“Maybe the sixth isn’t so bad?” I asked, rubbing a finger over the nearest surface and leaving a long clean line in my wake.
I wanted to know what the hell was causing all the dust. The particles in the air alone made my nose itch and eyes water.
He turned and placed the card I gave him with my name and number on the fridge for safe-keeping, his whole frame shaking in his oversized suit. “My youngest, Dolores—Lori as she likes to be called, has many preferences, let me tell you. She’s smart and very kind and probably the most salvageable of all my offspring. But that one shall not be carrying on the Sampson line all the same, as she just brought home her girlfriend this weekend. Her life partner, she says. Tells us she prefers the terms lesbian and alternative lifestyle.” He shook his head.
“At least there are no bodies this weekend,” I said, searching for ground to settle on.
Sampson looked up at me with large, soulful eyes. “I much prefer the dead myself.”
With nothing else to throw at him, I thought it would be best if I simply got to it.
“So, you found Eric Sullivan?” I asked.
“I find everyone, eventually,” he said. “I’m the only mortician and medical examiner for this county. And Old George, in the next county over, isn’t in the best of health, so I shoulder much of his work these days.”
“So it is my understanding that a car collapsed on him over at his parent’s garage, correct?”
“Indeed. One of the mechanical arms responsible for lifting the car broke. I’d heard it said that Sullivan Sr. was told to replace the lift arms no less than a hundred times. Look what it got him. Thousands of dollars’ worth of repairs, loss of customers, and a dead son.”
“How did they react to the news that he had NRD?”
The old man shrugged, and realizing he had pulled down the wrong book, replaced it on the shelf and chose another. “Who is to say? What happens in the home—that kind of thing.”
“Are his parents still alive?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Sullivan Sr. had a heart attack about three years ago. And his wife contracted cancer later that year. I saw her the next spring.”
I opened my mouth to ask another question but he cut me off. “Ah here we are. Sullivan, Eric. Died, March 5, 1997. Cause of death: massive thoracic contusions and internal bleeding.” When I didn’t appear to understand he added. “His chest was crushed by the car. Lungs and heart, kah-put.”
“Lucky for him, his head was OK,” I said and flipped open the small notepad I carried to take notes.
“Ah, yes, I’d heard that,” the old man said. “They can’t resurrect if they’ve injured their gray matter. No, Sullivan was lucky I suppose. Had the car fallen forward a bit more instead of straight down, I suppose he’d not have resurrected at all.”
“Did you see anything unusual?” I asked, “When preparing the body?”
“No. That is why we buried him. Do you know that you must insist on embalming now? In the past it was simply par for the course but now, we must leave everyone au naturel. Just in case. So if you would like to be sure you are dead, Agent Brinkley, I suggest you request embalmment.”
“But Eric didn’t?”
“No, like most people, I assume he didn’t know he had a choice. He was young enough that he wasn’t expecting to die. Frankly, I am quite ready to go.”
“So you’re saying he was buried and then—?”
“Yes,” he said. “Mr. Young is the one who heard the bell ringing, late one night up at Remmington’s Cemetery. You know, because we’ve started running strings to the boxes again, safety coffins they’re called, like in the old days, just in case.” I nodded, having seen the air tubes and bell strings myself. “To hear Young tell it, it was a dark, cold night, and all he could hear was this frantic ringing—said it was the most haunting sound of his life. He still wakes up hearing that bell, or so says Mrs. Young. It was one of our firsts, you understand. When the dead start doing things they aren’t supposed to, it stays with you, if you know what I mean.”
A headache was starting to build behind my eyes and I knew that if I didn’t take more aspirin or even better, have a drink, I wouldn’t get much further.
“Anyone else I could talk to about Eric in the area? Any siblings?” I asked but had a feeling that Eric Sullivan didn’t have much left to this old life that could lead me to his new one.
“He had an older brother, Dyson, who died in a motorcycle accident when the Eric was almost out of high school.”
“So no one?”
“Just the two wives and little girl that I know of,” he said. “But it is hard to tell these days. I just read in The Post that a man had two entire families. Two wives, two sets of kids, two lives. And not one after the other, but both concurrently, for nearly 35 years. Can you believe it?”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” I said.
The old man sighed and closed his book. “Yes, but maybe I would’ve had better luck with the second lot.”
Chapter 7
Saturday, March 22, 2003
It was almost 11 P.M. when I got a call from Charlie. I’d driven back across the river into St. Louis after scraping the edges of Eric’s hometown. I knew I wouldn’t find out much more about Sullivan until I had the right questions to ask. But I had enough to get started.
I’d just unwrapped a Hearty Man meal and punched two minutes on the microwave when the phone rang.
“Brinkley,” I answered, knowing it was the station, but not sure who was on the other end.
“I have a lead on your flasher,” Charlie said.
First my mind went to a case I got during my brief stint as an MP twelve years ago—working cases while I healed a busted shoulder. A veteran used to go into the barracks naked and sing the pledge of allegiance. The mind is strange that way, in how it jumps back and forth through time without reason. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about one of my girls, my current case, Rachel.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Her mother says she came home a week ago to get her birth certificate and a few of her other important papers, like her passport. The girl told her mother that she needed them for a job. So I checked the system for any places who’d requested background checks on her. An insurance company in Jeff City had a hit. She also applied to a printing factory in the same area. Both turned her down, of course.”
“What’s wrong with hiring an attractive young woman who just happens to detest clothing?” I was trying to make a joke. Not to demean the girl, but because it was Easter night and here my friend was doing the grunt work for a case far below his pay grade.
I didn’t need any more proof he was miserable.
He snorted. “I think it’s the stealing they’re worried about.”
“Ah well, to each their own, I suppose.”
“What is that sound?” he asked.
“My dinner. The little round table keeps catching, sorry.”
“She’s only hitting up jobs she isn’t qualified for. So I compiled a list of places in the area that are hiring. Figured you could check them out and try to catch her going in or out.”
“Brilliant work,” I said, sticking a fork into my meal and finding the center frozen. Swearing, I stuffed it back into the radiation box. “Not sure why you even hired me.”
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
“How about an O’Malley’s bacon burger and a beer?” he asked.
Even if he wasn’t one of my oldest friends and my superior, I knew I couldn’t turn him down.
“No such thing as too much beef or beer,” I said and stopped the microwave. “I’ll meet you there.”
Chapter 8
Sunday, March 23, 2003
O’Malley’s was surprisingly full. A large group of men dominated one end of the bar, a few singing loudly in heavily accented English. They were probably Irish. Clearly, the idea of getting drunk on Easter Sunday was a tradition for some. I wondered if it was
a tradition they brought with them when the Irish came to build the railroads. Enough of the group had bright red hair to make me wonder.
Charlie sat at the bar, one hand open and waiting as the barman refilled his mug from the tap. When the beer was handed over, foam sloshed against the rim and Charlie bent his head to suck up the mess.
“Hey,” I said and slapped his back before I climbed onto the stool beside him.
“Hey.”
“So how long have we got? What’s your bedtime?”
Charlie harrumphed. “It’s hard to tell when I am supposed to be up or down these days.”
“I’ll buy your drinks then,” I said and waved to the barman. “If we get enough in you, you should sleep just fine.”
The barman responded to my wave and came back. He wore a white dress shirt under a black vest and white apron. Classy shit. He looked more like a maître d' than a guy in a pub pulling the tap.
I ordered a McSorely’s Black and a bacon cheddar burger. If the barman judged me for not drinking a Harp, which seemed to be the beer of choice for much of O’Malley’s clientele, at least he didn’t give me shit for it.
I slapped the bar top a couple of times, rhythmically, in tune to the music seeping from the jukebox across the way, barely heard over the ruckus from the group at the other end of the bar and the loud TV over their heads. I felt good for the first time that day.
But Charlie’s mood was dark—his face turned toward his beer as if he were looking for something in the bottom of that glass.
“What’s going on, man?” I asked.
Charlie lifted his beer and took a long drink. Then he licked the foam off his lips. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I went still beside him. I wouldn’t lie to him, but I also wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say.
After me giving me a once-over and not finding what he wanted, he looked down at the beer in his hands again. “I spoke to Lieutenant Brant today.”
Here it comes, I thought.
“I know what he said,” he began. “But I want to hear you tell it.”
“What did he say?” I asked, looking up at the mirror behind the bar. My shoulders were slumped, my face dark. All the excitement I’d just relished over having the first beer of the evening was gone.
“That you shot a kid in a bomber vest and then totally lost your shit.”
“Those were his exact words?” I asked. “Totally lost my shit?”
Charlie sighed. “No. He said you kept the body. That you refused to let anyone take it away from you and that instead, you wrapped it up like a goddamn Christmas present and hauled it off into the desert. Then you resigned the next day.”
“His name was Aziz,” I said. “Not it, or the body, or even him. Aziz.”
Charlie looked horrified. “How do you know?”
“Because I took him home. I put him in his mother’s arms and I put a gun in his father’s hands and pressed the barrel to the side of my head and begged him to do the right thing.”
I killed your boy. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Blow my brains out, please. I beg you.
Charlie stopped drinking his beer. The burgers came, but neither of us moved to touch the hot food. The barkeep asked us something, probably about ketchup, but we didn’t answer so he went away.
“Why would you do that?” he asked, quietly, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him over the TV and the cheering.
“There was no bomb. I knew by looking at the vest there was no bomb, but the MP said he saw a light and I pulled the trigger. The light was a fucking keychain, some touristy piece of shit that flashed and blinked. Aziz was a decoy, and I killed him.”
“You can’t be blamed for that,” he said. “If it had been a bomb—”
“There was no bomb.” I screamed and slammed my fist against the bar top.
Charlie picked at a fry in his basket and put it back down, rubbing salt behind between his fingers. “You should’ve told me. You shouldn’t be working.”
“I have to work,” I said. “I have to. Sitting at home by myself with nothing better to do than to think is the worst thing that could happen to me right now. I’ll blow my fucking brains out.”
Charlie considered this. He poked at his fries, contemplated his beer and then finally spoke again. “You need help.”
“I need to work. I need to find the girls, and I’ll find Sullivan too. But I need to work through this.” My desperation was real and powerful. My hands were shaking. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest.
I was asking my oldest friend not to kill me.
“I should take the Michaelson case and give—”
“No,” I stopped him. “I’ll find her. I need to find her.”
“Finding her isn’t going to bring hi—Aziz—back.”
“It’s a start,” I said.
After a long time, Charlie nodded. “OK. I’ll sign off on this, but if anything gets to you, if you start to feel unsteady or—”
“I’ll tell you,” I told him. “I swear to God, I’ll tell you.”
Chapter 9
41 Weeks
In dreams, sometimes he dies in my arms. The impossibility of it doesn’t matter. The twenty minute hike from the mountain to the base becomes a step or two, and then I’m lifting him from the ground into my arms. The shot that killed him instantly, going clear through one side of his head and out the other, becomes a misfire, clipping his heart or shoulder or gut, and so he is still bleeding when I pull him into my lap and hold him. His white teeth and the whites of his eyes are exaggerated against his dark skin. The teeth chatter as I cry over him. The eyes roll up into his head as I scream at the sky.
In real life, I stayed with his body. I left my post and demanded they find the boy’s family. When they told me where to go, I wrapped the boy in a green military blanket and took him home. Even the nights I don’t see his face, or watch him die, I can still hear his mother wailing and his father beating his chest, while the goats scream through the night.
Chapter 10
Monday, March 24, 2003
With Easter weekend behind me and almost no news on my desk come Monday morning, I turned my attention to the missing kid, Maisie Michaelson. It had been almost a week since Maisie went missing, so we were outside the 48-hour window where most kids showed up—if they were going to. We had bulletins and missing child alerts everywhere, but that hadn’t generated shit, nothing credible anyway. Too often people lied when a reward was involved, desperate for the money, with no regard for the missing child’s safety.
I drove out to the house where Maisie lived with her parents.
It was a small house, a Cape Cod with its sloped roof and pointed ridges, at the end of a quiet street. There were two large windows in front, framed by black shutters against the burnt orange brick exterior. To the right of the house, a cul-de-sac was claimed by a few large trees crowded with underbrush and long grasses, but this was separated by a large privacy fence enclosing all sides.
A dog began barking once I closed the door to the Impala. I’d seen the Saint Bernard once before, through the slits in the fence as it paced back and forth, trying to get a better look at me.
Mrs. Michaelson opened the front door before I even made it up the walk. Her eyes were wide, glassy. Her hands trembled and I could tell that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to let me in or tell me to go away. I wish I knew why I had that effect on some women.
“No news yet,” I said immediately, shoving my hands in my black bomber jacket. I didn’t want her to think I’d come to tell her that her daughter was dead. “I have a few more questions.”
Something changed in the woman. Her expectant gaze, part-hope part-terror, hardened. Her back straightened as she opened the door for me.
I stepped into the warm living room and saw that not much had changed. The place was still spotless but that wasn’t uncommon. It could go either way—their home could fall into disrepair as they longed for their kid’s return, or they could clean con
stantly, hoping to keep it nice for her. It told me that Mrs. Michaelson was hopeful, hanging on to the dream of Maisie’s return more than anything else.
“Have you heard anything, Mrs. Michaelson?” I asked.
“No.” She sat on the stiff sofa. “You told us to call if we heard demands, but there’s been nothing. Not a word.” She rested her hands in her lap, trying out a couple of different places, but seemed unhappy with each option.
“I just wanted to ask,” I said and sat in the chair opposite her instead of on the couch at her side. I kept a respectful distance. “I know that sometimes it is hard to remember minor details like that.”
“Hearing from my daughter would not be a minor detail, Mr. Brinkley,” she said.
“Of course not.” The large window behind her let in a lot of white, cold light, blurring out her face. But I could tell by her tone she was defensive, angry.
“Ask your questions.”
“Sure,” I said. “I apologize if they appear repetitive. I just want to make sure I have everything right.”
She said nothing.
“You dropped Maisie off at school at 8:30.”
“Yes. Then I got the call at 11:30 saying she was missing.”
“And where were you in between?”
“I’m not a bad mother,” she screamed, her voice exploding in the small room around us. “Plenty of mothers leave their kids places for a couple of hours—the pool, the library, the backyard. What was I supposed to do? Not send my child to school? Maisie loved—”
Mrs. Michaelson froze. When she spoke again her voice was much quieter and controlled. “Maisie loves school. She started early just because of how smart and mature she is. This is because of the accident, isn’t it? I wish one of you would just have the nerve to admit it.”
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