Stranger in the Room

by Amanda Kyle Williams

  I felt my phone vibrating. I saw Rauser’s name before I blocked the bright display with my palm. “I need to take this,” I told Neil.

  “What am I supposed to do? I can’t see my hand in front of my face.”

  “Just wait here.”

  “Don’t leave me alone out here, man.” I heard him skid, then curse.

  “You were right,” Rauser told me. “Caterers dropped off party trays forty-five minutes in advance. Kelly’s daughter didn’t want them around when the old man got there. We’re running down several angles. By the way, last location for Miki’s phone was the Whole Foods in Midtown where she shopped. So no way to know if she lost it there and it went dead or if somebody lifted it.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “Closed three cases today. Probably open five more tomorrow. For now we’re looking good enough so that I can bring another team in on the Kelly and Delgado killings.” He paused. I heard the foil sound of his nicotine gum pushing through the package. I knew that sound by heart now. He was totally strung out on the stuff, a couple hundred bucks’ worth a month. But he wasn’t smoking, which was pretty good for a guy who had learned his high-stress job with a cigarette in his hand. “You were right about a couple things. The balloon hadn’t been exposed to the elements. It’s fresh out of the package. And Fiber matched the twine. It’s exact. We’re probably looking at the same lot. I think we can trace it to an individual store. Looks like you can get it at about any building supply, and a lot of drugstores and grocery stores too.”

  “Miki’s house, the condos where Kelly was abducted, the neighborhood where the Delgados live, it’s all in a pretty tight area,” I suggested.

  “Yep. The assisted-living place too. All in Midtown.”

  “He had to buy more than twine,” I said. “He needed toggles and drill bits and whatever. Big building supply right in the heart of Midtown. He’d shop where he’s comfortable, and he’d go where he’s just a face in the crowd. I’m sure they have some kind of cameras operating.”

  “As soon as we confirm the origin, we’ll start looking at security tapes. I got someone going over cold cases too, looking over the inventory sheets and shit. Maybe we got some stuff that didn’t seem important at the time.”

  “Exactly what I’ve been thinking. Neil’s been going through old newspapers with police blotters.”

  “I appreciate the help. And your help today. You might have blown it wide open for us. And you’re right. It’s why I drag you to crime scenes with me.”

  “I’m happy to do it,” I said.

  “How you doing, darlin’?” He always dropped the G. Like a country singer. “You feeling okay?”

  “I’m worried about Miki. But I’m okay.”

  “You know, we went through a lot, you and me, with the Wishbone cases last year.”

  “Where did that come from?”

  “We were hurt bad. And you went right back to work as soon as you were physically able.”

  “I have a huge mortgage. Of course I did. You would have too if APD would have let you.”

  “I had to go through weeks of psych stuff before they’d let me carry a gun again.”

  “Are you suggesting I give up work or my ten-millimeter?” I said it lightly, but I had an uncomfortable feeling Rauser had more on his mind.

  A slow second ticked by. “I bumped into Tyrone today. Said you seemed wrapped up a little tighter than usual last time he saw you.”

  “Why? What did he say?”

  “Said you went all Chuck Norris on some kid, then drew down on him.”

  Had my response been inappropriate? I didn’t think so. I’d felt threatened. I’d protected myself. I felt my temper spike and that tic pumping at the corner of my eye.

  “I just want to know you’re acknowledging what happened to us was a big deal,” Rauser was saying. “I want to know you’re dealing with it and not stuffing it. You don’t talk to me about your feelings.”

  “I don’t need you to be my shrink, Rauser. I pay Dr. Shetty to insult me every other Thursday. We pick the same scab off the same wounds. I get to be utterly self-absorbed, and she gets five hundred bucks a month. Everyone’s happy.”

  “I’m the guy that sees you put your gun under the pillow every night. I see the night terrors and sweats.”

  “Early menopause.”

  Rauser was silent.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “How about something real?”

  “Okay, I’m standing in the pitch dark on a country road with Neil, and this is not a great time to have this conversation.” Everything inside me had always risen up against Rauser’s daddy tendencies. It made me feel crowded and watched. I didn’t like it. When I wanted advice, I’d ask for it. I took a minute before I continued to adjust my tone. And my attitude. “Okay, the truth is I almost never feel safe anymore. And I miss drinking. God, I miss it. I came so close today. I think I might need to start those whiny-ass meetings again if my sponsor is still speaking to me.” I hadn’t shown up for so many meetings I’d promised to attend. I hadn’t talked to my sponsor since it was my turn to help clean up afterward. I didn’t mean to blow off the meeting. I just forgot. There’s always some emergency in my business. A fire that needs putting out always gets in the way. I’d gotten an angry message from him that night about commitment, about putting recovery first, about learning not to let down the people who counted on me. I hadn’t had the guts to go back.

  “It makes me happy you’re considering AA again.”

  “They usually have doughnuts.”

  “I wish I didn’t know you were on some dark road in Bumfuck.”

  “Well, I have a gun and a bad temper so …”

  Rauser laughed. “I love ya, Street. Get to a meeting. I’m sure they have them in Creeklaw County too.”

  I didn’t move for a minute after I hung up, just let the heavy air fall down around me. Rauser wanted me to talk more or cry or something. Because I’d been a victim of violence. Because we both had. Dr. Shetty gives me prescriptions to manage anxiety around post-traumatic stress. I never fill them. I can manage my own goddamn anxiety without a pill. I just wanted to move on. I didn’t want to keep being a victim. I remembered Miki arguing against her meds. Fuck. I didn’t want to deal with this.

  “Hello?” Neil’s voice broke in the darkness.

  I couldn’t see him, but I heard him milling. “I’m coming, you big baby.”

  “Everything okay in paradise?”

  “Rauser’s acting like a wife. It’s a pain in the ass. I kind of want to run away right now.”

  We walked for a minute. Gravel and sandy fine clay under our soles felt like walking on marbles. “Doesn’t that cop have enough drama in his life?” Neil chuckled. “Let’s face it. You’re a magnet for the shit. You’re the whole fucking cast of Glee.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I slipped and almost went down.

  “Some people like that, though. I have a friend down in the Keys. He says when the hurricanes come the howling is so constant and so eerie you think you’ll lose your mind. And then it stops. You walk outside and everything is torn all to shit and totally silent. And suddenly you miss the howling. Because you’re so used to it. Like you’re empty without it.”

  “Wow. Are the serial rights available to that? Because it was absorbing.”

  “You obviously missed the point,” Neil said. “The analogy was to love and drama, the way it howls, the way you get used to it.”

  “Again, fascinating. Thank you.” I squinted in the darkness. “Hey, there’s the fence. We’re close.”

  “That means Mrs. Stargell’s house is just up the road.”

  “Aww. You miss her? Want me to drop you off there? She can tell you stories and rub your head.”

  “You’re just jealous because she didn’t like you.”

  “Because I’m Chinese. Doesn’t that offend you on some level?”

  “Not really. I was there for the food.” We walked with only the ele
ctric buzz of cicadas, dirt and rocks grinding under our feet. I heard frogs and remembered there was a lake on the property.

  “What’s with the double names?” Neil asked out of the blue. “Joe Ray. Mary Kate. I guess it’s a southern thing. Billy Ray. Bobby Joe. Wally Bubba. Bubba Bubba. I think we should do that. What’s your middle name?”

  “No way.”

  “You don’t have a second name?” Neil turned his penlight on my face. “Come on. What’s the big deal? You know mine.”

  “Turn that off. And it’s no big deal to you because yours is David. Neil David Donavan. Could you be any whiter?”

  “You can call me Bobby Jane if it makes you feel better. Come on. I won’t tease you.” He punched my arm. “Tell me or I’m turning the interrogation lamp back on.”

  “Lei,” I answered, against my better judgment.

  “Lei? Oh my God. Your name is Keye Lei? You rhyme?” He started to laugh. “Is that a family thing or what? What were your parents’ names? Pee Wee and Kiwi?” He laughed so hard he snorted. “Oh Jesus, I’m going to wet my pants.” I thought I saw him grab himself in the dark, then I heard shoes skidding on gravel and a fump. “Sonofabitch,” he cursed loudly into the night.

  “Could you maybe be a little quieter? The whole undercover thing. Remember?”

  “It hurt, Kiwi,” he fake cried, then sniggered some more.

  We found the sloped driveway and hurried to the front of the building. Neil used his body to block the flashlight while I checked the door and windows. Didn’t look like there was an alarm system. I pulled my lock-picking kit out of the front pocket of my black hoodie.

  “Seriously?” Neil said.

  “You have a better idea?”

  “No.”

  “Then hold the light and make sure the old fossil up the road doesn’t see it.” I examined a standard cylinder lock on the front door. “She probably doesn’t sleep. Probably lives off the blood of children.”

  A few seconds later, the bolt withdrew and I pushed open a squeaky door into what looked like one of those walk-in doc-in-the-box clinics—commercial tile floors and a long Formica counter. But none of the tools normally found in reception areas—appointment books, magazines. No pencils or notepads. We stood there with the penlights in our hands, keeping the light low and away from the windows.

  “Not very welcoming,” Neil whispered.

  “No point, I guess. Visitors come in a coffin.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Neil moaned. It seemed to hit him for the first time that we were inside a crematorium.

  We slipped behind the reception counter and opened the door. The same tile met us—ash, with sparse blue and charcoal flecks. Metal doors with a square of reinforced glass at the top and center lined a hallway. Five of them. All closed.

  “What are we looking for?” Neil wanted to know.

  “I don’t know exactly. Tax files. See if he’s ever reported an employee. Utility bills and whatever else you can find that might make this place run. Suppliers’ invoices. I need his utility accounts.”

  “I’m shocked you’d think I’d invade someone’s privacy. What will I be looking for?”

  “Fluctuations.” I pushed open the first door to my left. Two adjustable gurneys. A metal table in the center. No windows. My flashlight swept over two rows of cabinets, upper and lower, a counter between them. There was a dock door, garage-style, with ridged metal, and a standard door next to it. A clipboard with a pen attached to it by a chain hung on the wall next to the dock door. I checked it out. Receiving Room Log. It was columned and lined, spaces marked for date, time, name of deceased, and funeral home delivering the body, and a column for the receiver’s initials. I flipped back through one page at a time. Same initials on each line. JRK. Joe Ray Kirkpatrick had checked every corpse into the receiving room—more evidence he was lying about an employee. A quick count of pages, then lines per page, told me the crematorium had accepted more than four hundred bodies since the log began at the first of the year. I went back to the front page and checked today’s date. Three lines. Mary Kate’s eagle eye had seen a hearse pull in this morning. Now I knew why. I looked over the counters, opened a couple of drawers, didn’t find anything that would help.

  We crept back out into the hallway. I chose the door across the hall. Neil was hot on my heels. If I’d stopped suddenly, I’d have had to see a proctologist. We stepped into an office with a messy desk, an ashtray piled with Black & Mild butts, and the stale stink of pipe-tobacco cigars. I saw stacks of paper on the floor, a braided throw, dusty like everything else, coffee-stained paperwork on the desk.

  “This is exactly what we need,” I told Neil.

  “Guy’s a total slob. Be no order to it. Makes stuff harder to find.”

  I heard a sound, metallic, familiar—the squeaky door hinge in the front room. Crap!

  Neil grabbed my arm at the biceps and squeezed. I guided him to the wall behind the door, cut my light. I could hear his breath quicken. “Just stay really still, okay?” I hissed. “Whatever this is, we’ll be fine.”

  We stood there in the dark and silence. No, not silence—footsteps, soft with a little drag. A sliver of light played under the door, then vanished. Neil’s breathing was coming heavier, and my heart was starting to tap-dance. How would we explain ourselves? And to whom would we be explaining ourselves to at almost one in the morning? Doors opened and closed. A one-inch gap between floor and door let the light in again, a quick sweep, then another. The door cracked open. There was nowhere to go. The only other door was being opened by a stranger. I reached for the Glock I had in the duty holster attached to the back of my jeans and gripped it by the barrel. Whoever it was, they were going to have a hell of a headache in a few seconds, because I was not about to wind up in a Creeklaw County jail. Larry Quinn would never let me live it down.

  I saw the tip of the flashlight. The beam bounced around, explored the room. I raised my arm. Neil sucked in a breath. Then the barrel of the flashlight came into view. I took a step forward. Mary Kate Stargell’s petite frame spun around with impressive dexterity for a woman her age. She aimed her flashlight at my face. I squinted, lowered the gun, and retaliated with my bright LED, pointing it at her beady little brown eyes. Not wanting to be left out, Neil switched on his penlight and moved it back and forth between us.

  “Mrs. Stargell, what are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? Ha! Why, I’m just being a good neighbor, watchin’ out after Kirkpatrick’s property.” She wagged one of her scrawny fingers at us. “And wouldn’t they like to know I found you in here? I knew there was no way in blazes you two were house shopping up here. You got the city written all over you.” Her voice was shrill with accusation and excitement, dark eyes glittering like a rodent’s in the light of so many penlight batteries. “You’re investigatin’ that rascal Kirkpatrick, and you better let me in on it or I’ll blab to everyone I know.”

  “You’re interfering with an investigation. Go home.”

  “If I have to leave here before you leave, then I’m going straight up to that Kirkpatrick house and knocking on that door.” White skin, thin as parchment, creased into hundreds of little lines. The woman must have been in her eighties. Her eyes narrowed. “On the other hand, if we leave here together with me knowing everything you know, why, then it’s a whole nuther story and I won’t feel the need to discuss it with anyone.”

  I moved my light over her—silver-white hair, pink quilted bathrobe, and hard-soled moccasin-style slippers. “Neil, fill her in and you two get busy looking for those accounts. I’m going to check out the crematory. Nice outfit, by the way.”

  “I used to come up here and keep Joe Ray Senior company. God rest his soul. That’s the crematory room two doors down. Across from that are the coolers. ’Cause there’s a waiting period and they got to keep them cadavers good and cold.”

  “Eeww,” Neil shuddered.

  “Keep that flashlight down and away from the windows, please.” I could hear t
he irritation in my own voice, but I didn’t care. I was aware of the waiting period. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours in most states. It was a safety measure in case an investigation was launched. Cremation prevents determining cause of death in most cases. There are exceptions. Bone fragments can tell the story if certain poisons and toxins contributed to death.

  “Why are you being so mean to her?” Neil asked in a loud whisper. His nerves seemed to be fraying a bit too.

  “Because I don’t want to spend the night in jail. And because she may actually be Satan.”

  We looked at her standing at the large antique desk sucking her false teeth and tsk-tsking at the papers and stains and empty Coke cans and dirty ashtrays. Mrs. Stargell pushed the eyeglasses hanging around her neck onto her nose, plunked down in the desk chair. The glasses pulled up at the corners like Catwoman’s. “If he had a grave to roll over in, why, then Joe Senior would be rolling.” She looked up and added earnestly, “He was cremated, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Of course,” Neil said.

  She opened a drawer and began riffling through Kirkpatrick’s private papers with the fervor of a Cold War operative. Neil, penlight stuck between his teeth, went to a pile of papers on the floor in front of a paper shredder.

  I left them and went to the door leading to the crematory chamber. Same Formica counters and cabinets I’d seen in the receiving room. There was a clipboard on the counter and a ballpoint on a chain. A wide, glistening stainless-steel chamber seemed to tunnel into the far wall. A Caution sign with warnings about high temperatures hung over it. A stainless conveyor system about five feet long was positioned in front of the oven. A gurney was pushed up to the conveyor.