The Atheist's Daughter (17 page)

Did he dare be so bold?

When he heard the first, faint wailing of sirens, he felt happy.

Chapter Twenty-Five

For once, even Liz didn’t want to talk. Ear buds fed her music while she sat on the molded plastic chair. She’d redone her make-up twice now, hiding the tracks of her tears. Her eyes remained red.

Kristin sat in the connecting chair beside her. In the Sheriff Station’s bathroom mirror, she’d seen the strain on her own face. She didn’t worry whether she’d start crying again. She felt as if she’d already used every tear in her body.

Every now and then, Deputy Kane would glance up from her desk and look at them. She’d already taken their reports and shared the results with the Sheriff. She’d have been glad to send them on their way if only Kristin hadn’t asked to stay longer.

“Another bathroom slip and fall,” one of the paramedics said, wheeling Susannah’s body from her house. Kristin wasn’t going to let it go so easily. She requested to speak with Sheriff Archer.

“It should only be a few more minutes, girls,” Deputy Kane said apologetically. Which was apparently true, or at least it was something the Deputy believed to be true. Talking on the telephone and greeting visitors at the desk, she hadn’t lied once since they’d been escorted to the plastic chairs.

Once you see Sheriff Archer, what are you going to say?
  Kristin asked herself.
Got a plan, some plan, any plan at all?

Nope. I got nothin’.

If she wanted to be taken seriously, she’d have to watch what she said. Instinctively, Liz understood this, too. Talking to the Deputy, she hadn’t mentioned a word of Kristin’s dream.

It would remain between the two of them. She wouldn’t tell the Sheriff any of it: How things went white when she saw Susannah, how a rasping noise followed her loss of sight, how she smelled the stench of new plastic. All of it, for now and forever, a secret.

Otherwise, no one would believe her.

Sheriff Archer would listen to her because she insisted on being heard, but he knew her history. He’d remember when he was only a Deputy Sheriff and was called by the school to escort her to the Center for the Fractally Whacked.

Kristin leaned over to Liz. Her friend removed one of the plugs from her ear.

“Do you think Deputy Kane told the Sheriff?”

Liz seemed lost at first. Then she said, “You mean, the whole fainting thing?”

“I didn’t faint. I nearly fainted.”

“Close enough.” Liz replaced the ear bud. “When we saw Susannah going into the body bag, I wanted to pass out. I was just glad you did it first.” Tucking her legs under the chair, she stared off into the distance.

“I didn’t pass out,” Kristin protested.

Tragic as it was, it wasn’t Susannah’s death that left her feeling weak-kneed. Not directly. It was the body bag itself which made her suddenly feel sick.

To begin with, she’d always thought those types of bags were black, appropriately colored for a mortuary. Now she knew they came in white. She never imagined the bag’s zippers were so large and heavy or that their slider rasped so loudly when its teeth bit together. She never realized how strongly a new body bag reeked of a chemical plastic smell.

Too late wise, as her mother would have said. She’d been given the clues, for what little good they did her. She couldn’t help but feel she should have done something. Somehow, she should have saved Susannah.

Now my mother’s best friend is gone
.
Dead...and maybe worse than dead.

Transformed.

The body in the tub didn’t belong to Susannah any longer. The thing in the water was a hollow shell. Lacking all but the outlines of blood and muscle, organs and flesh, it was as empty as the ghost people who had come to town.

Susannah had been drained and Kristin knew who’d done it.

Mr. Brass.

When the ambulances parked in front of Susannah’s house, he was there. Dressed in store label jeans and a five dollar Hawaiian shirt, he lingered beside the rear doors of the ambulance. He watched with avid interest as the paramedics brought the stretcher out of the row house’s front door. Entranced by the body in front of him, he’d never noticed Kristin.

She’d seen him, though. No longer a blank canvas, he now had too-pink skin and dark hair. He showed yellow teeth when he smiled, as he did when the stretcher carrying the body bag bumped over the curb and rolled past him. There were brown freckles on his oversized hands and a white scar running along the side of his neck. His arms were cordoned with heavy veins that existed to feed his thickly-muscled arms.

He wasn’t a glass man anymore. Seeing him on the street was like watching some bizarre black-and-white photo newly colorized by the death of a good woman.

How could such a thing happen? She didn’t know. But she believed in what she saw and she thought her conclusion was reasonable – if only it hadn’t been so impossible.

Too impossible to share with Sheriff Archer or anyone else. Less so, of course, because of her reputation as Winterhaven’s very own Mad Hatter.

Deputy Kane lowered the telephone receiver from her ear. “Your grandmother is here, Liz. She’s in Visitor Parking.”

“I have
got
to get my car back.” Tugging out the ear buds, Liz told Kristin, “It is seriously weird to be your friend.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. Call. Later.”

“Promise.”

Liz left through the side exit. A few minutes later, the Deputy gestured toward the Sheriff’s office.

Kristin opened the frosted glass door. Squeezed into a shiny black chair, Sheriff Archer sat behind his large wooden desk. “Take a seat, Kristin. Always good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too, Sheriff,” she said.

“Not like this, though.”

“No, never like this.”

“Bonnie Kane says you think Susannah’s death wasn’t an accident.” He rested his hand on top of the stack of papers on his desk. “The EMS guys disagree.”

“The EMS guys are wrong.”

“I was out there maybe an hour ago,” he told her. “There wasn’t any sign of forced entry.”

“The door was unlocked. When Liz and I got to Susannah’s house, we walked right in.”

“Honey, it’s a shock. I know,” Archer said. “Doesn’t make it murder.”

Not knowing what to say, Kristin viewed him stolidly.

He told her, “The way I make it, Susannah got up to start her day. Turned on the coffee, ran the tub. She’s ready to get into the water, feels a little dizzy, maybe she passes out. Probably the heart, possibly a CVA. She goes down, sends water everywhere, bangs her head. Drowns. A sadness, without a doubt. I’ll cry at her funeral, you know I will. But it was an accident.”

“Sheriff....”

He flipped to the second page of the EMS report. “‘Minor trauma, consistent with stroke or seizure’. A little bruising around the face. Broke a tooth, probably on the edge of the bathtub.” He folded the page back. “You get Susannah’s age, things happen. Not always good things.”

“Do you remember three years ago?”

“I’m not saying the case ends here,” he continued. “I’ve already contacted the County Coroner. It’s protocol. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts what he’ll find. A lot of water in the lungs, a residue of soap, probably the remainder of one of those Weight Watchers meals Susannah was always eating.”

“Three years ago,” Kristin said. “The Two Rivers’ Convenience Store. Somebody broke in over the weekend. Riffled the cash register, took over four hundred dollars worth of wine and beer.”

“I remember.”

“Dusty Harrison was blamed for it. He’d lost his job, needed the money. He didn’t have an alibi. There were two eyewitnesses placing him at the scene.”

“The Galloway sisters,” Archer said. “Somehow, you knew Dusty was innocent. Those Galloway girls did it.”

“I knew they weren’t telling the truth. You listened to me then.”

He sighed. “Bonnie says you have a suspect for me. You think, maybe, one of the owners of the new café had something to do with Susannah’s death.”

“I saw the café’s cook outside of the house.”

“Before or after the ambulance came?”

“After,” she admitted.

“Could just be somebody on ghoul patrol. All it takes is the cry of a siren to bring ‘em out. Happens all the time. It’s a little disturbed, not criminal.”

“He wasn’t acting right,” Kristin said. The Sheriff raised a questioning eyebrow in her direction. “He seemed pleased with himself. Happy, in a strange way.”

“Clothing all wet, buttons missing from his shirt? Any signs he’d been in a struggle?”

“I only saw him for a few seconds.”

“So that would be a ‘no’.” Reaching into his desk drawer, Archer retrieved a notepad. He scribbled something on it. “You know this guy’s name?”

“Brass.”

“First name?”

“Mister.”

“Jesus and Mary, can’t you give me a little more than that?”  He clipped his pen onto his shirt pocket. “Tell you what. Things slow up here, maybe I’ll nose around a little.”

He rocked back in his chair, his image growing fuzzy. It shook, faded, then he disappeared into the white wall behind him.

“I’ll get his first name, run a background check.” Archer’s voice spoke from somewhere in front of her. “Nothing official –”

He continued speaking but the words were buried beneath the sound of metal grinding over metal. The stench of plastic filled the office.

“Kristin?”

He popped into view, regarding her curiously. The walls behind him returned, wanted posters pinned to their surface. The rasping noise was gone. “You okay? You’re as pale as a ghost.”

The smell of plastic lingered in the air.

“Kristin?”

She said, “I need to get home. Mom’s probably worried.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“I was being stupid,” she said, rising to her feet
. Not a lie, not today
. After all that had gone on, she didn’t think she could stand losing her mouth. “Thinking it over, I mean. The paramedics were there. They wrote their report. If they say it was an accident –”
Careful with your words now
“– then they ought to know.”

“You said they made a mistake.”

“I’d never seen a dead body before,” she said. “I freaked. I’d hate for you to go out to the café. You’ve got other things to do.”

“What about this...” He paused to study the notepad. “Mister Brass?”

“The sirens woke up everybody. Half of the neighborhood came out to watch. If you arrested all of the people who were there, you wouldn’t have any room left in the jailhouse.”

“Like I said.”

“I want you to forget it, okay?”

Archer put a hand to his chin. He rubbed a thoughtful finger over his lower lip.

“Promise,” Kristin said.

The Sheriff’s face relaxed. Tearing away the top sheet of his notepad, he curled it into a ball. “It’s not like I don’t have any real crimes to worry about.”

He threw the paper ball into the wastebasket at her feet. “Nothing but net!” he cried triumphantly as she closed the door behind her.

* * *

His shift almost over, Sheriff Archer studied the EMS report again. When he was done, he stabbed at the intercom call switch. “Bonnie.”

“Sir?”

“You hear back from Carlisle?”

“He’s done with the Guitierrez place. Everything’s been labeled and bagged. Digital pics are on the computer if you’re interested.”

“What about his report?”

“It’s in there, too.”

“Anything I should know about?”

Through the intercom’s tiny speaker, Archer heard a rustle of pages. “Nope. Looks like what it was.”

“An accident.”

“Without a doubt,” the Deputy agreed.

He released the intercom button. He pushed back in his seat, feeling its mesh webbing rub roughly across the back of his shirt. “Goddamn chair.”

He shouldn’t have let Bonnie replace the old chair. Its cloth face was worn, it had lost a little stuffing, but at least it felt like it was made for a man’s body.

Its replacement was an unholy creation of mesh, fabric, chrome spindles and plastic. It didn’t feel like a chair at all. This five-wheeled waste of money was some kind of NASA-inspired torture device.

“Ergonomic, my ass.” Leaning across his desk, he pushed at the intercom button. “Hey, Kane.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did Carlisle ever find that missing piece of tooth?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Martin Piotrowski slipped the key into his pants pocket before crossing the sidewalk to unlock the mailbox. At the bottom of the container, under a utility bill, several advertisements, and two donation requests was a small envelope.