“So do you know where those two guys are now?” I asked.
“Yeah, we found them. They’re locked up for the moment, but they’ve got lawyers. They’ll be out on bail by this afternoon.”
I felt my heart jump, thudding against my rib cage. What would stop them from trying again? I poured a cup of coffee and took it to him.
“And the guy in the other car—have you found him?”
Gray stretched out his hand and took the mug from me. His fingers brushed mine and he pulled his hand away, almost as if I’d burned him.
“No, we’re looking, but there wasn’t much to go on. They found the car he used abandoned behind a warehouse across town. The tags came back stolen. As for the other two, they know we’re watching you. They’ll be twice as reluctant to come after you now.”
This didn’t comfort me. The police had practically surrounded me for two days and still these men had found a window of opportunity. These guys wanted Nick’s tape badly enough to risk almost certain capture. I couldn’t really believe that they were scared off by a small-town police department. On the other hand, perhaps it would give me the opportunity to set a trap of my own.
Gray’s pager sounded and Darlene jumped. He pulled it out of its holster and gazed down at the tiny panel.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said. He barely glanced at me before he turned and walked away, but the look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. There was a distance between us now, a gap created by my past life.
“Wait!” I called, hurrying to follow his long-legged stride across the porch.
I grabbed his arm and tugged him around to face me.
“You don’t understand,” I said, and then stopped as the words caught in my throat, the guarded uncertainty in his eyes holding me at bay. I was an unknown again. All we had in common were a bunch of traumatic events tied together by one short, sweet night, a night that had ended all too soon.
“I have to do this,” I finished. “He doesn’t have anyone else and I need the closure.”
Gray nodded and started to turn away.
“He told me that he filmed the murder of the FBI agent,” I said, and watched as Gray turned back, interested now. “He said it was a mob killing. He hid the video, but he wouldn’t tell me where. He said it would be easy for me to find, but he wouldn’t tell me where it was and he passed out before I could get it out of him. I think he wanted to sell it, but his girlfriend Connie double-crossed him and was trying to beat him to it when she got killed. You wouldn’t have gotten that out of him if I hadn’t gone to the hospital. I told Agent Cole everything he said—doesn’t that count for anything with you?” He didn’t answer, instead he went on as if we were colleagues, not lovers.
“So it’s a tape, not pictures, and he hid it somewhere he thought would be easy for you to figure out.”
I nodded, feeling a slow burn begin as I saw his attitude toward me warming. It was okay for me to get information out of Nick, but if I was merely praying with him or offering the man support as he lay dying, then I was back to being the enemy.
Gray’s expression softened, but as he reached out to touch me, I backed up, out of reach.
“I’ll let you know if he says anything else before he dies, Detective. Have a nice day.”
I turned away from him and walked back into the kitchen, closing the door firmly behind me. A few moments later, I heard the dull roar of his unmarked car pulling away from the curb.
Darlene didn’t say a word as I walked past her and up the stairs to my room. When I returned, dressed and ready to go, she had cleaned the kitchen and was sitting quietly at the table.
“You ready?” she asked.
I nodded, still not sure I could talk without starting to cry. Darlene seemed to understand and didn’t press me. We rode to the hospital in silence and once we arrived, I turned my attention to Nick.
Nick Komassi died at 3:52 a.m., August 3, without ever regaining consciousness. He died gently, slipping away in the last moments of a quiet, still night and leaving before dawn could usher in another beautiful summer morning. I had been with Nick for the final day of his life, and in that time, I had found the closure I so desperately needed.
Darlene and I left the hospital as the tiniest red sliver of the returning sun nudged the last star into a full retreat. The rain had ended and the clouds were gone. It was going to be a lovely day.
We stood outside the hospital doors, taking in deep breaths of fresh air and trying to find our bearings. Darlene was smiling to herself and humming something softly under her breath.
“Want to sleep at my house?” I asked. “It’s closer than driving all the way back out to your place.”
Darlene shrugged. “Might as well. I’ll see how I feel when we get there.”
We found her car and drove slowly away from the medical center. I knew I was tired. I could feel the fatigue slipping into my awareness, but I also felt light and as if I were almost floating in a fog of some kind. The world had changed so much for me in the past twenty-four hours. I almost couldn’t imagine it ever feeling normal again.
The weight of Nick and the battle we had waged over the past few years had lifted. What had once almost consumed me now was gone. I wondered what I would do with so much empty space in my life. No more anger. No more fear. No more waiting to see what horrible thing Nick would do next. All I felt now was this strange lightness. I was a different person, changed and released from a burden that had seemed to cover every aspect of my life. What would happen now? Who would I become now that I was truly free?
Pa and Mort met us as I pulled into my driveway. The two old men stood side by side, each cradling a mug of coffee, dressed in their old guy uniforms of white T-shirts and baggy khaki trousers. Their faces wore the stubble of an interrupted night’s sleep and their eyes were bloodshot with fatigue and worry.
“You had company last night,” Pa said.
“Yeah, but don’t worry,” Mort added. “We got here and secured the perimeter. Them bastards won’t be back on my watch.”
Darlene smiled. She thought this was cute, I could tell.
“What happened?” I asked. My newfound peace evaporated instantly, replaced by the familiar, heart-pounding anxiety that had become my everyday reality.
Pa rubbed his hand over his chin, then up through the fringe that he insisted was hair.
“Mort, here, has a police scanner set up in his bedroom. When he heard the dispatcher call in a possible prowler at your address, he phoned me.”
Mort smiled broadly. “Yeah, you never know when them things’ll come in handy,” he said. “I bought it last week, you know, just in case. Boy, I’m glad I did, too.”
Pa nodded. “Yeah, if Mort hadn’t called me, I wouldn’t have known a thing. They could’ve come back. As it is, you got some damage, but mainly what you got is a mess.”
Mort shook his head. “Vandals,” he said. “Vagrants. Drug users. Friends of that scumbag, well…that’s what they was if you ask me.”
I approached the back door, dreading what I’d see inside. My house looked like TV news shots of tornado damaged mobile homes. They had started in the kitchen, tossing drawers out onto the floor, breaking my teddy bear cookie jar, and proceeding with reckless abandon throughout my house.
Mort and Pa followed me while Darlene plowed on ahead, running up the staircase and calling back down over the banister. “They were up here, too.”
I felt sick inside. The fatigue of a sleepless night mixed in with the pain of Nick’s death, the distance with Gray and now the devastation of my home. It was more than I could absorb.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Mort said. “We got round-the-clock watches set up. Frank and Joey are coming on at eight. Joey says to tell you his wife and daughter are coming, too. They’re going to help clean up while you get some shut-eye.”
“I’d take you home to Ma,” Pa said, “but you won’t go, will you?”
I could only shake my head. No, I wouldn’t run
away, never again. I was going to stay right here. I was going to figure it all out somehow and deal with it, but I wasn’t going to leave.
We were standing in my living room. Books had been thrown off their shelves. Pictures lay in broken frames, covered in shards of glass. Mort stood by the newly repaired front window, looking out onto the street.
“That’s three times,” he said, turning to Pa. “I’ve seen them three times.”
Pa nodded, but didn’t explain.
“Who, Pa?”
“Nothing,” he muttered. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk later.”
“Pa,” I said. “What the hell is it? This is my house and my problem. Now what’s going on?”
Mort turned away from the window and let the slat on the blinds drop back into place. His lips were pressed together in a thin line.
Pa threw up his hands. “You gotta be such a hothead,” he said. “Marone a mia! All right, three times since we been here a black sedan comes by. We told the cops and then they come by. So far, ain’t nobody run into nobody. In fact, it might not even be the same black car.”
“Yeah,” Mort added. “I swear to God, it looks like the same car but it don’t look like the same guy driving it. Hey, I’m old. Maybe it’s my mind playing tricks on me, a co-inky-dink maybe, you know?”
He was trying to play it off like he’d been hit, out of the blue, by an attack of senility, but Mort wasn’t suddenly incapable of knowing what he saw and what it meant. He was playing Pa’s game, protecting Pa’s little girl from the dreaded truth, playing for time so Pa could protect his family the old-fashioned way, by himself.
“Go on upstairs,” Pa said. “We moved the old bed up to the guest room. You and your sister need to sleep.”
I felt a wave of emotion surge over me. My throat tightened. My cheeks flushed and all I could do was wipe away tears that streamed uncontrollably down my face.
This display was more than poor Mort was prepared to handle. He coughed and turned, busying himself by stooping down and picking up the broken shards of a vase. Pa walked over to me and wrapped a burly arm around my shoulders, pulling me to his chest. It was such a familiar gesture. It was what the men in my family did. When all else failed, they wrapped you in their arms as if to take you into themselves and give you the strength they had in abundance.
“I know you want to get these guys. But you can’t be effective without any sleep,” he said. “Rest for a little while. We’ll keep watch.” Pa walked me to the stairs, patted my shoulder and hugged me once more before giving me a gentle shove toward my room.
“Mark my words,” he said gruffly, “your sister is already snoring in the guest room. You sleep. Things will look better after you rest.”
I nodded, dragging my body up the stairs one step at a time, sniffling and hiccuping as I went. I collapsed onto my bed and buried my head under a pillow that still smelled faintly of Gray’s cologne. The last image I held in my memory as I drifted off was that of Gray hovering above me, resting his weight on his strong arms and smiling down at me as he leaned closer to kiss me.
While my conscious brain thought only of Gray Evans, my unconscious sought out Nick Komassi and brought him to me in my dreams.
“You never do what I tell you,” Nick said. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, looking very much alive except for one thing. He was wearing white long underwear, and he was smiling.
“Nick,” I said, “what are you doing here? You’re dead.”
I sat up, pushing the pillows behind my back and staring over at him. I remember thinking, This is the strangest dream I’ve ever had.
Dead Nick could read minds, apparently, because he answered me.
“Sophie, this is not a dream. Listen to me. I can’t go on until this is finished. I told you to go look for the video. You’d better get it before the others do.”
Now I was awake, or at least in my dream I thought I was awake. The entire episode was so vivid, so real, that I wasn’t sure that this was, in fact, a dream.
“Nick, I’m sleeping. You’re dead. I’ll get to it when I wake up.”
Nick shook his head. When I stared hard at him, I could see that he shimmered a little bit, as if his edges were blurring.
“Sophie, this is important. Get out of bed and go get that tape.”
“Nick,” I said, “this is a dream. You are dead. Furthermore, the FBI, the Mafia and I have all searched this house. I haven’t seen any videos other than the two or three movies I own. It’s not here and neither are you!”
I closed my eyes and willed myself to have another dream, a non-Nick dream. It was a technique that worked when I was younger, but not now. Clearly I was too tired to direct my own dream life. Nick wasn’t leaving. He leaned over and shook my shoulder.
“Sophie, I can’t go on, you know? Go on, as in, to the afterlife? I can’t go until you take care of my unfinished business.”
That did it. That was so Nick, always getting me to run his little errands because obviously my life wasn’t as important as his. My agenda could wait. Nick needed me to go downstairs, look in the armoire that held my limited movie collection, and retrieve a videotape of a murder.
“Damn it, Nick, I have a life here. I was up with you for over twenty-four hours. I sat by your bed and held your hand, and does that count for anything with you? Oh no. You can’t let me sleep for even an hour. I’ve gotta run downstairs and prove to you there’s no videotape of a murder. Well, you know what, buddy? You can just get it yourself if it’s so damn important! Now go away! I’m dreaming you and I’m tired!”
With this, I scrunched back down under my covers, ignoring Nick and rolling over onto my stomach. Even with my pillow firmly clamped to my head, I could hear his sigh of frustration.
I ignored him. Nick Komassi wasn’t going to irritate me anymore. He was dead and I’d be damned if I was going to dream about him or be haunted by his ghost. Really, I thought, the guy had some nerve.
“Sophie,” he said, “you have been sleeping for almost six hours. Get up and go find that tape.”
“Six hours?” I lifted the pillow just far enough to look at the clock on my bedside table. Sure enough, it was almost noon.
I clamped the pillow back over my head and moaned. “Go away, Nick! Leave me alone.”
“No can do, Sophie,” he said, bending closer and lifting the pillow. “I’ve got places to go and people to see. I can’t leave until I know you’re going to be safe.”
I glared up at him. “Buzz off, Nick,” I said. “You never gave a damn before. Why start now? Nick, heaven is not like the Boy Scouts. You can’t do a good deed and get your merit badge. You’re already dead. You can’t do it in retrospect. We covered all that already. Go on. Saint Peter’s waiting.”
Even unconscious I felt like an idiot. My ex-husband was still trying to micromanage my life, even after death, and even in my dreams. I shook myself and squeezed my eyes tighter.
Nick was not above using guilt and shame to manipulate from beyond the grave. He sighed. He moaned softly, as if he was in pain, and then he played the Roman Catholic trump card.
“Sophie,” he said, his voice loaded with angst, “my mother is waiting for me. I see her. She’s reaching out her arms and calling to me. Sophie, if you have a shred of human compassion left for my soul, you’ll do this one last thing for me.”
I was going to kill him. If he hadn’t already been dead, I would have finished off the job. Nick Komassi didn’t care about his mother. When she’d been alive, who was it who remembered her birthday, bought the cards and sent the flowers? It sure as hell wasn’t Nick. And yet, I could see her, crying and stretching out her flabby arms to clasp her boy to her ample bosom. It was an image that prevented sleep as surely as amphetamines. Damn that Nick!
I sat up, or at least I dreamed I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, then watched as they went right through Nick’s translucent body. We both stared, not quite believing what we’d seen.
“Who
a!” Nick breathed. “I really am dead.”
I rolled my eyes. “You think you’d be in my bed if you were still alive?”
Nick shrugged. “I guess you got a point there,” he said. He gestured impatiently. “Well, get a move on. I don’t have all day. Time’s awasting.”
I stood and turned to look at him. Was it my imagination, or was he blurring more? I had to shake myself to remind myself that this was, after all, just a dream and a total figment of my imagination. I was only going along with it because my brain wouldn’t let me exchange the dream for something more realistic, like, say, winning the lottery.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. But Nick wasn’t having any of that. He followed me soundlessly down the hallway. I didn’t quite have the nerve to look back over my shoulder and note whether his feet were actually touching the floor. Hell, they never did while we were married, why would he start now?
“Wait!” he called as I started down the stairs. “Where are you going?”
I gave him The Look. “Downstairs to check the videos like you wanted.”
Nick shook his head, and I watched as it seemed to leave trails of light in an arc of movement.
“Not there, idiot. Anybody could find it there! I put it in with your teaching supplies.”
I stopped, frowning as I tried to remember where I’d put them.
“I don’t have any movies….” And then I remembered. I had a copy of Shrek for rainy days when recess outside wasn’t an option and my little students needed a reward. It was in an art supply box, buried under stacks of paints, crayons, paste and scissors, and had been put into a plastic storage tub.
“How did you…”
Nick shook his head. “It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you. I had to sneak into your classroom and swap it out.”
I shuddered. “What if I’d left it when I moved?” I said.
Nick smiled. “Not you, Sophie. You’re a creature of habit. You boxed your stuff up and brought it home every summer. You added to it and reorganized it, but you never threw anything away. I just wasn’t expecting you to move. That made it difficult. Now where is it?”
Sophie’s Last Stand Page 21
