Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead (8 page)

Ray fidgeted a moment longer, then: “Well, he ain’t exactly run off. He’s just staying low to try to figure out the lay of the land. I got a friend over at the courthouse
who called me about a half hour ago, said the police were looking for him as a material witness.”

“You know how to get in touch with him?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

“I’m no lawyer, buddy, but I do know nothing good ever comes from running. If he’s rabbitted out of here, they’ll find him. If I was you, I’d get ahold of him, tell him to get a lawyer, and come on in. If he’s innocent, then sooner or later they’ll figure that out.”

I knew I was lying. Not about the police catching him, of course. If Slim’s run off, they’ll find him. I was lying about the if-he’s-innocent-he’ll-get-off stuff. Anybody who’s hung around courtrooms and jailhouses as much as I did in my years as a reporter knows that once you enter the judicial system and the system thinks you’re guilty, then nothing else matters. You can pretty well kiss your ass goodbye. But there’s no good in trying to acquaint people with the truth when they don’t have the basis upon which to accept it.

“You think so?” Ray asked.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Tell him to c’mon in and clear himself.” Then I hesitated just a moment. “He didn’t do it, did he?”

Ray’s mouth curled up. “Hell, no, Harry. He didn’t do it. That ain’t Slim’s style. You ought to know that.”

I didn’t know
why
I ought to have known that, but I let the comment slide for the sake of propriety.

“I didn’t mean anything,” I said apologetically. “I just had to ask.”

“Well, he didn’t do it,” Ray insisted. “But appearances are going to hurt him. You got to understand, Slim and Rebecca fought like hell the whole time they were married. Most of the time, it wasn’t any kind of big deal. Some people are just like that. It’s the way they express affection. But if you don’t know that to begin with, then … well, it could look pretty bad sometimes.”

I shifted in my seat and plopped my feet to the floor. Ray fidgeted uncomfortably. “Harry, if this gets nasty, you’ll help him, won’t you?”

I felt a cramp in my chest. Oh, hell, I thought, here it comes. This was not something I had any interest in getting involved in; besides, even as cheap as I am, Slim couldn’t afford me.

“I got an awful lot on my plate right now,” I said, with more than a hint of reluctance in my voice.

“Aw, c’mon, Harry, he’s a buddy. You can’t let a buddy down now, can you?”

I put my hands out in front of me. “Now wait a minute. There’s no indication whatsoever that Slim’s going to need any help. You just get in touch with him and tell him what I told you.”

Ray stood up. “I don’t know, man. I got a bad feeling about this.”

I rose and stood next to him. “Somebody you know got murdered, Ray. You’re supposed to feel bad.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

The phone rang as I was easing him out the door. My head was starting to hurt and I was about to let the machine take the call. On the third ring, though, I decided to pick it up.

“Denton Agency, may I help you?”

“Yeah, I’d like to phone in a pizza order, please. Can you deliver in thirty minutes or less?”

I sucked in a gulp of air. “Hell, yes, just get me through that long blue line of cop cars.”

“How are you, babe?”

“I’m fine. More importantly, how are you?”

“Gamier by the minute. But other than that, surviving.”

I sat down in my chair and mashed the phone into my ear, as if that would make her closer.

“Are you all right? Really? Have you got enough to eat?”

“Enough for now. And the plumbing still works, so we’ve got water and a place to wee-wee. Other than being bored and stressed-out, we’re all pretty much okay. The only place we’ve still got electricity is the cooler, so we ran an extension cord into the offices. At least we can run the microwave and keep the cellulars charged.”

“I tried to call you about a half hour ago.”

“We’ve only got one battery pack, and it’s old as Moses,” she said. “When it’s charging, we’re cut off. And it’ll only hold a charge a few minutes.”

“This is so frustrating,” I said after a moment. “I feel completely helpless.”

“Me, too,” she said. “But it’s okay, really. We’re all fine, and it’s just a matter of time until this gets settled. I’ll tell you one damn thing, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Metro’s going to owe me some comp time when this is over, and by God, I’m going to take it.”

I grinned. “Maybe we’ll get that vacation we’ve been talking about.”

“You’re on.”

“Listen, Marsha, I just—”

“Ruh, roh, you’re about to get mushy on me. Don’t, Harry. Like I said, this isn’t a private line. Besides, I’ve got to call Spellman before the cell phone dies again.”

“Spellman’s down there?” I asked. “Why homicide?”

“He’s also head of MUST.”

MUST is the Metro Unusual Situations Team, the local equivalent of SWAT.

“Listen, babe,” she continued. “I’ve got to go. I’ll try you later if I can. You be at home?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Call me later. And please be careful.”

She hung up, leaving me once again with that hollow, damned electronic silence.

So my old buddy Lieutenant Howard Spellman was manning the barricades. Maybe there were some possibilities here, after all.

I thumbed through the Rolodex again until I came up with Howard Spellman’s office number. Howard and I went back a long way, back to the days when I had the police beat for the newspaper. Jeez, that was over ten years ago. I think I was still young then, although I can no longer remember that far back.

Our relationship hadn’t always been an easy one. Cops by nature are leery of and fascinated by reporters at the same time. Most will cuss out reporters given half the chance, but then scramble all over each other to get their names in the paper. Better yet, get an interview with one of the TV-station pretty boys who pass for journalists these days. That was a coup.

After leaving the newspaper business, I expected that, if anything, private investigators would be held in even less esteem than reporters. I soon learned, though, that if you earned a cop’s respect, he’d treat you accordingly. I’d tried over the past two years with Spellman, with mixed success.

Spellman’s phone rang about ten times before I gave up. You’d think that the Homicide Squad would keep their phones manned during business hours, but Spellman was the only one with a secretary. If she was out of the office and nobody else was around, then it just rang off the hook.

Glad I wasn’t trying to report a murder.

I had another two hours, maybe a little more, before I had to meet Phil Anderson over at the insurance company.

I figured a long walk might do me good. It’s quite a trek from my office down Broadway to the Riverfront, but there wouldn’t be anyplace to park down there, what with all the squad cars and news vans.

So I took a stroll, and within a few minutes found myself maneuvering past the Al Menah Shriners’ temple on my way down the long hill toward the Cumberland River. The day had really blossomed, with only a few thick gray-and-white clouds drifting lazily over the city. The lunch-hour pedestrian crowds hadn’t let up yet either; I could see how somebody would hate to get back to the office on a day like today.

It had been a long winter, one of dark days that ended early. Headlights on by four and all that. I was glad to see it over.

Down by Second Avenue, I had to cross Broadway to the south side of the street to avoid the construction traffic. Nashville’s been in a boom the last year or so, having itself come out of a long, dark economic wintertime. The company that owns Opryland had bought up a huge chunk of Second Avenue and was remaking it in its own image. At the foot of Second Avenue, right on Broadway, a Hard Rock Café had moved in last year.

Ah, I thought, we’ve arrived.

Only problem was that all the people who’d run restaurants and storefront operations that dated all the way back to the late nineteenth century were now being booted out. Some of the residents had to go as well. Too bad; progress in, people out. More tourists pumping their hard-earned dollars into the local economy. You know what they say: every Yankee tourist is worth a bale of cotton, and he’s a helluva lot easier to pick.

Down by the Acme Feed Store, which thankfully hadn’t been bought and gentrified, I rounded the corner and started toward General Hospital and the morgue. Up the sloping hill, a line of Metro squad cars, engines idling in the heat, blue strobes flashing, diverted traffic blocks before you could get anywhere near the action.

A few news vans, with their satellite towers cranked up, were parked half on the sidewalk. But the crowd of newspeople had thinned. Maybe the novelty was beginning to wear off.

It took less than five minutes to get up the line. A young uniformed officer, arms crossed, leaning against the front fender of his car, was the only one around. As cars approached he motioned them to turn right, away from the river, and head off in the other direction. There wasn’t much traffic, though. Word had gotten out.

“Hey, officer,” I called as I crossed the street and approached him. “How’s it going?”

He gave me that cool, professional dealing-with-civilians look, the one they teach you at the Academy.

“Quiet today,” he answered.

I came to within a couple of feet and leaned against the back quarter panel. I crossed my arms like he did and stared down the hill.

“Had a little free time after lunch,” I said. “Decided to take a walk in the sunshine, see what’s going on. This beats being cooped up in an office, don’t it?”

“Yessir.” He reached for his whistle as a car approached a little too quickly, blew it shrilly, and motioned firmly to the driver. The guy slowed, gave us both a dirty look, then turned onto the side street and sped away.

“How much longer you think this is going to go on?” I asked, trying to keep that casual, just-jawing tone in my voice.

“No idea, sir.”

I backed away from the blue-and-white Chevy and turned toward the cop. “Say, you don’t know if Howard Spellman’s up there right now, do you?”

The officer turned and squinted at me in his best Clint Eastwood style. All he needed was a pair of mirrored aviator shades to complete the picture.

“You a reporter?” he asked after a second or so.

“One of them sleazeballs?” I laughed. “Not me. I’m
just a friend of his. Been kind of curious. Haven’t been able to get him in his office the past couple of days.”

“He’s been sort of busy.” The arms folded back across the uniformed and badged chest.

“Officer”—I squinted theatrically at his badge—“Roberts, I don’t suppose I could walk up the hill and say hi to him, could I?”

Officer Roberts shook his head. “No unauthorized personnel past this point.”

I’d expected that. “Say, could you call him on the radio and see if he’ll let me come up. If he said it was okay, that’d be all right, wouldn’t it?”

Behind us, from somewhere up the hill, we heard the whine of a helicopter engine coming alive. As the engine noise increased, the slow whop-whop-whop of the blades grew as well.

“What do you think?” I asked.

The cop pulled his handi-talkie out of a leather holster on his belt. He held it to his mouth and pushed a button. “Henry Seven to Henry One.”

“Go ahead,” came the disembodied voice through the static.

“Lieutenant Spellman up there?”

“Yeah, hold on.”

The helicopter noise grew louder. I looked behind us just as the olive-drab military chopper rose quickly, then darted off away from the General Hospital complex and the morgue toward the downtown area. A wind blew in from across the river, up near the northern loop of I-65, bringing with it the faint fragrance of the rendering plant, mixed in with the usual car exhaust and the odor of burning garbage from the Thermal Plant. My nose curled involuntarily.

Spellman must have answered, because the young cop put the handi-talkie back to his face. “Lieutenant, I’ve got a man down here says he’s a friend of yours. Wants to cross the lines and come up there.”

“Who is he?” Spellman’s crackly voice answered.

“My name’s Denton,” I said. “Harry Denton.”

“Harry Denton,” the cop repeated.

Silence. I figured Spellman was trying to figure out exactly the right string of obscenities to put together to express just how pleased he was to hear from me.

More silence. The cop adjusted the gain on his radio, then held it closer to his ear.

“Tell him to wait right there.”

Ten minutes later a white sedan that had unmarked cop car written all over it rolled down the hill and pulled to a stop behind the line of squad cars. Spellman got out, alone, and motioned to me to join him over on the sidewalk.

I stepped between the squad cars, crossing the line between authorized and unauthorized personnel. Spellman was only glaring at me about half as irascibly as I expected, so maybe this wasn’t going to be too excruciating. It could have been fatigue, though. Spellman looked about as whipped as I’d ever seen a man who was still on two feet.