Dead Man Talking

17

Remember what I said about the disgusting floor? Right about then, I didn’t care.

I hit the cement face-first, and though I screamed to my teammates to do the same, I really didn’t have to. When I got up the nerve to lift my head just long enough to glance around, I saw that they were all on the floor, too.

We stayed that way for I don’t know how long, waiting for another volley of shots that didn’t come. The only sound in the room was our rough breathing. That, and the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears.

I swallowed hard. “Everybody OK?”

Fortunately, everybody was.

Still on his stomach, Absalom shimmied over. “You never said nothin’ about people tryin’ to kill you.”

“Like I knew somebody was going to start taking pot-shots at me?” I half-crawled, half-rolled in the other direction, and when I was out of range of the window, I sat up and dug around in my purse for my cell phone so I could call the cops. “It’s not like it happens every day,” I said, even though it does happen more often than I like. “I told you I didn’t want to involve any of you. I told you it might be dangerous. I’m sorry.”

“Not lookin’ for a freakin’ apology.” Absalom sat up, too. “Lookin’ to know what you got yourself into.”

I didn’t have the answer, but as it turns out, it didn’t matter. Another round of gunfire erupted, and before I had a chance to dial 911, I fell flat again. My phone slipped out of my hand and skittered across the floor.

A bullet slammed into the cement not ten inches from it, and a spray of tiny cement pieces spewed into the air. Another bullet whizzed past my ear. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but hey, self-preservation instincts aren’t always logical; I rolled into a ball and covered my head.

And that’s how we all waited. One minute. Two. Three. With each second that passed, I was convinced the shooter was going to spring through the window and finish us off. When nobody did, I took the chance of unfurling and taking a careful look around. “Maybe he’s gone,” I whispered.

“Maybe.” Absalom rocked to his knees and crawled to the window. He was a big target and he knew it, so he stayed close to the floor and peeked around the side of all that was left of the board that used to cover the opening. “I don’t see anybody.”

“Me, either.” Reggie crawled up beside him. He had one of the sticks from the fire, and he tossed it out the window. It clattered to the ground.

There was no response, no gunfire. In fact, it was dead quiet for another whole minute. Then we heard a car door slam.

“Son of a-” It was gloomier than when I arrived at the Lake View, and I could just barely make out Sammi when she sprang to her feet. “That jerk ruined my shirt.” Her top lip curled, she brushed a hand over her T-shirt and stomped one foot.

“It’s just a shirt, Sammi. Chill.” Delmar made sure he kept his distance when he delivered his advice. “Better your shirt gets wasted than Pepper.”

Sammi being Sammi… well, she was well beyond being soothed. I’d like to think it was me being the shooter’s intended target that sent her over the edge, but it just as easily could have been the damage to her shirt. Before any of us could even think to stop her, she raced to the window, hopped over the sill, and barreled into the parking lot, swearing a blue streak at the top of her lungs.

“No!” I scrambled to my feet just as the car outside revved its engine and squealed its tires. Absalom and I made it to the window at the same time, and it might have been a toss-up as to who was going to push who out of the way and get outside first.

Except that the next sound we heard froze us both in our tracks.

The crack of a single gunshot.

By the time we jockeyed for position to get out of the window and raced to Sammi’s side, she was already dead.

“You look like you could use a cup of coffee.”

As if by magic, right after I heard these words, a disposable cup appeared under my nose. The coffee in it was hot and steamy, and it smelled like heaven.

Just thinking about drinking it made me feel like I was going to throw up.

I looked up from the coffee cup, and maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t surprised to find Quinn was on the other end of it. He slid into the backseat of the police car to sit next to me. “You all right?” he asked.

I’d like to say I sniffed, but the noise I made was way less polite than that. I swigged, and when he handed me a handkerchief, I grabbed it gratefully and wiped my nose and eyes.

“We were just doing research,” I said, telling Quinn the same story I’d told the patrol cops when they arrived in answer to my frenzied 911 call. It was, after all, technically the truth. “We were looking over the scene and talking about the crime, and-” I hiccupped. “That’s when the shooting started.”

“And this Sammi Santiago…” He consulted a small, leather-bound notebook. “She ran out of the room?”

“You know Sammi!” I felt I could get away with this explanation because Quinn was a Cemetery Survivor fan, and as every fan knew, Sammi has-er, had-a temper. He’d seen her in action. “She was so mad about the shooting and about her shirt getting dirty…” I remembered how back in the room, she thought her T-shirt was ruined, and how out in the parking lot when I finally dropped to my knees at her side, I saw that St. James’s face was obliterated by the dark red blood that oozed from the wound in Sammi’s chest. When I tried to draw in a breath to steady myself, it wobbled on the sob stuck in my throat. “Sammi just took off. And that’s when…” I swallowed hard. It hurt. “That’s when we heard the shot.”

“And the car?”

I thought back to the moment I hopped out the window. “I only saw it from the back. It wasn’t new. I could tell that. It was gray. Or maybe white. It was getting dark, and it was hard to tell.”

“Did anybody think to get the license plate number?”

I shrugged. After the first detective on the scene interviewed me, a nice uniformed officer sat me down in the patrol car, got a blanket out of the trunk, and draped it over my shoulders. The blanket sagged. Quinn didn’t adjust it. “I didn’t see much,” I told him. “I was looking at Sammi, and it all happened so fast.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking about the way the shooter escaped or the way a person can be living one second and gone the next. Since my eyes filled with tears and my nose clogged, I don’t think I was talking about the shooter.

“It’s OK,” Quinn said. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”

I was, and it didn’t make me feel one bit better. When he made a move to get out of the car, I plucked at his sleeve. “How did you know I was here?”

“I heard the call on the radio. The dispatcher mentioned the Lake View.” His expression was dead serious. “I remembered that file you asked for, so I figured you were here. They said there was a victim, a woman. I thought-” He didn’t finish the sentence, just slid out of the car.

Before he could walk away, I leaned over to see him better. “Did you call Virgil?”

“I’ll leave that up to the patrol guys,” he said. He stooped down to look me in the eye. “We’re done talking to you for now, though somebody will probably be by tomorrow to interview you again. You want me to follow you home?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Fresh tears welled, and I didn’t even bother to brush them away. “I’m a little confused.”

He nodded. “It’s the shock. I loaded your coffee with sugar. That ought to help.” He looked toward the Mustang. “You stay put for a few minutes, and when I can break away, we’ll get you out of here.”

He’d already walked away before I had a chance to tell him that would be fine. I had a million questions that demanded answers, and not enough energy to move a muscle. I sat in the back of the patrol car, and after a while, though I don’t remember drinking it, I saw that my coffee cup was empty. Quinn was right about the sugar helping; I wasn’t as shaky. I didn’t know where he got the coffee in the first place, but I dragged myself out of the police car to look for more.

I guess my relationship with Quinn was what had earned me the luxury of sitting in that patrol car in the first place. When I found them, Absalom, Jake, Reggie, and Delmar were herded to one side of the building, shuffling their feet and waiting for the official go-ahead to leave. They looked as miserable as I felt.

“You OK?” The blanket was still hanging from my shoulders, and Absalom straightened it. “You look awful.”

“I just can’t believe it.” Like I needed to tell them that? “I don’t suppose any of the cops said anything. About anything they’ve found? Or who could have done this?”

“Seems to me, you’re the best one who could answer that.” Absalom was right, but he didn’t press the point, and I don’t think it was because he was willing to cut me any slack. He looked tired. “All they did was ask us what we were doing here.”

“And you told them…?”

Reggie’s shrug said it all. “Told them we was following you. And that you was doing research. For the restoration at the cemetery.”

As far as it went, it was true, but it wasn’t the whole story, and it was about time they knew it. I sighed. “What I’ve really been doing is wasting time,” I said. “I think I know who buried that coin at Jefferson Lamar’s grave. He’s a man named Dale Morgan, and I should have talked to him long ago. I would have, if I wasn’t too scared to do what I knew I had to do.”

Delmar’s eyes were red, like he’d been crying. Because he didn’t want me to see, he hung his head. “You ain’t scared of nothin’,” he said. “You ran out of that room, just like the rest of us did.”

“But maybe I wouldn’t have been here in the first place. Not if I talked to Dale Morgan first. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe if I found out what he knows, maybe Sammi wouldn’t be-”

A noise from behind us stopped me, and I turned just in time to see a couple paramedics lift Sammi’s body onto a stretcher and put it in an ambulance.

I don’t know what it was about watching the scene that knocked the shock out of me. I do know that when it was gone, the only thing left behind was exhaustion.

My knees were weak and my shoulders sagged. I barely heard Absalom when he asked, “What you going to do?”

“I dunno.” It was the truth. My eyes filled with fresh tears. “I know I can’t just stand here, not when Sammi’s dead and…” I sobbed. “It’s not the kind of place where women should get killed. It’s a stupid little motel with flamingoes on the bathroom walls.”

I listened to my own words wash back at me, and a chill like the touch of a dead hand tingled up my legs and into my body. My veins filled with ice water.

I stood there thinking for so long, Absalom figured something was wrong. He waved a hand in front of my face. “Pepper? You OK?”

If only he knew. I was as far from OK as it was possible to get.

I threw off the blanket, and I was in my car and out of the parking lot before any of them could ask where I was going.

At Garden View, there’s a gate that employees use when they come into work early or leave late. It’s in an out-of-the-way place, and not many people know it’s there. Those of us who do have access to the code that unlocks it.

There is no such entrance at Monroe Street. The cemetery isn’t as big, for one thing, and since the only people on the payroll are city maintenance workers who come and go in daylight hours, there’s really no need for anything but the main gate.

Which means that gate gets locked every evening.

Which is a shame since by the time I drove across town and parked in front of the cemetery, it was long past sunset.

Which explains why I had to climb over the iron fence.

I am not by nature an athletic person. Besides a sweat (never a pretty thing), I broke a couple fingernails. And ripped my jeans. I got to the top of the head-high fence and held my breath, panicking at the height and the possibilities that spread out in front of me in a litany of disasters: broken bones, concussions, mussed hair.

None of that was anything I wanted to think about, and rather than dwell and panic some more, I closed my eyes, let go, and dropped. It would be nice to say I landed gracefully, but truth be told, I ended up on my butt.

No way I was going to let any of it stop me.

I was hobbling a bit, but my steps were fueled by the anger that had been building since the Lake View. Limp or no limp, I headed straight for Jefferson Lamar’s grave.

“You get over here, and you get here right now!” I didn’t care who heard me, so I didn’t even try to keep my voice down. Besides, who knows how loud you have to scream to be heard on the Other Side. “Lamar!” I tried again. “I need to talk to you, and I need to talk to you now!”

There was a shimmer in the air about ten feet away, and the next thing I knew, Jefferson Lamar was adjusting his big honkin’ glasses on the bridge of his nose. “It’s late,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be-”

In three steps, I closed the distance between us, and I guess I’d learned something from Sammi after all (besides how not to dress). If I wasn’t sure my hands would swish right through him, I would have shoved him hard enough to knock him down, just like I’d seen her do to Virgil. With no more substantial way to demonstrate my anger, I pointed a finger at his nose. “You lied to me. And now somebody’s trying to kill me. And somebody did kill Sammi. Are you listening?” I don’t know how he couldn’t be, since by this time, I was screaming at the top of my lungs. “Did you hear me? I said Sammi’s dead. Just like Vera. And her death is all your fault. Just like Vera’s.”

“No.” He slashed a hand through the air and this close, I felt the ripple of an icy breeze. “I didn’t kill Vera. I told you-”

“You told me you weren’t screwing her.” When I stared into those dead eyes of his, my jaw was so rigid, it felt like it was going to snap. “You told me that. You swore it was true. But you knew. You told me yourself. You said the Lake View was the kind of tacky place with flamingoes on the bathroom wallpaper.”

“Oh.” Right before my eyes, Lamar folded like an origami stork. It was all the proof I needed, and I guess that should have made me feel better.

All it did was make me madder than ever.

“There were no crime scene photographs that showed the bathroom at the Lake View,” I told him. Even though I shouldn’t have had to point this out, I wanted to watch him squirm. “There’s no way you could have known about the flamingoes. Not if you weren’t there.”

He backed away and refused to meet my eyes. “It doesn’t mean I killed her,” he said.

“It means you’re lying.”

His shoulders rose and fell. “You’re right.”

“Well, hot damn!” I laughed, but believe me, there was no humor in the sound. If they bottled sarcasm, they would come to me as the source. “So all this time, you’ve been proclaiming your innocence, and all this time, I’ve been stupid enough to believe you. And now you’re telling me you’re not innocent. That you’re a murderer!”

“No, not a murderer. But not innocent, either.”

The only way I could try to think to steady my rattling heart rate was to take a deep breath. “You admit it? You and Vera-”

When he turned and walked away, I followed right after him. Good thing. If I wasn’t close by, I wouldn’t have heard him when he mumbled, “She was young and pretty and lively. I was a married middle-aged man, and I loved Helen. Believe me.”

“Yeah, like I’ve believed you all this time?”

We were near the beat-up mausoleum, and Lamar stopped. “There was something exciting about being with Vera,” he said. “Something dangerous. She was so prim and efficient in the office, but when we were alone together, she was wild and different, and she made me feel so young! So-”

“So much like the cheat you really were?”

His shoulders sagged. “The guilt was overwhelming. Even so, I couldn’t stop myself. There were nights I told Helen I had to work late. Vera and I, we would head away from Central State to someplace where no one would recognize us.”

“To the Lake View?”

“No, that’s the truth. The night Vera was killed…” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “That was the one and only time we’d ever been to the Lake View. How that clerk said he recognized us… why he would lie like that…”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Seems to be a lot of that going around.”

“I’m sorry.” The way he said it, I almost believed him. “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. If Helen finds out…”

“Is that a little bit of conscience I hear talking?” Since I thought it was, my anger ratcheted back. A little, anyway. “How could you be so heartless? Not to mention stupid?”

“I’d never done anything like it before. I never would have again. But there was something about Vera…”

“And when you took the stand in court and denied you were having an affair with her?”

He scraped a hand through his buzz-cut hair. “All these years, I’ve second-guessed my decision to keep quiet about the affair.” He dared to look into my eyes. “I’ve second-guessed it,” he said, “but I’ve never regretted it. Sure, it might have helped. It might have done me some good to admit my sins. To explain what I was doing at the Lake View. But maybe it would have just made me look more guilty. And it surely would have broken Helen’s heart. I couldn’t do that. I’d done enough to hurt her.”

I took all this in, processing as I went. “So when you left Vera that night, you’re telling me she was still alive?”

“It’s the God’s honest truth. It was…” He cleared his throat. “It was supposed to be another of our usual dates. But that night, Vera told me it was over between us. She was going back to her old boyfriend.”

“Steve.”

“She said she’d done a lot of thinking and come to realize there was no future for us. She said she was tired of the sneaking around. She wanted me to divorce Helen so we could be together, but… well, I couldn’t do that. I told Vera. I told her I never could.”

“So she gave you the old heave-ho and you-”

“I didn’t kill her.” He looked away. “We fought. I know it’s impossible for you to understand, but Vera… she made me crazy from wanting her. I couldn’t think straight. When Vera said she didn’t want to see me again…”

I thought about the crime scene photos. “You’re the one who gave her that fat lip.” When he didn’t deny it, my anger came back, full force. “You slapped her, you creep.”

He hung his head. “I’ve regretted it. All these years. I wished it had never happened, that her last night on earth wasn’t filled with pain and violence.” Lamar lifted his head to look into my eyes. “You do believe me, don’t you?”

I met him look for look. “What happened after you hit her?”

He swallowed hard. “She cried. And I begged her to forgive me. I told her how much she meant to me, how I couldn’t live without her. She wouldn’t listen.”

“So you…?”

“I left. That’s all. I just walked out. I swear it’s the truth.”

Was I buying his story? Not lock, stock, and barrel (whatever that means). But I wasn’t going to dismiss it, either. At least not until I knew more.

“When you left, what was Vera wearing?” I asked him.

He cleared his throat. “Nothing. Not when I walked out. When we met that evening, she was dressed in the outfit she wore to work that day.”

“That’s why she didn’t care about your blood on her blouse. There was no use her changing clothes. You knew about the bloodstain. She knew you wouldn’t care.”

“The police never picked up on that.” He sounded grateful. “I was so devastated when I left the motel… about Vera leaving me… about how I’d lost control and hit her… I wasn’t thinking straight. I thought… I thought about killing myself. I would have done it, too, if I didn’t realize that Helen would wonder what had gone wrong. She’d never have the answers, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. I drove home in a fog. The next morning when I got to my office, the police were there to tell me that Vera was dead. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t tell them that when I saw her last, she was getting ready to get dressed.

“So she was getting ready to leave, too. By the time the killer showed up at the door of the room, she was already dressed. And-”

“Maybe when he knocked on the door, maybe she thought it was me.” There was so much hope in his voice, it turned my stomach. “Maybe she opened it because she’d changed her mind and-”

“You’re pathetic. Do you know that?” I was in no mood to spare his feelings. “We’ve got two dead women on our hands, a marriage that self-exploded, and someone who wants to kill me because I’m looking into what really happened, and all you’re worried about is if your little love puppy wanted you back? ”

“It’s been my curse. I’ve spent all these years wondering. All these years obsessing about Vera. And I’ve come to realize that I’ll spend all eternity this way if I don’t do something to give Helen some peace. I’m a sinner, Pepper. I was a bad husband. But I’m not a murderer.”

He looked so miserable, I actually believed him.

Go figure.