Murder Comes by Mail (14 page)

Across the room Jasper whined, but it was just a “hurry up with the food” kind of whine. Michael switched on the lights. Everything was the way he’d left it. A new biography of Stonewall Jackson lay facedown across the couch arm, open and ready for the next chance he had to read. An empty glass sat next to his gun cleaning kit on the coffee table where he’d left it late Sunday night. The smell of the oil lingered in the air. He didn’t mind the smell, which was a good thing since it took a lot of cleaning to keep his antique guns in firing condition. He took a quick look at his gun cabinet. Still locked, the old guns lined up behind the glass same as always. A thief would have gone for those first.

In the kitchen area of the room, a few dirty dishes cluttered the sink, which proved without a doubt Aunt Lindy hadn’t been there. Unwashed dishes drew Aunt Lindy like a four-alarm fire drew firemen. The usual clutter of junk mail was scattered on one end of the oak kitchen table, along with last week’s
Gazette
, which he still hadn’t read. The picture was facedown, but the word “hero” in the headline was easy to see.

Jasper walked back across the room to nudge Michael’s hand and then hurried back to the closet, his toenails clicking against the wood flooring.

“Okay, boy. I get the message.” After Michael poured out Jasper’s feed, he gave the hot water faucet a hard push to stop the leak.

Then he checked out the rest of the house. It didn’t take long. The log house had only two bedrooms and a bath besides the front living area. The towels in the bathroom were dry in spite of how he’d left them stuffed in clumps over the towel rod. In the spare bedroom the dust on the bedside table was undisturbed. The digital clock flashed a red twelve where he’d obviously forgotten to set it after the last thunderstorm had knocked out the electricity for a while.

His own bedroom was in its usual disarray with the dark green striped comforter pulled up on the bed but not quite covering the pillows and a pile of dirty clothes spilling out of the bottom of the closet. Yesterday morning when he left the house, he planned to do laundry after work. He glanced at his watch. Almost twenty hours ago. It seemed even longer. Days.

Out in the kitchen, Jasper crunched his dog food and the clock on the wall above the television clicked off the minutes till dawn. Nothing was out of place. He might not have given the faucet a firm enough push before he left. It was just the pictures of Hope flashing in his head that brought the monster scent.

The red light on the answering machine on the table by the couch flashed busily. Probably Alex telling him he was crazy and she wasn’t coming.

Michael went to the front door and turned the lock, then did the same on the kitchen door that opened out to the deck on the lake side of the house. Jasper stopped licking his empty bowl and padded behind him back to the bedroom, where Michael shrugged off his uniform shirt and draped it across a chair. In the doorway, the dog growled. The growl turned to a flurry of barks that bounced off the walls.

“Quiet, boy,” Michael ordered. Then he laughed when the dog stalked stiff-legged over to sniff the dirty clothes on the floor. “You’re as bad as I am tonight. Both of us seeing monsters.”

The dog worked his nose across the pile. Finally after one final bark, he decided the clothes were harmless enough and followed Michael back out to the front room to plop down on the braided rug by the couch.

Michael pushed the play button on his machine. The first message was a hang-up, probably Aunt Lindy, who refused to talk to machines. Michael fast-forwarded to the next message. Karen asked him if he’d forgotten his promise to go with her to look for a new computer in Eagleton that afternoon. Of course, he had.

After a little pause as if she almost expected an answer, she went on, “I suppose something came up, but I wanted to be sure you weren’t just running late before I left. I tried your cell, but you didn’t answer. I’ll talk with you tomorrow.”

She didn’t sound upset. Their friendship—comfortable, convenient, quiet—had stalled on the edge of being anything more than that. She wouldn’t be angry at him for forgetting. Not even if she found out he drove four hours to see Alex instead of keeping his promise to her. While everybody else in Hidden Springs might still think romance had a chance between them, Karen knew better and wasn’t upset in the least by that.

Michael pushed the button again and Alex’s voice filled the room. “I hope you’re not on the interstate headed this way, because there’s no way I can come. Absolutely no way. Not unless an earthquake hits the courtroom and makes the judge postpone my case due to rubble blocking the bench. I’m really sorry, Michael. I know you wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important, so give me a call. Maybe we can talk it out over the phone.”

The next message an hour later was also from her. “This is crazy, Michael. I know we promised to always be there for one another, but I just can’t come. Not tonight. You won’t file a breach of promise suit, will you?”

Michael smiled, wondering how old they’d been when they made that promise, but glad she remembered it even if he didn’t. He replayed it just so her voice would linger in the room a bit longer.

Jasper raised his head off his paws and whined.

“Yeah, me too, pal. Me too,” Michael said.

Michael pushed the button to let the next message play. “Deputy Keane.” A man’s voice. Jasper lost interest and dropped his head back to his paws. “Dr. Colson speaking. It’s 5:03 Monday p.m. Your office staff was kind enough to supply me with your home number when I told her how imperative it was I speak with you as soon as possible about our Mr. Jackson.”

Michael wondered why the doctor was calling him and not Detective Whitt, but he wrote down the number the doctor repeated twice before urging, “Please call as soon as you come in no matter the hour.”

The doctor would have to wait. In spite of his words, nobody wanted a call at this time of night. Rather, morning.

Michael resisted the impulse to back up the messages to hear Alex’s voice again. He’d seen her. She’d come. He didn’t need her recorded voice when he had that memory.

He went back to the bedroom and shucked his shoes and the rest of his uniform, leaving the gun within reach on the table by his alarm clock. He stared at the gun a moment before he turned the light off. What was he afraid of? Water snakes when he was swimming. Forgetting who he was. Aunt Lindy dying. Alex marrying a high-profile lawyer. Monsters without faces.

But this monster had a face. Michael had the urge to turn the light back on and go look at Jackson’s face in the picture on the front of the
Gazette
. Instead he pushed it all out of his mind and slept.

Four hours later he was up, loading the washer while he called Betty Jean at the office to let her know he’d be an hour or two late and to remind her not to open the mail till he got there.

“You don’t really think there’ll be more pictures, do you?” she asked in a small voice that didn’t even sound like Betty Jean.

“I don’t know.”

A small silence fell between them then before she said, “Did she come?”

“She came.”

“I’m glad.” She sounded more like herself. “That doctor called again.”

“Yeah, I got his message last night.”

“I’m talking about this morning. The phone was ringing when I unlocked the door.”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“You. Said he needed to talk to you. That it was urgent. Acted like he thought I hadn’t given you the message from yesterday.” Now she sounded huffy.

“I’ll call him when I get in to the office, but I’m not sure Whitt will appreciate it.”

“Whitt? Who’s Whitt?”

“Eagleton’s finest and smartest.”

“I hope so. I hope he has this nut behind bars already.”

“I can agree with you there.” Michael turned the dials on the washer and let the water rush in on top of his clothes.

On the other end of the line, Betty Jean heard the water. “It’s the pits not having a woman to do your laundry for you.”

Michael smiled. “Or a man to do yours.”

“That’s not what I want a man for.” She laughed and hung up.

A half hour later when Michael transferred the wet clothes to the dryer, he spotted something shiny in the bottom of the washer. When he fished it out, a sharp post stuck his finger. He never wore a tie clip. Maybe Aunt Lindy had lost one of her stick pins down here sometime.

He turned it over in his hand. He shut his eyes, shook his head a little, and looked again, sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. Hoping his eyes were playing tricks on him.

But the earring was a teddy bear, a friendly pink-and-yellow teddy bear.

15

As soon as Michael stepped in the back door of the courthouse, Hank jumped him. “What’d you find out? Was it her? Can I print?”

Hank didn’t wait for answers. “I’ve got to print. What can it hurt if I print? The poor little girl can’t get any deader because it’s in the paper, can she?”

“No.” Michael moved past Hank up the hallway.

Hank hustled around in front of Michael to keep him from going in the sheriff’s office. “Hold on just a minute. You’re going to have to say more than that, Michael. You can’t leave me hanging on this one.”

Michael resisted the urge to push past Hank and made himself look at the editor. He tried not to think of the teddy bear earring in his pocket, but that was like not thinking about the rain while standing in the middle of a stormy deluge. The monster had been in his house, maybe sat in his chairs, ate his food, drank his water, but Jackson was no Goldilocks easily scared off with a growl.

“You look awful.” Hank peered at Michael’s face.

“Didn’t get much sleep,” Michael said.

“I can understand that.” Hank shifted from one foot to the other. “Not that any of this is your fault or anything. You couldn’t know the jumper was a psycho.”

“You didn’t get any new pictures, did you?”

“No, did you?” Hank looked worried, but Michael wasn’t sure if it was because he was afraid he’d get more pictures or that he wouldn’t.

“I don’t know. I just got here.”

“Yeah, running sort of late, aren’t you?” Hank looked at his watch, then back at Michael. “You’ll tell me if you get more pictures, won’t you?”

“I’ll tell you.” There was no need to keep Hank in the dark. He was part of it already. He’d seen the pictures.

“Whitt wouldn’t tell me anything,” Hank said.

“Detective Whitt questioned you?”

“Actually I called up there to try to, you know, flesh out the story.” Hank looked uncomfortable. “I knew you’d tell me whatever you found out and all, but a good reporter can’t just sit on his hands. I’d have driven up there, but Perry’s out of the office cutting hay and so I had to knock up the new ads for the run tonight. Murders might sell papers, but ads pay the bills. I told Perry I hired him to do ads on Mondays, but he says he has to get his hay up when his hay is ready.”

“So you called.” Michael stuck in his words to keep Hank from going off on a tangent about how Perry needed to decide whether he wanted to be a newspaperman or stay a farmer.

“Yeah. I figured I wouldn’t get past the front desk, but they put me right through to this Whitt. Obviously he already had my name from you. Said he was glad I called. That he wanted to go over everything again, just so he’d be clear on exactly what happened. Said that sometimes newsmen noticed things other people didn’t and what I saw might give him a new perspective on things.” Hank fingered his notebook in his shirt pocket as if he’d like to pull it out and jot something down, but he let it stay in there.

“That makes sense.” Michael could feel Hank’s eyes on him, but Michael stared down the hall at the big penny scale that had been there in that spot ever since he could remember. He’d seen a penny scale just like it one time in a museum, but there were ropes around it so no one could step up on it. Hidden Springs citizens still quoted their weights from the penny scale over the doctor’s scales, maybe because it was usually five pounds lighter.

“Nothing makes sense.” Hank’s voice went up. “He said I might have to come to Eagleton to make a statement and that I should be careful what I publish so as not to make things worse. How could things get any worse?”

“More dead girls.” Michael finally looked back at Hank. “So what are you going to do?”

“He asked me if I had copies of the pictures.” Hank took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. The courthouse air conditioning had never done much to cool off the hallway. “He wasn’t too happy when I said I did. He said you should have confiscated them. Not just the pictures but the copies too. I didn’t tell him you let me make them.”

“You could have. It wouldn’t have bothered me.”

Hank wiped his face again. “I got to print it, Michael. I mean it was dumped in my lap. I can’t sit on it. The big-town papers are already sniffing around. There’s something about a body being found in a church basement in the papers this morning.” He yanked a clipping out of his pocket and waved it at Michael. “Whitt asked me, tried to order me, not to run anything about it, but I got to, Michael. You understand that, don’t you?”

“It’s not your usual small-town story.”

“You’re right about that.” Hank wiped his forehead again and stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. “But it’s a story with Hidden Springs connections. I’ve got to run it.”

“Then be ready for whatever happens next.”

“You think he’s going to kill again?” Hank finally pulled out his notebook and pen.

Michael looked at the little notebook without a word.

Hank dropped it back in his pocket. “Off the record then.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling that he might unless Whitt’s some kind of miracle detective.” Simply saying the words sent a sick chill through Michael. “This Jackson is slick.”

Hank frowned as he fingered the top of his notebook. “That’s the part about all this that doesn’t fit. I didn’t get that picture at all of Jackson out on the bridge. He seemed more like a mess-up of the first order. You think he has multiple personalities?”

“Who knows? Maybe you can ask that doctor up at Eagleton General.”