When the Dead Speak

by Sandra Tooley

  With the board completely cleaned off, she gathered the papers from the study and the dining room table and carried them to the living room. She pressed the igniter and brought the gas fireplace to life.

  From the hearth in front of the see-through fireplace, Sam stared wistfully at the window seat in the dining room. She thought back to last night and the way Jake’s arms felt wrapped around her, and the look of longing in his eyes, or maybe she had imagined it. Maybe it had been the longing in her eyes.

  She struggled to bring her mind back to her encounter with Carl and her conversation with the President. Whittier admitted he had received her father’s package of information. Carl denied having seen it until just recently. But he also had the pages from her father’s safety deposit box. And there was only one person who could have given them to him.

  The writing had been on the wall. She didn’t know how she failed to see it. As she watched the flames flicker, she thought of the night Jake had appeared on her patio. The familiar way his eyes deciphered every movement, registered every detail, his serious demeanor. FBI.

  Jake had been nothing more than another watchdog for Carl. His concern had been a lie, the key he finagled out of Abby, his staying here all these nights. She inhaled long and deep, daring those tears to make an appearance. She heard a key in the front door but didn’t look up.

  Jake walked down the steps to the dining room. The table was cleared of all the notes, papers. The sandblasted grapevine tree trunk was back in the center of the table with all its greenery, fake cactus, and flowers.

  “It isn’t hot enough outside for you?”

  Sam tore sheets of paper into halves, then quarters, and slowly fed them to the fire. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him walk over, toss his sportscoat on the couch.

  “You’re destroying evidence.”

  She looked up at him, gave a resigned sigh and tossed another handful of scraps into the flames, watching the edges curl up and turn to ashes.

  “I sold my soul to the devil today,” she started. “I gave President Whittier an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

  “President Whittier?” His eyes questioned her as he took a seat on the arm of the couch.

  “Yes.” She closed the door to the fireplace and brushed the dirt from her hands. She turned her attention to him, tried to look at him as her nemesis, not the man whose strong arms had protected her in the fall from Preston’s fence. Focus. That had always been her strong point. She just had to force herself to focus.

  “In exchange for not revealing that the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee was aware over twenty years ago that the bodies of missing GIs were buried at Mushima Valley, Whittier is going to appoint Abby to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and grant a few other odds and ends.” A tense laugh escaped her throat. “I can almost get used to this deal-making.”

  Jake’s face became as stony as Carl’s had been earlier.

  “The President, on the other hand,” Sam continued, “will make the murders and Preston’s involvement public. We can finally get the bastard behind bars and reinstate Hap and his unit to their proper, honorable status.”

  “He agreed to that?”

  He said it cautiously. Sam saw no hint of exposure behind his eyes, those soft brown eyes. Focus. All a lie. Set up. She had to keep saying the words like a mantra. Meanwhile, her chest felt as if a four-hundred-pound sumu wrestler were sitting on it.

  “Oh, he blubbered on and on about how he couldn’t give the Black Hills back to the Sioux.” She thought back to the folder Carl had, wondered if Jake might have been behind one of those doors all the time she was there. She felt her face flush, felt tears welling up. Again, she forced them back. “And I agreed to report that my father’s papers were just recently discovered without any hint that the President was ever aware of their existence. He’ll be a hero in the black community. That should be great for votes.”

  Sam glared at Jake. “Would you believe, there were two more pages to my father’s report? It mentioned the names of the guys in Hap’s unit and where Hap suspected their bodies had been buried.” She thought she saw a light turn on behind those stolid eyes. She gave him time to digest the information before asking, “How long were you with the Bureau?” She wiped the tears away as soon as they dared to show up.

  Jake reached over to help wipe them but Sam pulled away and moved over to the love seat.

  “I was going to tell you, Sam.”

  “When, Jake? After Preston received a pat on the hand?” She watched him move from the arm of the couch to the couch. The coffee table between them could just as easily been the Grand Canyon.

  “I talked to Carl until I was blue in the face. Frank and I both did.”

  “Frank?” She was beginning to feel like the punch line of a bad joke. “You trusted Frank enough with the truth but not me?”

  “It was what Carl wanted. And as far as Carl changing the President’s mind, Carl’s hands were tied, Sam. We both want nothing more than to see the reputation of Hap and the others cleared. And I DO want Preston to be tried for murder.”

  He reached across that canyon for her hand. For a brief moment he touched her. It unleashed her flood of tears again. She pulled her hand away and leaned back. Her eyes were penetrating, accusing, the same piercing coolness she had exhibited the first time she met him at Preston’s.

  “You had the videotape of me at Preston’s but you never used it.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Now I know why. You needed to be Carl’s eyes and ears. He needed to know how close I was getting to the truth, how much I uncovered.”

  “That may have been true in the beginning.”

  She saw pain behind those brown eyes, but told herself he was a good actor. Where was Abby when it came to witnessing the true Jake Mitchell, the man she seemed to trust and mother ad nauseam? Abby’s powers picked a bad time to go on shutdown.

  The grandmother clock in the corner of the dining room clanged, echoing off the walls, filling the cold silence. Sam leaned an elbow on the back rest of the loveseat. Her fingers tugged on her hair, winding and unwinding the strands around her index finger.

  She despised the fact that Jake had broken through her shell, that he had made her vulnerable. More important, she hated the fact that he made her feel emotions that were foreign to her.

  “You discovered Lincoln Thomas was Ling Toy and whisked him right off to Carl.”

  Jake leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He studied his hands as if answers were written in the deep creases. “There’s nothing I can say that will make you understand why I had to do what ...”

  Her head turned sharply. “You’re right.” She was beaten. She didn’t have one more ounce of fight in her. Her emotions had zapped it all out. Rising slowly from the couch she said, “I want you out of here.” As she passed him she ordered, “NOW.”

  She opened the front door and stood waiting. Jake placed his hand on the door, leaned close to her. Distance. She needed to distance herself from him before she weakened.

  “Sam.” His voice was a whisper. “Don’t do this to ...”

  She turned away. “Call first before you stop by to pick up your things. Make sure I’m not here.”

  Quietly, he left. She closed the door, started climbing the stairs to her room but dropped down on the third stair, too emotionally drained to move. She drew her knees up close and wept.

  All this time she had never been able to find a way to get rid of him. She never knew it could be so easy, or so painful.

  Chapter 73

  “You hardly touched your meal,” Alex said.

  Abby pulled her shawl up around her shoulders and leaned back against the bench outside of Flanigan’s. The restaurant was across the street from the Three Oaks Shopping Center, a huge, renovated, enclosed center with aqua-colored spires at its entranceways.

  Abby looked up toward the sky. The bright lights from the center and Flanigan’s parking lot hindered any view of the stars on this clear night. />
  “I just have this uneasy feeling.”

  A young couple walked past, the mother holding the hand of a young girl. Abby smiled at the girl whose wide eyes stared back. The mother and daughter took a seat on the bench next to them while the father walked off to the parking lot.

  The little girl, dressed in a pale yellow shorts outfit which matched her corn-silk hair, walked over to them.

  Holding out her doll to Abby, the girl said, “See my dollie?”

  “Your dollie is beautiful.”

  “Josie.” The young mother gathered up her daughter. “Let’s not bother the nice people.” She led Josie back to the bench.

  “You should not let your grandmotherly hormones take over your emotions, Abby. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go out tonight. We should have stayed home.” Alex rose from the bench, positioning his hat on his head.

  “I only wanted to give Sam and Jake some time alone.”

  A large bird was circling the parking lot. Seagulls scurried from their feasts of food scraps. Patrons emerging from the restaurant looked up as the bird with its forty-inch wing span descended on a nearby light pole.

  The hawk turned its head, its beady eyes trained on Abby. It let out a rambling diatribe, a screeching that drowned out the noise from the traffic and the hungry seagulls.

  Alex studied the bird and asked Abby, “What does the hawk say?”

  Abby sighed heavily and hung her head. The hawk’s report on Abby’s home front was not good.

  “Come.” Alex helped Abby up from the bench. “Why don’t we go take in a good blood and guts war movie?” He wrapped a consoling arm around her shoulder. “Definitely no romance movie.”

  As they walked toward the truck, Abby patted his hand and asked mournfully, “Dear Alex, is there really a difference?”

  Chapter 74

  Two hours had passed since Jake left. Sam rose slowly from the staircase and walked through the study to the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and brushed her teeth.

  Her last meal had been eons ago. Lunch maybe? But she wasn’t hungry. The pain she felt was new to her. It felt as though a large hand had reached into her chest and pulled her heart out. It was a pain she never wanted to feel again.

  She lowered herself onto the couch in the darkened study and pulled her feet up under her. Why wasn’t Abby home? She needed a shoulder to cry on. Her emotions betrayed her as the phone rang sending a glimmer of hope through her veins. No matter how much she wanted to, she refused to talk to Jake.

  She listened to the voice on the recorder. It was vaguely familiar. When he said his name was Cain, she rushed to the phone.

  “Yes, this is Sergeant Casey.”

  “I ... I have some information I think you might be interested in, Sergeant.”

  The hair on her arms rose. “About?” She carried the portable phone upstairs to her bedroom where she stripped out of her shorts and top.

  “Your father’s death. I can’t talk now.”

  “Then when?”

  “Meet me at 1600 Cornell at ten o’clock tonight. And come alone, Sergeant.”

  As she listened to the dial tone, bells and whistles went off in her head. A tingling sensation washed over her body. She had pushed Preston’s back to the wall. Maybe Cain was going to turn Preston in. Maybe he had a falling out with his boss. Maybe encompassed a lot of options. But she couldn’t back out now.

  Chapter 75

  A vacant four-block stretch of industrial sites stood dark and quiet. Litter from what seemed like the entire city appeared to have been sucked into this isolated part of town.

  It had flourished years ago. A steel container corporation, roto gravure printing company, steel tubing company. All either gave way to new technology or were the victims of cheap, overseas labor.

  She had heard the property was being rezoned for a golf course community. Anything would be better than the haven it had been for the homeless, drug addicts, and four-legged creatures. The homeless had moved on. The drug addicts had been cleared out. But the creatures, four-legged and furry, big and small, were in abundance.

  Shadows moved along the edges of the building as Sam inched her Jeep to the end of the block. Every nerve ending in her body was dancing a jig. A voice in her head told her to turn the Jeep around and drive out of there. She checked the address again on the side of the warehouse. It stood dark and abandoned, windows broken, weeds snaking up the sides of the building. Pressing the button on her pen light, she checked the address on her notes, then checked her watch. It was ten o’clock.

  She pulled around to the side of the building. A patrol car sat in the middle of the parking lot. She breathed a sigh of relief. After backing her Jeep up to a freight door, Sam checked her Glock 26 9mm and shoved it into the pocket of her jump suit.

  The tightness in her chest from her encounter with Jake had ceased with Cain’s phone call. It had now been replaced with a persistent pounding. Walking cautiously along the concrete drive, she looked for movement in or near the squad car. Her black clothing helped her blend into the shadows. One dim bulb on a building across the street did little to help her view of the dark lot.

  Pulling her gun from her pocket, she carefully took the safety off. Staying in the shadows, she made her way around the back of the building. Darkness stared back at her from the scum-and-soot-covered windows. She pressed her back against the building and listened for several minutes. A kite, caught in the burned-out bulb of a street light, flapped softly in the breeze. Birds flitted in and out of the windows of the steel container corporation across the street. The thought crossed her mind that birds don’t fly at night, or do they? Or were those bats she was seeing?

  A cold chill shot up her spine. Her eyes finally adjusted to the dark. Slipping her gun hand into her pocket, she slowly approached the patrol car. The driver’s side window was rolled down. A notepad and clipboard lay on the passenger side. The radio, a cop’s lifeline to headquarters, was turned off. Her eyes scanned the top floors of the warehouse. Suddenly, she felt like an ideal target, out in the open with only the car to shield her.

  “Anyone here?” she called out. Slowly she walked around the back of the car, her eyes scanning the dark, the buildings across the street. When her foot touched something by the passenger side, the adrenaline rushed through her body. Tiny pulses of electricity raced up her spine, lifting the hair off the back of her neck. Run, a voice in her head screamed.

  The body of the police officer was lying face down on the gravel-pitted pavement. She felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. Sam reached through the opened window for the radio. Ping. She ducked as a bullet shattered the front windshield.

  “Don’t even think of calling for backup,” a voice in the darkness called out.

  Sam peered over the side mirror, her eyes searching the building for shadows, the upper story of the warehouse for movement. “I thought you wanted to talk, Cain?” Tightening the grip on her gun, she moved forward, toward the front of the car only to be met with another barrage of gunfire. To remain here was suicide.

  Think before you act. Jake’s words nagged inside her head and she hated the fact that he was right. She had held a faint hope that Cain really did want to give up Preston on a silver platter. Maybe had proof that Preston was the mastermind behind Hap’s and her father’s deaths. Maybe that Cain wanted to testify against Preston in exchange for a lesser charge.

  “I AM talking,” the cottony voice yelled back. It was followed by more bullets riddling the front of the car, flattening the tires.

  He’s aiming for the gas tank, Sam told herself. The damn car is going to blow up.

  Suddenly, the air was filled with the odor of oil and gasoline. A small stream was etching its way across the pavement. A maniacal laugh sliced through the air. She couldn’t chance returning gunfire. Instead, she bolted, away from the car, away from the warehouse. A spray of bullets stalked her retreat, followed by an explosion. A blast of hot air picked her up and tossed her to the gro
und like a match stick. Her gun, which she had thought was gripped firmly, popped out of her hand on impact.

  As she rolled her body away from the car, she made a mental assessment of bodily damage. She could still breathe — no broken ribs. Her brain didn’t register any excruciating pains.

  As soon as she tumbled to the safety of the corner of the building, she jumped to her feet in time to see a second explosion lift the back of the patrol car. Her hand slapped against her chest, feeling the bulk of her medicine bundle beneath her jump suit.

  Once she reached the safety of her Jeep, she didn’t feel very safe. Panic gripped her like a winter deep-freeze. Her hand shook as she turned the keys in the ignition.

  As she drove off she heard the faint sounds of sirens in the distance. She reached across the seat for her cellular phone but it wasn’t there. Leaning over, she patted the floor on the passenger side, then under her seat.

  The thought that Cain took it, that he had been in her Jeep became apparent. A new sensation overcame her fear. It wasn’t just the panic that gripped her. This was different, and it was over-powering. She felt the overwhelming sensation of impending doom ... death.

  Cain stood and watched the inferno with immense satisfaction. He smiled as Sam’s tail lights faded in the distance. There were so many innovative ways to make a bomb these days. Not like the dynamite he had used on Samuel Casey’s car. Today there was plastique. It was efficient, clean. And by setting a heat sensor on the thermostat, his victim’s Jeep would be miles away before it blew up.

  Walking toward the burning police car, he picked up Sam’s gun with a gloved hand. The heat from the explosion was intense. The officer’s uniform was smoldering but the sounds of the sirens told Cain that the fire would be put out soon.

  “Just can’t trust these cops nowadays.” With a smile, he pointed Sam’s gun at the officer’s back and fired three times.