Play Dead

Chapter 41

Elise was trying not to let the situation with David interfere with her investigation of the TTX case. And the best way to help David was to try to clear his name. With that in mind, she decided to drop by the Chatham County Jail for another visit with their buddy LaRue, to see if he might be in the mood to divulge any new information.

He seemed happy to see her.

She was company. A break from tedium.

She slid a photo of Flora across the table to him. "Ever seen her?" she asked.

"Once or twice. At Black Tupelo."

"Talk to her?"

"No." He passed the photo back. "I only noticed her, that's all."

She pulled out another photo, this one of Enrique. "How about him?"

Bingo. His reaction gave him away.

LaRue stared at the photo while obviously trying to formulate an answer, trying to figure out if he should tell the truth or lie. "I sold him TTX," he finally said with resignation, his shoulders drooping as he passed the photo back.

"Earlier, you said you never sold TTX."

He didn't answer.

"Which is it? Did you or didn't you sell TTX?"

"I did."

Elise leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Tell me about it."

"He would come in a big black car. A Lincoln, maybe. Somebody was in the backseat."

"Strata Luna?"

"Probably, but I couldn't see. The windows were dark."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I didn't want to get into any more trouble. But I'm no murderer. You know that, don't you?"

At least not a deliberate one, she thought. But he'd still poisoned her.

Elise got to her feet. "I'll see what I can do to get you out of here." She'd already decided to drop the charges, but she wasn't ready to tell him just yet.

He was a scientist. A screwed-up genius. Prison would be a terrible waste.

Heading for the parking lot, Elise mulled over the new information. If what LaRue said was true, then Enrique had been somehow involved in the TTX case, at least peripherally. A big black car with tinted windows. Pretty straightforward. Both Enrique's and Flora's throats had been cut. By Strata Luna? Because they'd known something?

Elise had grudgingly liked Strata Luna. She hadn't wanted to believe she was involved. Had she allowed Strata Luna's connection to Jackson Sweet to cloud her judgment?

As Elise approached the car, her cell phone rang.

It was Seth West, Truman Harrison's coworker.

"You know how you said to call you if I thought of anything else?" he asked. "Well, I was on vacation in Disney World and we were on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and I remembered that Truman went into the tunnels under Savannah the day he died."

Elise perked up.

"We'd had a report of a possible sewer line break. Near the intersection of President and Bay. He had to go in through a grate in one of the old sealed cotton storerooms to check it out and write up a repair order if we needed it. I said no way was I going down there. I knew it would be nasty as hell, but Truman didn't seem to mind.

"He was gone a long time, and when he came back he said the place was full of cockroaches. They were crawling on him. In his hair. In his shirt."

"Did he tell you anything else?"

"Said it looked like homeless people had been living down there. Sleeping on filthy mattresses. Can you imagine?"

"Sounds horrid," she agreed.

"Does that help you at all? I kept thinking it was silly to bother you, but my wife said I should let you know."

"You were right to call."

After disconnecting, Elise immediately put in a call to Eddie, her favorite contact in the research department. He could find out anything, no matter how obscure.

"Remember that guy who was always in trouble for going into the Savannah tunnels?" Elise asked, heading for shade and a picnic table near her car. "What was his name?"

"Pascal. Adam Pascal," Eddie said. "For a while there, he was always in the paper and on the news."

She sat down at the wooden table and pulled out pen and paper. "Any idea where he is, or if he's still around?"

"Let me check." Elise heard the clicking of keys; then Eddie was back. "Lives on Isle of Hope. Was arrested about three weeks ago for his latest caper. Severely fractured a leg and is home recuperating."

Elise jotted down the number, thanked Eddie, and gave Pascal a call.

Like all obsessed people, the guy liked to talk about his obsession.

"Those tunnels go everywhere, man. Under houses. Businesses. Warehouses. Cemeteries. Hospitals. You should see the one under the old Candler Hospital. Creepy as hell, with gurneys and old wooden wheelchairs. The tunnels were used for all sorts of things, but mainly to transport bodies from the hospital to the morgue and cemetery."

"But aren't they sealed?"

"Long time ago. And not very well. You know how the city has always been about that kind of thing. Outta sight, outta mind. Been a lot of water through there over the years. They're crumbling. Dangerous as all get-out. People have died down there. / almost died down there. I'd offer to take you, but I'm laid up with a broken leg. A tunnel caved in on me, and it was three days before I dug my way out."

"You're lucky to be alive, Mr. Pascal."

"That's what I keep saying."

"What can you tell me about the tunnels and the Hartzell, Tate, and Hartzell Funeral Home?"

"Used to be a tunnel from the funeral home to a nearby morgue. It's not the morgue anymore. Now it's a residence."

"Description and location?" Elise asked, pen ready.

Before she'd finished taking it down, she knew the building he was talking about: Strata Luna's house.

"Black Tupelo?" she asked.

"Goes there too."

An alternate universe right under their feet.

"How about the Secret Garden Bed and Breakfast?"

"Yep. But don't you go down there in those tunnels, you hear me? I'm not exaggerating the danger."

"I won't."

"I'll fax you some maps. How's that sound?"

"Great." She gave him her fax number, then disconnected.

While Elise talked to Pascal, the manager of CD Underbelly had left a voice mail.

"You know that stuff you asked me to find?" the message said. "Well, I found it. The CDs were put on plastic. Charged to some dude named Enrique Xavier. The boss is cheap as hell and we still use the old imprint machines, so I was looking at the credit card imprint and noticed it was one of those business credit cards, and that it didn't belong to Xavier at all. Guess what other name was on it? Guess who owned the card?" He paused for effect. "That nutcase that rides through town dressed in black and wearing a veil over her face. Strata Luna."

Click.

Elise pushed number nine on her mobile phone, saving the message. Then she looked at her watch and realized it was almost time to pick up Audrey from softball practice.

Audrey heard tires squealing and looked up to see a familiar yellow car flying around the corner, her mother at the wheel.

Now what?

Elise jerked to a stop, leaned across the seat, and shoved open the door. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."

Audrey recognized her mother's hurry-up mode. She tossed her backpack and softball glove in the backseat, and jumped in the car. "Just a couple minutes."

"Good," Elise said with a distracted air. She checked over her left shoulder, then pulled from the curb. "You aren't anxious to get home, are you? I've got to make one or two quick stops."

"No problem."

Audrey changed her mind when, ten minutes later, they were turning into the parking lot of a funeral home. "Somebody die?"

Her mom opened the glove compartment and pulled out a flashlight. "People are always dying."

"I mean somebody you know."

"Oh, honey. I'm sorry," Elise said as if suddenly realizing she was acting a little weird. She looked at Audrey and smiled. "No. Nobody died. This involves a little investigative work. Something you might find interesting. It has nothing to do with dead people. I'm looking for a tunnel."

"Tunnel?" That might be okay.

"Come on. You don't need to wait in the car."

"Hey, isn't this the place that body was stolen from?" Audrey asked as they walked under the green canvas awning.

"Yes." Elise opened the ornately carved door.

"Cool."

They cornered the funeral director in the entry room.

The place had red carpet and a bunch of dark doors that probably had bodies behind them. Audrey hoped nobody opened a door.

If that happens, don't look. Just don't look.

"Well, sure, I've heard of the tunnels," the director said.

She stared at the man her mother was talking to.

He was creepy, with neck skin that hung over his tie. The place smelled too. Audrey had been to only two funerals in her life, both for great-grandparents. Both times she'd refused to look at the dead body, but she remembered that sickening sweet smell. Like something bad was being covered up.

"The tunnels have been sealed for years," the man said.

"I'd like to see the entrance anyway," Elise told him.

"We don't allow anybody down there."

"Mr. Simms, do I need to remind you that a crime was committed in your establishment?"

"It's just… that area of the home is kind of for overflow…"

Audrey immediately imagined piles of dead bodies. The smell, along with the image, began to make her feel a little dizzy.

"I'm not an inspector," Elise reminded him.

"Okay, okay."

Annoyed, he led them to the elevator, which took them to the basement level.

What a switch, from all tidy and plush to damp and crumbling stone foundation that smelled like mildew and rotting wood.

The funeral director stayed in the elevator. "Keep to the right," he said, waving his hand. "The tunnel entrance is in the last small room. Low ceiling. You'll need to duck. I have to get back upstairs." He pushed a button. The elevator door closed. A motor kicked in, taking Mr. Mortician away.

The floor was tabby cement that had been poured over sloped, uneven ground. The light was bad, and there were a lot of deep shadows and dark corners.

Elise clicked on the flashlight.

It was one of those cool police flashlights that really lit up the room. The bright white beam darted around, then landed on a shelf full of small cardboard boxes. Each box had a name and date.

"Apparently relatives don't always pick up their loved ones," Elise commented.

Sweet kitty.

Audrey didn't like being down there with a bunch of dead people even if they were ashes. At the same time, she was thinking about how nobody was going to believe her at school tomorrow when she told her friends where she'd been. They were going to, like, think it was the coolest.

A lot of people thought cremated bodies burned down to a tiny little pile of ashes. But Audrey had seen a show on the Discovery Channel, and it told how after the thing they cooked them in was cool enough to open, bones and teeth were still there. Mixed with the ashes. They had a machine that looked like a little cement mixer they dumped everything into. The machine ground up what was left.

Gross.

She fell into step behind her mom.

"Watch your head."

Elise shone the flashlight at the low ceiling, then back to a floor that had turned to rock and dirt. They entered a second room lined with metal shelves crammed with supplies. Bottles of pink liquid claimed to be embalming fluid. Others were called cavity cleaner. Pore sealer. Jugular tubes. Body inserts. Expression formers. Casket Mate, whatever that was. On the floor were drums labeled Drying Compound, Lightly Fragranced.

Audrey was feeling dizzy again.

Just a tunnel.

Right.

Her mother had said they were looking for just a tunnel. Maybe, if it was a tunnel from Night of the Living Dead. Her parents-well, her dad and Vivian-wouldn't let her watch those kinds of movies, but some of her friends had seen them so many times that they laughed at the scary parts. Audrey had been initiated at a sleepover. She'd had bad dreams for two weeks.

Cavity cleaner.

Body inserts.

She felt like she was going to throw up. She took a few deep breaths, then hurried to catch up with her mother, who was peering into an even smaller room.

Audrey couldn't wait to see what was in there. Ha-ha.

They had to walk hunched over.

It was tiny. And thankfully empty.

One wall was brick instead of stone.

"Is that it?" Audrey asked.

She'd seen the sealed tunnel at the Pirates' House Restaurant, so she'd kind of known what to expect, but still it was a letdown. Just a wall. How boring was that?

"Look." Elise pointed the light along the left edge where the bricks stopped, then down to a pile of rubble. "Someone's been doing a little excavating."

Audrey hadn't known what she'd expected when she'd come along. She hadn't really thought about it. But now her heart began beating faster.

She'd heard about the body that had been stolen from the funeral home. It had been all over the news, but suddenly the story changed from things kids at school were joking about to an actual crime. And here was a clue! A real clue!

She'd never seen her mom in action, actually working on a case. Suddenly she felt kind of amazed by her, kind of proud.

Elise pulled some bricks free and shone the light through the jagged black gap.

"Should we go inside?" Audrey asked, excited and scared at the same time.

"No. I need to get a crime scene team down here before anybody disturbs anything."

"Can I at least look?"

"Here." Elise handed her the heavy flashlight.

Audrey stepped forward and pointed the beam through the hole.

A tunnel. Cut from rock and earth, with the ceiling curved and lined with brick. In the distance it appeared to end, but Audrey figured it really turned.

Something hit her arm with a plop.

A bug! A huge black cockroach!

She jumped back, shook her arm, and screamed, dropping the flashlight.

Elise let out a funny yelp and knocked the roach from Audrey's arm. The bug went scurrying away, hunting for darkness. Then Elise retrieved the dead flashlight. She shook it and it made a broken-glass kind of sound.

Audrey gave her a pained look. "Sorry. But did you see that thing? It was huge. Mutant or something. Like half cockroach, half dog." She shivered dramatically.

"Jesus," Elise said under her breath, her own shudder mirroring Audrey's. "I hate those things."

That made Audrey feel better. Mainly because she'd always thought her mom wasn't afraid of anything.

It was nice to know she was.