Fog of Dead Souls

by Jill Kelly

  The bathroom was enormous, a Jacuzzi tub, a glass block shower. In the middle of the floor was an old-fashioned rocking chair and strapped into it was a tall, broad-shouldered man Hansen knew must be Al Robison. His blue shirtsleeve was rolled up and taped in the crook of his arm was a needle, the plunger half-in. His head was slumped over, but Hansen saw his chest rise and fall.

  Lenny Stanhope stood beside Robison. He wore sweat pants, athletic socks, running shoes. He was naked from the waist up, his chest and shoulders slim and muscular. They seemed to gleam in the light. He looked the picture of health. Hansen raised his gun, and Stanhope reached down and put his forefinger and thumb on the plunger.

  “I’ll bet I’m faster, old man,” Stanhope said. “Are you sure this is how you want to play it?”

  “You don’t want to die,” said Hansen.

  “You don’t know what I want,” said the kid with a smile that was disconcerting in its friendliness.

  Hansen hesitated a moment, then lowered the gun, though he didn’t take his finger off the trigger. He watched Lenny’s face. It was familiar—he’d met the guy twice before at least, but there was nothing really to remember. Smooth skin, regular features, white teeth. Handsome but in a bland kind of way. An easy face to forget. Only the eyes were off. They were blue, they were cold, they were dead.

  Hansen spoke. “How much did you give him?”

  “Enough for now.” The kid’s tone was matter of fact.

  “How did you get him in the chair?”

  “A little liquid sleepy-bye in his lemonade.”

  “Same thing you gave the girl?”

  The kid nodded. “She got the rohypnol, too.”

  “And the professor?”

  “That naughty girl wouldn’t play, wouldn’t drink what I fixed for her. I told her it’d be easier, easier to not know, but she wanted to go out awake. Her choice. Funny. She’s the only one who’s wanted to be awake.”

  “Why’d you come after her? She didn’t know who you were.”

  The kid shrugged.

  “I get it about Joel. He was your lover, wasn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t call him that. We had sex, lots of it, but love?” He seemed to consider the question carefully, then shook his head. “No, no love. But he played the game well and I admired that.”

  “Sex games?”

  “No.” Stanhope rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Geez, man, get your head out of the gutter. No, the game we all play. The game of pretending to be nice, pretending to be good, when we aren’t. Like Arlen. Pretending to be a good husband, a good father, but the truth was he was lousy at all of it. And he gives it all up for a prostitute.” The same look of loathing crossed his face again. “And you, Detective. You’ve been pretending to be an upright cop but you’ve been screwing the victim. Naughty boy! But I guess it’s not your fault. Most people don’t play the game well.”

  “And Richardson? Was he good at the game? Teach you everything he knew?”

  “Let’s just say it was a mutually beneficial relationship.”

  “So are you Jason Dirrelich? Or was Richardson?”

  The kid smiled. “You found the car registration. We both thought that was a nice touch. Joel thought up the anagram, but the car was my idea. What’s the old word, a ‘red herring,’ whatever that is?”

  “And Joel’s sperm? Another red herring? That was pure genius. Probably his idea. I’m thinking he was the brains of the outfit.”

  “Trying to piss me off, Detective? Or should I call you Doug?” He shook his head. “It isn’t going to work. I’ve got the upper hand here and we both know it.”

  Stanhope looked down at the syringe in his hand, and Hansen saw his hand tremble or itch maybe. Then the kid looked back at him. “Shall we get on with it?”

  “Just a couple more questions. Just for my own curiosity. We’re not in any hurry here, are we? How did you meet Richardson? Through your dad?”

  The snort was full of derision. “As if. It’s the other way around. I told Joel about Arlen, about the pharmacy connection.”

  “Then how did you meet Joel?”

  “The lovely and talented Madame Tomei. She knows how to connect men of like inclinations.”

  For the first time, Hansen could see the evil behind the kid’s eyes. If he’d been at the top of his game, he’d have seen it in Paris when he first met him. He went back to his questions. “How did you find her? Doctor McKay?”

  “Find her? I didn’t have to find her. I followed her. To Gettysburg where she must have been looking for you. I even went into the police station there and asked directions. She didn’t see me, of course. Then to Houston. Then to a bunch of dinko towns in Texas, where she stayed in a Holiday Inn every time. Women are so stupid. But I like road trips.”

  “How did you know to follow her here?”

  “For a cop, you’re not too smart, are you, Detective? I had her credit card numbers—got them in her apartment. I made a copy of Roger’s key. You know my brother, excuse me, my step-brother, Roger. It didn’t take much time to find Ellie’s papers, her strong box. What a joke! Then once I had the passwords, it was easy enough to check in online and see where she was going. You cops always pretend that you know what we’re thinking and what we’re going to do next. But you’re not that smart. If you were, you’d have found me long ago.”

  Hansen let the insult go by. “Why didn’t you just let her go? She couldn’t identify you.”

  “Now, Detective, that’s old thinking. There’s more to life than not getting caught. But I don’t expect you to understand that. So just consider her a loose end I needed to tie up.” He grinned. “Just a little joke of the trade. Or consider it part of the game. That’s all.” There was no hurt, no bitterness in his voice. Just that matter-of-factness.

  All the while Hansen kept him talking, he watched the second bathroom door behind Stanhope. He figured it led to the hallway or perhaps the other bedroom. He realized he was waiting for Two Horses to come in, take this guy by surprise. But nothing happened.

  “So what do we do now, Arthur?”

  The kid laughed, a mean, ugly sound. “Lenny,” he said. “Or Jazz. I like Jazz. Sounds kind of cool, doesn’t it?”

  Hansen saw the kid’s fingers twitch again. Eager to kill, he thought. Then from the bedroom behind him, Hansen heard a noise, a creak in the floorboards. He turned his head to the sound and when he turned back, the plunger had gone all the way into the syringe in Robison’s arm and the kid was through the door behind him.

  He had no time to think, no time to decide. He started after the kid. The small room was dark but not quite. He could just see the shape of the kid moving to the window. He lunged after him, grabbed his arm, and then felt him slip, literally, out of his grasp, leaving Hansen with an empty, oily hand. The gleaming muscles, Hansen thought.

  In a flash, the kid had the window open and was out of reach. Hansen was right behind him, but from the window, he could see the boy roll off the porch roof and sprint away into the fog. No clear shot. No sense in the chase either. He was carrying thirty pounds and thirty years that the kid didn’t have, and none of the agility, speed, and stamina that he did.

  As he turned back to Al Robison, he heard a rifle shot. Then another. Two Horses, he thought. He prayed the kid was down. Dead would be fine with him.

  He hurried back to the bathroom. He was relieved to find Robison still breathing. He opened his phone and dialed 911.

  “An ambulance is already on its way, sir,” the operator told him, and he heard the siren in the distance.

  EPILOGUE

  Ellie lay on the floor, dense carpeting and a warm woven throw rug beneath her, a blanket imprinted with the length of the body of a wolf tucked in around her. Her eyes were closed. She could feel the heat from Brown Bear Woman, who lay next to her. She had aligned her body with Ellie’s, only a few inches between them. From a speaker somewhere, a rhythmic drumming filled the air. The shaman’s breath was loud for a few minutes, deep,
shuddering exhales, muscles twitching, settling, then peaceful and quiet.

  Ellie’s mind drifted. A hummingbird crossed her vision. Then she saw a bear, and in the flat of its paw, the hummingbird danced. The images were so unexpected that she wondered if the shaman had put something into her tea. But she felt clear, and calmer than she had in a long time. She relaxed and drifted again.

  Joel’s face rose up in her mind. “Forgive whatever you can,” the shaman had said before they set out on the journey. She felt the old pain well up, the hurt, the anger, and then she wished it gone. She brought Arlen’s face to her mind as well and did the same. She didn’t want them to come with her into her new life. In her mind, she buried them, blessed their spirits, wished them peace.

  Ellie worried vaguely about the time. Had they been lying here a half hour? An hour? She took a deep breath. It didn’t matter. He would wait. This was important.

  Danny next. That was much harder. Once upon a time, she had loved him dearly. And because of that, she had drawn him into the circle of death that Joel had drawn around her. She lay there a few minutes, asking Danny’s forgiveness, accepting what she had done. She knew there was more work to do there, to forgive herself. And she knew she was willing to do the work.

  Her left palm began to itch. She wondered if this were a sign that the shaman was successful, or unsuccessful, or if her palm just itched. She watched her analytical self in action for a moment or two, then turned back to her breath. The hummingbird came again. Danced across her vision. She sensed the bear behind her, strong, solid, protective. She slept.

  Five minutes or an hour passed. She didn’t know. But then she heard the shaman’s breathing shift. As if on cue, the drumming intensified, then slowed, and the woman moved away from her and sat up. She spoke in a low, soothing voice and asked permission to reunite Ellie with the part of her soul that had been damaged. When Ellie nodded, the woman cupped her hands at Ellie’s heart and blew into her chest. She repeated this at the top of Ellie’s head. She urged Ellie to rest and assimilate it all. She moved away. The drumming had stopped, the room was quiet.

  Ellie lay still another long while. She felt warm and sleepy. She felt at peace.

  When Ellie stepped out onto the porch and into the sunlight, he got out of the car. She looked different, he thought. Lighter, clearer somehow. As she came towards him, she smiled. At first the look was shy, almost sheepish, then it broadened, opened. She was happy, and Hansen knew that they were going to be all right.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was written with support from a loving community of women writers and creatives during Writing Fridays in Portland, Oregon, and writing retreats at Aldermarsh on Whidbey Island, Washington. My thanks especially to Diane Sorensen, Bridget Benton, Jan Underwood, and Pamela Stringer. Thanks also to my sisters and thoughtful beta readers, Kerry Fall and Melanie St. John; to my editor Nicole Frail at Skyhorse, who’s made the process so easy; and to my kind and persistent agent, Andrea Somberg at the Harvey Klinger agency, who really championed my story.

  READER’S GUIDE TO FOG OF DEAD SOULS

  A Conversation with the Author

  How did you come to write Fog?

  JK: Like my first novel, this book started from a writing prompt, a sentence from poet Gary Snyder: “I walked into a bar in Farmington, New Mexico.” In the ten-minute writing I did using that prompt, a sixty-year-old woman desperately in need of a drink showed up. I wrote about four paragraphs and moved on to other prompts. But I couldn’t get Ellie out of my mind and when I finished my first novel, The Color of Longing, I knew I would write about her.

  To be honest, I had no idea what I was in for and no plans to write a thriller. It was just what happened. Once I introduced Ellie to the cowboy, I had to figure out why she was traveling, and a series of images went through my mind: the Gettysburg battlefields, which I had found a creepy, creepy place even after a century and a half; a fancy hotel room and a dead boyfriend; a handsome older detective; a mysterious psychopath. And they worked themselves into the novel piece by piece. It was quite a ride and I didn’t know how the story was going to turn out until I wrote the ending.

  What makes this an unusual story?

  JK: Several things. First, it’s the age of the characters. Ellie, Al, and Hansen are all in their sixties. I wanted to show that rape and violence happen to older women, too, not just pretty young women—that all women, regardless of age, struggle with self-identity after betrayal. And that they can encounter romance, be the object of affection of interesting men.

  I also wanted to explore older men’s feelings about older women. We hear a lot about older men who want younger wives, but many older men are attracted to women their own age. Relationships, not the sociopath, are at the center of this thriller; in fact, the killer is, in many ways, a catalyst for the drive for love and security.

  Then there’s Ellie’s drinking. She’s an alcoholic but I didn’t want her addiction to be the main point of the book. Her addiction doesn’t cause the violence she experiences but it complicates the aftermath.

  Last, many thrillers delve deeply into the psychology of the killer. I wanted to keep him completely unknown until the end and make the book about the victim and her relationships and how they impact the complications and final understandings of the plot.

  What are you writing now? Will there be a sequel?

  I have two new novels in the works. When Your Mother Doesn’t is a relationship novel that relates the challenges of two sisters who struggle to become their whole selves after growing up with a mother who couldn’t love them.

  Vague and Broken Boy (thanks to singer Adele for the title phrase) is a thriller about a married middle-aged professional woman and her involvement with a mysterious man who lives on the margins of society. Her need for adventure and a new life wreaks havoc in her family and then threatens her survival when she discovers what kind of games her lover is playing. Detective Hansen has already appeared in this new novel, so maybe some of the other characters from Fog will too, but I don’t know yet.

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  1. What was your reaction to Ellie’s acceptance of Al’s marriage proposal in the first chapter? Why do you think she accepted?

  2. What did you find most believable about the main characters in the book?

  3. Do the minor characters contribute well to the story?

  4. Which characters did you especially like or dislike? Why?

  5. How do Ellie’s problems with alcohol function as an additional character in the book?

  6. Road trips are a common theme in American literature. What is the purpose of Ellie’s travels to France and to the Southwest?

  7. The story travels through time and several locations. Did you find this added or detracted from your enjoyment of the book?

  8. The ending leaves a lot open. Do you think Al survives? What do you think happens to Lenny?

  9. Why do you think Ellie chooses Hansen in the end? What problems lie ahead for them?

  10. A thriller keeps the tension high throughout the book. Which episodes were particularly tense for you?