pay a visit to your mother.” His voice has softened, and I know he understands how difficult all of this is for me.

  “I have an idea about that,” I say. And then I share it with him.

  “It’s a good plan, but when it’s all said and done, your mother is going to be pissed at you.”

  “It won’t be the first time,” I say with a sigh. “And if things play out the way I think they will, it probably won’t be the last.”

  Hurley nods solemnly, pulls out of our parking spot, and drives back to the station, where we put our plan in motion. He makes the call to my mother from his car, putting his phone on speaker so I can listen in.

  “Jane,” he says when she answers. “It’s Steve Hurley.”

  “Ah, my future son-in-law,” she says with a distinct tone of disappointment in her voice. Marrying a cop is a definite climb down the social and financial ladder in my mother’s mind; and it’s a big fall, given that marrying a doctor was, in her mind, the pinnacle of my marital success. She still can’t understand why I divorced David just because he cheated on me. To her, dalliances are a fact of life and not worth the loss of stature I sustained by leaving David. It’s a moot point now, since David has remarried, tying the knot with Patty Volker, the woman who, at one time, was our insurance agent.

  “I need to speak with you rather urgently on a matter involving a case I’m looking into,” Hurley says. “And since it involves your ex-husband, Mattie’s father, I think it would be best if we discussed it without Mattie’s knowledge.”

  There is a long, silent pause on the other end of the line before my mother says, “I can’t imagine what help I can be, given that I haven’t seen or heard from the man in years.”

  “It’s regarding a cold case, one that happened decades ago, around the time he left you, in fact. We have uncovered some evidence to suggest he was involved.” This isn’t true, but we need to come up with a way to get my mother to cooperate, and Hurley is about to tighten the screw. “There’s also evidence to suggest you might have been involved.”

  “Me? That’s ridiculous.”

  “I’m hoping it is, but the DA is talking about having you arrested. I’m hoping, given our connections, to be able to clear you. But if I can’t, you may be spending some time in a jail cell in the near future.”

  I hear a gasp on the other end and can’t help but smile. A jail cell is my mother’s worst nightmare, not because she’s afraid of being incarcerated, per se, but because she is a raging germophobe. In her mind, sitting in a jail cell is akin to eating out of a petri dish at the CDC.

  “I suppose you can come by to talk,” she says. “But I’m telling you, I don’t know anything.”

  “Actually, I need you to come down here to the station,” Hurley says. “I need to record our conversation for the record.”

  This elicits an even bigger sigh from my mother. In addition to her fear of germs, or perhaps because of it, she also has a touch of agoraphobia and hates to leave her house. Sensing her hesitation, Hurley ramps things up a notch. “The DA is moving ahead pretty quickly on this—so the sooner, the better.”

  “Fine,” my mother says, the irritation clear in her voice. “I can be there in thirty minutes. Will that do?”

  “It will. Just tell the front desk that you’r
e here to talk to me and they’ll bring you on back. See you in thirty.” He disconnects the call and looks over at me with a tired smile. “You’re on,” he says.

  “Wish me luck.” I lean over and give him a kiss, and then we climb out of his car. Hurley heads into the station while I walk around and get back into the car on the driver’s side. Doing what I need to do will be difficult with my hearse. It tends to get noticed.

  Seven minutes later, I’m parked down the street from my mother’s house. Her car is still in the driveway and I’m relieved to see that the car of her live-in partner, William, isn’t there. It’s a weekday and William (“Not ‘Bill,’” he will stress, should you try the diminutive version of his name) is an accountant who keeps regular office hours. William met my mother after I fixed the two of them up on the heels of a disastrous blind date I had with him. He’s as big a germophobe as my mother, and their mutual quirk has proven to be good relationship glue. They’ve been living together for over two years now, despite the twelve-year difference in their ages. I’m glad William isn’t home. He’s a sweet guy, but even so, I doubt he’d cooperate if he knew what I was about to do.

  Several minutes into my wait, my phone rings. I think it’s Hurley checking to see how things are going—if they are going—but it’s Arnie.

  “What’s up, Arnie?”

  “Just wanted you to know you’re freaking brilliant,” he says, making me smile. “I checked the inside of Carolyn Abernathy’s gloves and her skin cream, and both tested positive for huge amounts of concentrated nicotine.”

  “You’re the one who’s freaking brilliant,” I tell him. “If you hadn’t discovered the whole nicotine connection, to begin with, I never would have focused on the gloves and the cream. And we might never have known the two cases were connected. I’m wondering if our Mr. Lundberg-slash-Prince is a contract killer of some sort.”

  “Any luck finding him?”

  “Not yet. Hurley has Richmond working on it. What are you working on next?”

  “I tried to get Hal’s phone dried out to see if it would work, but no luck so far. However, we did get his phone records, and based on the towers he pinged off of the day before he died, he was in the Chicago suburb of Kenilworth, which just happens to be an enclave for the rich and famous. Don’t know if it’s relevant to anything, but figured I’d pass it along. Also, we found one incoming call to his phone from a month ago that came from Carolyn Abernathy.”

  “Just one call?”

  “Yeah. Just to be sure, I checked Carolyn’s cell and phone records, too, but it was just that one call, lasting about fifteen minutes. However, I did notice a call Carolyn made last week to a Chicago number, and when I checked to see what towers her phone pinged on, she was also in the Kenilworth area. I doubt it’s a coincidence.”

  Even though I know Arnie could find a conspiracy in his morning box of cereal, for once, I’m inclined to agree with him. “I think you’re right,” I tell him. “Have you told Hurley any of this yet?”

  “No, I thought he might be with you.”

  “Not at the moment, he’s at the station. Give him a call.” I see my mother emerge from her front door and get into her car. She’s wearing a surgical face mask, something she rarely goes anywhere without. And I’m certain she has lathered any of her exposed, fair skin with lotion that has an SPF number in the thousands. I inherited my mother’s fair skin, blue eyes, and blond hair, though the rest of me seems to be all my father.

  “I gotta go, Arnie. Keep me posted.” Without further ado, I hang up and watch as my mother backs out into the street and drives off in the opposite direction. I wait a couple of minutes to make sure she doesn’t backtrack, and then get out of Hurley’s car, locking the door behind me.

  I have a key to my mother’s house, so getting inside is easy. Just to be sure, I stop in the foyer and holler out William’s name. The house is deathly quiet, so I make my way to the basement door, which is located in the kitchen. The house is utterly spotless, not a speck of dust to be seen anywhere. I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt when I compare it to the barely controlled disaster zone Hurley’s house has become with four people—a toddler and a teenager among them—living there. Clutter has become a way of life and I can’t remember the last time I actually dusted.

  Most people’s unfinished basements are dark, dank, cobwebby places, but not my mother’s. Her obsession with cleanliness has made its way down here. The concrete floor is spic-and-span clean. Neatly ordered shelves hold excess canned, paper, and dry goods on one side, and similar shelves on the opposite wall contain tools, partially used paint cans, and neatly labeled boxes. In the far corner, off to my right, are the household mechanicals: the furnace, water heater, and water softener, all of them connected to special filtering systems my mother had installed when she moved into the place. In the corner to the left is a washer and dryer, an empty laundry basket sitting in front of them. There are a few random pieces of furniture down here as well: an old wooden rocking chair, some folding chairs, an antique sewing cabinet, and a floor lamp. As I descend the stairs and scan the room, I feel my hopes sink because I don’t see the chest Desi described anywhere. Then I remember the space beneath the stairs.

  I make my way to the door under the stairs, open it, and reach in for a light switch. There isn’t one on the wall, so I wave my hand around until I feel a string hanging from the ceiling. I grab it and give it a pull.

  A bunch of Christmas decorations and an artificial tree—my mother would never allow a real one in her house—take up most of the space. But off to the left, tucked under the lower part of the stairs, I see the chest. I hunch over and get a hold of it, dragging it out of the closet and into the main part of the room. It looks exactly the way Desi described it. The latch on the front is secured by a padlock, and when I pick it up and look at the slot for a key, I can see the end of the paper clip Desi broke off in there. I go back out to the main portion of the room and walk over to the shelves containing tools. There is no hacksaw, so sawing off the padlock isn’t an option. I eye the tools a moment, thinking, before settling on a chisel and hammer. Carrying them back to the chest, I walk around looking for the weak spots before applying the chisel to one end of a hinge. I give the chisel a hard whack with the hammer. Nothing happens. I try again, hitting harder, but still it won’t budge. Two more whacks later, I give up.

  Frustrated, I return to the front of the chest and eye the metal loop that makes up the bottom part of the lock mechanism. There is a slotted, metal flange fitted over it and the padlock is run through the loop over that flange. I put the chisel up against the outer wall of the chest; I’m wedging it between it and the metal loop piece as much as I can. Two whacks of the hammer later, I see the loop start to move. Four more whacks, and it pops loose. I drop the tools on the floor, brace myself, and open the chest.

  CHAPTER 22

  On top of the inner contents are three photo albums. A quick scan of the first one reveals several blank pages in the front of the book, followed by pictures of me as a baby on the back pages. Some of the pictures have my mother in them; some are of me alone. There are several blank spots on the pages, and I feel certain these and the front pages contained pictures of my father at one time.

  The second album contains pictures of my mother and one of my stepfathers, Desi’s father. There are a number of pictures of me and Desi together, covering a span of about two years.

  The third album has pictures of my mother and her third husband. After a quick flip through the pages, I set it aside with the others. Beneath the albums are some boxes. The first one contains several manila envelopes, which turn out to be marriage certificates and divorce papers. Included in these is the marriage certificate for my father. I stare at his name, slightly faded and typed a smidge above the line it was meant to go on: Cedric Novak. At the bottom is his signature, written with tight, angular letters.

  I set the marriage certificate aside and move on to the last package of papers in the envel
ope: the divorce papers ending my mother’s marriage to my father. It’s a surprisingly simple two-page document, dissolving the marriage for irreconcilable differences, conveying full custody of me to my mother, and divesting my father from any claims on all of their shared property, including the house. The same tight, angular signature appears at the bottom of the second page, along with a witness’s signature and a notary stamp. My father’s signature is a stark contrast to my mother’s, which is written in a big, loopy, rounded hand. The effective date of the dissolution is September 2, 1984. I realize, looking at it, that Desi was a month old by then. I go back to the marriage certificate for my mother and Desi’s father and see it’s dated for September 30, 1984. Not only was Desi born before her parents were married, she was born before my parents were divorced. I never knew my mother had something so Jerry Springer-ish in her history and I’m betting Desi never knew, either.

  I move on to the second envelope and find birth certificates for me and Desi, along with our childhood immunization records. The birth certificates confirm the shady circumstances surrounding Desi’s birth. My mother had always led us to believe that she and Desi’s father were married a year before they actually were, and I had always assumed she and my father divorced before Desi was born. Even as I think this, I flash back on my mother carping about how my father disappeared around the time I turned four. And yet Desi was born when I was four. It would seem my mother had moved on to a new man either before my father left us or around the same time, which might explain why he left. All these years, my mother let me believe my father left simply because he didn’t care and didn’t want to be tied down, when the truth was he left because my mother had an affair.

  Feeling a stab of anger, I set the divorce and birth papers aside and move on to the third envelope. It contains all of the report cards Desi and I received from kindergarten through middle school. I chuckle when I look at mine because there’s a definite theme to them. My scholastic subjects—math, science, English, history, reading, and penmanship—always had A’s and B’s, but two other subjects—posture and conduct—consistently got D’s and F’s, with written comments like says inappropriate things, slouches too much, and interrupts all the time. A quick glance at Desi’s report cards reveal she was as good at being a student as she is at being a mother. Not hard to see which one of us was the problem child.