Summer of the Dead (10 page)

 

Chapter Eleven

Nick Fogelsong stood at the threshold of Bell's office on Tuesday morning. He'd shed his hat as he passed Lee Ann Frickie, Bell's secretary, whose desk in the outer office served as the last line of defense between the prosecuting attorney and the general public.

Lee Ann, sixty-seven years old and still spry of limb and mind, had looked up at him and nodded. The sheriff was the only visitor she didn't have to announce.

Now it was Bell's turn to look up. Fogelsong's generously sized body occupied a good portion of the doorway. For a few seconds, Bell didn't say a word. She wanted to savor her quiet joy at seeing him again, after what had felt like one of the longest months of her life. Part of what made it seem so long, of course, was the unsolved homicide of Freddie Arnett right at the end of it, and her hunger for Nick's expertise, but there was another reason, too. Fogelsong was the closest thing to a father she'd ever had—a real father—and his absence was an acute reminder of what her life had been like before they met.

He looked different when he wasn't wearing his hat. Incomplete. Older, too. Or maybe it wasn't the hat. Maybe it was something else.

“Can't believe it,” she said, a soft tease in her voice. She stood up. “Nick Fogelsong. As I live and breathe.”

“Told you we'd be back today.”

“You did. But things happen.”

“They do.” He paused. “This a good time to talk?”

“Absolutely.”

He took four steps into the room and dropped himself into the middle of the small couch across from her desk. Used both hands to gently set down the hat next to himself on the couch, as careful as a debutante dealing with a corsage she's marked in her mind as a keepsake.

Bell wanted to ask him about his trip, but she knew that would have to wait. This wasn't a social call.

“I'm sure,” she said, “you're pretty much up to speed on the Arnett murder. We're planning to canvass the neighborhood again today, and I've been going over the autopsy report. Looks to me like—”

Fogelsong held up a hand to stop her. “Need to tell you something. Sorry to say, it's not good news,” he declared. “Deputy Harrison called me ten minutes ago. She was going to call you next, but I told her to hold off, since I was headed here myself.” He took in a deep breath and then he let it go. “There's been another homicide. Happened either late last night or early this morning. Victim was found dead by the side of Godown Road.”

“Jesus.” Bell grimaced. “ID?”

“Charlie Frank. I know his brother, Wally.” Fogelsong looked at a spot on the wall just to the left of Bell's head. “Charlie was cut up real bad. Knife wounds in his chest and abdomen—and on his hands. Put up a pretty damned good fight.”

“Robbery?”

“Unlikely. Only thing missing was his boot. Might've come off in the struggle and the killer nabbed it. Or somebody else happened along and picked it up. Maybe an animal. No telling.” The sheriff rubbed his chin. “Wally has five kids and a wife who's dying of melanoma. So Charlie was the one who took care of their mother. Lived with her. Martha Frank's had MS for the last fifteen years, maybe twenty. There's no money for a nursing home. Charlie carried her from room to room, Belfa. From her bedroom to the front room to the kitchen. To the bathroom when she needed it. With Charlie gone, who's gonna do that now?”

It wasn't really a question, at least not a question that anyone could be expected to answer. Bell waited a decent interval and then said: “Forensics?”

“Techs're just getting started, but it's not promising. Harrison had already faxed me the preliminary report on the Arnett murder while I was in Chicago. This is similar—that is, a cleaned-up crime scene.”

“You think we're looking at the same perpetrator?”

“Sure as hell hope not.”

She didn't want to say it—she hated to give the idea life by speaking it out loud—but she had to. “You know as well as I do, Nick, what folks will be thinking. We're bound to get the question. Two homicides, right in a row. We'll be asked if there's a serial killer running around.”

He looked as if he'd been punched in the face. “God, Bell. Just what we need. A bunch of panicked people hoarding ammo and buying pit bulls from their cousins. You know what I think? I think people ought to give us at least a few goddamned days to sort it all out. And if we come to a dead end, then—
then
—they can start yelling about a serial killer.”

But on the other hand, Bell knew, he fully understood the town's apprehension, and the sense of abject helplessness that was almost worse than the fear. Nothing seemed too outlandish anymore for a small town. No amount of trouble and tragedy. There were no more safe places, no more spots beyond the reach of violence. Truth was, Bell believed, such places had never existed in the first place. Violence was everywhere. But people liked to tell themselves that small towns were exempt. Small towns were sweet and tranquil and quaint. Small towns were tucked away in the hills like peppermints in a grandmother's handbag; they were special treats, hidden from the nasty old world.

Screw that,
Bell thought, picturing the crime-scene photos from Freddie Arnett's driveway. The shattered skull. The wet bits of brain matter. Freddie's stringy, old-man's body, facedown, arms and legs askew. His trousers had hiked up in his sudden awkward fall, and a strip of bare skin showed just above his thin white socks; the strip on each leg was pale and hairless. Somehow that bothered Bell almost as much as did the sight of the smashed brain: that inch of skin above his socks. It was so tender, so intimate. Men like Freddie Arnett never wore shorts. So this was a part of him that only his wife, more than likely, had seen for a long, long time, maybe since he was a little boy, when he took baths on Saturday nights with his brothers, and now here it was for strangers to gawk at. Law enforcement personnel, crime-scene techs—anybody on official business could look at him without his permission. Murder was the ultimate violation, yes, but there were other violations, too, that came in its wake. Smaller, heartbreaking indignities. Such as a strip of skin between a rucked-up trouser cuff and the folded-over top of a ribbed white sock.

Fogelsong was talking again. “I'm meeting with Deputy Harrison in half an hour to coordinate the investigations. See where we stand. I'll keep you posted.”

Bell nodded.

“By the way,” he said, shifting his position on the couch, signaling a shift in topic, “I heard about your own little adventure. That stabbing you stumbled across in Collier County on Saturday night. Shirley's okay, I take it.”

“Yeah. But she's out of control, Nick. Won't listen to me. Goes her own way.”

“She'll settle down.”

“You think so?”

“I do.”

“Anyway,” Bell said, “the homicide in Tommy's appears to be unrelated to Freddie Arnett's murder. Killer confessed to Deputy Sturm at the scene. We're checking on his whereabouts Thursday night—but this one seems tied up nice and neat. No loose ends. Not about who did it, that is. There are a few questions about the victim and a business card he had in his pocket, and I might be looking into that just as soon as I—”

“Sturm?” Nick asked, interrupting her. “Mandy Sturm?”

“Yeah. Do you know her?”

“Not her,” he said. “Not well, anyway. It's her husband I know. Virgil Sturm. Good man. Works for the CSX railroad. Or did, before all the layoffs.” Fogelsong dusted off his knee, as if he could somehow get rid of bad news the same quick way. “He's related to Mary Sue's family.”

Bell let a short but decisive length of time go by. “Speaking of Mary Sue—how'd things go in Chicago?”

The sheriff discovered the cuff button on his right sleeve. He pressed it with his thumb, then twisted it, as if checking to make sure it wouldn't fall off at an inopportune moment.

“Fine,” he said. Voice flat, neutral.

Bell was disappointed but didn't show it. His business.

“One thing.” Nick was speaking again, which surprised her. Usually she was the one forced to break the occasional silences. “I went by to see Clayton Meckling,” he said. “The hospital he's at—the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago—is right downtown. Real close to the hotel where Mary Sue and I stayed. Spent a couple of afternoons with him.”

Now Bell was the one who looked around for a bit of busywork in which to indulge. She picked up a yellow pencil, one of several she kept at the ready alongside a short stack of paper on her desktop, and nervously worked the pointy end against the sheet on top. In a few seconds, the paper wasn't blank anymore.

“How's he doing?” Bell asked. She kept her voice casual.

“Pretty well. He's a fighter. Not a surprise, but still good to see. They're working him hard and he's eating it up. Just about ready to come back, he told me.” Fogelsong rolled his shoulders, then leaned forward so that he could arch his back. Couch-sitting was not a natural condition for him. “I don't know how you two left things, Belfa. Don't know if you're in regular contact anymore. But he's not the man he was four months ago. No more self-pity. None of that left in him. He's got plans again.”

She was glad to hear it—thrilled, actually—but hesitated to show any portion of her joy to the sheriff. She was closer to Nick Fogelsong than to anyone else on the planet, but there were still areas of Bell's life that she didn't discuss with anyone—including Nick. Bell and Clay Meckling had been romantically involved until Clay was maimed in an accident in the spring. He withdrew from her, from everyone, and she and Clay hadn't spoken in over two and a half months. It was Rhonda Lovejoy who'd told her about Clay's trip to the Chicago rehab hospital, one of the best in the world.

“Appreciate it,” Bell said. For all the emotion in her voice, she might have been thanking him for opening the courthouse door for her.

The sheriff waited, just in case she wanted to say something else, ask any more questions about Clay. She knew why he was waiting, and she also knew how impossible it was for her to reveal how deep her feelings ran for Clay Meckling—as impossible, come to that, as it was for Fogelsong to discuss his wife's illness.
Put Nick and me in a contest to see who's more stubborn,
Bell thought,
and it'd be a tie, no question. He won't talk about Mary Sue and I won't talk about Clay. Won't—or can't. Same thing. Both of us were taught to keep it all inside
. Sometimes it felt as if they'd both been sentenced to prison—not the kind that had held Shirley, but the kind whose invisible walls were even taller, even stronger—on account of how and where they were raised, the hard and constant lessons they'd learned.

“Well,” Nick said, “better get back to it.” He stood up, having first leaned to his right so that he could use his palm to push off against the arm of the couch. It bothered the hell out of him, Bell knew, that he needed help these days, even inanimate help, to assist his rise. Nick hated dependency in all its forms. But he was fifty-five years old. Gravity pushed back harder these days. “After I meet with Deputy Harrison, I've got to get ready for tonight's meeting with the county commissioners,” he said. “Soon as word gets around about Charlie Frank, they're going to have a lot of questions about the murders. And they're right to be asking.” Another complication occurred to him. “I'm going to request funds to hire private security for the ceremony on Friday. It'll bust the budget wide open—but it's worth it. Everybody's jumpy as hell. And no wonder.” He put his hat on his head, leveled it up.

“Extra security sounds like a good idea.”

“Thing we really need,” he said, “is another deputy. I'll make my pitch again, but it won't work. Can tell you that right now. Commissioners might go for a temporary fix, but a new hire? Forget it.”

“A couple of unsolved murders might change their minds.”

“Hell of a way to get their attention,” he shot back. “Anyhow, way I hear it, there'll be a record crowd on Friday. Maybe close to a thousand people. Maybe more. Can you beat that? A thousand people—all in one place—in Raythune County. Riley Jessup spends his days in a big house over in Charleston now, but he's still a popular man in these parts.

“You know what?” Fogelsong went on. He was switching gears again. Bell could hear it in his voice. That voice had toughened up, the anger threading blackly through it. “No way in hell I ever thought we'd have two homicides in a row like this. Not again. Not after last fall. You just don't expect it.” He ruminated for a quick run of seconds. “Don't imagine Freddie Arnett or Charlie Frank were expecting it, either, until events proved otherwise.” He started to go, then turned his head in her direction one more time. “Deputy Harrison did a good job while I was away,” he said. It was both a question and a statement. “Considering.”

“She did her best. Baptism of fire, I'd say.”

“Coffee later at JP's?”

“Sure.” Even in the midst of the slow-motion crisis of two murder investigations, they needed to keep their rituals. They'd agreed on that five years ago, when they first began working together. “Bet you missed that bottomless cup at JP's,” she added. “Coffee's kind of hit-and-miss in big cities, as I recall.”

Bell saw something come into Fogelsong's eyes before he answered. She and the sheriff had a fierce and steady mutual affection. They rarely alluded to it, even in passing. And that, she believed, was a large part of what had enabled its survival all these years: They didn't wear it out or distort it by analyzing it or even naming it.

“Yeah,” he said. “That's the main thing I missed, all right. The coffee.”

 

Chapter Twelve

Lindy could not bring herself to lock her father in the basement when she left at night for her shift at the station. She could have done just that; there was a dead bolt on the kitchen side of the basement door, and she kept the key. It would be easy. But if anything happened—a fire, say—she would be trapping him, dooming him, and she couldn't do that. The basement had no outside entrance. No windows, either.