The Dead Man

Chapter Nine

Ammara and I were facing Enoch's body, our backs to Lucy, unaware she was watching and listening. We turned around. She was standing in the entryway from the dining room to the den, one hand in her coat pocket, the other at her side, palming her cell phone, rotating it in a slow arc, the cell phone camera capturing the scene with faint whirrs and clicks. I glanced at Ammara to see whether she realized what Lucy was doing but her eyes were fixed over Lucy's shoulder, searching for the soon-to-be-demoted street cop that let Lucy past the yellow tape.

"There's always that," I said, wondering why Lucy was photographing the scene and why my instincts told me not to bust her.

"I got bored waiting for you in the car," Lucy said.

"Who's she and what's she doing in the middle of my dead man?" Ammara asked me.

"It's complicated," I said.

"Not really," Lucy said as she slipped her phone into the purse slung over her shoulder. "I'm Lucy Trent. I own the house where Jack lives until I kick him out, which could happen sooner rather than later the way things are going. I drove him out here because he was shaking too badly to do it himself. That's not so complicated."

"This is a crime scene," Ammara told her. "Authorized personnel only and you aren't authorized."

Lucy smiled and nodded. "So that's what the dead man means. Crime scene. I like it."

Ammara took two steps toward Lucy. I cut her off, my back to Lucy again. "It's okay."

Ammara leaned in toward me, her voice hard but too quiet for Lucy to hear us. "What do you mean it's okay? This is my scene, not yours. Your invitation didn't include a date."

"Understood," I said, my voice matching hers. "I'll handle it."

"Good. Do it now. I don't want your landlady polluting my crime scene."

I raised my hands in surrender. "No problem. One thing. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep me in the loop."

She took a deep breath. "You know the rules, Jack. You're a civilian. I'll tell you as much as I can without compromising the investigation."

"Which means you think that whatever was in that envelope has something to do with the money the Bureau says Wendy stole. You were at her funeral. You saw the date on the postmark. What? You think she rose from the dead and took the bus to New York so she could mail a letter to me confessing to being a thief and telling me where she hid the money?"

"You can make it sound crazy, Jack, but it's what you taught me. Collect the evidence. Follow where it leads. Let someone else higher up the food chain decide what to do with it."

We stared at each other, her face impassive, our friendship trumped by the job, another thing I had taught her. I nodded, conceding the moment.

"Let's go," I told Lucy.

We gave Walter Enoch's gargoyle death mask a last look.

"He was somebody's nightmare," Lucy said. "Glad he wasn't mine."

"What was that about?" she asked me when we were back in the car.

"The dead guy was a mailman who stole mail instead of delivering it."

"What's that got to do with you?"

"He stole my mail-at least one letter anyway. The envelope was found on his body but it was empty. Ammara Iverson, the agent you pissed off, thought I might know what was in it."

"Did you?"

Weak light filtered through the car as we passed strip centers, street lamps and oncoming traffic, shadows flickering across her face like a grainy silent movie. The effect was jarring, fogging my brain.

I was used to the visual triggers that could unleash spasms or inexplicably weaken my legs, sending me to the floor unless I grabbed on to someone or something. Two hours at the movies watching the latest action flick or five minutes in the florescent lighting aisle at Lowe's was a ticket to the funhouse. I'd have to add a black and white strobe light show to my list of things to avoid in the twenty-third hour of a day when my daughter speaks to me from the grave. I closed my eyes. Lucy let her question drop.

I declined the arm she offered me when we got home, using the banister to steady myself on the stairs going up to my bedroom. Ruby followed behind me, scratching the cushion of the easy chair where she slept, curling up without complaining that I was out late and without asking questions I didn't want to answer.

The dog had her bedtime routine and I had mine. One of the last things I did was check my gun even on days when I never took it out of its case. Guns are one of the few things it pays to be obsessive about because they do not forgive mistakes. Mine was always loaded, the safety always on, the case in the corner of the eye-level shelf in my bedroom closet, one end against the wall, the other flush against a stack of books laid flat with the spines facing out that I promised myself I would read before I die. I wedged the gun against the books, making it impossible to retrieve the gun case without disturbing the books. Wendy's stuffed animal, Monkey Girl, claimed the other end of the shelf.

After checking the gun and putting it away, I always restored the alignment of the books, the precision reassuring me that no one else had touched my gun. It was a safety habit I'd developed when my kids were young and curious about a father they sometimes confused with heroes on TV and in the movies who ate bad guys for breakfast and spit them out with the bullets they caught in their teeth.

The second book from the bottom, a Doris Kearns Goodwin biography of Lincoln, was angled away from the ones above and below. The angled book was a small thing, something I may have dismissed in my fatigued state, except for the gun case. It too was an inch out of place, the dust outline marking its spot on the shelf a testament to my housekeeping skills.

I opened the case, the smell of gun oil reassuring and familiar. The magazine of my Glock 23 was full, the safety on; the barrel smooth and polished as if I had just cleaned it. Except that I hadn't. Not since I'd last fired it two weeks ago at the Bullet Hole shooting range. Since then, I'd checked it every night, not concerned that I'd left smudged fingerprints all over it.

I put the gun away, unanswered questions worming their way into my head like snatches of song lyrics that burrow in your brain and won't stop playing. Lucy Trent was the only person who could have been in my closet. What was she doing with my gun? Why did she ignore my instruction to stay in the car? Why did she take pictures of the crime scene at Walter Enoch's house? And, as long as I was making a list of things to keep me awake, how did she get into the house when I was the only one with a key? I lay in bed in the dark as a final flurry of shakes had the last word, forcing me to put these questions off until tomorrow.

Maggie Brennan's name tugged at me in the halfway house between consciousness and sleep. I heard a voice say her name, calling her unbelievable. It was Tom Goodell, a retired sheriff from Johnson County, one of the beer-drinking cold case crew. He'd presented his case at lunch one day last year. It was about a couple that was murdered in their sleep and the daughter that survived. Though I couldn't summon the details, I was glad to have solved the puzzle of her name. Even if she weren't the same Maggie Brennan, I'd at least have an icebreaker to use when I met her.

My last waking thoughts turned, as they did most nights, to my lost children: Kevin, dead at the hand of a predator whose last and only decent act had been to blow his brains out, and Wendy, whose drug overdose had been a long-time-coming self-inflicted death. After all these years, my memories of Kevin were a comfortable touchstone from a better time when nothing seemed out of reach. My memories of Wendy, always hovering behind my eyes, were a raw reminder of how I had failed her.

Tonight, Walter Enoch's warped face was the last one I saw, whether he died of causes natural or felonious, why he was holding Wendy's envelope when he died, and what had happened to the envelope's contents were the last unanswered questions of a too long day.

I'd spent my life answering questions such as these, chipping away at the mystery of murder. The one thing I had learned was that the real mystery was not about who lived and who died or even who did it. It was about how we lived, why we died, and what difference we made.