Speak the Dead

by Grant McKenzie

  “You’re bleeding,” said the man, his voice concerned.

  “I need to pee.” Sally tried hard to sound defiant and strong—anything but terrified and weak.

  “Of course.”

  The man reached in, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her from the trunk. Sally was surprised at the strength of him, but relieved to be standing on her own two feet on solid ground.

  The man bent to the nylon strap binding her ankles and cut it with a tiny stainless-steel knife that appeared in his hand as if by magic. When he stood back up, he nodded at a small hedgerow just a few steps from the road and handed her a small travel pack of paper tissue. She held her bound hands out to him, but he made no move to cut those bonds.

  Lowering her hands, Sally glanced around at their location—an empty country road surrounded by endless fields of pasture. There was no other traffic and no signs of any people; she couldn’t even see a farmhouse. She looked down at herself. Not naked, at least. The jeans and T-shirt she was wearing had come from a pile of clean laundry that she had been meaning to put away for the last two days. As such, the pockets wouldn’t even contain a piece of lint never mind anything useful.

  “How long have we been traveling?” she asked.

  “A few hours. I have water and snacks in the car once you’ve done your business. I also have Band-Aids for—”

  Turning her back, Sally closed her ears to the man’s false concern, and trudged to the bushes.

  He never took his eyes off her for a moment.

  There was nowhere to run, Sally thought as she squatted behind the bushes. No homes with telephones, no farmers with guns, no lead-footed drivers with fast cars and a romantic notion to play Prince Charming.

  She reached up to her torn scalp, feeling rivulets of blood beginning to congeal under her fingers.

  What could she do with that? she wondered. Leave traces on the bushes in case Jersey sent a bloodhound to track her down?

  The thought was ridiculous. Jersey wouldn’t even know she was missing. No one would.

  26

  When Sally returned to the car, she was more composed, but thirstier than ever.

  “Would you like to ride up front?” the man asked.

  His voice sounded completely unthreatening, despite having drugged, kidnapped, and driven her to god knew where in the trunk of his goddamn car.

  Sally stared into the man’s one good eye. It was so dark, it was like staring into a black hole; and there was something else, too, she realized, something not quite human.

  “Did you dress me?” she snipped.

  The man nodded.

  “You drug me, too?”

  “I needed you to come with me.”

  “And you couldn’t ask?”

  “Would you have come?”

  “Not without a good reason.”

  The man’s mouth twitched, and a small pool of drool dribbled from the twisted lips. His dead eye looked incredibly sad.

  He said, “I couldn’t risk the detective coming back before I could explain.”

  “Did you hurt him?” Sally asked quickly.

  “I made sure he was distracted. He’s perfectly fine.”

  Sally sighed in relief. “I could use that water.”

  The man opened the car door and ushered her into the front passenger seat. The car was large, a late-model Cadillac with a roomy interior and plush electric seats.

  “There’s just one thing.” The man leaned over as though to fasten her seatbelt, the unmarred side of his face passing so close she could have bit him.

  The nylon strap around her wrists was severed, but before she could enjoy the freedom her left hand was slipped into a metal handcuff that had been chained to a bar under the seat. She opened her mouth to protest but was distracted when the man grabbed her right hand and fastened a handcuff around that wrist, too. The second handcuff was attached to a slightly longer chain, giving her right hand more movement.

  “I apologize,” said the man. “But I must take precautions.” He handed her a bottle of water and twisted off the sealed top. “You’ll be able to eat and drink, and this is more comfortable than the trunk. However, if you make me regret this upgrade, I won’t hesitate to return you to the darkness.”

  Sally flared her nostrils, but bit back a stream of profanity. She didn’t want to waste her energy on something that would so obviously fall on deaf ears. Instead, she tilted the bottle to her lips and began to drink. She couldn’t remember the last time water had tasted so good.

  The man sETTLEd into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  With his profile exposed, Sally studied the full extent of his misshapen face. In her original vision of the man, when she had watched him manipulate Mr. Higgins into driving over his own wife, Sally thought his flesh was melted and burned from a close encounter with fire, but up close she could see that it was actually a rubbery curtain of excess skin. It was as though the skin had grown to cover a large subcutaneous growth or tumor. When the tumor was removed or shrunk, gravity had pulled down that side of his face like an empty pocket.

  She wondered why anyone would allow such a disfigurement to go untreated in this day and age of discount plastic surgeons in every neighborhood mall ready to nip, tuck, suck, and staple while one’s spouse shops for key chains and batteries at the Dollar Store next door.

  Sally rattled her chains to remind herself that she was the prisoner in this car, not him. He wasn’t one of her guests, and it wasn’t her job to fix him.

  “Where are you taking me?” Sally asked.

  The man turned to her, his mouth twitching again. Sally wondered if that was his way of smiling. If so, it was both disgusting and disturbing.

  “I’m taking you home,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, you missed a turn,” Sally snapped. “I live in the city.”

  “I mean your real home,” he said calmly. “Where you were born and where—”

  “I don’t remember that place,” Sally snapped again. “Couldn’t even tell you its name. How do you know anything about it?”

  “I know everything about you, including your real name. Sally Wilson is so plain for what you were raised to become.”

  Sally narrowed her eyes. “That is my real name.”

  The man shook his head. “That’s the name you adopted. You must have been too traumatized to tell anyone your true name when they found you on the outskirts of Bismarck. The family didn’t know how you made it there on foot. You had been missing for two weeks. By the time we finally tracked you down, you had been shipped out of state, and your records were sealed. We’ve been looking ever since. It has taken us twenty-five years and many false leads. Someone didn’t want us to find you.”

  “Who is us?” Sally asked.

  “Your family.”

  The image of her mother lying dead on the bed, and her father in the bathtub with a shotgun jammed in his mouth, flashed before her eyes.

  “I don’t have a family.”

  Reaching into a breast pocket, the man retrieved a small bottle of artificial tears. He squeezed several drops into his right eye. The excess liquid ran down his sagging cheek and dripped onto his shirt. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “That’s not true. You have a large family. The Blues were—”

  “The Blues?” Sally asked.

  “Your family name. You were born Salvation Blue on the first of June, 1984. Your mother called you Sally for short, but your father preferred the full Christian name, Salvation.”

  “And you know this how?”

  The man’s mouth twitched again and a pool of spittle dribbled down his chin. He dabbed at it with a paper tissue from a travel pack he kept in one of the cup holders.

  “The day you were born,” said the man, “was also the day we were betrothed. I’m Aedan. Your husband.”

  it took sally a moment to adjust to the news.

  “Husband?”

  Aedan nodded. “That is why I never gave up looking for you. It was my
duty.”

  Sally didn’t want to believe what she was hearing. “This is fucked up. I’ve never seen you before today and… ” she could hardly spit out the words, “marrying a baby is just sick.”

  “We wouldn’t have lived together until you came of age,” said Aedan, his tone sounding hurt. “But we were promised to each other. The ceremony was—”

  “Ceremony?” Sally blurted.

  “The wedding ceremony. I have photos that I can—”

  “Let me out of here,” Sally demanded, her teeth gnashing so tight her jaw threatened to snap.

  “I can’t do tha—”

  “Let me out!”

  Aedan’s face turned a dark shade of gray as he turned and fixed her with his good eye. The black hole seemed to crackle with energy.

  “Do I need to drug you again?” His tone still sounded calm despite the storm in his eye.

  “Fuck!” Sally slammed her hand against the door panel and turned to stare out the side window. Although she fought back tears, her shoulders slumped in defeat.

  “You’ll understand better when we reach home.”

  Sally shook her head. “There’s no way I’m ever going to understand this shit.”

  Aedan sighed. “You’ll see.”

  27

  “It’s not good news,” a forensics technician told Jersey and Amarela when they entered the cold basement of Paynes Funeral Home.

  “Let me guess,” said Amarela dryly. “The victim’s dead?”

  The technician, a skeletal man in his early fifties with a bad comb-over and a silver moustache so thin it could have been drawn with an eyebrow pencil, snorted loudly.

  “The message?” Jersey asked impatiently.

  “Nothing left but residue. It wasn’t meant to be permanent and as soon as it got wet it began to break down.”

  Jersey sighed heavily. “Any idea what it was made from?”

  “I can run a few tests back at the lab, but my guess is a simple vegetable dye designed to react to water. The breakdown process would make it glow for just a few minutes. Nothing complicated. A kid could make it.”

  Lieutenant Morrell entered the steel and porcelain room from a second set of stairs that led down from the lobby of the funeral home. “So there is no way to prove the message was directed at your witness, Detective Castle.”

  “It was meant for whoever washed the body,” said Jersey.

  “Which could have been your witness or the coroner or even a family member,” said Morrell. “I was just talking to the funeral director upstairs and he tells me that it’s not unusual for family members to request that they wash the body before burial as part of the grieving ritual.”

  “Did either of the Higgins children make such a request?” Jersey asked.

  “No.”

  “So it’s still suspicious, then?” said Amarela.

  “It’s unusual,” agreed the lieutenant. “But not enough to delay the funeral.”

  Amarela leaned close to Jersey. She whispered, “The mayor must have stood his ground.”

  The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. “It was Mr. Higgins’ lawyer, actually, Detective Valente. And he offered me his full cooperation if we had a good enough reason to delay the burial. But we don’t.”

  “Sally’s missing,” blurted Jersey.

  The lieutenant arched his eyebrows. “Your witness?”

  “We just came from her apartment, and she’s gone.”

  “Were there signs of struggle?”

  “Nothing definite, but—”

  “Let me get this clear, detective,” said Morrell firmly. “You have no evidence of foul play except some woman told you she might have seen another man in the speeding car when Mr. Higgins drove over his wife. To further cement her story, a mysterious message appears on a body that she’s handling in a mortuary by herself. And now when half my forensics team is scrambling around a cold basement and finding nothing, she disappears?”

  Jersey cringed. “Well it sounds bad when—”

  “It sounds very bad!” Morrell scolded. “This case is closed. Leave this family to bury its dead, and get back to work before I forget why I employ you.” He glared at Amarela. “Both of you.”

  Amarela waited until the lieutenant had stomped back upstairs.

  “That was uncalled for,” she said.

  Jersey nodded. “He practically accused Sally of—”

  “No,” Amarela interrupted, “I meant the boss lumping me in with you. You’re the senior detective. If you go off on some wild goose chase it doesn’t mean I should share the blame.”

  Jersey’s mouth twitched as he bent down close to his partner’s ear.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” he whispered.

  “What, here? The stiffs making you—”

  Jersey groaned. “Just convince the techie to take enough blood to run a tox screen, will you?”

  “Why me?”

  “Because, partner, you could talk a man into shaving his butt for you.”

  “Disgusting,” she said, while crinkling her nose, “but true.”

  28

  When the car left the secondary road and merged onto a fast-moving freeway, Sally finally had an idea of where she was. The first road sign they passed told her they were traveling on the I-90. It was followed by a large sign that proclaimed Spokane, Washington was just one hundred forty miles further north.

  “Spokane?” she asked.

  Aedan didn’t answer.

  “Huh,” Sally said angrily. “Married five minutes and already getting the silent treatment.”

  Aedan turned to her in confusion.

  “It’s a joke,” Sally explained. “When you work with dead people, you develop an odd sense of humor. They can be a stiff crowd.”

  Aedan returned his attention to the road. “We will get something to eat in Spokane.”

  “So it’s just a pit stop?”

  “Yes.”

  “And our final destination?”

  Aedan went quiet again, but this time Sally welcomed the silence as her mind began to churn. Spokane, she thought, phones, cars, people. Lots of people. But first she needed more answers.

  “Okay,” Sally began, “since we’re going to be spending time together, I need to know what the hell all this has to do with the bodies at the funeral home? Did you write that spooky note on Mr. Higgins?”

  “What note?”

  Sally exhaled noisily. “He’s here. Run!”

  “I didn’t write it, but this is promising.”

  Sally’s forehead crinkled in concern. “Why?”

  “I’ve followed many false leads in the past and my punishment has been severe. But this note you claim to have seen shows all has not been in vain. You may possess the gift we need. ”

  “What gift?”

  “To speak for the dead.”

  Sally paused, her face frozen in shock.

  “Speak for the dead?” Her voice was barely above a whisper; something about that phrase triggered a memory—her mother, eyes open but blind, arms dripping in fresh blood, a beatific smile upon her face.

  “What did you see?” Aedan asked, his voice growing in excitement. “When you touched her?”

  Realization began to sink in, and Sally felt sick to her stomach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The man’s dark eye glistened. “I needed to be sure. I studied you on the security tape from the bar. You traveled with her, didn’t you?”

  Sally shook her head, not wanting to believe this mad man’s words. “Did you kill that woman?” Her voice was shaking. “As a way to… to test me?”

  “How else could I know? You didn’t react when I sent you the cleaning lady.”

  Sally gasped. “Mrs. Shoumatoff. You killed her, too?” Sally closed her eyes, trying not to let the floodgates of despair open.

  “I suspect she had been dead too long before reaching you. I wasn’t sure if it made a difference.”

  “So you killed Mrs. Higgins outside my off
ice because you wanted me to touch a fresh corpse?”

  “What did you see when you touched her mouth?”

  Sally ignored the question. “And what about her husband? Why did you kill him?”

  “It was necessary. I couldn’t simply let him go. Not with what he knew. Besides,” Aedan continued, “he needed to be punished for—”

  Sally held up her hand. “I don’t want to know.” Tears pooled in her eyes and began streaming down her cheeks. “You’re a monster, you know that?”

  “No, you’ll see. Once we’re back home everything will be made clear.”

  Under her breath, Sally muttered, “I should have never stopped running.”

  29

  Jersey entered Sally’s apartment for the second time that day. There was no sign that she had ever returned.

  With a despairing sigh, he entered the bathroom, rolled up his sleeve, and pulled the plug on the cold bathwater. As the drain gurgled, he opened her medicine cabinet and studied the contents. Along with the usual assortment of toiletries and feminine hygiene products, there was a small bottle of prescription sleeping pills and an over-the-counter bottle of ibuprofen.

  He next entered the kitchen and found the cat food, which he poured into a spill-proof bowl beside the fridge. At the sound of the dry pellets hitting the plastic bowl, the calico cat poked its head around the corner and flashed Jersey a suspicious scowl.

  Jersey lifted the second bowl and filled it with fresh water. After placing it on the floor beside the first, he backed out of the kitchen and turned his attention to the lone bedroom. As he opened the door, he could hear the cat crunching at its food.

  In the bedroom, Jersey searched through Sally’s strewn clothes and a small leather travel pouch he had noticed her wearing around her waist when they went for coffee. The pouch contained her wallet, cellphone, iPod, and keys to the apartment—all things one usually didn’t leave behind.

  Sitting on the unmade double bed, Jersey flipped through Sally’s wallet. It contained one credit card and one bankcard, a driver’s license, and a customer loyalty card for a nearby coffee shop. Two more lattes and she would receive one for free.