Dead Folks' blues d-1

by Steven Womack

  Rachel turned to me, fear in her eyes. “Harry, I-” she hesitated. “I’m so sorry.”

  Walter set his briefcase down on the counter. He fiddled with the catches, the lid of the case rising toward us.

  “You don’t understand,” Rachel said. “I didn’t pay anyone to kill Conrad.” Her voice was barely a whisper, the color completely gone from her face. There were dark circles under her eyes, as if a fatigue beyond measure had settled on her.

  “I didn’t have to.” She turned, stared at Walter.

  “Oh, for chrissakes, Rachel, you really need help,” I said, shocked. “You can’t really believe anybody’s going to believe that. Walter’s an attorn-”

  I turned. As Walter shut the lid of the briefcase with his left hand, I saw in his right hand a pistol.

  And again, in one of those senseless, idiotic sparks that run rampant through human brain cells in the middle of catastrophe, I thought: Hmmm, looks to be about a 9 millimeter. Nope, I ain’t gonna mess with that.

  I stared at him. My jaw cracked open this time.

  “Does this mean no more raequetball?”

  Walter smiled. “You always were an asshole, Harry.”

  This ain’t real, I thought. This isn’t happening.

  His smile disappeared. “This wasn’t my fault, Harry. She talked me into it.”

  “You, Walter?” I was still dazed by it all. It was the one option I hadn’t considered.

  “It was her idea, damn it! She put it together.”

  I looked at Rachel. She stared at Walter with an expression I’d never seen before. An expression of pure, distilled fear.

  “We’d been having an affair for about a year,” he continued. “She was going to divorce him after I made partner. Big bucks in being partner.”

  “Then you didn’t make partner,” I said.

  He moved his eyes from her to me. “Yeah, that’s right, Harry. I didn’t make partner. Rachel and Conrad were falling apart, the marriage dead. In debt up to their eyeballs. The money almost gone. I’m in deep, too, man. Don’t you see? This was the way out. For both of us.”

  He motioned with the gun, his hand shaken by a quick tremor. “Both of you, sit down. Now.”

  I looked at Rachel. Her eyes bulged in terror. She backed into a chair, then sat without taking her eyes off him. I came around the other side of the table, sat as well.

  The pistol looked small in his hand, the way it must have looked to Mr. Kennedy. It was the last thing Mr. Kennedy saw in this life; I didn’t want to have the same experience.

  “Why’d you do Mr. Kennedy?”

  “Who?”

  “The black guy in the Lincoln, the one who worked for Bubba Hayes.”

  “Hell, I’d forgotten his name. I knew he was following you. I didn’t know what he knew. But then he started following me as well. Not all the time, but enough to make me think he knew more than I wanted him to. Then I caught him parked out in front of Rachel’s house one night when I was coming out. I knew he had to go.”

  I shook my head slowly. He hadn’t even remembered the man’s name. “Jesus, Walt. Did you have to kill him?”

  “He was getting too close, damn it!” he yelled, his hair falling down on his forehead. “He brought it on himself.”

  He reached up, loosened his tie with his one free hand, the pistol pointed at us the whole time. He was sweating now, perspiration dripping down his face. All I could think of was that I didn’t want to the sitting at some goddamn kitchen table.

  “Why me?” I asked. “Why’d you bring me into it?”

  Walt grinned, but it was a painful grin, his lips pulled back like a dog baring his teeth. “That was Rachel’s idea, too. When I told her you’d lost your job at the paper and had become a detective, we both got a good laugh out of it.”

  Pained, I looked over at Rachel. She turned my way, but couldn’t bear to look at me.

  “You were our backup,” Walter said. “We figured the cops would never suspect Rachel if she had the alibi and also hired a P.I. We never figured you’d be smart enough to figure this out. Kinda broke a few patterns on us, buddy.”

  I looked at Walter, his face glistening, tight, and I realized at that moment how much he hated me. For whatever reason and from whatever source, Walter Quinlan hated me. I’d never seen it; even now, didn’t understand it.

  “I didn’t break any patterns, Walt. I didn’t figure anything out. I just thought I had. Actually, I’ve been blind to a lot.”

  “I’m sorry, Harry,” Rachel said.

  I looked at her. Her face had a look of resignation, as if she no longer had the energy to be afraid, or to even care.

  “Me, too,” I said quietly.

  “Isn’t this touching?” Walter sneered.

  “What happens now?” I asked.

  “Well, we can’t leave things the way they are, can we?” His voice was cold, the voice of a stone killer. “No, we can’t do that at all. Let me see … Harry finds out you killed Connie. Confronts you with it. Maybe he’s blackmailing you. Yes, I like that. And so will the newspapers. You kill him. Then, in a fit of hysteria or guilt, you take your own life.

  “Star-crossed lovers to the end. Oh, yes, the papers will love it.”

  Rachel gasped. “No, Walter-”

  “He’s right, Rachel. It has to be this way, doesn’t it? It’s the only way.”

  He smiled at me again, a little softer now. “I’m glad you understand. Stand up, you two. We need to go back to the bedroom.”

  He motioned with the gun. I stood up, glancing out of the corner of my eye at the mess spilled out onto the kitchen table from Rachel’s fanny pack. Lying in the pile of tissues, gum, keys, and a couple of wads of paper, was the stun gun.

  If I could just get to it.

  I tried not to stare at it, hoping with every breath that he wouldn’t see it. If I could only get to it…

  I slid my arm over the table as I stood up, scooping the stun gun up into my right coat sleeve. All I had to do now was get close to him. My chest felt heavy, my heart thumping away helplessly.

  Rachel sat there, frozen. The lines in her face were suddenly deeper, her eyes popping.

  “You’re serious,” she whispered.

  “Stand up,” he ordered. “Now.”

  Then I heard it. Far away, at first, but louder by the second.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “What’s what?” he demanded.

  “That. Listen.”

  We stood silent for just a moment. “What is it?” Rachel asked, looking at me. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was deus-ex-freaking-machina. Whatever, I was going to play it for all it was worth.

  “Sirens,” I said. “Hear?”

  The unmistakable high-pitched whooping grew even louder.

  “You call the cops, Walter?” I asked, mustering as much calm as I could.

  “Shut up, damn you! Move, upstairs!”

  “It won’t work, Walter. They’re coming. I don’t know who did it, but they’re coming.”

  “My God,” Rachel said.

  “Move!” Walter yelled. He came around the counter, was barely a foot away from me. I turned, my back to him, Rachel just beyond me facing the hallway. I uncupped my hand; the stun gun slid into my palm. I took a step, then dropped and spun, my hand on the button. I jumped for him.

  Something hit the back of my head and exploded in searing heat and pain. Thought: oh, hell, so this is what a bullet feels like. Only it wasn’t a bullet. It was the butt of the gun.

  I felt the stun gun go into his gut, my finger mashing the button so hard it hurt. He screamed, jerked. I felt his arm slam down on my shoulder.

  Then next to my left ear, the gun went off. It was a bellowing, sharp, excruciating crack, followed only by the echoing silence of a battered eardrum. I felt him go limp on me, then fall.

  I was dizzy, nauseous, lying on top of Walter the same way I’d fallen on top of Conrad. I hyperventilated, my heart in my chest, m
y breath shallow, short, rapid gasps. I reached up and took the pistol out of his hand.

  The sirens blared outside, but they seemed softer now that I was only hearing them out of one ear. Tires screeched from just beyond the living room behind us.

  I struggled to get up, but I was dazed, the nerves in my legs a light year away from my brain. I couldn’t move very fast. Nothing worked. There was a ringing in my head.

  I tried to speak, but nothing came out.

  I rolled off him, the gun in my hand. I turned. Rachel was on the floor, her back against the wall, staring at me.

  A red splotch slowly widened in the middle of her shirt.

  Time hung like that for what seemed an eternity, the adrenaline flooding my body breaking everything into microseconds. I tried to yell again, dropped the pistol, scooted over to her.

  Her eyes were glassy, fading fast.

  I took her hand. It was turning cold. She opened her mouth. I pulled her to me, my arms around her shoulder. I pulled my left hand away from behind her. It was covered in blood.

  There was a long red smear on the wall.

  Behind me, there was the crash of a door splintering, then the pounding of booted feet. I felt somebody behind me, then arms all over me, pulling me away from her. I fought, yelled. Nothing happened.

  Rachel fell back against the wall, a gentle crimson foam filling her mouth.

  30

  Somebody put one of those blue chemical ice packs on my head, over the bandage the paramedics had stuck on, then lifted my right hand to hold it in place.

  “Everything you’ve told us jibes with what we already figured,” Howard Spellman said. We were in the living room, feeing each other across the coffee table as I sat on the couch. “We had credit reports, the insurance policies. We knew she had the motive. We just hadn’t put it all together yet.”

  “I’m afraid that I just stumbled onto it,” I said. “If she hadn’t said something about my head getting bashed in, I’d never have figured it out.”

  “Well, you ever tell anybody I told you this, and I’ll break both your arms,” he said, “but that crack about your not being able to find your ass with both hands and an instruction manual.…”

  “Yeah?” I twisted my head to meet his eyes. The ice pack slipped painfully.

  “That was uncalled for.”

  Lieutenant Howard Spellman was being halfway nice to me. Go figure. “No problem. Forget it. By the way,” I said, scooting around to face him, “how’d you guys get here, anyway?”

  “Damndest thing,” he answered. “We had a call on the police band. Officer down at this address. The uniforms that pulled up heard the shot from in here. You’re lucky they didn’t blow you away.”

  “Yeah, I’ve always been lucky that way.”

  “Is that all you want in your statement?” he asked.

  “That’s it, Lieutenant. That’s everything.”

  “I’ll have this typed up. You come downtown later, review it, sign it. Okay?”

  “Sure, I’ll come right down.”

  “Not immediately,” a feminine voice said. I looked up. Marsha Helms was at the end of the couch. “I think he’s going to need stitches this time.”

  “Great,” I said. “Another trip to the emergency room.”

  Spellman stood up, walked back into the kitchen. Marsha and I were alone in Rachel’s living room now.

  “You’re lucky, you know that?” she asked, matter-of-factly. “The Glock was loaded with Glasers. Hollow core round with shot suspended in liquid Teflon. Ninety-seven percent kill rate. The round doesn’t kill you, the liquid Teflon poisons you.”

  I looked up at her. Her hair was pulled back professionally, cleanly, her shoulders square, her dress severe. She was a pro, doing her job. She arrived right after the police tore down the door, had done the forensics and filled out the death certificate with a coldness that was simultaneously attractive and repulsive.

  “I think I’ve said this before, but you’re amazing.”

  “So I’ve been told. Anyway, worked out better for the victim. She was history before she hit the floor. Went quick, no suffering. The slug-”

  “Marsh, darling. I don’t want to hear it.”

  She sat on the couch next to me. “So now it’s Marsh darling.”

  I stared at her. “Yeah. That okay?”

  She reached over, laid her hand on my forearm. Her touch was soft, sweet. “How deep were you in?”

  “Deep enough,” I said. “But not enough to drown.”

  I heard a ringing, but unlike the ringing that had been in my head, this sounded real. Then it stopped. A moment later, Spellman peeked around the door.

  “Anybody know you’re here?”

  “No, why?”

  “Well, Mr. Hot Shot Private Eye, you got a phone call.”

  I laid the ice pack on the coffee table. Confused, I stood up slowly, crossed the room to a cordless phone on a bookshelf. I picked it up, pulled out the antenna, flicked it on.

  “Yeah?”

  “It was the lawyer, wasn’t it?” The line was full of static, like a car phone.

  “Lonnie,” I said. “How’d you know?”

  “Hope you don’t mind my keeping an eye on you. I figured somebody better watch your scrawny ass. You didn’t seem to be doing a very good job at it.”

  “So it was you who-”

  “Hey, you want a cop, you either yell ‘Officer Down’ or you go to a doughnut shop.”

  “You’re something else, buddy.”

  “Just keep it quiet, okay? Civilians aren’t supposed to have police radios in their pickups.”

  “You got it, man. Anything you say. And yes, it was the lawyer.”

  “He the one that bought it? I heard over the radio you had one down.”

  “No, he shot her.”

  “Rough duty, man. You going to be okay?”

  I looked over at Marsha. She was sitting on the couch still, looking at me intently. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just need a little time.”

  “That’s one thing you’ve got,” he said. “Call me later.” There was a scratchy click as he hung up.

  I hung up on my end, then looked out the front window across the wide expanse of lawn, the gathered neighbors, the driveway crowded with squad cars and paramedic vans. Beyond them, on the street, a single black pickup with tinted windows drove slowly by toward Hillsboro Road.

  I felt heavy, like lead. Exhausted beyond feeling.

  Marsha came up behind me, put her hand on my shoulder. “C’mon, we better get you over to General. Get you sewed up. I’ll give you a ride. You shouldn’t be driving.”

  Something inside me wanted to break, but I didn’t have the energy. Numb everywhere. I walked past her, out into the hall and into the kitchen. The pictures had been taken, the sketches drawn, the preliminaries near conclusion. Rachel was on a gurney now, zipped into a bright orange body bag. Two hefty paramedics picked up the gurney and maneuvered it slowly out of the kitchen. I followed with Marsha behind me. She rubbed the tips of her fingers up and down the small of my back.

  We walked out into the driveway just as a uniformed Metro shut the door to his cruiser with Walter in back. He was staring straight ahead, stone cold.

  “Sad, isn’t it?” Marsha said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Look at it this way, though,” she said brightly. “You’ve solved your first big case.”

  I looked at her. Talk about skewed perspective. “Yeah,” I said. “Nothing like getting what you want, is there?”

  We walked down the driveway toward the black Porsche. The end was sticking out, and I almost laughed out loud at the DED FLKS plate.

  “I’m not going to bleed all over your car, am I?”

  She stopped, looked at the top of my head without having to stand on tiptoe.

  “I’ve got some tissues in the car. It’s only oozing now. You’ll be okay.”

  “Say,” I said, as we walked toward the car, “you ever take on live patients?”<
br />
  She turned to me. “Gee, I don’t know. It’s been awhile. Maybe I’m out of practice.”

  “I’m awful sore,” I said. “I could use a little TLC.”

  “Well, I had a course in physical therapy back in med school. Let me do a little reviewing. Then we can talk about it later.”

  “Maybe over dinner,” I suggested. “Real soon.”

  “Yeah,” she said, walking straight ahead without looking atme. “I’d like that.”

  “One thing, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know about this rigor mortis stuff.”

  She stopped, looked at me funny, questioning.

  “You know,” I said, “the all-over …”

  Marsha went blank for a moment, then a gorgeous grin spread across her face, and I felt alive again. She broke out laughing. Heads around us turned.

  “Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do about that.”

  “Dr. Helms,” I said, holding the driver’s door of the Porsche open for her, “I’m in your hands.”

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  Steven Womack

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