by John C. Ford
“So, it’s you,” Kate Warne said to Lovell. “Why am I not surprised?”
She wasn’t talking loudly, but their voices carried in the night. Lovell must have been using Mitch as his contact, like we thought. With Mitch dead and the money in reach, he was revealing himself to her for the first time.
Lovell wore cargo pants, looking like he’d stepped out of one of those adventure pictures in his office. I got Kate in the viewfinder with him and snapped off more shots.
“Let’s get this done,” Lovell said.
“Why are you doing this, Larry? Your gambling problem’s that bad?”
Lovell shrugged. “We all have debts. You should have never kicked me out of the firm, Kate. That was your mistake.”
Then his head jerked right, hearing something. He looked to the picnic bench, the stairs up to Tina’s street, into the woods. Lovell didn’t seem to catch any sign of the sheriff—or us.
“The money, Kate.” Lovell fished in his pocket and pulled out the Vista View memory card. “And this is yours.”
She kept the briefcase at her side. “They’re digital pictures. You could’ve sent copies anywhere.”
“You can copy film, too.” He stepped a foot closer. “This is a trust relationship we’ve got. You trust these are the only pictures and hand over the money, or you don’t and I send them everywhere. Your call.”
“Show them to me,” Kate said.
Lovell reached into another pocket and pulled out the camera that Bob had used, inserting the card and flicking through the images. “That’s it,” he said at the end. “Now let’s get this done.”
After a moment Kate resigned herself, turning dials on the case. I wondered if the sheriff would wait until Lovell had the briefcase before he showed himself.
Kate opened the case. I don’t know how much was there, but it was more than $15,000. Lovell smiled—the same smug grin that had annoyed me about him from the start.
“Easy now,” he said, offering the memory card to Kate. She handed over the briefcase and it was done, their bodies relaxing just a hair. I had caught the whole thing on camera.
“Happy trails,” Lovell said, keeping his eyes on Kate as he walked away. She nodded into the woods, a signal to the sheriff. The three of them stood on our right. At the same time a single fiery burst came from the left.
I looked, and by the time my eyes turned back to Lovell, he was on the ground. Tina’s hand dug into my bicep. I shot pictures, trying to stay detached and aware.
Kate Warne scrambled back in horror, shrieking. The sheriff lumbered to her, crouching with his gun drawn, eyes madly searching the field to the left of us. He pulled Kate behind a tree. She covered her mouth, hyperventilating.
The sky had opened in a summer rain and metallic slivers fell softly through the lights.
Lovell didn’t move. I zoomed the lens over his body and swallowed. His eyes were frozen, his cheek shattered by the bullet. We’d just watched somebody die.
The rest followed in a blur.
When I turned back to the left, Mayor Ruby was striding in toward Lovell’s body. The gun hung limply in his hand. I kept taking pictures while Sheriff Harmon marched over to meet the mayor. Kate Warne staggered behind the sheriff.
“Jesus, Julian. I said I’d take care of it.”
“I knew you wouldn’t, though. It was my problem anyway.” Mayor Ruby was standing over the body like it wasn’t even there.
The sheriff leaned in to the mayor. “There’s more than you involved here,” he said. He held an arm out behind him, holding Kate back. “Get out of here, now.” She hesitated, unable to keep her eyes off the body.
“Get,” he said again, and she snapped to the present. She tore an awkward line back into the forest, back from where she’d come.
“We couldn’t risk it,” the mayor said to the sheriff.
“You can’t do this, either. I could have scared him off.”
“No, you couldn’t have. It never would have ended.” He was running overtime, on a manic spell. “It’s good for all of us. Kate doesn’t have to worry anymore. Blaylock’s gone; now he’s gone, too.” The mayor peered down at Lovell, a cold fixture on the grass. “It’s over.”
“Blaylock was different,” the sheriff said. I didn’t know what he meant but his voice was hard as a wall.
“I’m getting the wagon here,” the mayor said, and pulled out his cell phone. I knew it then: He was calling Dr. Mobley.
The mayor wandered across the grass, waiting for an answer, while the sheriff held his head in frustration. For a moment the night took a breath, slowing down. But it was just starting.
The next seconds happened like this. A car took the bend on Lake-shore Drive, brights on, sweeping a flash of light across the woods. The sheriff’s body jerked upright, eyes holding on the bushes we huddled under. It could have been the strength of the headlights or a stroke of bad luck, maybe a reflection from the camera lens meeting his eye. I don’t know, but we were done. The sheriff played it cool, looking off but not too far. Tina and I reached out to each other at the same time—she’d seen it, too.
I skirted inches forward, knowing what we had to do. I grabbed Tina’s arm and pulled her with me. The sheriff was closer to the stairs than we were, but getting to Tina’s house was our best shot.
I pointed to the stairs, and Tina nodded. The mayor had connected—he talked sternly into his cell. The sheriff sauntered away from the stairs now, walking easily, preparing to take us by surprise. Now.
I yanked Tina’s arm with me and broke through the leaves. We ran wildly for the stairs, knowing we couldn’t make it unseen and hoping for the best. The sheriff had an angle on us, but he was slow. We made it farther than I thought before hearing a burble of confusion at our backs. I grabbed the railing and felt Tina pushing me forward from behind. The wooden steps had been put in years ago—the thin boards hammocked in the center. I charged up them two at a time. The sheriff was yards behind us getting to the stairs. We were going to be okay.
Tina charged behind me, her hand on my back. I felt it slip away as Tina yelled in pain. I checked back and saw her huddled, clutching the ankle she’d twisted on the stairs.
The sheriff closed in instantly.
It would be no matter for him to slap cuffs on Tina now. He was reaching for them already. Without thinking, I descended two steps and kicked out at him. My foot landed squarely on his chest, and when I pushed off, he tumbled down the quarter flight. His body stopped just short of the ground, jammed across the stairway.
“Can you move?” I said to Tina.
She winced tightly as soon as she got to her feet. With her arm around my shoulder, we made it up the stairs, Tina hopping for balance on her good foot. From the top we looked down and saw the sheriff just getting up.
“They don’t know your house,” I said.
We hobbled down the hill, getting a little pace going by the time we made it to her front door. The sheriff hadn’t made it to the top when we shut ourselves in. I locked the door and twirled the blinds closed and found Tina on the couch, head down, elbows on her knees, sucking air, spent.
“Call Tim,” I said, peeking through the blinds. The sheriff hadn’t appeared—maybe he’d given up on us. Tina pulled her cell phone out. “You can’t even walk, can you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “That hurt like hell.”
She pressed Tim’s number on her phone and held it to her ear.
“Tell him to meet me,” I said.
“Where are you going?”
“The morgue.”
33
“Chris, no.”
“They’re going to do it again—just what they did to Mitch.” I had to stop it if they were going to try to cover up another murder.
“Don’t,” she said. “We’re lucky we got away; we’ve got to stay out of it now. You know what we just saw.”
“I’m going.”
I was heading to the door when she gave in. “Go into my bedroom then,�
�� Tina said, “in the drawer of the nightstand. Just do it.”
She wasn’t trying to stop me anymore, so I went. The house got darker down the hallway to her bedroom. I flicked the light and found a rumpled bed with scarlet sheets and a jungle of curiosities that I couldn’t bother to investigate. A Dalí print hung over a black laminate nightstand. Stepping through a week’s worth of laundry, I pulled the tiny drawer open.
The handgun sat alone inside the drawer. Metallic and small, cold to the touch. I heard Tina’s muffled voice, talking to Tim, telling him she couldn’t stop me, he had to get over there now. I picked up the gun and carried it back.
Tina waved me over to the sofa. “Turn your phone on. Tim’s on his way there.” I nodded, distracted by the thing in my hand. I didn’t know the first thing about guns. Tina ejected a clip from the handle, checked it, and put it back in.
“This is the safety,” she said, showing me. “You pull this back, and then all you do is pull the trigger.”
“Hopefully not.”
“Yeah. But take it.”
The Escort rattled to a stop a block from the hospital. I didn’t want them seeing it if I’d beaten them there. I ran through the soggy air to the hospital.
Sweat was rimming the neckline of my shirt within thirty seconds. Mobley’s Oldsmobile wasn’t in the parking lot yet; I hoped that meant I had a few minutes to get down there ahead of him. I bent at the waist by the front doors and let a few sharp breaths pull through me, until I got control.
The doors were open and the lights on, but they didn’t staff the volunteer information booth this late. The morgue would be locked—I had to get the key from Dr. Sutter’s office. A candy striper walked through the lobby, carrying charts in her hand. I ducked down to a water fountain, waiting for her to pass.
“Can I help you?” she said when I pulled up.
“Which . . . uh . . . way is the emergency room?”
The question satisfied her. “Out the doors, around the building to your right.”
“Ah, thanks.” I hung there, waiting for her to pass down the hall, when an EMT van pulled up outside. Lovell’s body, probably. There was no more time to wait—I jogged back to Dr. Sutter’s office.
His door was open, but the desk drawer with the keys to the morgue was locked. I banged on it uselessly, with a sinking feeling that I wouldn’t be able to prevent another cover-up. My camera strap weighed on my shoulder—I shouldn’t have brought it with me. I had enough evidence in there to at least show that the mayor had killed Lovell, and I was putting it at risk by carrying it around with me.
It was a metal desk, an old one from the fifties or something. Dr. Sutter had a paperweight of an Irish clover on his desk. It weighed a ton, much heavier than the gun. The lip of the desk hung out over the drawer. I checked out in the hall and saw no one, then rammed the paperweight up into the lip of the desk. After a few more hits, the lip raised enough to show the small metal bar that locked the drawer in place. Dr. Sutter had a letter opener in his pen holder, a mug shaped like a brain. I slid it through the opening and the metal bar turned down easily. I had seen Dr. Sutter open that drawer plenty of times and knew right where the key to the morgue would be sitting. I took it out and headed downstairs.
I set up on Mobley’s sofa. I’d been waiting there five long minutes, the cold air freezing my T-shirt to my chest. Every once in a while I snuck a peek at the empty autopsy room through the large window looking out from Mobley’s office. It was pointless—I’d know if anybody entered. I’d be able to hear them. The gun sat on the cushion next to me. I didn’t want to touch it. I doubted if I could use it.
My cell phone rang loudly, the electronic noise banging against the hard walls of Mobley’s office. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Christopher. Are you at the hospital?” Tim.
“I’m down in the morgue.” I figured Tina had told him everything. “It sounded like they were calling Mobley before.”
“You’re out of sight, right?”
“Yeah, in the office.”
“Okay, good. I’m almost there. Don’t come out. Don’t make yourself known. Just stay put, okay?”
“Yeah, okay, Tim,” I said. It was his deal now. A wash of relief came over me, and I closed my eyes.
I had just closed my phone and lain back on the sofa when I heard something at the morgue entrance. Somebody had opened the door. A second door opened and brought another wave of relief—whoever came in had gone straight into the autopsy room instead of heading back to the office.
I heard a different, harder clack of shoes. Two people.
The door to the autopsy room closed, muffling their sounds. I leaned closer to the window when their voices picked up in anger. Concentrating, I could distinguish their words.
“It’s not gonna happen again.” And then a cough. It was Dr. Mobley. I could see him in my mind, dabbing at his mouth with the handkerchief.
“Whatever you want. I’ll give you more.” The mayor. Like I thought—he’d bribed Dr. Mobley the first time, and he wanted to do it again.
“This is different,” Dr. Mobley said. He’d already come to Tim about Mitch Blaylock—he wasn’t about to fake another death certificate. I figured he was stalling, but it was funny how he’d chosen the same words as the sheriff had: Blaylock was different. I still didn’t know what that meant.
“Whatever you want,” the mayor said. He was almost shouting.
Mobley didn’t answer. Finally, he said, “I’m going to talk to the sheriff. You should be gone when I get back.”
I heard Dr. Mobley leave and waited for the mayor to follow him.
After a minute the door opened, and I thought he was gone. But when I looked into the autopsy room, I saw that it was Tim, entering with a severe look on his face. His eyes focused downward, against the wall; the mayor must have been sitting there. I should have ducked back down, but I couldn’t peel my eyes away.
Tim pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. “Mr. Mayor, I have to arrest you.”
I raised up another few inches, far enough to see the Mayor slumped against the wall. He had placed his gun on the floor. It lay alongside his leg, and I wondered if Tim could even see it there.
“No,” he said to Tim. “The sheriff ’ll talk to you. We’ll work this out.”
Tim shook his head. “I’m arresting you for murder. The sheriff can’t help with that.”
I don’t know if I saw anything snap in the mayor’s face or not, but afterward I thought I did. His hand flashed to the gun as he pushed up off the wall. Tim didn’t have time to react. He hadn’t realized how far gone the mayor was; he hadn’t prepared himself for this.
In a split second, the mayor had risen to his feet, his back turned to me. I could see Tim’s face, watching helplessly as the mayor raised the gun. I was going to watch Tim Spencer die right there in the morgue. Another fraction of a second.
The shot I fired blew a chunk of the window apart. The shards sprayed like confetti, and the mayor’s left knee buckled. I had hit him just below the shoulder. He held the gun in his right hand, not giving up, struggling to forge on. His right arm made a wide, arcing motion as he turned himself around. His eyes latched onto me as the gun traveled up to my chest.
I pulled the trigger again. Glass clinked to the floor as the Mayor clutched his ribs. Blood ran across his fingers, spilling over his knuckles. I must have hit his heart.
“C’mon, Christopher.”
It was the third or fourth time Tim had said it. Calmly, softly, trying to pull me away with gentle words. I had come into the autopsy room to see what I had done, and now the mayor’s blood was pooling around my feet. My mind was stranded in a vast nowhere.
Nurses rushed in from somewhere, and then the mayor was being lifted to a table. White coats swept past me and closed around his body, huddling over his chest, frantic with activity.
Tim’s hand closed around my arm, and I let him take me away.
He sat me on the plastic bench at the front of the hospital lobby by a dying fern. Everything turned to background noise—Tim making calls on his radio, police funneling in, red and blue lights from squad cars swirling pointlessly around the lobby. I don’t know what Tim told them, but it was enough to convince them not to arrest me.
My cell phone rang. Home. Daniel.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, Daniel.”
“What’s wrong?” It took him two words to sense it, and I wondered if, for the rest of my life, people would know something was off about me with my first introductory sentence.
“Nothing.”
“Mom and Dad are home. They picked me up from Julia’s. Where are you?”
“The hospital.”
“Where’d you go tonight?”
“Nowhere. I can’t talk about it. . . . Daniel?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell them I’m not coming home tonight. Tell them I’m sleeping at Tina’s.”
Tim was standing by me when I hung up the phone. “I’ll drive you,” he said.
“I’ll go to your parents’ place next and tell them everything,” Tim said as we parked at Tina’s. I nodded, though I wasn’t understanding much of anything.
Tina met us at the front door. I don’t know what we looked like, but she took a sharp breath of surprise before smoothing out, smiling weakly.
“He saved my life,” Tim said, before Tina could ask any questions. He drew her aside, whispering the bare details to her while I stood numb at the door. On his way out Tim clapped me on the back. “I might come over later, when I’ve finished for the night.”
Tina nodded. “Sure.”
“It might be real late.”
“Whenever,” she said.
PART V
SUSPENDED ANIMATION
34
We limped together into the living room. Her ankle wasn’t any better, but it felt like she was the one holding me up.
