The Ways of the Dead

by Neely Tucker

  The judge stood at the microphones and looked from left to right expectantly. He was a tall man, perhaps six foot three, and weighed, Sully guessed, about two hundred. His face, usually tanned, was ashen. He seemed to blink in slow motion. Valium? Handful of Ativan? Sully glanced to the house to see whether anyone was looking out a window, but not a curtain stirred.

  “On Friday evening, October first, our daughter, Sarah Emily, was killed after her dance class in Washington, D.C.,” Reese began. His voice was full and assured. He leaned down slightly to talk into the microphones. The act of talking seemed to lend his eyes focus, but it was as if the skin were not animated. The man looked like a talking mannequin. Sully, standing at the edge of the scrum of reporters, turned on his recorder and held it out. “We would like to thank all branches of law enforcement for their full support and professional work, which is ongoing. We would like to thank the White House, the President and First Lady, the House and Senate leaders for their remarkable support and personal offers of condolences and sympathy. And we would like to thank the thousands of Americans who, across this country of ours, have reached out to Tori and me to express their empathy, their concern, and their prayers. It is stirring.

  “It is equally stirring to us that we have had to look out our windows each day, all day, at a street full of reporters and cameramen and photographers who have expressed no sense of grief but whose job apparently is to document our sorrow by pressing on the boundaries of our privacy. We ask the employers of these workers to release them from these morbid obligations and leave us to our grief. The memorial and funeral service for Sarah will be private. There will be no further announcements or statements from the family at any time on this—this subject.”

  He paused, and rocked back slightly on his heels. His hands had been folded in front of him, and now he pulled them behind him, clasping them behind his back. He was beginning to sweat, the beads starting to form high on the forehead. Sully thought he was ready to launch into another phase of the speech. Instead, he simply gave a curt nod.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said. “Now, if you would please leave. Thank you.”

  He turned and began to walk back down the driveway.

  No one said anything for a moment until, as the lights began to turn off, a cameraman said softly, “And the godless, blood-sucking vultures of the American media thank you.”

  There was low murmuring and chortling behind that, and Sully saw Dave Roberts emerge from the herd. “I’d say he loves us,” Dave said, slapping Sully’s shoulder and moving past him with a cackle, headed for the truck. Sully followed. “That was perfect—you got to give the man his props,” Dave said. “Give it an hour and watch. They’ll scatter like crows.”

  Sully nodded and stepped aside to call in a couple of paragraphs on the scene. Patrick said yeah, yeah, typing it in, but hang on, Eddie wants to talk to you.

  Edward came on the line. “So what’s this about the manhunt, the suspects?”

  “What I told Patrick earlier. I got a heads-up it might go down today.”

  “Chris says he hasn’t heard anything.”

  “That surprises you?”

  “Take the high road, Sullivan. Can you work it some more?”

  “I can try. No promises. You want any more on this out here?”

  “No. I was watching. Reese was very effective. We write a scene-setter on a bereaved father asking to be left alone, we look like cocksuckers.”

  “So—so you want me going on the suspects now?”

  “Yes. I don’t have to tell you how important this is.”

  He clicked off, and be damned if some of the reporters were not already drifting back to their cars, pulling out. Television trucks were striking tripods, loading up. Dave’s crew was dragging, but they were wrapping up, too. Dave was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, wrestling the tie off his neck.

  “Hey,” he said, looking up at Sully. “There’s an honest-to-Christ seafood place about two miles up. They got a bar. Want in? We’re killing time till the six o’clock stand-up.”

  “Maybe I’ll catch you up down there.”

  “The Chesapeake. Two miles west, on the right.”

  Sully nodded and walked back to the bike, sitting astride it in the shade. He sat, thinking about it, watching the trucks pull out. After twenty minutes, when it was deserted, he went limping back toward the house, turning down the driveway like he owned the place.

  An officer stepped out of his patrol car, stringy, incredulous. A U.S. Marshal came out of the garage and the pair began walking rapidly toward him. Sully kept walking, his hands up and away from his body, a business card between two fingers of his left hand.

  “Please give this to the judge,” he said, looking at the officer, extending the card, “and tell him he wants to talk to me for a few minutes. But right now. He needs to talk to me right now.”

  “You know my orders are to arrest the first reporter who tries some shit like this?” the cop said, almost chest-bumping him, sweating in a bulletproof vest.

  “’s why I said please.”

  The cop took the card, looked down at it, and motioned to the marshal. The man took it and walked back into the house. He reemerged a few minutes later, flicked his finger at Sully, and escorted him into the foyer. It was high ceilinged, spacious with stone floors, a mirror in a heavy frame on the wall and a small credenza. Thick carpet started in each room off the foyer, and the staircase was just ahead. It was oppressively quiet.

  “You are in a world of shit,” the marshal whispered to him. He was a tall, chubby man, his black suit coat buttoned, his brown eyes bright and harsh. He stood about nine inches from Sully’s face, leaning in from the waist. It was the stance and position of men in authority, and Sully resented it as much as he recognized it.

  He pursed his lips as if to kiss the agent on the lips, and the man recoiled, stepping back.

  “Thought so, tough guy.”

  The agent glared and motioned him to follow down the carpeted hallway. At the end, he knocked softly on a door, swung it open, and motioned for Sully to enter. It was the judge’s home office. David Reese sat behind a heavy desk. His tie was still knotted at his throat and his jacket was still on. There were framed diplomas on the wall. The place had the air of a funeral parlor.

  “I honestly cannot believe your temerity,” Reese said, as soon as the agent closed the door. “I cannot believe you would send some sort of cryptic note to my family at this hour. The only reason I allowed you in was so I could document your behavior to your employers, who will be informed of this, at the highest level, within the hour. I can assure you that my graciousness will not be so profound this time.”

  “The last time we had dealings, David, you lied about what you told me, then tried to get me fired, so let’s cut the foreplay,” Sully said, sitting down, uninvited. “I am truly sorry about your daughter. Honest to Christ. Now. If you’re going to call my bosses and tell them I’m the only hack who got into your house today by handing a cop a business card and telling him it was important, they’re going to be more impressed than pissed. But go ahead. Eddie Winters’ll take your call. I just talked to him. The phone’s right there.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Go ahead,” Sully said. “I’n wait.”

  “There is some point to this,” Reese said.

  “Yeah. There is. It’s an off-the-record visit. I’m not reporting anything about coming to your house or what it looks or sounds like in here. I’ll report what you said in the driveway and that’s it. I came to tell you that apparently at some point today, or perhaps early tomorrow, police are going to arrest the three men or boys who were in Doyle’s Market when Sarah was there.”

  The man rocketed to his feet, knocking his chair back. “How do you know that? No one has told me any such thing.”

  “It’s going to happen very s
oon. But that’s not the point. The point is that, as a matter of decency, I did not want your family to put much faith in those arrests. They’re not going to stand. You’re a prick, David, but I thought it was the decent thing to do, for your wife if nobody else, to let her know to condition her expectations.”

  “How could you even know about the arrests, much less if they’ll stand?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Reese shook his head. “I don’t trust a goddamn thing you’re saying.”

  Sully stood up and nodded. “Doubt I would if I was you, either. But I wanted to let you know. It seemed right to me. Do with it what you want. I am sorry for your wife. I mean that.”

  He backed out of the room, opened the door, and was escorted to the edge of the property by the marshal.

  “Soon, and very soon,” the agent said.

  “Blow it out your ass,” Sully said.

  eleven

  Sully took the bike back downtown, feeling the energy, the adrenaline coming up now. By the time he peeled off 395 and onto South Capitol, the building itself in his rearview, he was where he needed to be, ready for the shit to start.

  He turned right onto O Street SW, one block short of his destination, maybe a mile from the waterfront docks and clubs and restaurants, and a good cannon shot from tourist country. He passed Half Street and then turned south on First, approaching the intersection John had given him. Two white Chevy Caprice Classics, parked illegally, four men in each, screamed that he was in the right place. He went back up to the McDonald’s on East Capitol, got a Coke and called John Parker again, getting the answering machine.

  A blue Olds Cutlass sat in the parking lot, the engine running. He would have sworn he’d seen it in his rearview on the GW Parkway. “You got to be kidding,” he said out loud.

  After twenty minutes without a call back from John, the blue Olds still in the parking lot, he went back outside. He went to his bike, helmet in hand, then turned and walked rapidly to the Olds. There were two men inside, both white, jeans and sweatshirts. In this part of town.

  “Hey,” he said, rapping on the passenger-side window, leaning in.

  The window came partway down, the guy not saying anything.

  “You should try the burgers,” he said. “I think this place, it’s gonna catch on.”

  The window went back up.

  • • •

  A few minutes later, he ripped the bike back onto South Cap, giving it full throttle, up to ninety in less than two hundred yards, no way anything on four wheels could keep up, and then he braked and leaned hard to make the right onto M, took two other turns, blowing the stop signs and, less than three minutes later, was on P, the tail gone.

  Parts of the job he liked: This.

  Midway down the block one more time, he popped it into neutral, then hit the kill switch. The engine coughed and died. He made a show of pushing his visor up, looking down over the motor, to the left and right. He let the bike coast about fifty feet, distracting attention from his right hand, which he was squeezing ever so slightly, to apply the front brake and stop the bike before he passed an alley to the south.

  The three-story brick building John had described was in a direct line of sight. Pulling off the helmet, he spit on the street, acting disgusted. He unlocked the seat, pulling the tool kit from the underside niche, and, taking a knee and pulling out a wrench, he loosened and tightened the screws of the frame that held the battery in place.

  It didn’t take long. A car rolled up behind him, unnaturally close. He half turned and saw it was one of the white Caprices.

  “’s the problem, Evel?” A low baritone.

  Sully turned back to the bike and reached for a wrench. “’s it to you, ace?”

  “Hey,” the voice said. Sully ignored it.

  “Hey,” the voice said, and he heard a door open and it slapped into his back, knocking him into the bike.

  He stood up and wheeled around, acting shocked, acting pissed, selling it hard. The cop, one of the SWAT team members sitting in the car, bulletproof vests under sweatshirts, held a badge up beside his face, but not outside the car.

  “Get your broke-ass bike off the street,” the man said, nodding toward the badge.

  Sully took a half step to look at the badge, peered at it, still with the dumb thing. “Well, Christ, dude, how was I supposed to know? Want me to push it over there?” He indicated P Street with a nod of the head.

  “Further down,” the man said, motioning down First.

  Sully figured he had about fifty yards to give and still be in eyesight of the apartment building. He heard a chopper overhead, somewhere in the distance.

  “Let me get my tools up and I’ll push off.”

  The cop flicked cigarette ash off his chest. “Put them on the fuckin’ bike and move.” He backed up until he got back in the car. They rolled off, went down the street, and made a left. Circling, Sully thought, back to their original spot.

  He pushed the bike down First, watching the building from his peripheral vision, then stopped, pulling the wrench back. He kneeled behind the bike.

  A few minutes later, a white cargo truck parked across the street in front of him. There was a pause, and then a heavy van with blackened windows rolled past him, wheeled hard onto P, and slammed to a stop. Four, five, six SWAT team members leaped out, running to the front of the apartment building, the first one carrying a Plexiglas shield, two behind him with assault rifles. At the same time, the back door of the cargo van rolled up and a jumble of agents leaped out, sprinting across a neighbor’s yard, leaping over a small boundary fence.

  Percussive booms ran up the street and a puff of smoke emerged from the apartment building. Yelling. A window shattered. Two and then three flat pops. The overhead thump-thump-thump intensified, the helicopter directly overhead now. Sully ran to the street now, pretense gone. A cop turned, briefly put a gun on him, Sully stopped, hands up, and the cop turned back.

  Officers boiled out of the narrow doorway of the apartment building, a handcuffed man between them, head down, pushing and pulling, yelling, swearing, an awkward run to the black van parked in the street. Another knot of officers at the apartment doorway, a plume of smoke trailing them, and a second man emerged, again in handcuffs, again force-marched to the van. Seconds later, a third man, feet dragging. He did not appear to be conscious.

  Sirens hit full force, the vans and squad cars roaring out. Sully whipped out his cell and called Patrick on the desk.

  “Suspects just got popped,” he said, giving the address and a few more grafs to get the story started.

  “I’m coming with the rest,” he said, looking over his shoulder. Cops on the perimeter were looking at him, talking into their fingers, starting to move toward him.

  He cursed, rushing to put the tools back, hearing a siren start whoop-whoop-whooping, and saw a patrol car start to make a U-turn. He cranked the bike, and it roared into life, and then he had the helmet on, leaning over the gas tank as he hit the throttle to keep the front end of the bike from rearing into the air as he shot forward, leaving the patrol car behind.

  A block down, blowing the stop sign, the bike flying past sixty, now to seventy, he saw the blue Olds parked at the curb, waiting, not bothering to give chase.

  • • •

  Five hours later he was sitting at the mahogany bar in Stoney’s at the back end of the long L-shaped fixture, the Sazerac in front of him, the glass chilled, the lemon peel at the bottom like a little pickled fish.

  “Wait,” the guy at the other end of the bar was saying. “Turn it back up. They saying something.”

  Sully looked up in time to see Dmitri, working the bar, trying to clean up and close down, reach above the mirrored glass and turn the sound on the television up.

  “—and have just released the names of the three suspects apprehended today. They are Reg
inald Jackson, seventeen, of the District of Columbia; D’onte Highsmith, eighteen, also of the District; and Jerome Deland, twenty-two, of Prince George’s County.” The man was looking down at a sheet of paper reading. “According to a police spokesman, all three have criminal records. Deland has four arrests, for assault, battery, unlicensed use of a vehicle—that’s the District’s charge for car theft—and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Court records show he was on, ah, parole. Highsmith has two arrests, both on drug possession charges, and had been released five weeks ago to await trial. Police say Jackson was at Oak Hill, the city’s juvenile detention facility, and escaped two weeks ago. They were apparently at a neighborhood basketball court just before the Sarah Reese killing, and then again minutes later, and were found to have an item of Sarah’s in their possession when arrested earlier today at—”

  “What is ‘item’?” Dmitri said. “Why don’t they just say?”

  “’Cause the police didn’t tell them,” Sully said. “They didn’t tell me, either. Why bother? It’ll come out in court. What they want—what the police want right now—is for people to go to bed thinking it’s all over.”

  Dmitri turned the sound down. “You want another?” Vant. Sully tapped the top of his glass in response. Dmitri raised his eyebrows at the man three seats down, who shook his head no. Dmitri made another Sazerac and told him that would be the last one. Sully said sure and then his phone buzzed.

  “How did you know?” Melissa.

  “Lucky guess.”

  “Look, if you’re just going to be an ass—”

  “So glad I was out at the Reese house taking dictation while your boy was killing it on the investigation.”

  There was fifteen seconds of silence. Then, “I said you were right, okay, but—”

  “I wouldn’t get real excited about these arrests, either,” he said, jumping ahead to keep her off balance. “They look screwy.”

  “Screwy? Eddie said you were on about this. These morons were just out of jail when this went down. Something happened in that store and they—”