The Morgue and Me (27 page)

Julia looked at me for the first time. “Has he eaten dinner?” she said.

“Yeah. Thanks a lot for doing this, really. I wouldn’t ask but—”

“Don’t worry about it. When will you pick him up?”

“Before midnight. It shouldn’t be too long.”

She nodded. It couldn’t have been clearer that she didn’t care where I was going or whom I was doing it with.

“So, you know, I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night. A lot, really.”

Julia saw it coming a mile away. She was already shaking her head. “I think we’ve just had bad luck. It’s probably best to leave it at that.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “Yeah, for now.”

“No. Forever, I think.”

She had thought about it, too—she was done with me. I would have left it at that, but tonight I was going to be different.

When she grabbed the doorknob, I held it fast from the other side. “I sort of woke up to some stuff in the last couple of days. Maybe the last hour, actually.” It was like she’d heard me for the first time all night. Her eyes narrowed a shade; she released the door, intrigued enough to listen. “Anyway, umm, I really wanna try. I want to make it real this time—me and you. Not just something to obsess over.”

Her face softened, opening a crack. “Obsess over? I don’t remember that part.”

“My mistake. I’m certified obsessed. In a healthy way.”

She grabbed the doorknob again, her pink fingernails curling against it. “You’ve always known where I am, Christopher,” she said with a hint of invitation in her voice. “You’ve always been able to call.”

Then the door closed, and I called it a victory.

W
e walked up the hill from Tina’s house, stopping short of the long wooden stairway down to Duncan Woods. “That thing all charged up?” Tina said, pointing to my camera.

“Yeah.” I threw the strap over my shoulder and led the way to the top of the hill. Crouching at the wooden landing, we had a bird’s-eye view of the clearing at the edge of Duncan Woods. The overhead sodium lights shone off the paint-lacquered picnic benches, where I had watched Tina twirl in the night before she pulled me down to waltz with her. The same picnic benches that the sheriff had scoured that day. He’d known the exchange would take place here—that’s why he’d been casing it.

We were early, a half hour till showtime. The park was empty, and the visible notch of Lakeside Drive in the left distance was bare of traffic. “What’s the latest from Tim?” I said.

“He called me when he finally left, maybe forty minutes ago. He’ll have to hurry to make it.”

“You wanna stay up here?” We were far from where the action would be and a little exposed, but if we lay flat on the landing, no one would see us.

“Not much time before they get here,” Tina said, “ but let’s go down.” We hurried down the stairs, surveying the grounds for a spot to set up.

It was obvious. At the edge of the park sat a clump of leafy bushes, tall enough to settle under. “Stay here a sec,” I said, and crawled low into the bushes, lying between their thin trunks. I could see Tina plainly enough through the leaves. A pair of headlights flashed across Lakeside Drive behind her, then disappeared again.

I wouldn’t be able to use my flash and had to pray they stood close enough to the light over the picnic table to get a decent exposure. I took a test picture of Tina, checked the lighting on the screen. Good enough. “Did you hear that?”

“Nope.”

“Can you see me?” I asked.

“Just the glow from your camera.”

I shut off the display and snapped another one. “Anything?”

“No.”

“C’mon then, we’re good.”

Tina scurried under the bush with me, hunkering on the opposite side of a trunk. “You’re a genius, brainy,” she said. “Goddamn. It’s like a friggin’ apartment in here.”

She pulled her cell phone out and punched at the settings. Silencing it, I figured, so nobody would hear if a call came in. “Okay, we’re officially flying blind here.”

It almost didn’t matter if Tim showed up anymore—Tina and I were in this for good. We wriggled against the earth, finding comfortable positions.

“Christ, I could really use a smoke right now,” Tina said after a minute. And then, getting serious, “Hey, thanks for sticking with me.”

“Sure.”

Her hand reached out and clasped mine in solidarity. She released it with a nod, and we understood without saying it that it was time to stay quiet. It was getting close to ten, and they could show up any minute. It felt like we had taken large breaths and dipped under water.

I adjusted my leg a final time, triple checked the camera settings, and scoped the grounds through the telephoto lens. The sodium light over the park hummed white noise that I hoped would cover the clicks from the Nikon. My elbows were aching from digging into the ground, when we heard the crackle of brush on our right.

They hadn’t come from Lakeside Drive, the way you would if you came for a Sunday picnic. They advanced from the woods, two shadows making for the cleared park area with light steps and swiveling heads. I poised the camera.

Kate Warne came first, a thin briefcase in her right hand. The money. She had dressed in a dark jogging suit with white piping that picked up the light. Tina grabbed my arm as the second figure emerged: Sheriff Harmon. Her older brother, there to protect her. I wondered if he planned on arresting the blackmailer when he showed up, and if so, how they would explain the pictures of the golf-course bribery. Surely they’d come out if he tried to press charges.

They stayed at the edge, close to the trees. I turned a dial, slowing the shutter speed—with some luck the pictures would be bright enough. I nodded at Tina and reeled off some shots of them standing together.

The sheriff gripped Kate by the elbow, said some last words, and retreated into the darkness of the trees. I clicked a last picture of him and then he was gone, sucked in by the black forest. He was going to take Lovell by surprise.

Kate Warne stood alone for a good five minutes, rolling her neck every once in a while, switching the briefcase from hand to hand. Then a soft crunch of gravel sounded through the park. A car door shut. A sturdy, satisfying
shhhuck
—an expensive car.

Thirty seconds later, Lawrence Lovell walked up to her. They stood, stiffly facing each other and there was no question—this was it. Lovell was the one blackmailing her, and they’d come to make the exchange.

Tina stared out at Lovell with a brittle, hard-eyed look of accusation.

“So, it’s you,” Kate Warne said to Lovell. “Why am I not surprised?”

She wasn’t talking loudly, but their voices carried in the night. Lovell must have been using Mitch as his contact, like we thought. With Mitch dead and the money in reach, he was revealing himself to her for the first time.

Lovell wore cargo pants, looking like he’d stepped out of one of those adventure pictures in his office. I got Kate in the viewfinder with him and snapped off more shots.

“Let’s get this done,” Lovell said.

“Why are you doing this, Larry? Your gambling problem’s that bad?”

Lovell shrugged. “We all have debts. You should have never kicked me out of the firm, Kate. That was your mistake.”

Then his head jerked right, hearing something. He looked to the picnic bench, the stairs up to Tina’s street, into the woods. Lovell didn’t seem to catch any sign of the sheriff—or us.

“The money, Kate.” Lovell fished in his pocket and pulled out the Vista View memory card. “And this is yours.”

She kept the briefcase at her side. “They’re digital pictures. You could’ve sent copies anywhere.”

“You can copy film, too.” He stepped a foot closer. “This is a trust relationship we’ve got. You trust these are the only pictures and hand over the money, or you don’t and I send them everywhere. Your call.”

“Show them to me,” Kate said.

Lovell reached into another pocket and pulled out the camera that Bob had used, inserting the card and flicking through the images. “That’s it,” he said at the end. “Now let’s get this done.”

After a moment Kate resigned herself, turning dials on the case. I wondered if the sheriff would wait until Lovell had the briefcase before he showed himself.

Kate opened the case. I don’t know how much was there, but it was more than $15,000. Lovell smiled—the same smug grin that had annoyed me about him from the start.

“Easy now,” he said, offering the memory card to Kate. She handed over the briefcase and it was done, their bodies relaxing just a hair. I had caught the whole thing on camera.

“Happy trails,” Lovell said, keeping his eyes on Kate as he walked away. She nodded into the woods, a signal to the sheriff. The three of them stood on our right. At the same time a single fiery burst came from the left.

I looked, and by the time my eyes turned back to Lovell, he was on the ground. Tina’s hand dug into my bicep. I shot pictures, trying to stay detached and aware.

Kate Warne scrambled back in horror, shrieking. The sheriff lumbered to her, crouching with his gun drawn, eyes madly searching the field to the left of us. He pulled Kate behind a tree. She covered her mouth, hyperventilating.

The sky had opened in a summer rain and metallic slivers fell softly through the lights.

Lovell didn’t move. I zoomed the lens over his body and swallowed. His eyes were frozen, his cheek shattered by the bullet. We’d just watched somebody die.

 

 

The rest followed in a blur.

When I turned back to the left, Mayor Ruby was striding in toward Lovell’s body. The gun hung limply in his hand. I kept taking pictures while Sheriff Harmon marched over to meet the mayor. Kate Warne staggered behind the sheriff.

“Jesus, Julian. I said I’d take care of it.”

“I knew you wouldn’t, though. It was my problem anyway.” Mayor Ruby was standing over the body like it wasn’t even there.

The sheriff leaned in to the mayor. “There’s more than you involved here,” he said. He held an arm out behind him, holding Kate back. “Get out of here, now.” She hesitated, unable to keep her eyes off the body.

“Get,”
he said again, and she snapped to the present. She tore an awkward line back into the forest, back from where she’d come.

“We couldn’t risk it,” the mayor said to the sheriff.

“You can’t do this, either. I could have scared him off.”

“No, you couldn’t have. It never would have ended.” He was running overtime, on a manic spell. “It’s good for all of us. Kate doesn’t have to worry anymore. Blaylock’s gone; now he’s gone, too.” The mayor peered down at Lovell, a cold fixture on the grass. “It’s over.”

“Blaylock was different,” the sheriff said. I didn’t know what he meant but his voice was hard as a wall.

“I’m getting the wagon here,” the mayor said, and pulled out his cell phone. I knew it then: He was calling Dr. Mobley.

The mayor wandered across the grass, waiting for an answer, while the sheriff held his head in frustration. For a moment the night took a breath, slowing down. But it was just starting.

The next seconds happened like this. A car took the bend on Lake-shore Drive, brights on, sweeping a flash of light across the woods. The sheriff’s body jerked upright, eyes holding on the bushes we huddled under. It could have been the strength of the headlights or a stroke of bad luck, maybe a reflection from the camera lens meeting his eye. I don’t know, but we were done. The sheriff played it cool, looking off but not too far. Tina and I reached out to each other at the same time—she’d seen it, too.

I skirted inches forward, knowing what we had to do. I grabbed Tina’s arm and pulled her with me. The sheriff was closer to the stairs than we were, but getting to Tina’s house was our best shot.

I pointed to the stairs, and Tina nodded. The mayor had connected—he talked sternly into his cell. The sheriff sauntered away from the stairs now, walking easily, preparing to take us by surprise. Now.

I yanked Tina’s arm with me and broke through the leaves. We ran wildly for the stairs, knowing we couldn’t make it unseen and hoping for the best. The sheriff had an angle on us, but he was slow. We made it farther than I thought before hearing a burble of confusion at our backs. I grabbed the railing and felt Tina pushing me forward from behind. The wooden steps had been put in years ago—the thin boards hammocked in the center. I charged up them two at a time. The sheriff was yards behind us getting to the stairs. We were going to be okay.

Tina charged behind me, her hand on my back. I felt it slip away as Tina yelled in pain. I checked back and saw her huddled, clutching the ankle she’d twisted on the stairs.

The sheriff closed in instantly.

It would be no matter for him to slap cuffs on Tina now. He was reaching for them already. Without thinking, I descended two steps and kicked out at him. My foot landed squarely on his chest, and when I pushed off, he tumbled down the quarter flight. His body stopped just short of the ground, jammed across the stairway.

“Can you move?” I said to Tina.

She winced tightly as soon as she got to her feet. With her arm around my shoulder, we made it up the stairs, Tina hopping for balance on her good foot. From the top we looked down and saw the sheriff just getting up.

“They don’t know your house,” I said.

We hobbled down the hill, getting a little pace going by the time we made it to her front door. The sheriff hadn’t made it to the top when we shut ourselves in. I locked the door and twirled the blinds closed and found Tina on the couch, head down, elbows on her knees, sucking air, spent.

“Call Tim,” I said, peeking through the blinds. The sheriff hadn’t appeared—maybe he’d given up on us. Tina pulled her cell phone out. “You can’t even walk, can you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “That hurt like hell.”