Resurrection Blues

by James, Harper

  ‘There are none so dead as those who don’t want to be alive.’

  It was a typical Crow-style comment, identical to the way he described Sarah’s disappearance.

  There are none so lost as those who will not be found.

  The implication was the same in both cases. Lauren and Sarah had each chosen their destiny and carried it through, to hell with the consequences and everybody left behind. They both shared something else in common. Evan had no idea what had happened to either of them.

  ‘I knew the Medical Examiner, Ivanovsky,’ Crow said. ‘Came across him in the course of my work, I mean.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. Perfectly competent.’

  ‘How do you explain the dental records? The car, the bracelet, okay, anybody could’ve been driving her car and wearing her bracelet. It’s a bit harder to put her teeth in while you borrow the car.’

  Crow put the knife down and stood with his hands flat on the kitchen counter. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Ivanovsky made a mistake. Or he—’

  ‘Deliberately falsified the autopsy report?’

  Evan shrugged.

  ‘It’s got to be one or the other.’

  ‘Mistake, then. Why would he falsify the report? There’s only one thing that’s certain as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘She’s alive.’

  ‘Yes. And that means she wants everyone to think she’s dead. She doesn’t want to be found.’

  Just like Sarah as far as you’re concerned.

  Crow knew what he was thinking, it would be hard not to. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘You want me to look into any of this? I can check out Ivanovsky easily enough.’

  ‘What, as well as looking into Adamson’s story?’

  For a split-second Crow looked like he might stab Evan with the kitchen knife. Evan had already noticed the dexterity with which he handled the blade as he prepared the food.

  ‘I can walk down the street and chew gum at the same time as well, you know.’

  ‘Okay. Fine by me.’

  ‘One last question,’ Crow said.

  For once, Evan was ahead of him. His hand was already moving.

  ‘What do I have to do to get you to pour me another glass of wine?’

  Chapter 26

  ‘TAKE A LOOK AT THAT,’ Levi said, pushing a piece of paper across the table.

  He’d woken Evan up at an ungodly hour demanding they meet immediately. He had something important to show him, something that wouldn’t wait. Evan dragged himself out of bed wishing he hadn’t let Crow tempt him with the offer of more Pappy Van Winkle’s after dinner. After a quick shower that didn’t make a dent in his headache, he made his way to a diner a couple of blocks away. Levi was already there.

  Evan picked the sheet of paper up. It was a printout of an email.

  Please stop. You don’t know what you’re getting into.

  That was it. It wasn’t signed. He turned it over. Nothing on that side.

  Even if his head hadn’t been thumping, he doubted he’d have done the cartwheels up and down the diner Levi seemed to be expecting. He shrugged, talk to me.

  Levi gave him a look that he remembered his parents using at school report time.

  ‘It’s from Lauren.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Levi jabbed his finger at the printout, the excitement on his face giving way to irritation.

  ‘Look at the email address.’

  Evan looked.

  Annabel_Lee_1988

  He didn’t think it was the booze from last night causing him to be particularly slow but Levi clearly expected some kind of aha moment.

  ‘That’s Lauren’s email address?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Do you know anyone called Annabel Lee? Is she a friend of Lauren’s? Someone who’d send an email on her behalf?’

  Levi blew a great huff of breath out of his nose.

  ‘Have you got the bracelet?’

  Evan fished it out of his pocket. He was sure everything would be explained soon and then he could get back to his bed. Levi snatched it out of his hand. He turned it and pointed to the inscription.

  We loved with a love that was more than love

  ‘Edgar Allen Poe,’ Evan said.

  ‘Yes. But what’s the poem called?’

  Evan pretended to think for a moment.

  ‘Love?’

  He knew it wasn’t, but what the hell. It was too early for guessing games.

  ‘Annabel Lee!’ Levi shouted.

  Luckily the diner was deserted at six thirty in the morning. The few customers who were there had the sense to ignore all the other sort of people who’d be in a diner at that unearthly time on a Sunday morning.

  Evan dutifully experienced a minor aha moment.

  ‘And Lauren was born in 1988.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Levi threw himself back into his seat, his breath bursting from him like air from a punctured tire. Jesus, that was hard work was written all over his face.

  ‘Did you reply?’

  ‘It bounced back. This’—he jabbed the sheet of paper again—‘arrived during the middle of the night. By the time I saw it, the account had been closed down.’

  ‘And you think it’s from Lauren?’

  ‘Yes. Which means she’s alive.’

  Evan had something a lot more conclusive than a cryptic email received in the middle of the night. He talked Levi through the visit to the jewelry store, then voiced the undeniable conclusion, ‘Lauren faked her own death.’

  It was clear from Levi’s face that he was struggling to decide what to ask first—how or why? In the end he settled on the easiest to answer—from an emotional point of view.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘She’d have needed help but the end result is it was somebody else’s body in the car. Either the medical examiner made a mistake or he was in on it.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  Evan shook his head at all the same questions he’d been asking himself.

  ‘And Lauren would need a new identity,’ Levi said.

  ‘It’s difficult, but it’s not impossible. It’s easy enough to get a replacement birth certificate if you’ve got all the pertinent information. You can even do it online. After that it’s a domino effect, each step based on the validity of the documents obtained in the preceding step. Of course, the easiest way is to take on the identity of someone who won’t be missed.’

  ‘Like the body in the car.’

  Levi was having trouble processing all the information and the implications that he hadn’t known the first thing about his wife, what she was capable of. But dwelling on the past wasn’t going to get them anywhere.

  ‘Getting back to the email,’ Evan said. ‘Assuming it’s from Lauren, she wants you to know it’s from her. She knows you’d pick up on it. But she doesn’t want anybody else to know it’s her. That means she’s worried her normal email account has been hacked. So, what do you want to do? She knows you’re trying to find her. Now she’s asked you to stop. You don’t know what you’re getting into means it’s dangerous. You’d be getting in over your head.’

  Levi ran his fingers through his hair. It was too early for difficult decisions.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s got to be because of the men looking for her. She’s scared you’ll lead them to her.’

  Levi choked back a nervous laugh, looked around the diner as if they could be summoned merely by speaking of them out loud. He tugged at his shirt collar, rolled his neck.

  ‘They fit the category of not knowing what I’m getting into. There are some experiences you don’t need to experience first-hand.’

  Evan mouthed a silent Amen to that.

  ‘No. I’m not going to stop now. That would be like abandoning her, leaving her to those guys, whoever they are. She’s trying to protect me with that stuff about not knowing what I’m getting into. That’s not how it’s m
eant to work. I should be protecting her. If she’s in trouble, I’ve got to do everything I can to help.’

  It was a nice speech for a Sunday morning, uplifting, as good as going to church without having to get dressed up. Evan nodded like he’d have been disappointed if he’d said anything else. Which he would. He’d have carried on with the case whatever Levi said.

  ‘Good. Does her old email address still work?’

  ‘No idea. I haven’t shut it down. It was a free one. I forgot all about it.’

  ‘Try emailing it. Open a new email account, call it Annabel Lee with your date of birth. Maybe she still checks her old account even if she doesn’t send mail from it. After she emailed you and immediately closed down the account so you couldn’t reply, she might be expecting it.’

  Levi smiled wistfully.

  ‘That’s exactly what she’d expect me to do. She’d know it would drive me crazy.’

  ‘Arrange to meet up. Work on the basis that all the email accounts are monitored. You have to think of somewhere you both know and refer to it in a way that nobody else would understand.’

  Levi nodded, encouraged.

  ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  ‘Except it can’t be anything too obvious. Like where you went for your honeymoon. Or the hotel you went to every year for her birthday.’

  ‘We didn’t—sorry, that was just an example, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Uh-huh. You get the picture.’

  Levi wasn’t looking quite so encouraged now.

  ‘These people aren’t stupid—’

  ‘Okay, okay. I get the message. I’ll give it some thought.’

  ‘One more thing. Have you ever heard the name Waits? He’s the guy in the photograph with Lauren.’

  Levi thought for a few seconds, but he wasn’t really putting his mind to it, he was still thinking about a secret location.

  ‘No. Have you got a first name?’

  ‘No, just Waits.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Levi said vaguely, gripping his chin between his finger and thumb. ‘Got it!’

  Evan watched him as he dipped his finger in the dregs of his coffee and drew something on the table top. He turned his head to look.

  ‘Eighty?’ he said.

  Levi had drawn the number 80. He was nodding to himself, a grin plastered across his face.

  ‘That means something does it?’ Evan said.

  ‘It does to me and Lauren. And to other Edgar Allen Poe fans.’

  ‘What was it, his age?’

  Levi shook his head.

  ‘No. He was only forty when he died. They buried him in an unmarked grave at first. Then, twenty-six years later, he was moved and a fancy marble monument erected, the one you can see today. But before that, the sexton of the church placed a sandstone marker on the grave. This is where it gets really weird. The only thing engraved on it was the number 80.’

  ‘Not even his name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why eighty?’

  ‘Nobody knows. It’s just one of the weird things about his grave.’

  ‘Okay. It sounds obscure enough.’

  ‘That’s not all. When they finally erected a proper marble monument, it was too big for the original burial site, so they put it in the front corner of the cemetery. Most people looking for Poe’s grave would go there. But he was originally buried in his grandfather’s lot, number twenty-seven. There’s another headstone there marking the original grave, but it’s behind the church at the back.’

  ‘And Poe fans would know all this?’

  ‘Lauren does,’ Levi said. ‘If she gets an email from an Annabel Lee address with the number 80, she’ll know it’s from me and what it means.’

  ‘If you say so. It’s worth a try.’

  ‘I could make it even clearer. He died in 1849. I could use Annabel_Lee_1849.’

  ‘Okay. One more thing. Where’s the cemetery?’

  ‘Westminster Burying Grounds. In Baltimore.’

  Evan nodded to himself. It could be worse. Then a thought that later he could never properly explain popped into his over-active mind. He’d never been to Baltimore. He wondered if Guillory had.

  Chapter 27

  EVA RIVERA, THE AUNT who raised Lauren, was still very much alive. Evan caught her on her doorstep as she returned from Mass on Sunday morning. He guessed she was mid-sixties, still attractive and dolled up in her Sunday best, even if her skirt was a little short for her age—and church. He was old fashioned that way.

  Despite her returning from an institution that very much believed in reincarnation of the soul if not the body, he made no mention of Lauren when he introduced himself.

  ‘I’m working for Levi Stone,’ he said instead.

  The name drew a blank at first. Then he remembered Levi had admitted he didn’t even know if Lauren’s aunt was still alive. It seemed reasonable after five years of no contact that the name meant nothing to her.

  ‘Lauren’s husband.’

  Eva’s grip on her handbag tightened at the mention of Lauren’s name. She tried a small smile.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I’d like to ask you about her parents.’

  ‘What are you doing for Levi?’

  It wasn’t what he was expecting. And he didn’t have an answer.

  ‘Can we talk inside?’

  She weighed up the question for a moment. He put his best aw-shucks look on his face, the one that would have Guillory poking her finger in his eye. And rightly so. But it worked for Aunt Eva. She opened the door and invited him in.

  ‘Is Mr Rivera—’ he started to say to buy himself more time as he tried to think of what he might be doing for Levi.

  ‘We’re separated. And good riddance. I haven’t set eyes on him for five years.’

  The vitriol behind the words surprised him. And the specific reference to five years intrigued him. That would have put their separation at the same time as Lauren’s faked death and Evan was a firm believer that there are no coincidences, only patterns we do not see.

  ‘I’d divorce the bastard if I could,’ Eva said. ‘but the Catholic church doesn’t allow it.’

  ‘That’s why you’ve kept his name.’

  If he was hoping to catch her out and she’d say, no I didn’t, Rivera is my maiden name, his name is Waits, then he was disappointed.

  ‘No, it’s better than mine, that’s all. Johnson. I got teased more than enough for one lifetime at school. Show us your johnson, Eva. I couldn’t wait to get rid of that name, no way was I going back to it.’

  She said it in a joking manner, but her eyes didn’t see the humor. He nodded like he knew how it was, still trying to think of a good reason for his visit. She took him into the kitchen, indicated a wooden chair at the table. She stood hipshot, with her right elbow resting on her left fist, fingering the flesh behind her ear. Maybe the facelift stitches were itching. He stayed standing. It was going to be one of those conversations.

  ‘You didn’t say what you were doing for Levi.’

  The irritation in her voice from talking about her husband was still there. Evan only had himself to blame. He brought it up. The tone of voice and aggressive stance made him think Mr Rivera had made a good decision. He opened his mouth and gave his tongue free rein.

  ‘He doesn’t know anything about Lauren’s family.’

  ‘I know he doesn’t. He was never interested.’

  He was reminded of his visit to the Medical Examiner, Ivanovsky. That conversation also started out with Ivanovsky claiming to know nothing about the case, and then, shortly afterwards, he knew it all. Eva Rivera hadn’t recognized Levi’s name but now she seemed to have a very definite—and negative—recollection of him.

  ‘Why now?’ she said, maintaining the level of aggression in her voice.

  A very good question.

  Any minute now he expected to see her foot tapping.

  He shrugged, put on another, watered-down aw-shucks expression. This one was meant to say, i
t’s just one of those silly things.

  ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  He cleared his throat, thrust his hands in his pockets to stop his fingers from getting numb in the chilly atmosphere.

  ‘Five years ago, my own wife disappeared. Five years last week, in fact. On the anniversary’—he did the air quotes thing with his fingers—‘I was in a bar, drowning my sorrows. Levi was there, asked me if I was okay. We got talking. I told him all about it. But I wasn’t so drunk I couldn’t tell something was upsetting him, and it wasn’t my story. That’s when he told me about Lauren dying five years ago. At about the same time Sarah disappeared. That’s my wife.’

  Eva was nodding along but her face hadn’t softened any. The lips were still a tight line, an expression on her face that would turn milk sour.

  Good call, Mr Rivera.

  ‘He told me he knew nothing about Lauren’s family. I thought that was sad. Your wife’s gone and you’re left with this nagging feeling you didn’t really know her when she was there. And now it’s too late.’

  He needed to wrap this up soon. He was depressing himself. What started out as a ploy to try to get this tight-lipped old woman to open up to him had somehow been turned on its head. Under the pretext of talking about Levi, he was baring his soul to her.

  ‘I’m a private investigator. I said I’d find out about his wife’s family for him. I told him I’d do it for free because of the similarity. It’s the sort of thing I’d like someone to do for me.’

  He spread his hands. So here I am.

  If you took a phrase like what a crock and turned it into a facial expression, that’s what Aunt Eva looked like now. At least she was polite enough to not laugh out loud.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’ve barged in here and started talking about Lauren, not thinking about how painful it must be for you. It’s not just about Levi. I guess we both sort of forgot that. I’ve taken up enough of your time.’

  He took a step towards the hallway.

  She didn’t say anything.

  He took another one.

  Hey, I always walk this slowly.

  One more, little step. He was almost out of the room.

  ‘Sit down, will you, and stop pretending you’re leaving,’ she said. ‘You’re making me feel uncomfortable.’

  His ass was on that chair in a flash. She fished a pack of Gitanes out of her bag and pulled out a chair for herself. She dropped heavily into it, offered him the pack. He shook his head.