Stay Dead (Elise Sandburg series)

by Anne Frasier

  She wondered if it would hurt.

  She guessed it would hurt.

  And then she stopped wondering, because she couldn’t breathe. She flailed, slapping and tugging at his arms while she whimpered beneath his sweaty palm.

  And then, just as suddenly as it started, he was gone. In the dark she heard sounds of scuffling, of glass breaking, and she heard cussing and pounding. And then silence . . .

  Elise stared at the dried-up corpse inside the box. Someone had killed this man because of her.

  “We were all swimming in the river,” Anastasia said from the doorway. “And Scott took you inside. I heard shouting from upstairs, and the sound of breaking glass. I told the others to stay where they were, and I tossed on a shirt and hurried to the house. There was no electricity up here then, so I brought a lantern with me. And when I got here—” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God, Elise. I blame myself. I blame myself for all of it. There you were, on that filthy mattress, your nightgown pushed up to your armpits, and . . . and . . .” She covered her face.

  Elise finished for her. “And Scott dead on the floor.”

  “Yes.” Anastasia let out an anguished sob. “Yes. I took you downstairs, and I tucked you in my bed, and I gave you a sleeping pill. I just wanted you to stop thinking about it. I wanted it to go away for you. And you slept like death until the next evening. I think I gave you too much. But when you woke up, you never said anything about the previous night. You just acted like it hadn’t happened, so I didn’t say anything either.”

  “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you report it?”

  “I was scared, and cops didn’t much like what was going on out here anyway. One of the men helped me, because, let me tell you, a dead man is really heavy. We lined the trunk with plastic and we put the body inside. We were going to carry it downstairs and bury him, but then I got the idea to just leave him here. To fill the box with lime and sawdust and kind of mummify him. It was just supposed to be temporary, until everybody left, or until the police quit looking for him. But the police never came. For a while people talked about the dead rat smell, but I kept adding more lime, and burning more incense, and it finally stopped. And then I just quit coming up here. Until now.”

  Elise got to her feet. “And you never found out who killed him?”

  “Oh, honey. I was drunk and high. I’d even dropped a little acid that night. I can’t be a hundred percent sure about anything.”

  Elise had experienced cases of selective amnesia, or trauma-based amnesia, but she’d never been completely convinced it was real. Now she knew. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think he did anything to me. I mean, I think whoever killed him got there before he could hurt me.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “What about the man who helped with the body? Was it someone named Joe? Or maybe Sam?”

  “I don’t remember. You have to realize it was a different time back then. People came and went, and after he left I never saw him or heard from him again. And I was relieved about that, because he would have been a reminder. But I’m glad he was here, whoever he was. I consider him your guardian angel.”

  Had the man who saved her been Jackson Sweet?

  “You can’t tell anybody, Elise. Not about this body, and not about me.”

  She could see Elise wasn’t biting.

  “I did it for you, darling. I did it to protect you.”

  “Auntie, you did it for you.”

  Anastasia put a hand to her chest and let out a gasp of matronly protest. “How can you say that? I love you, Elise. I was protecting you.”

  “And who are you protecting now? With your fake death?”

  “Why, I’m protecting the plantation. I’m protecting my way of life. I’m not some amoral, soulless bitch, Elise. I live by my own rules, but I do what’s right.”

  She’d denied Elise’s assault, and she’d denied the murder, and now she was in denial about the plantation.

  Anastasia made an obvious attempt to redirect the conversation. “Who is that man who’s been here a few times?” She fanned herself with her hand, and rolled her eyes. “I watched him leave from the window in the turret, and my, my, my.”

  “He’s nice enough to look at, but you don’t have to deal with him on a daily basis.” Oh, that was mean. And not true. But no way would she tell her aunt what had happened between the two of them.

  “I could deal with a lot if he looked that fine.”

  Anastasia would say go for it. Not the advice Elise was seeking. Jump, Elise. “You have to turn yourself in,” Elise told her.

  “Come on, Elise.” Her tone was begging, cajoling. “Tell you what. Let’s have a girls’ day. You and your daughter, and me and Melinda. We’ll do our nails and do our hair, and talk and gossip.” She gave Elise an appraising look. “Your hair is beautiful. So sleek and shiny, but we could put a streak of red in there. How about a streak of red?”

  “This girls’ day sounds appealing, but you forgot one thing. You’re supposed to be dead. And you forgot about the body.”

  “Your daughter doesn’t need to know what I’ve done. Just tell her there was a misunderstanding. And like Mark Twain said, ‘Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’ ”

  Elise said nothing.

  “Let’s have our day, our family day. Because we are family. Then I’ll turn myself in. What difference will it make if we wait? Whoever this is in the box—he’s been here for over twenty years. What will another few days, even a few weeks, matter? Let’s have some fun, Elise. Let’s get to know each other again. You can rest up. I’ll take care of you. And once you’re all well, once you’re all healed, I’ll step forward. I’ll tell the police everything.”

  Elise thought about it awhile. She knew her aunt was playing her. But at the same time, what did it matter if they waited a week or even longer? What difference would it make? Elise’s plate was full right now with Tremain on the loose.

  “Look at you. All in black. That’s depressing. I’m sure you have to wear black for work, but you don’t need to wear it here.”

  Elise looked down at her black slacks and black shirt. “I like black.”

  “I’ll make you some colorful skirts. I have the most beautiful fabric I bought in a little boutique in New Orleans. Lovely red-and-purple velvet. I’ve been saving it for something special.”

  Elise tried to imagine herself in a colorful skirt. It couldn’t be done. Why did all the women in her life want to change her? “No, really, that’s okay.”

  “Skirts are so easy. I can make one in two hours.”

  “I don’t need a skirt.”

  “You need someone to take care of you, that’s what you need. I can cook meals, and I can bring you a glass of water and a pain pill. I can rub your back and make you tea.”

  “Why does everybody seem to think I need to be taken care of?”

  “Why, look at you.” She gestured at Elise, at the way she was holding herself up against a wall, her bad foot barely on the floor. “All broken.”

  “I’m not broken.” A weak protest. She was broken. Inside and out.

  Anastasia might not have been the Anastasia of Elise’s childhood, but her knack for rudely exposing a person’s weaknesses hadn’t changed, and for a split second Elise experienced the childish need to please the woman in front of her. Wear her colorful skirts, and be unbroken for her.

  “Do you know that a person heals faster when not stressed and not in pain?” Anastasia asked. “Think of this as a trip to a spa.”

  That was amazingly close to the pipe dream Elise had concocted when she’d first decided to come to the plantation.

  Here Elise had built this mental shrine to her aunt. She’d placed her in this lofty place, far above other mortals, only to find she was really your garden-variety crazy cat lady, sans the cats. That got Eli
se thinking about her other childhood memories, and the accuracy or inaccuracy of them. Had her mother really been as mean and as remote as she remembered? Her father so cold? Or had Elise misread them? God knew, her own daughter rolled her eyes at Elise and thought her about as uncool as a mother could be. And really, how had that happened? Elise was a cop. Elise carried a gun. Elise caught bad guys. That was like being a superhero, right?

  “Do you like cats?” Elise asked.

  Anastasia looked surprised, then wrinkled her nose. “I really don’t care for cats. I’m more of a dog person.” Then she laughed at a thought in her own head. “I’m really more of a man person. Bring that man of yours around here and I’ll entertain him.”

  “Auntie!”

  Anastasia laughed. “Let’s go downstairs and I’ll dig out a cane I picked up at an antique shop on Wright Square. You’d look good with a cane. And while we’re down there, I’ll go for a swim and you can cheer me on.”

  This was the Anastasia Elise remembered. The most important person in the room.

  CHAPTER 27

  The next morning Elise left the plantation for downtown Savannah, her plan being to beat Gould to work. She didn’t want to deal with being chewed out for not staying the night at the police station. Not really his business anyway. But there was an accident on Interstate 16, and traffic was backed up. When she pulled into the parking lot, she spotted Gould’s black Civic. Damn.

  Once inside the office, his reaction to her little deceit was almost what she expected, except that he seemed distracted. Even more distracted than usual.

  “Where’d you really stay last night?” he asked. He was sitting at his desk in his white shirt, sleeves rolled up a few turns, tie askew, hair even wilder than usual.

  Seeing him brought the previous evening rushing back in a way that seemed more than just a memory. She felt his hot skin under her fingers, and she could smell his hair against her face.

  In all the excitement of finding the corpse last night, and meeting the man who might or might not be her father, and finding out Anastasia wasn’t dead, Elise hadn’t gotten around to destroying the mojo. And you couldn’t just throw a mojo away. That was dangerous. It had to be disposed of according to protocol, and she wasn’t even sure what that protocol was. Maybe she’d just put the whole mess someplace where it would be safe. She imagined stuffing it into a canning jar, labeling it, then sticking it in the back of the freezer. The label would say GOULD with a red diagonal slash across it.

  She was tempted to tell him she’d stayed in a hotel, but she wanted to stop with the lies. But wasn’t her entire existence a lie right now? Not an outright lie, but a lie of omission? Of many omissions? “The plantation,” she said like someone who was tone-deaf.

  “Oh, that’s great. Out there by yourself. Middle of nowhere. Poor cell service.” He took a swallow of coffee. “Ghost in the pool.”

  Now he was making fun of her. “It’s almost on the edge of town,” she pointed out, dropping her bag on her desk, which faced a window overlooking Colonial Park Cemetery while David’s desk faced a brick wall. His choice.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Mouth against hers, soft and warm. Bed and clothes and buttons and buckles. Laughter.

  “Nothing happened.” Nothing she could tell him about. My birth father might not be dead. My aunt definitely isn’t dead.

  She turned her back to him and squeezed her eyes shut. “How far did you run this morning?” It was a question she often asked him. Today it was her attempt at a return to routine.

  “I didn’t.”

  That was unusual. He ran almost every morning. Said it was his therapy. Had last night upset him that much? Maybe she’d been too hard on him, but root work was a hot button for her. And yet this morose distraction seemed more than a product of their fight. They’d fought before, and he usually shrugged it off.

  A flurry of activity at the open door, a knock, then Avery stuck his head inside, hand on the doorjamb. “Got a live one downstairs,” he announced in excitement. “Interrogation room. Picked him up this morning.”

  “Tremain?” Elise asked.

  “No. You know the prints we got from the newest killing? This guy’s a match.”

  Gould and Elise were on their feet before Avery was done talking. Gould grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair; Elise grabbed his coffee and took a long swallow before handing it to him. And then they were off, striding down the hallway, Avery in front of them, Elise moving slower than usual because of her ankle. Gould took in her antique cane, carved with flowers, the handle worn smooth by dead hands, but said nothing.

  At the elevator, Avery hit the “Down” button while continuing to fill them in. “He’s had his rights read to him. Refused a lawyer. Says he doesn’t need one. Same old song.”

  “Are you ready for this?” Gould asked Elise once they exited the elevator on the first floor and were approaching the interrogation room. “I can do it.”

  “I’m okay.” The department had long ago realized Elise was the best interrogator they had, and she got better results when she interviewed the subject one-on-one.

  “We can do the old good cop, bad cop,” David offered, still worried about her mental state.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  The suspect ended up being a typical crime model. White, early thirties. Seedy and dirty and skinny and nervous. A record a mile long with a start in petty theft before graduating to drugs, assault, and felony. A repeat offender, with a prison stint under his belt.

  “So, Zachary Creed.” Elise sat down at the table across from him and opened his file.

  “Zach,” he corrected.

  “You’re on probation right now, is that right?”

  The space was as bright as a school lunchroom, and just as stark and depressing. High in one corner, a camera recorded everything while Gould and Avery watched from an adjoining room.

  “Did anybody offer you anything to eat or drink?” she asked.

  He nodded, staring at his tattooed hands folded in front of him on the table.

  The secret to Elise’s high success rate in the interrogation room wasn’t really a secret at all. She didn’t browbeat people. She didn’t play games. She simply talked to them in a straightforward manner. She simply treated them like human beings.

  “Your fingerprints were found at the scene of a very serious crime,” she said. She opened the manila folder and sifted through pages of criminal history. “I’m looking at your file, and you’ve had some arrests. Assault and battery, armed robbery, drugs, but I don’t see murder on your record. That’s good, since I’m sure you know Georgia has the death penalty. But I want to let you know that cooperation now could help you avoid a death sentence down the road.”

  He was listening, head bowed.

  “Do you want to tell me how your fingerprints ended up at the scene of a gruesome murder?”

  Fifteen minutes later, he was sobbing. “I didn’t know he was so young. I didn’t know that until I read it in the paper.”

  “How much money were you offered?”

  “Two thousand dollars.”

  “For a life?”

  “I know! I know!”

  “I’m sorry, Zach.” And she was. There were evil people, and there were people like Zach. Just really, really messed up. Without hope. And sadly, a lost cause with no chance of redemption. People like Zach could rarely be saved. She would have said never, but that seemed too bleak.

  Now that he’d as much as confessed, he seemed eager to share information. And as his story unfolded about some unknown person contacting him about organs, her mind sorted through what he was telling her, and a suspicion began to form. These were not murders for the sake of murders. They were murders for profit. And deep down she sensed that Tremain was somehow connected. They had no evidence to back that up, and she knew it would be hard t
o convince anybody else of her theory.

  “I think you should have a lawyer,” she told Zach. “Would you like the court to assign you one?”

  “Yeah.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Yeah, thanks.” He looked up at her. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Elise Sandburg.” She stood and held out her hand. They shook. “Good luck. Wait here and someone will be in to escort you to a cell. And a lawyer will speak to you later.”

  “Thanks.”

  Outside the room, Gould and Avery were waiting.

  “Good job,” Avery said. “As usual.”

  Her successful interrogation rate was said to be because she used hoodoo. A joke, but irritating all the same. Her strategy was simple: she treated the criminals as if they’d done nothing wrong. And many, in their twisted minds, didn’t think they had. You had to meet them where they lived. It wasn’t her job to hand down blame. Her job was to simply come out of that room with the truth.

  Back in the hallway, Gould pushed the elevator button while Avery broke away to take the stairs. “His story pretty much supports what we were beginning to suspect,” Gould said. “Black-market organs.” The trafficking of human organs was a multimillion-dollar business.

  They stepped in the elevator and the doors closed. “I don’t think this is your typical organ black market,” Elise said, fingering the handle of the cane Anastasia had given her. “The victimology is all over the place. Old people, young people. If someone wanted transplant organs, they’d want them taken from healthy eighteen-to-thirty-year-olds.”

  “Maybe the victimology seems random because the kills are opportunistic. The vic simply in the wrong place, wrong time. I mean, that guy . . . Zach. He’s definitely no pro.”

  “I think the targets are very specific.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s your theory?”

  The elevator stopped on the third floor. “I think they’re being sold for root work and mojos,” Elise said.