The Sleeping and the Dead

by Jeff Crook

  “Half the golf widows in town were plotting to get him in the sack. They tried and failed, numerous times. I have their depositions on file. He seemed utterly devoted to his wife, beyond reproach, too monogamous if you ask me. His story was just too good to be true. People were started to think he was gay. In any case, this whole time he’s losing his shirt at the casinos and private poker games, playing against people who can afford to lose in one night what he makes in a year. Ashley’s people are rich as the pope, and she had taken out a fat life insurance policy, but he can’t get at that money if he kills her. Somewhere along the line, James meets Endo. Maybe he hires Endo to whack his wife so he can collect the life insurance…”

  “Only he never collected it,” I interrupted.

  Adam didn’t break stride. “… or maybe he and Endo become lovers, and maybe after a couple of times together he drops Endo like nobody’s business and Endo decides to get back at him, kill his wife and frame him for it. After what he did to Dave, you have to admit it fits his pattern.”

  “Then that clears James,” I said.

  “No it doesn’t. How did Endo know about that spare key, unless James told him about it? He wouldn’t plot her murder and risk everything on the chance he might find a spare key.”

  “I found the empty key frog because I was looking for it. A lot of people keep a spare key outside.”

  “And people change the locks when they move into a new house.”

  “They bought the house in an estate sale.”

  “I know that.” He sounded tired, frustrated with the investigation, exasperated with me because I wouldn’t stop arguing with him. If Endo got away now, Adam would be blamed for it, not Billet, and certainly not Wiley. And here I was, wasting his time when he should have been tracking down the killer. He went on, “All I’m saying is Endo is the link. We never connected him before because none of his victims had an obvious relationship with one another. He was the only common point in all their lives. And their deaths.”

  The bathroom door opened. James stepped out and leaned against the doorjamb. He pressed a wet towel to his forehead. He looked into the bedroom and saw me talking on the phone, then staggered to the couch and sank into the ratty cushions.

  “I don’t think Endo is a typical serial killer,” Adam continued. “He knew all his victims. That’s why we couldn’t pin him down. He doesn’t fit the profile. He killed them to punish them, for whatever reason. My guess is he felt betrayed.”

  “Any sign of him yet?” Adam still hadn’t mentioned the photos I’d sold to Michi. I hoped they would never find them.

  Fat chance of that. Who was I kidding? It was only a matter of time. To build the case against Endo, they would tear Michi’s house apart, brick by brick, just to make sure there weren’t any bodies hidden in the walls. My pictures would show up eventually, and that would be that.

  “Nobody has seen the Murano since you spotted it this afternoon.”

  “It may not have been the same one.”

  “That would’ve been a hell of a coincidence,” Adam said. “I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t believe Ashley St. Michael just happened to stop by the Playhouse the night Richard Buntyn was killed. I don’t believe Endo just happened to find that spare key outside her house. There’s something bigger going on here, something we can’t see because we’re too close to it. Which is why you’ve got to drop this guy, Jackie. James St. Michael stinks. His story stinks. I don’t want him there with you.”

  I lowered my voice to keep from screaming into the phone. “You don’t want him here? Who the fuck are you to tell me what you don’t want? If you’re so worried about who I’m seeing, why don’t you just ask me out yourself?”

  “First of all, I’m your NA sponsor. It wouldn’t be right for us…”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  He interrupted me. “Second, I’m gay.”

  Now it was my turn to sit there with my chin in my lap. I’d always assumed Adam was straight, a good heterosexual boy of the standard cop mold. A little uptight, sure, married to his job, definitely, but that wasn’t exactly unusual for a cop, especially one moving up so quickly through the ranks. He never talked about his personal life, people he was dating, anything. I never suspected it was because he was gay.

  “I thought you knew,” he said when I didn’t answer.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “No. Well, it does, of course, but not like that.” How could it? I was floored by his revelation, still off balance by the suddenness of it, and still angry at him for trying to direct my personal life.

  “I wish you would trust me on this guy, Jackie,” he said.

  “You’re wrong, Adam.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “James is a decent guy.”

  “Jackie, you’ve never been right about a man in your whole life,” he said. The bastard was right. That’s why it hurt so much.

  “I thought I was right about you,” I said, and hung up.

  40

  I TURNED THE RINGER OFF and dropped the phone on the bed. I didn’t want to talk to Adam if he called back, and he would call back. Any minute now. He always called back when I hung up on him.

  James was lying on the couch with his arm over his eyes. I checked the front door to make sure it was locked. James sat up and looked at me over the back of the couch. “That didn’t sound good,” he said.

  “Sorry. You weren’t supposed to hear.”

  “I tried not to listen. You should have closed your door. But I appreciate what you’re doing.” He rubbed his face with both hands, going from his chin up and over the top of his head, like a swimmer getting out of the pool. His eyes were puffy and dim in the light.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “You have funny ideas about nothing. It didn’t sound like nothing.”

  I changed the subject. “Are you all right now?” His face looked like a clay mask in the glow of the laptop.

  “I’ll be OK…” He choked it off before it started again.

  “You need a fresh beer.” I got him a can of Budweiser from the fridge.

  He took a small sip. “Your friend, the cop,” he said. “He doesn’t like me being here.”

  “Screw him.”

  “Did you tell him about the picture you found?”

  I shrugged and flicked cigarette ash on the floor between my legs. James carefully stood his beer on the arm of the couch, like a man defusing a bomb. A droplet of dew ran down the side of the can and sank into the other stains in the fabric. “I hate cops,” he muttered. “They’re bastards. Every last one.”

  “Adam’s not a bastard,” I said, wondering, Why am I defending him? Adam was being a bastard about James. “He’s my friend. He’s worried about me.”

  “Is that all?” James asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He wouldn’t look at me now. He traced another drop of dew down the side of his beer can. “He’s a guy. Maybe he has personal reasons for not wanting me here.”

  That pissed me off, even though it shouldn’t have. I’d practically accused Adam of the same thing. It didn’t change how I felt now. “First of all, Adam’s my NA sponsor, so that’s not going to happen because it would be a violation of trust. Second, he’s gay. So don’t go second-guessing other people’s motives if you don’t know the first fucking thing about them, OK?”

  He picked up his beer and held it to his mouth without drinking. “Sorry,” he said. He took a long swig, his throat rising and falling like a piece of machinery. He socked that can away like a regular frat boy, crumpled the empty in his hand. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “It’s just that every time I turn around, some cop is trying to screw up my life.”

  “Cops see it all,” I said. “They don’t always get it right.”

  “Yeah, but when they get it wrong, innocent people die with a needle in their arm.”

  “Why do you think
so many cops end up alcoholics, drug addicts, divorced?” I was describing myself.

  He shrugged, sullen. All he could see was his own point of view, and I couldn’t blame him. One thing you don’t want in your life is some cop who’s married to the idea that you broke the law. It really won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, he’s going to find a way to bring you down. All the same, I could understand Adam’s concern, and deep down I still harbored a niggling doubt about James. How did Endo find that key, unless he already knew about it?

  “Maybe I can help you see the situation from a cop’s point of view,” I offered.

  “I really don’t care to see their point of view,” he said.

  “Just sit still and listen for a minute. Like I said before, when a woman is killed, cops automatically look at the husband or boyfriend. That’s a fact of life. Also, you’re up to your ass in debt…”

  “How…” he started to say, then realized how stupid that question would sound.

  I continued, “… up to your ass in debt. Your wife had a big insurance policy and her folks had money. That’s motive.”

  “I never tried to collect on her policy.”

  “Because the insurance company wouldn’t pay as long as you were a suspect.”

  “I didn’t want to collect.”

  “You couldn’t collect, whether you wanted to or not. Cops don’t care about your noble intentions. All they see is the insurance policy and how much you stand to collect.”

  “OK,” he said, calming down a little. “I can see that. I never thought of it that way. But it’s not gambling debt.”

  “What then?”

  “Stocks. I was in deep, day trading, borrowing money to cover my losses.”

  “Borrowing from who?”

  “Leg breakers. The banks wouldn’t talk to me anymore.”

  “If you needed money, why not sell the house?”

  “The house belongs to Ashley’s parents. They bought it for us as a wedding present, but the title is still in their name. They’re very controlling people, especially her dad. We had to stay married for ten years before they would give us the house outright. After the…” He paused again and his eyes watered up. “After Ashley died, they let me keep living there for her sake, until I was actually convicted. Innocent until proven guilty. They’re Democrats.”

  “How generous of them,” I said.

  “They don’t talk to me anymore. We talk through their lawyer. After I lost my job, I needed every penny to pay the lawyers and keep the gorillas off my back. The other day I got a margin call, so I sold Ashley’s cameras. I had no choice. I sold my Lexus a couple of days ago.”

  “So you defintely had motive. Means is obvious enough—you were her husband.” I had to stop myself. Here he was helping me to dig his own grave, yet for some reason I still trusted him.

  I continued, tried to be more diplomatic, and failed. “All that’s left is opportunity, and that’s the sticky part. You have a perfect alibi.”

  “Exactly,” he said without moving his lips. They were flat gash across his face.

  “But that doesn’t mean you weren’t involved. You could have hired it out.” Then, because I still had that niggling doubt, I said, “Wayne Endo,” to see how he would react.

  He didn’t, except to say, “What?” That eased my mind a bit. Either he didn’t know Endo or he was a damned good actor. Damn good. The best ones always are. Not even Perry Mason can shake them.

  “Did you ever know or meet a man named Wayne Endo?” I asked.

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Never talked to him in a chat room online?”

  “I don’t do that kind of thing.”

  “Never picked him up in a bar anywhere?”

  “You mean like a gay bar?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I was married!”

  “Lots of gay men are married. You wouldn’t be the first.”

  He just shook his head. This was a pointless line of inquiry, anyway. Adam was wrong about James and I knew it. I took a drag and blew the smoke at the computer screen, then clicked to the next image in the camera file. It was a picture of me, naked, asleep in bed with my brother’s baseball bat clutched between my legs. I had kicked off the covers. The angle was low and foreshortened, as though the camera had been sitting on the nightstand when the photo was shot.

  I closed the image, but left the computer on. “Endo isn’t your typical serial killer,” I said. “He may not even be a serial killer. He murders people he thinks have betrayed him, or to send messages to people who have betrayed him.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  I probably shouldn’t have told him. If he did have something to do with his wife’s murder, all I was doing was giving him the opportunity to cover his tracks. But I didn’t think he was guilty. Maybe I didn’t want to think he was guilty. “Maybe you met Endo. Maybe you had a brief affair. Maybe he fixated on you and when you didn’t return his affections, he killed your wife and tried to frame you for it.”

  “But that’s not what happened.”

  “What really happened doesn’t matter,” I tried to explain. This wasn’t some show on television. Justice might not prevail in the end. “All that matters is what the DA thinks happened, and what he can convince a jury to believe about you. Which is more plausible? That you had a gay affair that went bad and your lover murdered your wife? Or your wife just happened to be in the perfect place at the perfect time to catch the Playhouse Killer in the act, that he killed her, staged her body, found a hidden and unknown key that allowed him to frame you, then accidentally took a photo of himself standing over the body of his victim?” Just as I finished, a tremendous crack of thunder broke right over our heads, putting an exclamation point on my conclusion.

  James said nothing, but his eyes had that drawn look of panic, as though for the first time he could see how thin the line was keeping him from death row. If Endo was captured, the cops, maybe even Adam, would paint the same scenario and Endo would plead to it to buy himself a reduced sentence. That’s all it would take to put James St. Michael on a gurney.

  He had never faced that reality. Like most people, he assumed truth would win out, and justice would be served in the end. Meanwhile, he’d blamed the cops.

  I almost told him about Sean. Maybe if he knew that I understood what it was like to lose someone, he could unload some of that grief. But I would have sounded like a Narcotics Anonymous counselor. Hello, my name is Jackie, and I’m still grieving my brother’s murder.

  Truth was, I really couldn’t know what James had been through, just like he couldn’t know what I’d been through. You can talk about it, but nobody can share those dark watches of the night with you. James had been dealing with this the best he could for two years, but the cops wouldn’t let him move on. They wouldn’t let him bury his wife.

  I reached across and took his crumpled beer can, tossed it in the trash in the dark. I couldn’t even see the garbage pail, but Zen-like I swished it, nothing but net. The thunder was pretty much constant now, but still distant, except for that one crack.

  “You want another beer?”

  “Please.” I sucked the foam off the top before handing it to him. He thanked me and set it on the arm of the couch without taking a drink. I stood in the door with the cold blowing out around my legs. James was staring sightlessly into the bedroom, one side of his face lit up by the light from the refrigerator. The other side was so dark I couldn’t see it.

  “I didn’t kill my wife,” he said, turning to me. “I loved Ashley. I still love her.”

  “I believe you.”

  “I wish I could believe you do.”

  “I wish you could, too.” He sat with his chin resting on the back of the couch. His hair was softer than it looked, but his cheeks were rough. He needed a shave. “If I thought for one second you had murdered your wife, do you honestly think I would kiss you?” I leaned forward in the chair and kissed him on the mouth
. He kissed me back, but only a little. Ashley was still there inside him, the memory of her, holding him back. I could feel her. I could almost see her. He was the only thing holding her in this world, but if he let her go, they’d both be lost.

  I kissed him again and this time he put his hand on the back of my head, and now he clove to me with a terrible desperation, like a drowning or starving man. I don’t know if I was merely standing in for his lost wife, if he even knew who he was kissing. It didn’t matter. I could hardly breathe but it didn’t feel like I needed to breathe. I was starving, too. Two starved children devouring each other. I felt the wet on my cheeks from his tears and he let me go just enough to breathe, and rested his forehead against mine.

  “I’ve spent the last two years wondering whether I’d ever prove my innocence,” he said.

  “Nobody’s innocent,” I said, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “We’re just not all guilty. Can you stay here tonight?”

  He nodded.

  41

  HIS MOUTH TASTED COOL AND earthy, like water from a mountain stream, like snow and the wind and the melting sunlight, with just a hint of beer. Mine felt like a bayou full of rotting gar and lovesick bullfrogs. I couldn’t remember if I had brushed my teeth that morning. I hadn’t eaten all day. I was living on cigarettes and beer.

  I took his hand and pulled him to the bedroom door so he could see the bed against the wall. It was easy enough to spot it in the strobes of lightning outside the window. I put a hand on his chest and kissed him again, briefly, just with the lips, and said, “Give me a minute.” I let my hand drift down his chest, over the rippling muscles of his belly, just so he had no doubts what I intended. Then I took the two steps back into the bathroom and closed the door.

  I gazed in the mirror for a moment and hardly recognized myself. My face was so pale my eyebrows looked like someone had drawn them with Magic Marker. My eyes were tiny beneath them, squinting suspiciously at the person in the mirror. I pulled down my jeans and panties, then shucked off my shirt and bra and tossed them in the shower.