Corpses Say the Darndest Things: A Nod Blake Mystery

by Doug Lamoreux

  “No, dumb ass,” he said, “you're the one with the witness.”

  “Uh-huh. Who saw what?”

  “A neighbor thought they saw a shadow, someone from the car that hit you, they think, bend over you…”

  “And put something in my pocket?”

  “Probably. That doesn't mean there isn't something you can tell us.”

  “How long were you going to keep this a secret?”

  The door swung open and Mason, unknowingly (the only way he ever accomplished anything), rescued the lieutenant from any further admissions by tossing him the requested bottle of pain pills. Then, like a groundhog scurrying from dark clouds, he disappeared back through the door. Wenders looked from the bottle in his hand, the potential relief for his headache, to me, the most likely cause of it, and said, “You look like hell. Take yourself over to Cook County and get your head X-rayed. Make sure there's still nothin' there.”

  I wearily made my way out, thinking how lovely it would be if Wenders choked on the aspirin.

  *

  It was almost dawn – of the following day – when Lisa leaned me (in my Sabu-esque turban of a head bandage) against the wall outside my door. She switched the paper bag (a prescription muscle relaxer and the only pain pill my allergies allowed) to her other hand, unlocked the door with my key, and supported me into the apartment without me falling on my face. She's a good girl, Lisa.

  Let me fill you in on the previous twenty-four hours. You're already aware I spent the morning, from the time of my arrest (they let me go, yeah, but when you're hauled away in cuffs, sisters and brothers, you have been arrested) until the lunch hour, being threatened by Wenders. You already got the skinny on that. The interview had lasted over five hours and I thought it had been an ordeal. I've been more wrong but not often. Because then I limped into the Emergency Room at Cook County Hospital and the real ordeal started. I signed in just before noon, called Lisa at the office to let her know that most of me wasn't dead (the jury was still out on my head cheese), and to warn her I'd probably need a lift once the medical staff had fixed whatever I'd broken. I warned her that, if that was the case, I'd give her a call. Then I plopped like a spilled pudding into a waiting room chair and proceeded to do just that; wait.

  I waited so long that Lisa put in the best part of her day, closed the office early (just after 4 pm) and, not having heard anything, came to the ER to check on me – before I was seen by anyone. Yeah, after five hours beneath Wenders' glare, I did over five hours more in the hospital waiting room. If I had been bleeding internally, by then I'd have been chatting with the victims in this case on their side of eternity. I was eventually ushered into a room with a bed where my vitals were taken and the waiting allowed to start all over again. Day became evening. Lisa pitched two bitches, a small annoyed one, followed some time later by its great big furious sister, before a disinterested (but warned and wary) X-ray tech finally whisked me away to the Radiology room for my photo shoot. Evening became night, during which she took one million and six pictures, I counted; ankles, knees, hips, hands, chest, right shoulder, and my melon from every conceivable angle; so many I glowed. Then it was back to my room where night became morning. A thousand years later, a sleepy-eyed doctor rattled the films in the air, making as much noise as he was able, while he gave them twice the once-over he'd given me. His verdict: I had concussed my already-concussed head. Of that, he had no doubt. Beyond that, I was beat to hell and back but he didn't think I had any major injuries. I was apparently, for no discernible reason again, lucky to be alive. A dead relative must have put in a good word for me, though I couldn't imagine who. He, the doctor that is, warned I might have a broken bone or two. He didn't think so, but the pictures would be re-read in the light of day by someone who charged even more than he did. He wished me well and tried to cut me loose.

  That's when I asked him the question; hypothetically, of course. The doctor left the room a few minutes later probably thinking I was out of my mind. He passed Lisa in the hall. She ignored him, staring in at me as if she had no doubt I was crazy. Apparently, she'd been eavesdropping.

  A nurse gave me an injection, wrapped my head wound in the nifty turban already mentioned, and urged me to get plenty of rest. The advice was silly. They'd kept me up all night, given me a shot that not only knocked out the pain but was making me tired as hell and now, though I was as comfortable as I was likely to be for some time on that cot with pillow and blanket, they were ordering me up and throwing me out. Why didn't they let me rest? Not long after, Lisa shoe-horned me into the tin can she drives, stopped to fill my scripts at an all-night pharmacy, and brought me home. Confessions of a gumshoe; I probably could have taken a taxi and managed on my own, but didn't.

  “Couch or bed?” Lisa asked. I did my best to stare like a hungry wolf. She wasn't feeling sheepish. “Who do you think you are, Steve McQueen? Get over yourself.” She led me to the couch and helped me to sit but it felt as if she'd dropped me into a car on Space Mountain. I closed my eyes and took in air not to throw up. When I was able, I groaned, “The room's spinning.”

  “Any pain?”

  “No. No pain at all. Whatever they gave me… they ought to sell it in six packs. But my head is…” I let it go. After all, what did I expect. “Did I thank you for coming to my rescue?”

  “Three times already. Can I get you anything? Are you hungry?”

  “Ugh… The thought of food… No, thanks.”

  Lisa sat in the chair opposite. “Before the hospital… Before you called… Did Wenders give you a hard time?”

  “Yeah,” I said matter-of-factly, “Yeah, he did.”

  “He doesn't really think you killed anybody.”

  “Is that a question or a statement?”

  “Well, does he?”

  “Who knows what Frank Wenders thinks? He's fishing.” I laughed at the thought of a whale fishing. It must have been the pain killers. Lisa was staring at me. Like she'd stared at me earlier, from the hospital hallway outside of my Emergency room, only more so. If I'd ever seen the like, she was building up to a question.

  “What's going on, Blake?”

  Yeah, a question. Staring back with any meaning or intensity was out of the question. I was so medicated, I could barely hold my battered head up. I tried instead for naive innocence.

  “Don't bother with that look,” Lisa said. “You're not sweeping this under the rug. I heard you with the doctor. I heard you tell him you're having hallucinations.”

  “I did not tell him I was having hallucinations.”

  “You said you were afraid you were.”

  “If you're going to listen to other people's conversations, the least you could do is listen. I was asking him a question about a hypothetical case.”

  “That's nonsense, Blake, and you know it. You were asking him about brain damage.”

  “I was curious,” I said defensively. “I've been hit in the head a few times.” I'd have pointed at my turban for emphasis but couldn't lift my arm.

  “Are you having hallucinations?” Her tone was touching and terrifying. She was staring again.

  “I don't know,” I told her. I wanted to tell her so much more. About the things going on – in my head; the pain, the shocks, the visions or hallucinations or premonitions or whatever they were. I wanted to tell her the dead were transporting into my noggin in a blue and gold beam of light and begging for my help. I wanted to tell her that corpses say the darndest things. I wanted to tell her I wasn't merely trying to solve a series of murders, I was experiencing them. And, when she objected to all of the above, to try to convince her that, no really, I've had my head bashed in, been set on fire, had my throat slit, been hung. Why shouldn't I tell her? I trusted Lisa like I trusted nobody on earth.

  The room was spinning again, or yet, and that conversation, that sharing of interesting (to say the least) experiences I'd been having, was not going to take place. Certainly not now, when I had no clue what was happening to me, when I was swimming
in pain medication. It couldn't take place. If, for some unknown reason, or even a known physical reason like having my skull repeatedly smashed, I was going out of my mind, then I had no choice but to go alone. And if I was becoming some kind of psychic then, Katy, bar the door! I raised my eyes to see that Lisa was still staring with that frightening quizzical look she'd patented. “I don't know,” I repeated.

  Then I changed the subject. “As for Wenders, he's just fishing.” Had I said that before? It didn't matter. “He's not above letting me solve a crime for him, you know that if anyone does. He's got a witness that clears me of this last performance and that probably ruins his day. As to facts in the case? I don't know. Can you imagine what Frank Wenders would do with a fact?”

  “That murder scene just sounds like it was horrid.”

  “They've all been horrid.”

  “Yes,” Lisa agreed. “But this time, all that blood.”

  It took me a minute to catch up. “The Riaz place? Yeah. It was horrid.”

  “You're going to think I'm a freak but it sounds kind of romantic too.”

  “What? What is romantic about a double murder?”

  “Nothing. Not the murder. The scene. The way you described the scene.”

  I tried to remember, saw scattered flashes, but the meds…

  Lisa was still talking, describing what she imagined the scene was like. “Rocio fought to live. Mortally wounded, she crawled up the stairs to die beside her husband. Then, with her last breath, she declared her devotion and her love by struggling to grab the rosary and the Valentine that Reggie had given her. She clutched them to her breast and died beside her mate. Don't you think it's kind of romantic?”

  “I think you're right. You are kind of a freak.”

  “Next time you need help, call your ex-wife,” Lisa snapped as she stood. “Or better yet, call that little church bitch.”

  “Whoa. Lisa.” I grabbed her arm, nearly killing myself. Everything hurt and the room had no intention of slowing its spin. “I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. You know me… and my jaunty sense of humor. I'm grateful for everything. More, I'm completely in… in debt… I owe you.”

  “Does that mean you're going to teach me to be a detective?”

  “Why in God's name would you want to be a detective? Don't be stupid.”

  “Okay. Does it at least mean you're going to start paying me with checks that don't bounce?”

  “I just said, don't be stupid. Ask for something I can do.”

  She gave me back my hand, set it right in my lap, which was nice of her. Then she said, “I'm going to take off. I'm supposed to be at work in a couple of hours.”

  “What kind of tyrant do you work for?” I asked her groggily. “Why don't you take the day off?”

  “Just because you stayed out and played all night doesn't mean I don't have work to do.”

  I barely heard her. The world was quickly fading out of existence. Still groggier, I said, “Hey, hand me that file on Riaz, would you?”

  “No.” She pushed me back into the couch. I had no strength or desire to fight. “Go to sleep.”

  “Can't sleep.”

  I'm pretty sure that's when Lisa headed for the door. I think I remember her opening it. I have the most vague recollection that she turned back and started to say something… Something like, “Nod, I just…” But I was gone, vanished into a drug-induced sleep. Knowing Lisa the way I do, she probably finished the truncated sentence with a sigh. It was, I'm sorry to have to admit, how most people ended their conversations with me.

  She's a good girl, Lisa.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A splash of cold water on the face first thing in the morning is sometimes all you need to jump-start both you and your day. But there are those times, when you're dead on your feet, aching in body and spirit, where the same activity, a cold splash of water in the puss, amounts to little more than rinsing off a corpse. Jump ahead twenty-four hours, sisters and brothers, because whatever that nurse gave me in the hypo made me sleep the clock twice around. I awoke on the morning of my eighth day on that miserable case and was rinsing off a corpse all right, in spades. The big bandage was gone, replaced by a small square of gauze, but my hair was still shaped like a turban. The bruised hulk staring back at me from my drug cabinet mirror didn't need a jump, he needed a tow. But, looking the way I did, what junkyard would take me? I patted my phiz dry (the towel felt like sandpaper), used the frame on both sides of the doorway like pinball machine bumpers to escape the bathroom, and worked my way down the hall like Rich Little doing The Duke.

  Always a man with a plan, I scooped up the file folder of Reggie Riaz's summarized prison and parole records on my way through the living room and into the kitchen. Even bending was a chore but, on the bright side, if I was still alive in thirty years and felt the same, I'd be having a good day by nursing home standards. I plugged in the toaster, found the instant coffee and microwaved a mug of water. (I'm probably boring you but, feeling as I was, these were heady accomplishments and I relate them with pride.) I scanned the file, an official looking thing of heavy green cardboard and bright red tabs packed with a rainbow of colored reports, until the microwave called time. I played Fat Bottomed Girls with a spoon on the inside the mug (I hate instant coffee), dug out two pieces of bread that didn't look to be part of the penicillin experiment, threw them into the toaster, and returned to the reports.

  “Well, looky here.”

  I opened the counter shutters, equalizing the gloom between kitchen and living room, retrieved the phone from the coffee table, and reached through to set it on the counter. I headed back around into the kitchen, picked up the Riaz file, and started dialing. “Blake Investigations.” Lisa was chewing a breakfast sandwich. Okay, I was guessing, but I thought I could hear eggs.

  “What a coincidence,” I told her. “That's who I called.

  “Blake! You're not dead.”

  “Have you been worried?”

  “Slept like a rock the whole two hours you left me night before last. Relished the peace and quiet yesterday. Tried to call you last night, got no answer, minded my own business and put you out of my head. Then slept like a rock again last night.”

  “You are a rock.”

  “Ye-ah,” she agreed. “And well rested. You ought to get yourself nearly-killed once a week.”

  “And here I called specifically to tell you you were the best.”

  “I'm completely charmed. How are you feeling? What's up? And why am I the best?”

  “I'm feeling awful. So what else is new? As to what's up; I just opened the Riaz file.” I was about to elaborate when something caught my eye; black smoke rolling from my toaster. My breakfast was going up in flames. “Damn it!” I dropped the phone, yanked out the plug, and attempted a rescue. I couldn't manipulate the butter knife, the only utensil at hand, into either slot as my fingers weren't cooperating (even my hair hurt). I turned the toaster over, shook it, and watched my toast and six months of charred crumbs bounce on the counter top. I picked the phone back up. “Sorry.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” Suddenly Lisa's breakfast sounded good. I returned to rescuing mine. “Where was I?” I scraped the char away then buttered my briquettes.

  “You were saying how important I am to you.”

  “The prison report, right.” I crunched a bite of toast (that's not an exaggeration) and picked the file back up. “Guess who appeared as a character witness at Reggie's parole hearing?”

  She didn't give it much thought. “Mother Teresa.”

  “You're closer than you know. The Reverend Conrad Delp.”

  “Blake,” Lisa groaned, “get off this case or my mother is going to end up hating me.”

  “You? Don't you mean me?”

  “No, I mean me. She already hates you.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Wait, that's your hang-up sound. Was that it? Was that all you wanted?”

  “It's the only interesting fact I've
learned. I wanted to share it.”

  “Thanks for sharing.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Hey,” she asked, still chewing, “are you coming in today?”

  I took another bite, giving her a little of her own medicine, crunching toast, nearly breaking teeth, as I assured her, “I'm not even getting dressed today.”

  It wasn't a whole lot later, I admit, that I was dressed and walking around the apartment. I'd returned the phone to the coffee table and was doing laps around the couch, trying to keep my limbs from stiffening up, while I dug deeper into the Riaz prison record. It hurt to sit for very long and, even if it hadn't, that report was interesting reading and hope was keeping me on my toes. I'd been flipping the pages casually, without coming upon any more bombshells, when I came across a list of Reggie's former cell mates. I read down the page, stopped at a name that rang a bell, and let it ring until the explosion went off in my brain. “Son of a bitch.”

  For once the mental explosion didn't hurt, or feature a cast of ghosts making guest appearances in my noggin, it was just an idea, a notion, a question. But it was a hell of a question. I tossed the file down and dialed the phone. “Blake Investigations.”

  “Lisa, I need you to call… Stop eating for a second. Call Brian Scully over at the 16th precinct. Tell him I need to get my hands on a photograph of a convict…” I paused to give it a thought and made myself shiver. “…or, heaven forbid, an ex-con named Eddie Love.”

  “Eddie Love?”

  “That's the one. I was responsible for his last trip to prison back when you were still trying on your prom dress.”

  “I didn't go to prom, Blake. I wasn't asked. Thanks for picking that scab open.”

  “Eddie Love,” I repeated with a sigh. “He was a transplanted Montanan, or Idahoan, or something like that. I worked overtime to forget him. No, wait, he was from Wyoming. Doesn't matter. He was a country boy brought himself to the city like some kind of Midnight Cowboy. I sent him up ten years ago; some nasty business involving prostitutes and a knife. He's a major head case and I need to know if he's out and about. And, if he is, where. Have Brian send the picture to you. I'll be in.”