Before I Wake

by Dee Henderson

  “Okay, I buy the cow is a special case. The lady with the cracked dining-room window?”

  “One of my Sunday school boys caused it. So tomorrow I’ll be arranging an apology from him and an agreement that will satisfy Mrs. Remstein regarding her window.”

  “The missing petty cash at the library?”

  “I see your point. I do hang out somewhere easy to find on weekend nights so people can tell me what is going on. So yes, this night is typical. It’s part of being elected sheriff. They vote for you; you work for them.”

  “I think it’s nice.”

  Her quiet words of praise made him smile. He did try hard to be accessible to folks in town and it wasn’t often people noticed, for it was just expected now. “Thanks. And just FYI—if you ever need to pass on news, don’t wait for a weekend. Pick up the phone.”

  Rae laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  They walked to the hotel, a comfortable silence between them. They crossed the last strip of grass and stepped into the hotel parking lot.

  “The strike has me working some odd shifts, but if you have a free evening this week that works out, I’d like a rematch at the pool table,” Nathan offered.

  “I’d like that too.” She dug out her hotel-room key. “I appreciate your time tonight, Nathan. It was a nice welcome.”

  “Anytime, Rae. Sleep well.”

  * * *

  Rae dropped her book and room key on the dresser beside her things, comfortably tired. Sleep would come now.

  Nathan was good company. He was going to be asking more questions about her past than she was comfortable with, but there was no way to avoid them. She just had to resolve how much she wanted to say about those days.

  The message light on her phone was blinking. Rae dialed the front desk for the message. A fax had arrived for her. “I’ll be down in a moment.”

  She picked up her room key and went downstairs again.

  The cover page of the fax was from her former boss. Knowing it was being sent by a public fax, he’d kept the note general. They had found a bank safe-deposit box belonging to Mark Rivers. There were several pictures of her with him. Would she contact him at her earliest convenience? They could either be destroyed or sent on to her.

  That Mark had kept photos didn’t surprise or concern her; that he’d thought them important enough to put into a bank safe box did. She’d have to think about this before she answered. Rae returned to her room and added the fax to her briefcase to follow up on Monday.

  * * *

  What was she going to wear to church in the morning? She shifted hangers, looking for something pretty and yet simple. Her attendance at her local church in Washington, D.C., had been sporadic due to the undercover assignment. She was determined to change that now.

  This last year had rocked so much of what she thought about God. She had to start rebuilding that relationship somewhere. She would start with finding a new church home.

  Nathan had mentioned he taught Sunday school, but she hadn’t thought to ask which church he attended. She hoped Bruce had begun attending church, but she wasn’t going to call at this hour of the night to ask.

  She found the phone book. The town had four churches with yellow page ads. All the ads welcomed families, mentioned free coffee and said services started at eight, with First Catholic also saying ten. It was a town that liked to get up early.

  No matter which church she chose, she’d have to endure standing out as a stranger, for she doubted there would be more than a handful of visitors. She studied the directions for the Justice Christian Church and then closed the phone book. It wasn’t going to be an easy morning, but it was necessary.

  Rae set her alarm clock for six-thirty. A knock on the door interrupted her.

  It was late for a visitor. She peered through the security hole, saw the manager who had checked her in that afternoon standing in the hall, and opened the door. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Gabriella, I apologize for the hour. I was asked if we would deliver these when you returned, no matter what the hour.” A clerk joined him carrying a huge bouquet of roses.

  “Oh, my.” She pushed open the door and took the vase, counting more than two dozen roses. “Please, give me a moment to get my purse. I appreciate the trouble you both took.” She thanked them both generously.

  Rae closed the door with her foot and carried the vase of roses over to the dresser. They were absolutely gorgeous against a sea of green. Perfect deep red roses in the winter—someone had gone to a lot of trouble. She pulled out the card, suspecting Bruce was following his own plan for how to welcome her to Justice. She opened the envelope. Welcome to Justice, Rae. Nathan.

  She blinked. Nathan.

  She smiled. He’d just spent much more on the roses than she would on the speeding ticket. She read the card again and slid it back in the bouquet of roses. It had been a long time since someone sent her roses. She drew one of the roses toward her. A nice welcome message, as well as being a spot of beauty in the winter. She’d remember them to his favor.

  6

  Cars crowded the parking lot of the Justice Christian Church and people had begun parking on the side streets. It had snowed overnight. Rae didn’t want to be walking far in these shoes. She found a parking place behind a red Toyota on a side street within sight of the church building and picked up her Bible and her purse.

  She joined others walking toward the building, aware her nerves were stretched tight this morning.

  How much did she want to say when someone said hello and struck up a conversation? She wanted to make a good impression and the truth had so many layers to the full story.

  Did she want to talk about D.C. and the FBI or simply focus on the fact that she was new to town and would be working with Bruce? How much did she want to say about her history with Bruce and how she knew him? She’d be most comfortable hiding behind the safety her connection to Bruce provided her, and the fact that they were good friends. She wasn’t above using his relationships with folks in town to smooth her own introductions into the community. Her life would be so much easier right now if she had chosen to be a homemaker rather than a cop.

  She slowed. Nathan was across the street, heading away from the church at a fast clip. She watched him tug off one glove and pull out keys from his pocket. Headlights flashed on a Mercury Sable. Rae remembered him mentioning he had a Sunday school class to teach, yet he was leaving in a hurry. Where was he going? As he pulled away from the curb he reached out and put a canister light on the roof. Police business.

  She stopped. She wavered on the decision and then turned around. She walked back to her car and got in, set her Bible and purse on the passenger seat, and started her car.

  She didn’t plan to spend her next months chasing ambulances or cops, monitoring scanners, or otherwise being a police groupie, but she did have a fine sense of priorities. Something was wrong.

  With the strike Rae knew the Justice Police Department was stretched very thin. There was always a possibility that another pair of hands would make the difference between a good outcome and bad. She was still a cop in her heart. There were church services tonight; she could come back.

  Rae followed Nathan.

  * * *

  Nathan followed the Sunburst Hotel manager down the hall to room 3712. The first responder to the scene stood before the closed door.

  Several guests were clustered out in the hall watching what was going on. Nathan didn’t need them hearing the report or seeing this scene. “Sergeant, close off this wing of the hall and task the arriving officers for the perimeter; then come give me your report.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Nathan pushed open the door of the hotel room. “Step inside so the door can close, but stay there,” he instructed the hotel manager. Nathan stepped toward the king-size bed and the body lying still beneath the covers.

  He touched his radio transmit button. “55-J, 10-97. Confirm 10-54. Notify appropriate.”

  “10-4.”
/>
  The lady looked asleep, her head resting square on the pillow with her right hand limp atop the covers.

  Nathan simply stood and looked for a long time, absorbing the details from the eyelashes against her cheek to the way her mouth slackened on the left side. There were possibly the faintest signs of a seizure—a touch of dried spit on the corner of her mouth, the jaw a little off for a natural slacking of the muscles in sleep. Her hands were open, fingers curved, her left hand partially caught in the sheet.

  The covers were disrupted only slightly, suggesting it had been her own movements disturbing them. There weren’t signs of violence marring her face as it recorded the circumstances of her last breath. Her hair had been brushed before she turned in, for while it showed the disruption of movement during sleep, it still had a brushed-in shine. Death had come early in the morning?

  “Did the maid come into the room, touch anything?”

  “No. Lucinda knocked, came in to deliver the towels and toiletries requested on the form last night, and got a shock when she saw this. She closed the door and used the hotel radio to call down to my office. She wasn’t very coherent, but she was real insistent that she just shut the door.”

  “I can understand her shock; this isn’t something you expect to walk in and see. Where is Lucinda now?”

  “My assistant manager took her down to her office. We’ll see that she doesn’t talk to anyone else before you speak with her.”

  “Good.” Guests died in their sleep of natural causes, it happened even in a small town like Justice, but rarely to someone this young. A suicide? A drug overdose? He needed definitive answers on this one, and the sooner the better.

  “Please get the room records, anything she signed, how she paid for the room, if there were calls made. Bring them up here.”

  “I’ll get them,” the manager agreed, looking relieved to be able to leave the room.

  * * *

  Nathan scanned the tables and dresser: no prescription bottles to be seen, no drinking glass. Her things were in order, with a random carelessness that suggested they remained where she had set them down. There was no ring on her hands, and he saw none that she had removed. A book rested on the bedside table, near the edge.

  Nathan stepped to the bathroom door and turned on the light, studying the counter. A toothbrush, washcloth, makeup, hair dryer. No sign of a prescription bottle or pill case. Numerous towels were draped over the shower rod and the side of the tub to dry. She’d used the pool on Saturday? He could faintly smell chlorine.

  There was nothing visible that caused him concern.

  Lord, she just died?

  He didn’t like the feel of that answer, for it made him feel so small. She didn’t wake up. It brought back the vividness of the child’s prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. . . . Only he had always said it differently, I pray the Lord my soul to leave. A child’s fear of the bogeyman in the night, of going to sleep and never waking again.

  Death came suddenly; that was God’s business. But when death came with assistance; that was his business.

  * * *

  Who was she?

  Why had she come to town?

  Nathan needed answers to both questions. Two Chicago newspapers were on the table, one from Friday, another from Saturday. There were no signs of a laptop or briefcase, making him doubt she was here on business.

  Nathan pulled on latex gloves and picked up the trash can. She liked Diet Mountain Dew, granola bars, and had tossed away the last two bites of a bagel with cream cheese. A small empty sack from the Fine Chocolates Shop downtown confirmed she’d visited at least the downtown area since she had arrived in town.

  He moved to the dresser. He found a slim clutch billfold in the top drawer, picked it up, and opened the clasp. A single key with a rental car tag, a set of cards including a phone calling card, and a credit card. He found a driver’s license.

  Peggy Worth, 433 Greenbriar Drive, Waukegan, IL. She’d signed her license to be an organ donor.

  He looked toward the bed where she lay, a silent witness to his search. She was twenty-eight years old.

  She was so incredibly young to be dead.

  She was also staying at a hotel less than three hours from her own home. That struck him as odd.

  He counted the cash she was carrying. Three hundred and twelve dollars in small bills, mostly tens and twenties. It seemed a bit much, but it fit with a tourist. The billfold yielded a card for a hairdresser appointment, a slip from a dry cleaner, but no photos. Who was important in your life, Peggy? Who is wondering what has happened to you; why you are late to arrive or to call?

  * * *

  “This is unfortunate.”

  His deputy, Gray Sillman, head of the investigative division, joined him. Nathan offered the license. “I’m getting a mixed sense of this; I haven’t seen anything particularly alarming yet, but it just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Pretty lady.”

  Nathan nodded. “See if you can find a scanner in this hotel, enlarge the photo, and get a couple dozen copies made. Let’s get officers canvassing to find out who saw her before a guest who might have useful information checks out.”

  “I expect she’ll be remembered.” Sillman stepped out to make the arrangements.

  Nathan checked through her suitcase.

  The hotel manager returned. “Her name is Peggy Worth, and she registered with a Visa card.”

  “How many nights?”

  “Four. She checked in Thursday evening and was scheduled to leave Monday. There are room-service charges on her bill but no outgoing long-distance phone calls. Local calls wouldn’t show up.” The manager handed over the paperwork.

  “Thank you. The coroner is on the way. Would you arrange for him to come up through the service entrance?”

  “Already arranged. Do I need to move the guests who stay on this wing to different rooms?”

  Nathan closed the suitcase, not finding anything particularly helpful. “You might want to clear the two rooms on either side of this one as people will be coming and going for a few hours, possibly the rooms by the elevator as well. I’ll also be down to talk with the maid in a few minutes. Your assistant’s office is located where?”

  “Behind the check-in desk.”

  “Would you also pull the security log for this room; let me know when she came and went from her room since the time she arrived.”

  “I’ll start work on it,” the manager agreed and left.

  * * *

  “Sir.” The initial responding patrol officer stepped into the room to offer a folded note. Nathan took it as two more officers joined him.

  He held out the car key. “Let’s see about finding her rental car in the parking lot; maybe we’ll find something there to get us to next of kin.”

  “Yes, Sir.” The officers headed out to get the search started.

  Nathan opened the note.

  5’7”, blonde hair, green eyes, designer eyeglasses. She has a workout jacket with an LA gym logo above the pocket. She left the exercise room about 7:40 p.m. Saturday heading for the hotel sauna and after that said she had a late-night, first-time date to see the movie Holiday Park. She’s a freelance reporter with the Chicago Daily Times and the National Weekly News.

  He turned over the note. It wasn’t signed.

  Nathan stepped to the door. “Who gave you this?”

  The officer pointed down the hall to a group of guests watching what was going on. “The lady in blue.”

  Rae Gabriella.

  She was talking with a young teen, making notes on a pad of paper. She was dressed for a morning out in a simple and elegant dress, her hair pulled back by a red ribbon and the high heels accentuating her graceful posture and long legs. Nathan watched her for a moment, making herself at home in the investigation with the ease of an officer assigned to the case.

  Rae had a room at this hotel, and Nathan had never met a cop yet who wasn’t curious. She’d probably stepped
out of her own room and into this scene. Nathan walked toward the group, not sure what he wanted to say to her, deeply appreciating the note she had passed him, while knowing this was probably a crime scene she shouldn’t be involved with.

  Nathan paused as the elevator opened. The coroner stepped out; a spry man at sixty, the doctor and former medical naval officer was one of the county’s irreplaceable personnel. Nathan had never seen Franklin Walsh lose his focus even at the most awful of crime scenes.

  “What do we have, Nathan?”

  Nathan glanced down the hall at Rae and left that conversation for later.

  * * *

  Nathan turned back to room 3712 and held the door for the doctor. “She’s young. Peggy Worth, twenty-eight, according to her driver’s license.”

  Franklin set down his bag and walked over to the bedside to lean down and study her face. “Tell me what you’ve found in the room.”

  “No medication of any kind, not even an aspirin. The only food in the room are the remains in the trash of a bagel and cream cheese, granola bar wrappers, an empty Diet Mountain Dew can, a chocolate sack from the shop downtown.”

  “Bag them for me. I wouldn’t think food allergy, but we’ll rule it out. Any inhaler for asthma, a medical card?”

  “Nothing so far. We believe she was working out in the hotel exercise room last evening around seven-thirty, and then may have visited the sauna. The damp towels in the bathroom suggest she might have also gone for a swim at the pool.”

  “Anything that looks like performance-enhancement drugs or even simple vitamins?”

  “Not so far. We’re still looking for her car and any more luggage.”

  The coroner loaded film in his camera and took several photos; then he set it aside and pulled on gloves. He moved back the blankets. “There’s no gross sign of physical trauma, no bruises on her neck or her arms.”

  He opened her eyelids to study her eyes. Using a tongue depressor, he opened her mouth and studied her tongue and gums.