The Ways of the Dead

by Neely Tucker

  At the scene, uniformed officers were holding the crowd at the barricades, most of them residents who’d been evacuated from adjacent houses. Four television trucks sat at the curb, their antennae sprouting up like tiny metal hairs on the asphalt head of the city. Traffic on Warder was at a standstill, people getting out of their cars, walking up to be able to look around the corner and see the enflamed building. Boys in big, loose T-shirts, riding their bikes in circles, whooping.

  A hose sent a huge stream of water toward Doyle’s, the torrent bursting into spray and steam upon contact with the roof, shooting through the windows, the hiss of it meeting flame and ember, cascades of water running off the porch. The yard was drenched, the overflow pouring off the postage-stamp yard, over the low stone wall to the sidewalk, where it splattered and ran into the street.

  Sully was steadily dictating to Tony, the man still on from the overnight shift, updating the story on the fly for the paper’s nascent Web site.

  “‘The interior of Goodwin’s home appeared to be austere and grim, with some sort of death chamber’—call it a ‘macabre,’ Tony, ‘macabre,’ death chamber—‘in the basement. A hurried view of the premises this morning, just as the fire was breaking out, showed an upstairs bedroom with almost no furnishings other than a mattress on the floor and a tidily kept office.

  “‘The basement was decorated with grisly displays—pictures, mementos, items of clothing—of several dead women, their photographs in both life and death. The packed-dirt floor appeared to be a burial pit, partially obscured by floorboards and carpet. Recently turned earth showed the remains of what appeared to be human skeletal remains.’”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know, right?”

  “How the hell did you get in there?”

  “Luck and nerve.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I was over here early and, Christ, there was fire coming out of the front window. Knew it was his place, ran up. Door was open. Went in to look for him.”

  “And found this.”

  “And found this.”

  “Was he in there?”

  Sully paused, thinking.

  “Not that I saw.”

  “And you’re sure? I mean, you are fucking-A sure about the basement? The corpse?”

  “I don’t know how many times I can say it.”

  “Okay. I’m still going to couch it as it ‘appeared’ to be a body, ‘appeared’ to be this and that down there. Now. They’re beating on me for an update. Gimme something on the scene outside.”

  “A couple hundred people, I’d say, top and bottom of the street. Two fire engines out here now. Looks to be just the one house going up. Tall, tall plume of smoke. Very black. Is Photo over here yet? And hey—so what is Chris getting from the cops about Doyle’s location?”

  “They think maybe he’s inside.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s a crispy critter if so. I’m sweating and I’m at the back of the barricade. I’ll call you in a few when I know something else.”

  “Keep that phone in your hand.”

  Sully clicked off the cell and sat down, ignoring the damp pavement.

  After a while, the flames began to die down, and then some more, and another fire engine came and put a third hose on the blaze, and soon the last of the flames were gone and a huge cloud of smoke was rising, ash filtering out into the air, gobs of roof caving in, the occasional sound of bottles exploding inside.

  Warder Avenue was cleared and traffic began to move. Most of the crowd broke up. The street smelled bad, like burnt insulation, like waterlogged carpet.

  Sully kept calling in updates, the story blowing up, R.J., Eddie, both calling him, asking him if he was absolutely sure about what he saw, if he was alright, that this was breaking all over the networks now, citing the paper as the sole source as to the interior of the house.

  “Unbelievable,” Eddie said, his voice thin down the line. “Just unbelievable. He just sat there, hiding in plain sight.”

  Sully called R.J. and asked him what the Reese camp was saying about the story. R.J. said, “They’re holed up. Not even a denial.”

  Midmorning, Sully finally answered John Parker’s calls and told him that what he had seen was in the paper and he didn’t have anything to add. Parker said they would need a formal statement and Sully, as politely as possible, referred him to the paper’s attorneys.

  He stood at the top of the 700 block, less than fifty yards from Noel’s apartment, maybe thirty from where Lana Escobar was found, six houses down from Rebekah Bolin’s resting place.

  It struck him that, for a navy man, Doyle didn’t like to travel much.

  • • •

  A little after nine that night, and long after dark, paramedics in heavy fire gear finally came out of the house with what looked to be a body beneath a white sheet. It was loaded into an ambulance and it pulled away, lights flashing but no siren.

  A few minutes later, a couple of patrol cars came up Warder, whoop-whooping to clear the traffic, and uniformed officers opened the barricade to let them and a small convoy of black SUVs pull inside. Once they were inside, the yellow tape and the rubber orange traffic cones were put back in place behind them. The mayor materialized out of one of the SUVs, and Sully spotted the chief waddling around in the middle of the block.

  By then, there were more reporters than gawkers, dozens of them, from television stations and networks and cable channels, from newspapers, from magazines—everybody who had a bureau in Washington had a crew up here, the serial killer in the nation’s capital. Metro was all over this in force, Chris staking out turf, two or three other young reporters asking and interviewing bystanders and making calls, Sully still out there just to call in the big picture or telling detail or whatever. He was standing off to himself, not in the mood to bullshit with the rest of them, his thoughts running in loops.

  By ten twenty, with the eleven p.m. news looming, a police sergeant Sully didn’t recognize told television crews to set up at the top end of the street for a presser, just inside the barricade. This set off a brief and unpleasant scrum. Print reporters howled until they were allowed to cross the barricade, too, standing just behind the cameras. A small forest of microphone stands blossomed on the pavement, floodlights beaming on the small patch of blacktop. A techie stood in front, holding a white rectangle of paper for a white balance, then stood behind the microphones for focusing.

  Sully saw Chris interviewing people and then immediately calling it in.

  For himself, he’d called in only a couple of bits of color in the past few hours, both from neighbors. One man, who lived three doors down from Doyle, said he’d been in bed with his back window open, said there were gunshots, plural, and then the fire boomed into sudden life. The other, a man in his sixties who lived directly across the street, said he was lying on the couch watching television when he heard a bap, one shot, looked over, and noticed that fire was already licking at the drapes inside Doyle’s. Not two shots, he said. He was sure of it.

  Sully was sure to call in the conflicting reports to the desk.

  At five minutes after eleven, the chief, the mayor, the fire chief, the U.S. Attorney for the District, and a small group of racially diverse suits from Main Justice and the FBI stepped out of SUVs and patrol cars down the street, stood together, waiting for one more, and then approached the reporters together.

  The group stopped about five yards from the microphones. The chief walked ahead and took the microphone; the rest formed a supporting line behind him.

  “Good evening,” the chief began. “I’m joined this evening by Mayor Barnes; U.S. Attorney Stanton Holmes; Chief Bolden of D.C. Fire; Agent Montgomery of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Marshal Medford of the Judicial Security Division of the Marshals Service; and Paul Cavna, deputy director of the Justice Department.”

  Th
e chief paused and looked back and forth across the lights arrayed in front of him, as if he were somberly taking in an audience, though Sully knew, from standing in front of such lights at such short distance himself, that you couldn’t see a damned thing but glare.

  “This morning, the city’s fire department responded, at roughly 2:20 a.m., to several 911 calls of a fire in the 600 block of Princeton Place Northwest. This was preceded, by a few minutes, of calls reporting a possible gunshot or gunshots at or near the same location. The house in question was 673, the remains of which are behind me. Officers were unable to enter for several hours because of the blaze.

  “The homeowner, Doyle Goodwin, who was, ah, he was a well-known and long-established member of this community, and owner of the market that bears his name just up the street there at Georgia. The remains of Mr. Goodwin were found in the front hallway. His body was very badly burned, let me say, but there was a gunshot wound in his right temple, passing through the skull.”

  There was a ripple of noise that ran through the reporters, a vague sigh, the lot of them scribbling while they held out their recorders, or perhaps the exhaled air came from the seventy or so onlookers, the hard-cores, who were stacked behind them.

  “Mr. Goodwin . . . Mr. Goodwin lived alone. A pistol, with one shot fired, was near his right hand. Although the investigation is continuing, preliminary reports lean to suicide. There was no note found, but it may have been lost in the fire.

  “The fire, Chief Bolden tells me—you’re going to hear more from him in a minute, I’m not the expert—was clearly set. Accelerant found all over the first floor of the house, going up the stairs. It’s our scenario—this is early, I want to emphasize, this may change—that Mr. Goodwin set the fire and then shot himself.”

  Here, he looked up. The man hated his job right now, Sully thought, and he didn’t blame him.

  “However, that is not all. Found in Mr. Goodwin’s left hand was a necklace, a silver sort of charm necklace bearing the name ‘Noel.’ It has since been identified, by a family relative, as the cherished keepsake of Noel Pittman, whose body—”

  —a louder ripple from the onlookers, a stifled cry—

  “—buried in the basement of a dilapidated home behind Mr. Goodwin’s store. Mr. Goodwin had been interviewed about that homicide, as well as that of Sarah Reese, but as a possible witness. He showed no signs of distress in those interviews. He was not, ah, a suspect of a material crime.”

  He sighed then, and let the final shoe go, played it out and put an end to it all.

  “Finally, in the basement, which was only partially burned—very water damaged, but not badly burned—was some sort of—of burial ground, as you may have seen reported. I cannot go into details at this time, but I can say that there were what I would call mementos from several women who have been listed as missing or dying under mysterious circumstances. Our work into that is just beginning, but I can say that we have found at least one set of human remains in the basement, as yet unidentified, and we also found two items belonging to Sarah Emily Reese and an industrial type of serrated knife, which may be the murder—”

  Whole shouts now, yells, gasps.

  “—murder weapon in that homicide, which, as you know, took place just outside of Mr. Goodwin’s store. The forensics tests will take a couple of days for final verification, but we believe that blood on that knife is likely to be a match to Sarah’s for several reasons, not all of which am I at liberty to go into.”

  Silence now, total and astonished silence.

  “There had been a confession in that case, as most of you know, and we will sort this out in the coming days, but at—at this moment we would expect the three suspects in that case to be released and most of their serious charges dropped. Obviously, we are just starting an investigation into Mr. Goodwin, and that will be an investigation that takes some time.

  “I want to let the others speak to this very sad, very disturbing case, and I want to stress that our information is preliminary, but let me take at least a few questions now.”

  The dam burst. Shouts, yells, repeated questions, one clamoring over another, a final one floating in at the end of the others, and thus gaining clarity.

  “—was there, right in front of you—how was he able to elude you for this long?”

  “Probably because we weren’t looking at him.”

  “Why weren’t you looking at him?” The shouted follow-up.

  “Probably because one of the primary suspects, Reginald Jackson, confessed.”

  “Why would Jackson confess if he didn’t do it?”

  “I have no insight as to that.”

  Full barking now, the media dogs were loose.

  “Was Jackson coerced into that confession? Was that confession videotaped?”

  “Why would Goodwin kill Sarah?”

  “Will charges be filed against Judge Reese for failing to disclose his ties to Noel? Does that classify as obstruction of justice?”

  “How many other bodies in that basement?”

  “Will you resign?”

  They came tumbling, end over end, one over the other, most not even expected to be answered, thrown out as an accusation, as an insult, as an indictment of police incompetence, stupidity, failure.

  The chief held out both hands, palms down, looking like a man warming his hands by a fire.

  “We’re not going to be able to answer all these tonight. Judge Reese, that’s a different issue. We haven’t had a chance to talk to him. We’ve only read the story in the newspaper today, but yes, that’s something we’ll want to talk to him about. Gasoline, I can tell you that. Gasoline was the accelerant. And no one in our custody was beaten or maltreated. I can tell you we were as surprised as anyone both by the things we found downstairs and by the fact we found them at all. Mr. Goodwin had been a helpful and forthcoming witness in our investigation in both cases.

  “We have no idea as to motive. It may be we find that in the coming days, although the fire has pretty much destroyed Mr. Goodwin’s house and any evidence that might have been in it. I would guess that might be a reason for setting it, but I don’t know that. We had thought of him as helpful. We thought of him, until we walked in that house earlier today, as a victim in his own right of these murders and their consequences. He was, instead, it appears, the perpetrator, the man who killed both Sarah Reese and Noel Pittman, and several others.”

  forty-three

  Sully called in a couple of final grafs to Tony, the celebratory lap, the last touches. Tony had left, gone home, and come back again. He was taking feeds from who knows how many reporters. He keyed it in, asked some basic follow-ups, and then stopped.

  “Just shipped it,” he said, finally. “Done. Story’s gone.”

  “I’m clear?”

  “You’re clear. One-A. Above the fold. Jesus, man. Two days in a row. Reese and now this.”

  R.J. was on the phone two minutes later, before Sully could even get to the bike.

  “Boy. You boy, you boy. Just watched it on television. You were right. Brilliant. You told me you had a feeling about those women up there. You did. It was—I’m sitting on the couch next to El, I’m saying, ‘It’s Ruth calling his shot to center, this kid.’”

  Sully let the feeling soak into him, the exhaustion, the end of the adrenaline spike.

  “Thanks, amigo.” He didn’t know much else to say. “Reese? We ever hear anything on Reese?”

  “You mean, other than he’s dead to the Supremes, and possibly off the bench? You didn’t see the punditry today. The Senate is making noises there’ll be hearings.”

  “I meant corrections, denials.”

  “Not a peep.”

  Sully blew out his lips. “Well. Okay.”

  “So,” R.J. said, “you know we’re going to want you on this full-time for a while, the big picture about Goodwin, the women
up there, the whole shebang. God only knows how many women he actually killed.”

  “It’s going to be more than we know about right now.”

  “Yeah. Oh, yeah. And we’ll want you on it.”

  “Can you let Chris do the wrap-up on the three suspects? I would imagine they’ll get released tomorrow. There’ll be a ton of stuff on that.”

  “You feeling bad about making him look like a punk?”

  “Maybe a little. Speaking of punks, I haven’t heard from Melissa today.”

  “Ahaha. Neither have I. She’ll eat shit on this one, but she’s not going anywhere. I’d smoke the peace pipe with her, I was you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Sully got to the bike, cranking it into life, unlocking the helmet, straddling it. He saw the glittering sign of the Show Bar two blocks down. Why not? he thought. Plop down in Doyle’s old haunt, sit where he sat, look at what his twisted mind had looked at night after night.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, R.J. I’m going to have a drink. Don’t look for me before noon.”

  When he stopped the bike and got to the red front door of the strip club, he gave the man in a black suit ten dollars for the cover. The man ushered him inside, the music throbbing, the purple and red lights revolving. He started to put Sully at a table near the front until Sully motioned toward a booth at the back of the club, and the man took him there.

  He got a gin and tonic and watched the show. After a while, Sly walked in. Sully had not spotted Lionel, but someone must have seen him and called the boss.

  Sly walked to the booth, sat across from Sully. The waitress came and Sly took a Hennessy.

  The dancer finished her routine. Scattered applause, maybe a dozen bills stuffed in the white garter adorning her right leg. She came around the room in a short white silk robe, propping a leg on each customer’s chair to say hello, to let the robe fall open and allow them another view and to tuck more bills into the garter. Sully obliged with a five. Sly did not look at her and she left.