Dead Connection

by Charlie Price

  “Hey, it’s Gates.”

  “Rome, how’s it?”

  “Hey, I’m following up some stuff on the Parker thing.”

  “New stuff?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t know if it’s any good yet.”

  “Maybe you’d let me decide that?”

  “Sure.” Gates felt he had to protect Compton. If police came after him, he would probably close up like an oyster. “Uh, street word around the County; I’m over there a day or so a week at the competency hearings.”

  “Go.”

  “Yeah, hearsay, maybe a white car, maybe a mature man arguing with the girl inside the car, maybe hit her and drove off.”

  “That’s pretty goddamn specific, Rome. Who you been talking to?”

  “Drum, really, it’s just rumor right now, but I’m all over it. I’ll call the minute I have something solid. It’s your case, dead clear.”

  “Don’t say ‘dead.’”

  “Right. Hey, you interviewed the dad in November?”

  “You like the dad for this!”

  “No. No. God, calm down.”

  “Go.”

  “Okay, you talked to the dad. Any feeling about him?”

  “A ghost. Insane with grief. Looked ninety years old.”

  “Hey, mind if I talk to him again?”

  “Shit on a post, Gates. What you got? Give it up!”

  “You’ll be the first, Drum, I swear it. I got to go.”

  As soon as Gates hung up, his phone started ringing. Probably Drummond. He ignored it and hoped that it wasn’t a mistake talking to the man. This case was making everybody crazy. Possibly himself, too. He gave up on the father idea, it wasn’t panning out, and sent Drummond an e-mail to that effect. No sense making him edgier than he already was.

  RACES AND CHASES

  At 3:30, Bruce was knocking on Robert’s door.

  “Come on. Let’s go to the store.”

  Robert said “Rite Aid” through the door. He couldn’t help himself.

  Bruce tried the door. It opened and Robert was standing right there, just as he had been for the past fifteen minutes.

  “Hiya!” Bruce was smiling and cheerful as usual.

  “Hi.” Robert wondered if he was glad to see the new guy. He didn’t even think about the movie. Too big a step.

  “You like candy?”

  Robert nodded.

  “All right! Let’s roll!” Bruce headed down the stairs, towing Robert loosely by the sleeve of his ski jacket.

  * * *

  The movie itself was way louder than Robert expected. He hadn’t been to one since high school and didn’t remember them being so noisy.

  “Dolby Digital!” Bruce explained. “Just like really being there right in the middle of the action!”

  Robert had not been able to keep up with the plot twists and didn’t want to ask Bruce and get a lecture in the theater, but he did like the cars. The races and the chases were exciting. And the girls! A really pretty one had showed her chest. Robert decided right then to go back to the Arcade Newsstand after work tomorrow.

  Walking back to the hotel, he tuned Bruce out. Bruce had been talking nonstop since the film ended.

  Robert knew if he hadn’t gone he would have been sleeping part of the time and walking the rest of the time, and here he was walking anyway. And he had had some good candy. And the movie itself was okay.

  Since high school, and Robert could hardly remember back then, he hadn’t had a friend, except for his pals on the ward at Chico. Maybe he and Bruce were pals. Robert shrugged to get his shoulders to relax. And soon that other guy was going to take him to get ice cream. Maybe this town wasn’t so bad after all.

  HUNTING THE VOICE

  The crypts were littered with dead insects and dry leaves, empty but for the coffins sealed on shelves within. They smelled like dust and old plaster. Dead ends.

  When Janochek went back to the cottage, Pearl and Murray agreed to meet Saturday morning and thoroughly search the whole place—trees, shrubbery, outbuildings, even roofs, from the top corner of the property all the way down to the city street.

  They found some strange stuff: a plastic grocery sack containing two rolls of toilet paper beside a mildewed sleeping bag, hidden in a thicket by the fence bordering the rodeo grounds. In the newer section, deep in juniper bushes, a corkscrew, a rusty pocketknife, and some empty cough syrup bottles.

  They didn’t find a body.

  Saturday afternoon, Murray went seeking the new voice. The winter sun was weak, but he figured he still had at least an hour of daylight left. He began on the last two lanes from the road, which he hadn’t covered yet.

  He walked slowly and quietly, focusing.

  Near the end of the haphazard row of markers on the second-to-last lane, he thought he heard something. He stopped and made his breathing quiet. Crying, soft crying. He could barely hear it. Like a big radar dish, Murray turned around very slowly, trying to see if he could get a stronger signal in any direction.

  He heard it better when he was about due east, pointed toward the last lane over in this new section. He turned around one more time. Yes, confirmed. Then he did something he didn’t like to do, especially in the daylight. He walked straight for the sound, right over the top of other people’s graves.

  Murray wound up behind a shiny charcoal granite headstone. When he stopped, he could hear a girl’s voice. And along with it now, he could hear moaning. He was getting queasy. He had never felt this way before with Dearly or any of the others. The sounds came in waves, and somewhere in there, in the background, the more he tuned in, he could hear yells or screams. Like someone was being hurt. He had a strong urge to back up, to leave.

  It reminded Murray of the time he had been awakened by sounds, terrible sounds, coming from his mom’s room. Moans and cries and yelling. And he had run in to save her. But she wasn’t being hurt exactly. Or maybe she was. But she and the guy she was with got mad and told Murray to get the hell out. Leave them alone! And Murray had spent the rest of that night in a sleeping bag in his backyard.

  The longer Murray stood close to the headstone, the louder the noise became. He remembered a time last year when he was walking to school. At a big intersection, a mom with kids in her car had run a red light. She plowed into a big SUV. Murray heard the bang and looked up. The cars were smashed together and a hubcap was rolling down the street. All the traffic stopped and there was silence. Until a couple of the kids started yelling. Wailing. A dazed girl held a badly broken arm out the window, screaming. And another girl was moaning for her mother, who looked dead against the steering wheel. Those cries haunted Murray for months after.

  This sound was like that. Like something horrible had happened … or was going to happen right now—

  Murray ran. Like a coward, he ran.

  PEARL’S QUESTION

  When Janochek got back from his Saturday-afternoon bike ride, Pearl was sitting in their living room, writing on a pad of lined paper. She told him that she was working on the cemetery project, but her teacher had said it might not have to be a paper after all, maybe just an oral report. She told him she was writing things down anyway, making some notes so she wouldn’t forget anything he had said.

  As he listened, Janochek found he still didn’t quite believe her, but he didn’t want to question her further and seem like he was doubting her.

  She waited for him to sit in his favorite reading chair, faded maroon and round-armed, with a matching ottoman. “I think this paper or this talk, whatever it turns out to be, would be even more interesting if I had something special or something strange to say about cemeteries.”

  Janochek noticed that Pearl had managed to morph this “paper” into some vague assignment that would give her an excuse to put him off in case he asked to read her work.

  “Did people ever use cemeteries to hide things?” Pearl asked.

  He immediately wondered aloud if Jewish people had ever been sheltered in crypts to keep the Nazis from
finding them. And artworks. Maybe books? The Gnostic Gospels in the caves. Were they also burial grounds?

  “Do we have any caves in this cemetery?”

  Why was she suddenly so interested in this place,?

  “Pearl, I keep having this feeling there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “God, Dad, you’re such a parent sometimes.”

  “Don’t curse! Of course I’m a parent. I’m your damn father.”

  “Dad.”

  “All right. All right. But, (a) I’m supposed to be a parent, and (b) you shifted the subject to me. What I want to know is if there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “Jeez, Dad, you’d think I was a criminal or something. Just forget about it!”

  She went into her bedroom and shut the door. End of discussion.

  Janochek had seen this performance before.

  A NEW MAN

  Murray couldn’t think of anyplace to go but home. He really did not want to think about what had just happened. It was like the joke: count to ten without thinking of rabbits. Once somebody said that to you, as soon as you started counting, you automatically thought about rabbits. He sang instead. Some Christmas carols he had learned years ago in school. They were comforting, and besides, they were the only songs he knew.

  The front door was unlocked. Inside, Murray’s mom was sitting at the dining-nook table with a man in dark pants, a white shirt, and a narrow black tie. They both turned to look at him. The man wore glasses and had bad posture. Murray knew a thing or two about posture because his gym teacher had used him as a bad example. Murray thought the man looked like a Gumby.

  “Murray, you know Frank, don’t you?” his mom asked.

  Murray didn’t say anything. Then he realized he had stopped walking, and he started again, moving toward his room.

  “Murray. Murray! Stop for a minute. I want to ask you something.”

  Of all the days! But he stopped.

  “Frank has just offered to take me and you out to dinner. I haven’t seen you in a while, and I want you to come.”

  Murray reassessed the white shirt and tie. What if this was a government guy? He could not remember his mom ever inviting him to dinner with one of her men. He couldn’t think what was going on, but he was reluctant to risk messing it up.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  His mom turned to Frank. Frank looked at her and then back at Murray.

  “Where would you like to go?” he asked Murray.

  Sheesh! Murray couldn’t remember going anywhere except fast-food places. Denny’s for breakfast once.

  “Uh, Denny’s?”

  “Sure,” Frank said, as if that was a great idea. “Denny’s it is! Ready?” he asked, looking from Murray to his mom.

  Frank stood and put on the sport coat that had been hanging on the back of his chair.

  “Frank is a Pentecostal minister who just moved up here from Fresno,” she said, to no one in particular, as they walked out the door. “I met him today in the line at Safeway. He’s going to settle down and stay in Riverton, aren’t you, Frank?”

  Murray didn’t hear Frank’s response. He had walked fast out to the sidewalk, trying to spot what Frank was driving. Looking for clues. What was his mom doing this time?

  Frank took them to the Denny’s by the freeway. His mom had talked constantly all the way in the car, and when they picked a booth and sat in it, there was finally a moment of silence. Frank broke it.

  “Well…,” he said, looking across the table at Murray.

  “Murray.” Mom supplied the name to him.

  “Murray,” he said. “I’m not embarrassed to say that I’ve taken a shine to your mom. She’s the friendliest person I’ve met in the week I’ve been here.” He paused, looking for confirmation or something.

  Murray held his look but didn’t say anything.

  “As your mom told you, I’m a godly man, and I’ve always believed friendliness is next to godliness!” He chuckled then, and Mom followed suit.

  Murray didn’t get it.

  Frank looked over at her, and then back at Murray.

  “What she didn’t tell you is that I’m going to be the new youth minister at Valley Pentecostal, over on the east side. The youth minister,” he emphasized, “so I’m hoping you and I might get along as well as your mom and I seem to.”

  His smile was too big.

  Thank God, the waitress came right then and handed them menus and asked if they wanted anything to drink. Murray buried his face in the laminated pages and didn’t surface again until she asked for their order. By that time, Frank and his mom had started talking together. He heard his mom tell the man that he, Murray, was a good boy but real shy and to just give him time and Murray would warm up to him. Frank said that, for right now, a deacon had given him a room in his home, but that he was looking for his own apartment and expected to have one by the first of January.

  Frank told her that he loved kids, had always wanted a family, but that he had decided to wait to date anyone until he was out of the service and finished courses at the Pentecostal Bible College in Fresno. He’d finished up in October, got his assignment to Riverton in mid-November, and here he was. And since he had done the things he’d set out to do, he would like Mom to consider being his first formal date, maybe dinner, just the two of them, early next week.

  Mom asked him what this was, meaning tonight, and he said it was just a simple courtesy for being so open and polite to him at the “big impersonal supermarket.” He told her, “You know, God works in mysterious ways.” Murray thought, This guy sure can talk; maybe he really is a preacher.

  During the meal, Murray kept his eyes on his plate, staying out of the conversation. He was trying to zone out and not think about the cemetery. He did hear one other thing, though. Frank said he was going to be giving the convocation tomorrow morning and invited them to attend.

  * * *

  Sunday morning started with sunshine bright enough to penetrate the windows and wake him. Murray lay in bed dreading the day, particularly the afternoon, when he would meet Pearl and have to tell her about yesterday. Did he have to tell her? He thought it over. It hadn’t worked before to try to keep anything from her. Murray really didn’t want to go back to that gravestone. But maybe he’d feel better with Pearl there. He wanted to talk to Dearly first, he knew that.

  He got up and went to the bathroom and then to the kitchen. As usual, he glanced at his mom’s bedroom door. It wasn’t shut! The bed was made and there were no clothes strewn around the floor. He heard her then, in the kitchen. Jeez. He tried to think when the last time was he’d seen her act like a homemaker.

  “Feel like going to church?” she called as soon as she saw him.

  Church! That was a new one. And then he remembered last night.

  Okay, now he understood why this dressed-and-breakfast thing might be happening.

  His mom asked, “Want an egg?”

  She was boiling some, and he could smell toast.

  “Yeah, please.”

  “I want to hear Frank,” she said. “He may be the nicest guy I’ve come across in ages, and I think he likes me, likes us.”

  After Murray’s experience at the tombstone yesterday, he supposed church wouldn’t be such a bad idea, but he didn’t want to go. He wasn’t ready to go back to the cemetery until around noon. He guessed staying home by himself was the default decision.

  “Um, thanks, Mom, but no thanks. I’ve got some homework I need to get done so I’m just going to stay here.” Since his mother never asked him about school, she had no way to evaluate his excuse.

  Her hair was in curlers during breakfast, but by the time she left, she had brushed it out to a curly sheen. She was wearing a modest blue dress, stockings, and medium heels. Murray thought she looked real nice.

  THIRTY DAYS

  Monday morning at eight, Billup walked up the stairs and into the station, ready for work. He nodded to the duty officer in front and start
ed for the stairs to his cubicle.

  “Hold it,” the duty officer said. It was Webber today, and he was holding his hand up like stop.

  “Whaddayamean?” Billup was embarrassed and hoped no one was listening.

  “Fowler said to stop you if you came in and to tell you to leave for now and report to his office at one.”

  “I work here.” You dumb shit.

  “I know you do,” Webber said, his face reddening.

  “And Fowler told you to tell me this?”

  Webber met his stare.

  Billup wanted to feel outrage. He wanted to show his incredulity, but while he was driving to the station, he had already envisioned the possibility of something like this happening. Best to pretend like it was just par for the course. Like he was on special assignment. If they fired him, if they really went so far as to fire him over this crap, he would leave this stupid job and work for Sierra West security or, hell, even ARCO Arena security and get in to see all the Kings games free. He didn’t need this shit.

  He’d come back at one, but if Fowler was a dick, or they wanted him to beg to be reinstated, piss on ’em. He could get a job anywhere.

  When he came back in at 12:55, nobody said squat to him. He went upstairs to Fowler’s office without stopping at his own. Fowler sat at his desk, eating a sandwich. He motioned for Billup to come in, and put down his sandwich. He dug through the jumble of papers on his desk and selected an oversized manila envelope. He drew out a report, three or four pages typed and stapled, and briefly riffled through the pages. He hadn’t asked Billup to sit.

  Billup knew he was screwed. He could see by the way he was being treated. Goddamn that Brenda! And the fat therapist bitch! He’d like to see this skinny bastard Fowler with that therapist. She’d tie his bony little neck in a twist, too, ignorant know-it-all bastard.

  “Waldrop is the Employee Assistance Profesional for the whole department.” Fowler talked as he read. “Her report recommends immediate referral to alcohol treatment.”

  “That’s horseshit, Dave.”