When One Man Dies (33 page)

He unlocked the door and got in. And as he sat down, he realized he’d left his lunch box on the barge. He sighed, got out of the car, and started the trek back to the boat. The water slapped against the dock, and it wobbled a bit. He knelt down and reached for his lunch box
.

“We warned you.”

The voice was loud, rising over the water. Tenant looked to his left toward the source of the sound. About thirty feet away, two men slouched along the shore, staring downward. A thin stream of light reflecting off the river illuminated them. The light came from a docking boat farther down the river
.

Tenant could tell the men were out of view to anyone in the parking lot. He’d gone down to the shoreline to fish out his shoe when a coworker played a joke on him. He knew you could be seen only from the dock he stood on
.

“No, please.” Another voice. “It was only business.”

Between the two men, a hand rose out of the water, as if the person needed help standing. One of the men slapped the hand away
.

“Don’t worry, Maxwell. This is only business too.”

The second man raised his arm over his head. In the light Tenant saw a thick shape,
probably a blackjack. The man swung it downward, and it landed with a sickening thump. Water splashed around his arm. The man repeated the move three more times
.

Tenant should have just turned and run away, but his muscles wouldn’t move. His eyes wouldn’t look away
.

The other man kicked at the body in the water until the current took it. He turned his head to watch it float away, and his pale face faced Tenant, his features caught momentarily in the thin light off the river. Joe Tenant tried to memorize them. The reddish hair, freckles, the crooked smile
.

If the man saw Tenant, he didn’t react. He just turned back toward land and walked off
.

Tenant peered over the edge of the dock. Dark waves ebbed and flowed, and the water was deep enough here that he couldn’t see the bottom. The dock rocked again, hard enough that Tenant had to brace himself. He crossed to the other edge and peered over
.

At first he didn’t notice it, he looked too far left. But once the dock rocked one more time, he looked to the right. Bile rose in his throat
.

Facedown in the water, the body of a man in a pin-striped suit bobbed in the current, sleeve caught against the pier
.

Tenant closed his eyes and swore
.

Maybe he wasn’t as lucky as he thought
.

Chapter 1

Jackson Donne hadn’t talked to his sister in years. So when Susan buzzed his apartment, he wasn’t really expecting it.

“You closed your office,” she said as she entered. “Court ordered.”

She didn’t respond, save for brushing a strand of her short auburn hair over her ear. Susan had cut her hair since the last time he’d seen her and it was boyish in style, though thick and brushed back. It didn’t fit her.

“How are you, Jackson?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

She stalked past Donne and sat on the couch. Dropping her purse on his coffee table, she said, “No small talk?”

He didn’t respond.

“It’s Mom,” Susan continued. “She’s sick, real sick. She doesn’t have much time left.”

He couldn’t help asking, “What’s wrong?”

“Alzheimer’s, dementia. We put her in a nursing home last year, now she’s in a hospice.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Would you have come help?”

It was a good point. He had separated himself from his family, just as his father had. Unlike his father, however, Donne had good reasons. At least he thought so.

“There’s a reason I’m coming to see you now. Mom, she’s been talking about stuff I never knew about. I’m not sure if it’s rambling truths or she’s making things up, but I need your help. You’re a detective.”

“Not anymore,” he said.

“Whatever,” she said. “I want your help.”

“To do what? You want me to sit by her, read her stories, talk to her?” He shook his head. “I’m busy, Susan. Not going to do it.”

“Come on, Jackson. You know how much we mean to her. She had us so late in her life. Please, she should have been in menopause and she was having kids. We should both be there for her.”

Donne shook his head.

“Damn it, Jackson. It’s time to grow up. Be a son. Be a brother. What else are you doing with your life?”

“I’m starting school at Rutgers in the fall. I’m working.”

“I want you to find out about Mom’s dad. She’s been talking about him.”

“What does it matter?”

She grabbed her purse and moved toward the door. Finally. “Peace of mind,” she said as she turned the knob. “Doesn’t that matter?”

“What kind of purse is that?” he asked. “Coach, one of those expensive kinds?”

She looked at the purse, then at Donne, confused.

“Franklin buy that for you? Drop a couple hundred on you to keep you happy?”

Her face turned red, and she took a deep breath before speaking. “Think about it, Jackson. You need to see her again before she dies. Peace of mind. I don’t think you’ve ever had it. Not with Jeanne, not with me, not with Mom. Hell, not even with Dad, and you were, what, eight when he left? Maybe you could use a little closure. Help us out.”

“No.”

“Please, Jackson. She said that our grandfather murdered someone. It’s all she’s been
talking about. I need to know if it’s true.”

She pulled the door open and stepped into the hallway. He never should have allowed her up.

***

Donne worked nighttime security at a storage facility in Piscataway. It was a great job. He got in about eleven and off at seven. No one bothered him, and he could come in a little buzzed after a few drinks at the Olde Towne Tavern. He could even catch a little West Coast baseball on satellite radio or take a nap.

Which was what he was doing when Franklin Carter approached him.

“Wake up, asshole,” he said, banging a fist on the desk. Jackson sat forward, his eyes shot open, and he stifled a yawn.

Carter looked like he’d just come from work, dressed in a pinstriped suit, pale blue shirt, and striped tie. Even his loafers were polished. His dark hair was combed back, his mustache neatly trimmed. “What do you want, Franklin?” Donne asked. His tongue tasted like leather.

“Your sister came to you for help and you turned her down.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

The silence hung in the room. Behind Carter, through the swinging glass door, headlights passed. It had to be earlier than Donne thought for there to be that much traffic.

“I want you to help her,” Carter said. “She came home the other day in tears. She had just been with your mother, watching her fade away. She said she went to see you and you two argued. You’re hurting her. I won’t have that.”

Donne shrugged. “It’s not my problem.”

Franklin Carter slammed his fists on the desk again and leaned in so close Donne smelled his breath. “It is your problem! This is about your mother and your sister. Don’t you have any sense of family?”

Donne thought about Jeanne. About what he knew about her now. “No,” he said.

Carter stood back up and reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pen and checkbook.

“What’s it going to take?” he asked.

“I don’t do investigative work anymore.”

He took a deep breath, then said, “Everyone has a price.”

Donne sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. He didn’t have any college scholarships coming in. He hadn’t been paid a salary in a long while. The storage facility was an hourly wage and it wasn’t much more than rent and drinking money.

“You always were a rich prick,” Donne said. “Even in high school. I couldn’t stand you. I never understood why our parents were friends.”

“What’s the price?” Carter said, his voice unbearably confident.

Donne gave his brother-in-law a price. Carter scribbled out a check.

***

When Carter came through the door, his tie was loosened and his hair was out of place. Susan got off the couch and wrapped her arms around him.

“How was work?”

He pressed his hand against the small of her back and pulled her close. Susan smelled the faint remains of his sweet cologne.

Carter didn’t answer her question, so she moved her head away from his neck and looked at him.

“Work?” she asked, nudging his shoulder with her chin. “You know, meals, plates, table settings, schmoozing with customers on the Upper East Side? Or at the very least in Montclair? I asked you a question.”

Carter leaned in and kissed her. “Jackson’s going to help.”

“You’re kidding. He told me he didn’t want to see Mom. He seemed pretty adamant.”

Carter shrugged. “He’s going to help.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled and kissed her again. “Anything for you, babe.”

Read on for an excerpt of
Not Even Past
, the third installment in Dave White’s Jackson Donne series, coming in 2014 from Polis Books:

“The past is not dead. It’s not even past.”

--William Faulkner

PART I

Jersey Comeback

Chapter 1

When Jackson Donne saw the eight year old picture of himself, he thought the email was the weirdest form of spam he’d ever gotten.

It was taken on graduation day at the Academy, and Donne was in his dress blues smiling in front of an American flag. His hat was tilted down, leaving two fingers of room between the brim and his nose, exactly as they’d been taught. Jeanne had taken it. They’d only been dating three months, and he remembered how happy she was that he’d completed training. Now, they’d have some extra time
to spend together. Donne was smiling more about that than actually graduating from the Academy.

He hadn’t seen the picture in years. It was boxed up somewhere, with the rest of Jeanne’s things. Had her parents taken that stuff after she died? He didn’t remember Donne scrolled down some more and saw the text. The muscles in his shoulders tightened as if someone had grabbed him. Written in bolded italics was “Click and Watch. Her life depends on it.” Next to that a link, but not to a website Donne recognized.

Don’t click on it, he thought. Probably some virus, something that would eat up all the files on his computer. He couldn’t afford that, not now, with exams looming. Of course, the only reason he logged on in the first place was to procrastinate.

But this email tickled his brain. The picture, who had found and sent him that picture. He looked at the email address again, a string of numbers and a domain that just said “
di.com
.” Nothing familiar jumped out at him.

Donne quickly forwarded the email to his personal email address. Then he closed the school email, but didn’t delete the original message. Scrolled through the rest. Nothing from his professors. No study guides, no cheat sheets, no rubrics. No help at all. His time at college had been tedious, full of syllabi, Moodles, message boards, readings and essays. But, this was his life now.

No gunfire. No one dies.

Life was what it should be. Boring. Work on what you have to, have pizza and a beer on Friday night. Watch some movies. Tweet.

And now that he was so close to the end, closing out his degree, he wanted it to be even easier. Kate said he had senioritis. He didn’t disagree.

Which was why this email bothered him. Donne clicked on it again and looked at the time stamp. It’d been sent at six this morning. Now, according to his iPhone, it was ten am. Four hours that email had sat there waiting for him. The Microsoft Outlook email system Rutgers used didn’t jibe with his phone, otherwise he might have gotten it earlier.

But no, that picture had sat there while Donne had gotten up and gone for coffee and a bagel. Surfed through some NJ websites looking at the news and overall procrastinating instead of studying.

The mouse arrow hovered over the link, turning from arrow to finger. His own finger hovered over the button.

A bead of sweat formed at his hairline.

He clicked the link. And his gut gurgled when he got the pinwheel cursor. His computer had frozen and for an instant he worried about every one of his files disappearing into some abyss of zeros and ones. About spending the next twelves hours waiting in line at the Genius Bar at the Menlo Park Mall.

The pinwheel stopped and his browser opened up. Donne stared at the screen. A black square, then a Quicktime Play Button in the middle. He clicked on the triangle and waiting as the screen buffered. It must be buffering, he though, because nothing else was happening.

There was a loud swoosh from his speakers and the screen went bright white, like sun reflecting off snow. Donne flinched and squinted as the camera
adjusted to the light. The picture came into focus. A nearly empty room. Gray walls, gray floor. The camera was positioned behind two spotlights. Donne could see the tri-pods and big round head fixed on top of them. Beyond that was a chair. In the chair was a woman.