The Morgue and Me (29 page)

But something was off. I could think now, more clearly than I had in the last few hours. If the mayor killed Mitch, he would have done it to get the pictures back. But he never got them; Mike did.

I couldn’t guess why Mike wanted them, but I could try to think of connections. Who knew about the pictures? Lovell, Mitch, and anybody Mitch told. Abby Shales, at the least.

And then my mind leaped across a chasm and I knew.

I knew, and it was terrible.

Tim drove me back early. It was part of the deal, he said—he’d promised to keep a police watch on me instead of making me come to the station. He said that was why he stayed at Tina’s with us, but he’d slept in her room. It failed to inspire even a hint of jealousy in me—which is to say, I was dangerously unwell.

We’d barely gotten any sleep, and it was more night than morning on the ride home. Yellow-blue light veiled the darkness, but the world stayed still, looking empty and hollow around us in the quiet. A policeman was posted on our front porch; Tim waved to him from the car.

“I’ll call you later,” Tim said. “We’re gonna work it out.”

“Yeah.”

My parents were sitting vigil at the kitchen table. In an act of heroic restraint, they let me go to my room without delivering any message except the love in their tired eyes. I didn’t know it then, but they’d spent the night finding me a lawyer, and by four o’clock in the morning, they had secured the services of one of the best criminal defense attorneys in Detroit. They let me go to bed without a question, and I’ll always love them for it.

M
y parents hired the other guy—the shrink, I mean—by ten o’clock in the morning. He had an exalted reputation, but I had the sense that the primary thought on his mind throughout our sessions was his liability insurance rate. His big advice was that I shouldn’t joke around.

I didn’t leave the house for a week, but I never felt more cooped up than during our sessions out on the porch, talking pointlessly over lemonade and cookies. Pointlessly, I say, because there was one big thing on my mind, but it was something I’d never tell him. I was the only one who knew who’d killed Mitch Blaylock, and I hadn’t decided what to do about it. I hadn’t even told Tina.

The week passed quickly considering I was holed up in the house, penned in by the cameras outside and my parents’ strict instruction to stay put. It felt like being in a spaceship—suspended there in my cabin on Admiral Street while important information trafficked back and forth from outside. Most of it came from Tim and Tina, and most of it was good.

The mayor was still alive, for one thing. Maybe not for long—hooked up to tubes, still unresponsive—but alive.

The state authorities had opened an investigation into the events at Duncan Woods, and Tim was working closely with them. Some guy from a “task force” came out to our house and questioned me for hours about what had happened. I sat there with my lawyer at my side and only lied once during the whole thing, when I told the guy I didn’t know who killed Mitch Blaylock.

The district attorney decided not to charge me with shooting the mayor. He said it in a big press conference that Tina covered. I saw clips of it on television, too. The district attorney was being a little cagey; he wouldn’t promise that I wouldn’t be charged with some other crimes, like breaking into the morgue. The events of that night were still being investigated, he said, and there was a lot that his office still wanted to know before they would make further announcements. But I figure I’m in the clear.

They buried Lawrence Lovell that week. Tina told me about the funeral. My parents didn’t like her coming over, but they allowed it for brief visits; I overheard my dad one night, telling my mom that talking to Tina was the only thing that lifted my spirits, and I guess he was right. We sat in the living room, and she gave me the details—the small crowd that turned out for him, the way his glossy white coffin with a dozen roses on it fit him perfectly.

“Here’s the best part,” she said, and handed me an envelope.

“What is it?”

“A gift from Larry.”

I opened it and saw two things: a letter and a memory card. I pulled out the card.

“Is this what I think?”

Tina nodded, biting her lip in excitement. “He put it in a safe-deposit box the day before he died. The instructions were to send it to me if anything happened to him. A last bit of insurance. I guess he liked me after all, eh?”

She smirked and told me to read the letter, which fleshed out the things we already knew.

He said he got the blackmail idea when he sensed that his position in the firm was precarious. Kate had cut him out of a lot of projects, including the representation of the New Petoskey Resort and Spa. He knew the mayor had taken payments before, like some other judges, and started to wonder if Kate planned to fix the big case. He started tracking her and pretty soon found her at the Lighthouse Motel. He took the incriminating pictures, saving them for a rainy day. When she edged him out of the firm, he decided it was time to collect on his lottery ticket. Mitch was just the front man, a disposable guy Lovell could use to keep himself anonymous.

Between the letter and the pictures she had gotten from Lovell, Tina had more than enough to write story upon story about the scandal. They started coming the next day.

Kate Warne and Corbett denied it all. They said it was a bunch of made-up lies, but within a day after Tina’s first story, it was already unraveling for them. Kate Warne is on her way to getting disbarred. The sheriff is clinging to his post, but he might have to resign, too, because Tina has written about him being in Duncan Woods when Lovell was shot. I had the proof of that on my camera, but my lawyer made me turn the pictures over to the police. When Tim releases them to Tina, it’ll really be over for the sheriff and Kate Warne.

A bunch of papers from downstate picked up Tina’s stories, but the
Detroit News
and
Free Press
didn’t come calling like she thought they might. When they talk about it on television, most of the commentators say there’s something weird about a reporter trying to figure out a murder on her own, especially with an eighteen-year-old kid. There’s always a hint of sexual activity in their comments. I saw the
Eyewitness News at Seven
the other day, and it was pretty blatant. A psychology professor from Michigan State University was comparing Tina to one of those female teachers who seduces her sixth-grade student.

My mom snapped the television off and said that I shouldn’t listen to any more garbage like that.

 

 

The only thing she hasn’t written about is Mitch Blaylock’s murder. For that, she needs me to go on the record, but I’m not ready yet. I wish I didn’t know, but I do.

It keeps me up at night.

“
Y
ou know the Hippocratic *Oath, right?”

My dad was reading Emerson in his study. His leather bookmark was sitting on the desk, glossy in the lamplight. He slid it inside the Emerson and rested it slowly on his lap. It was two thirty in the morning. Nobody in the house was getting a lot of sleep these days.

“Not the actual text, but I know what it is.”

“Dr. Mobley had it up in his office. In a frame.”

My dad hummed, biting his top lip, like he sensed dangerous territory. “Have a seat. Relax.”

The cushion wheezed as I sat. “You know the start of it: ‘Do no harm’?”

“Sure. ‘First, do no harm,” he repeated.

“I know something, Dad. Something about what happened. I can’t figure out what to do.”

He set his book aside. “Because you think it’ll do more harm than good?”

“Yeah. It could ruin somebody’s life.”

“This isn’t something you want to share with me, is it?”

“Not really.”

My dad sighed. He pulled two cigars from his drawer and told me to follow him out to the backyard. I think it was supposed to be a man ritual of some kind, but I told him I’d pass on the cigar. “Don’t blame you,” he said. “These things aren’t that great.”

“So, what do you think?”

“I think you probably know what the best thing to do is. And if you don’t, find someone you’re comfortable talking to about it. It always makes things easier. Maybe Tina.”

“Mom would kill you for saying that.”

He laughed. “Maybe. Ah, no. I think she likes her, actually. You just have to give your mother a little time.”

“Yeah.”

We let it go at that, and I waited out there with him until he stubbed his cigar out and put it in the trash can. “It’s three o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Do you think you’re going to be able to sleep?”

“Maybe.”

He opened the screen door, hinges creaking, and stopped to let me in first. “So, do you have a plan to get out of your quandary?”

“I’m working on it.”

 

 

The next day was my first time out of the house since the shooting and before I left, my mom hugged me tight and told me to be safe, don’t be too long, bring a friend back here if you want to. I kissed her on the cheek and walked out the front door. The camera crews had pretty much given up by that point, so that wasn’t a problem.

Tina met me in the parking lot of the New Petoskey Resort and Spa. I was just going to show a picture to Buddy, that’s all, but I wanted her there with me. Maybe I was still feeling a little shy toward the world—my face had been plastered on the
Courier
for days before Tina started writing up her own stories. But I hadn’t asked her just to have some company out in public. If I was right, Buddy was going to tell us who did it.

She parked alongside me and gave me a hug when we got out of our cars.

“So?” she said.

I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket. I’d gotten Daniel to print it out from the Petoskey High Web site. When I handed it to Tina, she just stared. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

 

 

Dana’s Jetta sat in the driveway, the only car there. I prayed that her mom, the mayor’s wife, was at the hospital—this would be hard enough without facing her. I walked up the path to the thick double doors.

Dana answered with a mask of sleep over her eyes. I’d shot her father, and there I was. I thought she might just close the door back in my face. “Yes?”

Her stereo was on. You could hear it in the foyer, a tinny hip-hop song lost in the elegant space.

“Dana . . . I . . . I wanted to talk to you, if I could.”

“I’m leaving for the hospital in ten minutes.” She said it coolly and then retreated inside to the stairway, where she’d left a pair of shoes. She watched me as she put them on—I think it was her way of telling me I could come inside.

I stepped in, remembering that evening at the scholarship ceremony. The painted walls in the foyer were hospital clean, like they had been assaulted for days with Formula 409.

“Why are you here?” Dana said. I couldn’t have blamed her for being resentful at my presence, but she seemed more curious than anything else.

I could have danced around it, but there was no point. “I know you killed Mitch Blaylock.”

“What?” Only a slight uptick in interest registered in her voice. She rested her elbows on the stairs and looked at me full on.

“I know you killed Mitch Blaylock. It’s what I’ve been doing this summer, figuring out who killed him.”

“Wha—” She tried to gather herself. “What do you mean?”

“I saw his body in the morgue, and I found out that Dr. Mobley had been paid to cover up his murder and rule it a suicide. By your dad.”

She listened to me calmly. “And you’re saying I killed him?”

“I know you did. Mike’s been trying his best to protect you, but I found the blackmail pictures at his place. It didn’t make sense to me—Mike had no reason to kill Mitch Blaylock. But your dad couldn’t have done it, either. If he had, he would have recovered the pictures.”

“So . . . this leads to me somehow?”

I was a little thrown—she was staying even, not fighting me on it. It was like she just wanted to hear a story.

“Yeah. You’re the girl that Mitch was with at the Country Club the night he died, weren’t you?”

She just stared at me, betraying nothing. I already knew it was the truth—Buddy had confirmed it when Tina and I showed him the picture.

“I thought it was this other woman, who’s actually in Texas now. She said it wasn’t her, but I never really thought it was important,” I said.

“Just tell me why you think I killed him,” Dana said a little more sharply. Her jaw was jutting out protectively.

“It was Mike. I kept wondering how he’d be involved in this thing with your dad.” I should have seen the link back when I found the pictures, really. It was obvious. “You’re the only connection between them, Dana. You killed Mitch, took the pictures, and went to Mike’s place that night. That’s where you go when things are bad for you, I know.”