Ben sat beside her grave for another hour. Sometimes he’d talk to her while he was there. Sometimes he wouldn’t. This evening his thoughts were filled with images of Bill Tatum on that boat. He couldn’t understand how one family member would do such a horrific thing to another. What could Bill have possibly said that would cause his son to grab that hammer and smash his father’s head? Maybe he already had the hammer in his hand, but he probably hadn’t. He’d probably walked the length of the boat to get the hammer. He’d opened the hatch at the stern, reached inside for the hammer, pulled it out and then walked back across the boat to his father, who was probably at the controls like he usually was. The entire act would have taken around sixty seconds, but that was more than enough time for Bobby to realize his intentions were madness. There was also the significant damage to his father’s face. It must have been the result of numerous blows with the hammer, maybe a dozen or more. How could Bobby have kept swinging that hammer as he saw the pain and injury it was doing to his father? He’d known Bobby to be a hot-headed man. It was now obvious that he was more than that. He was a sociopath. How else could someone commit such a horrible crime?
Ben tried to push his thoughts of the Tatums to the back of his mind. He turned to his wife’s gravestone and silently read each letter of her name, her date of birth, and her date of death. His name would be beside hers one day.
They’d had no children, and the nearest relatives lived over two hours away. He wasn’t really close to any members of his family or hers. His wife had been all he’d ever needed. It was doubtful anyone would ever come to this gravesite after he was gone. He thought of his body lying under the ground beside hers. Their lives were ultimately so short. No one would remember they’d ever been here.
***
Alex Penfield looked at the stack of bills on his kitchen table. Most of them were already overdue. He needed to face a harsh reality: the odd investigative job here and there wasn’t going to get him anywhere close to paying his debts. He needed to find a better way to market his services, or he needed to find a new line of work. The problem was that he’d always been a cop. He didn’t know anything else, nor did he really have any other interests. He thought back to his last day on the job. The Hampton Police Department hadn’t fired him nor had they asked him to resign, at least not officially. He’d gotten the message, though: It would be best if you left.
He understood them. His last case had embarrassed the department. Hell, it had embarrassed him. How could he have not seen what his own partner had been up to? They’d worked together for years, yet he’d come to realize that he truly didn’t know her. Maybe it wasn’t possible to ever know anyone. Maybe humans were even mysteries to themselves. His partner had taken the lives of two innocent people. She’d even tried to take the life of a third. He was someone Penfield had personally brought into the investigation. It was true that he’d eventually solved the case and uncovered his partner’s guilt, but not before it was too late.
Then there had been that book that was published to tell the story of what happened on Ruckman Road. It had been his idea to tell it. He thought the truth needed to get out there, but no one had believed him.
Penfield turned back to the stack of bills and leafed through them one more time. He’d already eliminated every service he thought he could live without, including cable television. He’d rationalized keeping his internet service since he deemed it a necessity for his job search. He would have to cancel it and start a daily trek to the public library. The mortgage was the largest bill, of course. He was one month behind on that bill. He knew the bank wouldn’t go into foreclosure until he’d missed three months in a row, so he questioned whether he should just skip another month and get caught up on the electric and gas bills.
He opened his laptop and logged onto a real estate website. He searched for recently sold houses in his neighborhood to have a better understanding of what he could expect to get for his house. The results were depressing. It would barely cover what he owed, even if he could sell his house.
He opened up a second page on his web browser and started to type in the address for a popular job site. The website appeared on the screen, but Penfield grew depressed after searching the job listings for just a few minutes.
He then clicked over to the site for the local newspaper. The headline talked about proposed tolls for the local highways. They were called “Hot Tolls,” which was a term he’d never heard about. He read farther into the article and learned they referred to charging tolls for certain sections of a roadway during rush hour. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one with money problems.
He was about to close the web browser when he saw another article that piqued his interest. The headline referenced the murder of a local waterman. Penfield clicked on the story and saw a photograph of a boat at a Gloucester marina. He read the accompanying story and learned the victim’s name was Bill Tatum. He then read about the arrest of the victim’s son. It didn’t surprise him. The murderer was usually someone the victim knew well. It was a depressing notion, but it was a hard truth Penfield saw reinforced over and over again during his many years as a detective.
Penfield looked back at the photograph. That’s when he noticed the name of the boat. He double clicked on the photo to enlarge it, and then he zoomed into the name: Sally. He instantly remembered Atwater’s words. He said he’d heard the name Sally echo across the surface of the water in his dreams. He’d never seen the woman, though. Was that because it wasn’t a woman at all?
Penfield suddenly felt foolish. It was nothing more than a crazy coincidence. Besides, Penfield had no knowledge of the victim. He’d never even heard the name Bill Tatum before, and it wasn’t like he was going to get the case. Private investigators rarely got murder investigations. It was usually missing persons or divorce cases like the last assignment that had ended in a parking lot brawl.
Penfield shut his laptop and walked back to the master bathroom. He started the shower and stripped off his clothes. He looked down at his side. The pink scar from where he’d been shot years ago was still as visible as ever. His side had started hurting again that morning. He’d chalked it up to the strain of the fight with Phillips and his friend, but maybe that wasn’t it. His side often hurt at random times, even when he hadn’t physically exerted himself. Penfield climbed into the shower and let the steaming water wash over his body. It felt good, but it did nothing to ease the pain.
***
Ben left his wife’s gravesite well after the sun had set. He made the twenty-minute drive back to his house. The rain had started while he was still at the cemetery. It wasn’t a hard rain, but the light drizzle somehow added to the misery of his day. He parked his car inside his garage and made his way into his house. The heat instantly hit him. The temperature seemed unbearably hot. Perhaps it just felt that way because of his heavy coat and his body’s acclimation to the cold as he’d sat in the damp graveyard.
He made his way through the kitchen and the adjoining den. He walked into the hallway, which led to the bedrooms. The thermostat was in the hallway, just beside the master bedroom door. He looked at the setting and saw the temperature was set to ninety degrees. He didn’t know how that could have possible happened. He was the only one who lived in the house, and he had a habit of never putting the temperature setting above seventy degrees during the winter. He didn’t see how the small switch had moved so far to the right of the thermostat. He adjusted the lever so it would be back at seventy.
He walked into his bedroom and stripped off his coat, which he tossed on a chair in the corner. Sweat now formed on his head and under his arms. He took off his tie and dress shirt so that he was only wearing his undershirt and dress pants. He was still blazing hot, so he walked into the bathroom and turned on the sink. He placed his wrists under the cold water. It cooled his body down a little but not much. He grabbed a towel beside the sink and soaked it in the water. He turned off the faucet, squeezed the excess water out of the towel, and
placed it on the back of his neck. It felt good against his hot skin. He walked back into the kitchen to get something to drink. He grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and drank it in one long gulp.
He thought again about the thermostat. He just couldn’t understand how it had moved. He was about to walk into the den when he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He removed his phone and looked at the display. It was a local area code, but he didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello.”
“What did you think of this morning? Did it remind you of anyone?” the male voice asked.
The voice sounded muffled, as if the person had a wad of cotton balls in his mouth.
“Who is this?” Ben asked.
“The blood wouldn’t stop pouring out of his skull. It was everywhere.”
“Bobby?”
“He told you he didn’t do it. Why didn’t you believe him?”
“Who is this?”
“My father never cared for me. He couldn’t wait to get rid of me once I started to change. My death wasn’t an accident, but you already knew that. Didn’t you?”
“There’s no way in hell I’m going to believe you’re Jimmy Tatum.”
He got no response. Ben looked at the phone display again and saw that the call had ended. He was about to phone his department and ask for a trace on the number, but then he heard a car drive by outside. The noise of the tires on the wet pavement were much louder than they should have been.
Ben walked toward the front of the house. He exited the den and saw that the front door was open. The outside light illuminated the heavy rain that fell on the front porch. Ben had come inside the house through the garage, which led to the kitchen door. He definitely hadn’t opened the front door since the previous day, and he was always good about locking it. Someone was in his house. There was no other explanation. It was also the answer to how the thermostat had been moved.
Ben walked quickly back to the kitchen where he’d left his service weapon. He saw a man standing behind the counter. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he wore a brown hooded sweatshirt and jeans. His dark hair was long, and it stuck out from underneath the edges of the hood.
“You betrayed me,” the man said.
It was the same muffled voice he’d heard a second ago on the cell phone.
Ben took a quick glance at the small table in front of the counter. He could see his gun was still in its holster.
“Who are you?” Ben asked.
“Why do you ask the question when you already know the answer. My brother told you he saw me on that boat. He told you what I did.”
“I don’t know who the hell you are, but you sure as hell aren’t Bobby Tatum’s brother.”
The man lowered his hood. His hair still covered most of his face.
“I saw you at the cemetery. I know who you were visiting. Tell me, Ben, where do you think she is now? Do you think you’ll join her soon?”
“Get out of my house.”
The man pulled his hair back, and Ben recoiled at the sight of his face. Half of it was missing, and the outline of his teeth and jaw could be seen through the thin flesh.
“Do you believe him now?”
“Jimmy?” Ben asked.
The man reached under his hooded sweatshirt and removed a hammer. Ben rushed for the table to grab his gun, but the man climbed onto the counter and jumped down at Ben as he lunged for the table. He struck Ben in the back of his head with the hammer. Ben crashed into the edge of the table. He could have sworn he’d actually heard his skull split open when the hammer had struck it. He slumped to the ground just as the man stepped closer to him.
The man leaned down and put his hideous face just a few inches from Ben’s.
“Do you believe him now?” he asked again.
Ben tried to speak, but no words came out of his mouth. He looked down at the tiled floor, and saw the lines of the tile begin to spin and blur. Then he felt the hammer crash into the side of his face. He was about to lose consciousness when the hammer struck him a third time. Everything went black.
Chapter 7
Ben
Eight, November.
Penfield climbed out of bed. It was only five-thirty in the morning, and he doubted he’d slept more than two or three hours throughout the night. He walked into the den and grabbed his laptop off the table in front of the sofa. He logged back onto the website for the local news. The story had moved on the page since the previous night, but he still managed to find it. He clicked on the story and saw the photograph of the boat in the marina. He read the name of the marina and did a Google search to find the address for it. He guessed it was about a forty-five minute drive from his house to the marina.
Penfield closed the computer and walked back to the bathroom. He took a long shower. He spent most of the time standing still and letting the hot water hit his side where he’d been shot. The pain had increased throughout the night, and now he had trouble standing upright.
He climbed out of the shower, dried off, and got dressed. He’d walked into the kitchen to grab his car keys before he truly knew what he was doing. He walked outside and saw there was still a light rain in the air. He pulled his coat tighter around his body, but it did little to keep out the cold wind. He climbed into his car, turned the heat on full blast, and backed out of the driveway.
Despite being early in the morning, the traffic was still heavy. Many of the people living on the Virginia Peninsula worked government and military jobs and tended to get an early start. It had been a long time since Penfield had driven to Gloucester, despite it just being on the other side of the river.
He drove down Route 17 and crossed the Coleman Bridge. He drove a short distance after the bridge and then made a right turn onto Guinea Road. He pulled into the marina’s gravel parking lot several minutes after that.
It had stopped raining by the time he arrived at his destination, but the sky was still a depressing blanket of dark gray clouds that were threatening to open up again at any moment. Penfield walked to the edge of the parking lot and looked toward the water. It was a large marina with several rows of boat slips. He walked down to the docks. It didn’t take him long to spot the boat in question since the entrance to the slip was draped with yellow crime scene tape.
Penfield walked down the dock and stopped just beside the tape. He looked at back of the boat and saw the name “Sally.” He leaned forward and saw an inch or so of red water floating on the boat’s deck.
He turned just as he heard heavy footsteps on the deck.
“Did you know Bill Tatum?” the waterman asked.
He looked to be in his late thirties and was of average height. He wore the traditional clothes of a waterman, and his short, dirty-blonde hair was tucked under a worn baseball cap.
“No, can’t say I ever met him. How well did you know him?”
“We worked these waters together for years.”
“What happened to him?” Penfield asked.
“They say his son killed him. I just can’t believe it.”
“Why is that?”
“The guy doesn’t have it in him.”
“Which one of these boats is yours?”
The waterman nodded toward a boat at the far end of the dock.
“That little beauty on the end,” he said.
Penfield looked at the boat. It looked like it had seen better days, but he still understood the man’s pride in it.
“What do you go out for?”
“Oysters. Not much out there anymore. Don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”
Penfield followed the waterman’s eyes as he turned and looked at the deck of the Sally.
“Don’t make no sense.”
“It never makes sense. Don’t try to figure it out,” Penfield said.
The waterman paused as if he were still trying to understand Bobby Tatum’s actions. Then he turned back to Penfield.
“You have yourself a good day.”
&nbs
p; Penfield nodded.
“Good luck out there.”
“Thanks. I’ll need it.”
Penfield watched the waterman walk down the dock and hop onto the back of his boat. Penfield turned and looked once more at the red water floating on the boat. It looked like a significant amount of blood had been spilled. The victim had probably been stabbed, maybe even had his throat slit.
A few drops of rain hit his shaved head. He looked up and saw the clouds had gotten even darker in the last minute. He turned when he heard the waterman start the engine on his boat. He watched him cast off the lines and ease the boat out of the slip.
Penfield walked back to his car. He unlocked the door with his remote. He turned and looked back toward the bay once more. The setting was exactly as Henry Atwater had described it. A bay with dark water surrounded by a marsh. The woman’s name was there as well. Had Atwater just gotten lucky? Had he just spoken in general terms, and Penfield had gone looking to prove him right? It couldn’t be. The name Sally was too specific. What did it all mean, though?
He opened the car door but then stopped when he heard sirens in the distance. Their wails echoed off the surface of Mobjack Bay. It sounded like several emergency vehicles. Something serious had just happened.
***
Emma finished the rest of her morning coffee and placed the mug in the kitchen sink. She ran a quick blast of water into the mug and swished it around. Then she placed it on a towel beside the sink. The towel was already covered with a few plates and several pieces of silverware. It would have taken her all of thirty seconds to put them away, but she just didn’t feel like doing it.
Dead Rise: An Alex Penfield Novel Page 4