Dying to Tell (2 page)

two

The First Bank and
Trust of Frederick County occupied one of the oldest buildings in Old Town Winchester—a historic town in northwestern Virginia whose roots were established before the American Revolution. The bank sat just off the town square in a brick and stone building guarded by marble columns at the entrance.

The bank annex—even older than the bank itself—sat behind the main bank and was connected by a covered brick courtyard. Both were now swarmed by sheriff's deputies and Winchester policemen processing the scene and searching for evidence.

I emerged from the strange subterranean vault and went looking for Angel. I found her inside an ambulance with a paramedic checking her over. The security guard, whose nametag read
Larry Conti
, sat beside her with an ice pack pressed against his temple. His face was a messy
blue-black
collage of bruises and his mouth sported two split lips that looked like a collagen treatment gone Frankenstein. He'd gotten lucky with a bullet and taken a beating, but otherwise appeared fine.

Despite her harrowing morning, Angel looked like a winter-wonderland lingerie model. Minus the lingerie, of course—who would wear lingerie to a bank at seven in the morning? Beneath the long overcoat that lay beside her, she'd worn a
well-fitted
skirt and cotton top—fitted as in it swooned over her curves and hills and accentuated her sexy, womanly charms. Thankfully, no bullet holes or broken bones marred her centerfoldness—no, that's not a real word.

She smiled as she thanked the paramedic when he cleared her to go.

“Angel, are you all right?” I asked, stepping into the open ambulance door. “Back there, for a moment, I thought …”

“You should be so lucky. You'd love it if we were both dead. Then I could never escape you.”

Ouch.

She glanced across the parking lot at an oversized detective stuffed into a dark brown barn coat interviewing the man who saved her life—Captain
Oh-My
-Hero—Mr. Thorne. She smiled at him and walked over to the security guard sitting on the gate of another ambulance beside hers.

“Are you all right, Larry?” she said. “You saved me, you know—you and Mr. Thorne. Thank you.”

“It's my job, Professor.” His words were slurred—the product of swollen lips and pain medication. “I'm glad you're okay. I'm sure lucky I brought that book to read at lunch.”

Lucky was right. Dame Agatha took a bullet for him.

The paramedic pulled the blood pressure cuff off Conti's arm. “You're okay. You should come into the hospital to check for a concussion. You hit your head pretty hard and have a good gash there.”

“Later, after I finish with the cops,” he said. “Maybe.”

Angel asked, “What happened in there, Larry?”

He shrugged and winced at the same time. “Got to work about six thirty and found the employee door unlocked. I went in to check it out. That guy jumped me just inside the door and took my gun. He beat the shi …”

“It's all right, Larry, my husband's a cop—
was,
I mean.”

“Yeah, okay.” He tried to smile but winced again. “He beat me up pretty good and kept yelling for me to show him the vault with
the gold and stones. He was nuts—this is the bank annex. I told him the bank was next door.”

“What
else d
id he say?”

“Nothing.” Larry slid off the gate onto the ground outside the ambulance. “He kept hitting me and yelling about the vault. He clipped me one last time and ran out. I got my backup gun and went after him. That's when we ran into you, I guess.”

She climbed down from the ambulance. “You're a hero, Larry. Thank you again. Get better.”

I said, “Angel, about William Mendelson. We gotta talk.”

Neither she, Larry Conti, nor the paramedic paid me any attention.

Rude? No. And it wasn't because on this frigid, snowy December day I stood outside in the same clothes I've worn for two years—jeans, an old black tee shirt, running shoes, and blue blazer. And it wasn't because I looked like a homeless guy begging for change or asking to move into your basement for the winter, either. It's because they don't see me—they don't know I'm here. You know, it's that whole “I'm dead” thing—dust, gone—well,
not
gone, not really. But dead all the same.

And I'm not hanging around haunting my beautiful wife just for spite, either. These days, I'm a dead detective. Or in some cases, a detective for the dead. When I was alive, I was a hotshot homicide cop. Now, dead, I'm still a hotshot homicide cop—it's just that my clients are nearly always dead or at least connected to someone who is dead. And sometimes, being on this side of life and death makes all the difference in the world for catching the bad guys. It doesn't pay much, but the satisfaction of nabbing a killer after he or she thinks they're in the clear is enough for me.

“Did you hear me? I found William Mendelson …”

Angel held up a hand. With the other, she lifted her cell phone to her ear—a ruse to speak with me in public—and walked away from the ambulance. Appearing to talk to herself in public makes her seem nuts, and that's not good for a
well-known
professor of American History.

“You've been following me a lot lately.”

“What? No. Listen, Angel, I found William and he's—”

“Yes you were.” Her eyes darkened the way they used to when I got caught sneaking in at
oh-dark
-thirty after a night howling at the moon with my cop pals. “Why? Can't I go to a meeting without you following me just once?”

“But, Angel, William—”

“I need my privacy, Tuck. I need space … me time.
Normal-people
time.” She started to turn but looked back at me. “Unless you can do that spirit thing—possession or reincarnation or whatever—into the body of a dashing French movie star. Then, I might overlook your irritating stunts.”

“
Irritating?
Wait,
me time?
Without me?” Lately, Angel had the notion I followed her everywhere and listened in on her calls and hung around with her and her friends. Mostly, of course, because I did. Being a dead husband is tough. And after two years being none of the man I used to be, it was getting to me. “I heard you leave at six thirty and followed you—only for your protection. What are you doing down here at this hour?”

She rolled her eyes—we covered that, right? “William emailed me last night and wanted me here at seven thirty. So …”

“Angela,” a husky, deep voice called—it was Bear. “If you checked out okay, we need to talk.”

Most people's first impressions of Detective Theodore Braddock are that he's a big, bulky, gruff, grumbly kinda guy. It's amazing how perceptive people are. But Bear has redeeming qualities, too. He's fun, protective of Angel, and loyal. Okay, maybe I'm describing Hercule, my black Lab, but they're sort of the same. Hercule just listens better.

Bear was
six-four
and made the scale groan at
two-fifty
-plus. His hair was short and unstyled. He was powerfully built without any extra fries or cheeseburger flab, either. As he lumbered toward us, he looked tired and aggravated—perhaps because his face showed two days' growth of stubble on one side and
clean-shaven
razor burn on the other.

I always laugh at those movies where cops run from their homes after a “no one can save us but you” telephone call. The call always came while shaving and they never bothered to spend the extra sixty seconds to finish. Like a minute would end the world.

In Bear's case, I understood. His call was about Angel—bank robbery in progress, shots fired, Professor Angela Tucker at the scene. He'd probably left his house without closing his front door—probably left the sink water running, and probably ran over a dozen pedestrians to get here. He'd been my partner since the police academy and family since Angel and I married. And after my death, he'd been her rock and protector, too.

We were lucky he hadn't shown up in just his underwear and Glock.

“Angela,” he said, “tell me again what you're doing down here this early.”

He asked good questions, too.

She told him about her email from William Mendelson, then gave a detailed account of the greeting she got when she arrived. “And no, before you ask, I don't know what William wanted to see me about. I have no idea. Has anyone seen him yet?”

“I've got men searching the bank,” Bear said, scribbling some notes in a small pocket notebook. “So far, we haven't found—”

I couldn't stand it. “He's dead.”

Bear jumped and almost dropped his pen. He turned and locked eyes on me standing beside Angel. “For God's sake, will you wear a bell or something?”

“A bell?” Bear knows I'm around, but sometimes I have to speak to him to make the connection. Weird, right? “What for?”

“I hate it when you sneak up on me.”

“I didn't sneak up on you. I've been here the whole time. You just didn't see me.”

Now
he
rolled his eyes. “I'm still getting used to you.”

“Why? We've been partners for sixteen years.”

“You're dead now.”

“And you're not. Do you hear me complaining?”

He cursed. “What about Mendelson?”

“I've been trying to tell Angel but she was too busy scolding me about—”

“Jesus, Tuck—what about Mendelson?”

“He's dead.” I hooked a thumb toward the annex. “Somebody shot him in the bank, er, through the heart, really, but he's down in an old vault in the annex's
sub-basement
—sort of a secret
sub-basement
, too. You go through this closet in Mendelson's office and—”

“Murdered?” Bear's radio suddenly came alive as he said to Angel and me, “The bank robber killed old man Mendelson?”

“Detective Braddock,” a voice called over the radio. “We …”

“You found Mendelson dead in a vault in some damned
sub-basement
,” Bear snapped. “Secure the scene. I'm coming down.”

“How the hell did you know that? I just found him.”

three

“What do you know
about this place, Angela?” Bear said, leading the way into the annex. “What do you know about Thorne and the Mendelsons?”

“I just met Mr. Thorne. He seems like a wonderful man …”

“Wonderful?” Holy Captain Fantastic—she never called
me
wonderful. “You have two seconds of conversation and he's wonderful? During a
shoot-out
, no less?”

She held up her hand. “He just saved my life.”

“That makes him lucky, not wonderful.”

Angel ignored me and followed Bear across the lobby toward the dark corridor I'd gone down earlier.

I'd never been in the bank annex before this morning. In fact, I'd rarely—if ever—ventured into the First Bank and Trust of Frederick County at all. I'd known about it during my breathing days. Truth be told, I wasn't much of a bank person, or a checking account person, or a
bill-paying
person, either. And since Angel made more than three times what I had made as a cop, she handled all the finances. I did the other important stuff—like going to the gun range and barbecuing and guarding the plumber while he fixed what I broke. Manly stuff. I was more of a
cash-in
-hand guy.

The lobby was cavernous with marble floors and
two-story
-high mahogany walls adorned with paintings of local Winchester sights and renditions of famous local Civil War campaigns. I expected a
fat-bellied
,
cigar-smoking
rich guy in an expensive suit to wander out any moment with a bag of money to count. You know, the usual bank stuff.

Bear and Angel disappeared down the corridor and I followed it to the far end. With the lights on this time, I noticed a richly furnished waiting area and three oak office doors. On the far wall, adjacent to a mahogany receptionist desk, was an ornately framed door with a placard beside it that read “Chairman of the Board” under William Mendelson's portrait. The painting was of a stout bull of a man with
slicked-back
gray hair and dark eyes. He had a dull drone smile—the artist's attempt to breathe friendliness into an otherwise stark expression. The artist fooled no one.

Mendelson's office was still dark except for a single wall lamp at the back of the room that one of the policemen must have flipped on during their search. It had been pitch black when I'd passed through earlier. When I went inside, an ominous phantom lunged at me from behind the door.

“Holy shit!”

I backpedaled and would have slammed into a bookcase, but dead guys don't slam into anything. We just sort of, well, keep backpedaling.

Guarding the right of the office door was a
ten-foot
-high horrific monster—luckily not a vampire—that glared death and savagery as he lunged at me. Lucky for him he was just a statue. So I steadied myself and looked closer. The statue was neither monster nor beast, nor had it lunged at me—but it was thinking of it. It was a stone carving of some ancient Egyptian king or deity—I wouldn't recognize either one since the only things I knew about ancient Egypt I learned from Charlton Heston. The statue held a tall spearlike thing and he was
part-man
,
part-animal
, with a curved face, long rectangular ears, and the body of a man. It wasn't Charlton Heston nor the death merchant I feared. But I was glad he was made of stone and on my side. He'd be a great ally in the pending vampire apocalypse.

Okay, yeah, I watch too much
late-night
television—the dead don't sleep, we just go to this dark, lonely “
time-out
” place. I hate it there, so I enrich myself with cable TV.

“No wonder no one likes Mendelson. Who has monsters around their office, Vincent Price?”

The stairwell door to the
sub-basement
waited in the corner of the room behind Mendelson's large antique cherry desk. Earlier I thought it was a closet. I followed voices down toward the vault chamber—again, the smoky air reached me but grew more pungent and dense as I neared the vault. A few more stairs and black smoke swirled around me and the heat was unbearable …

“Bear! Angel! Get out …” My warning was unnecessary, of course, because neither were anywhere in the basement. Well, not the basement I'd followed them to anyway.

Stepping off the stairs, the vault anteroom floor was nowhere beneath my feet—not because of the veil of smoke, but because I was not in the here and now. At the anteroom gate, I'd stepped into some other time—some other day—when William Mendelson's vault was the center of a storm.

This storm was a raging sea of flame and smoke churning around me like hell's front porch. The anteroom was engulfed in fire. Wooden shelves that lined the walls were awash in angry, growling flames. An old desk or table—I couldn't discern which—was consumed, too, and a nearby chair was toppled backwards and almost ashes.

Muffled shouts descended the stairs as two bulky, masked figures emerged into the anteroom. Their masks were not any robber's disguise but respirators for firemen cloaked in heavy
fire-protective
ensembles.

“Is anyone down here?” One of the firemen called in muffled, hollow sounds through his mask. He stepped into the anteroom and glanced up. Flames chattered overhead across ancient wood joists as gnarled
fire-fingers
stabbed out at him. “Jesus, Tommy, we gotta get him fast.” Another step forward. “Call out! Where are you?”

I could do no more than watch the two firemen inch into the furnace. My feet were immobile and my legs would not obey. Yet, movement was unnecessary, as neither fireman would be aware of my presence—they hadn't come to save me and were oblivious that I was mere feet from them watching their every move. I had a
front-row
seat for whatever I was to see and they had no clue I was in the audience. After all, I was not there. Not really.

A voice called from inside the open vault in choked, terrified spasms. “Here … I'm … in here.”

“We're coming. Get on the floor!”

Tommy lurched forward and used a long bar with a forked tongue on the end to push away a blazing fallen shelf blocking his path. The second fireman used his bar to lever the debris toward the wall, clearing an escape.

Violent swirls of smoke choked the room. The fire chattered and taunted the men as the surrendering joists crackled overhead.

“Gruber—I've got him.”

Tommy emerged from the vault with a sooty, coughing body over his shoulder in the classic fireman's carry. He stumbled, twice fell to one knee, but regained his strength and tried to continue on.

“Wait!” Gruber—the other fireman—jumped back as a flaming
ceiling-high
shelf collapsed atop Tommy and his ward. “Tommy!”

I had to turn my head—not from the inferno's intensity, but from my certainty that at any moment the ceiling would follow the shelf down and finish the three men.

But there was a reprieve.

Gruber leapt into action and levered the engulfed shelf up and away. He grunted, reached into the smoke, and pulled Tommy and his charge free.

Tommy got to his knees and rolled the man off his shoulder to the floor. “Take him, Gruber, I gotta get my breath.”

Gruber hefted the man over his shoulders with one powerful movement. “Come on, Tommy, follow me. We gotta get out of here. This place might be gone any second.”

“Go, go,” Tommy gasped and waved toward the security gate. “I'm right behind you.”

Gruber hesitated, nodded, and disappeared into a wall of smoke.

Faltering wood groaned above and fire rained a gale down on Tommy's back.

“Get up, Tommy. The ceiling's coming down,” I yelled, but the fireman couldn't hear me. I was losing touch with this place—this time. The room now turned around me like a carousel. The flames fluttered still and the smoke dissipated. I tried once more. “Go, Tommy. Get out before—”

Two heavy ceiling timbers crashed down. One struck the steel security gate and slammed it shut. The second fell against the gate, jamming between it and the wall.

Tommy was trapped.

“Gruber!” Tommy tried to lever the timber free. “Gruber!”

The room swirled into a blur before me. Lingering fingers of smoke faded and the room disappeared into nothing. An eye blink later, the overhead light shined ahead of me on the other side of the steel security gate that was now open and unbarred. I jumped toward Tommy—or toward where he'd been.

I never reached him …

My first step touched the anteroom floor and I faced the open steel security gate. The dim overhead lights were on and no shelves or flames surrounded me. The smoke was gone. The heat had cooled. Tommy and the burning timbers were no more—sent back to some point in time that was not my own.

“Damn.” I shook off the vision that had tried to send a message. What that message meant was as mysterious and veiled to me as the events I'd just encountered.

These side trips from the here and now were not unfamiliar to me. Since returning from, well, from wherever it was
really-dead
people stay, I often was pulled elsewhere to watch vignettes of the past. I'm not talking about old reruns of westerns or
I Love Lucy,
mind you. The visions were hints and clues from the past—someone else's past—but they were never clear. It was just as it was moments ago: A flash of events. A secret needing to be told, sneaking out from somewhere to taunt me. And it was always up to me to figure out whether it meant anything or not.

Lucky me.

“Hey, Angel, am I glad to see you. I was just in a fire. Right here, too. Man, was it scary …”

Angel threw me a glance and shook her head—that meant
Be quiet and listen
. Of course, the two things I was not good at. “Gotcha.”

Bear glanced over at me but said nothing. He stood in the open vault doorway beside Angel and a tall, almost
too-thin
African-
American detective—Calvin Clemens. Behind Cal was Mr. Wonderful—Thorne—who stood watching.

Cal had been on Bear's team for years and was a solid cop. He was in his early thirties with
close-cut
hair, high cheekbones, and big round eyes. He wore a goatee and was dressed in jeans and an untucked black dress shirt beneath a dark sport coat. Unlike many of the cops on the team, he stayed to himself and did his job. He wasn't much for fanfare or bluster. My kind of cop.

“Cal,” Bear said, flashing a penlight around the dimly lit vault, “get crime scene down here right away. And call the ME.”

“Right. That robber cleaned this place out. Except for this safe, I guess.” He gestured to an old railroad safe that looked like it was last used to keep money from Billy the Kid. It stood beside the counting table in the back corner of the vault. “Wonder what he got?”

“Poor William,” Thorne said in a dry, steady voice. He didn't appear squeamish looking over the body. In fact, he seemed rather …
comfortable
. “After all he's been through—to be killed by a robber. I should
find Marshal.”

Bear noticed Thorne's calm, too. “You don't seem too upset, Thorne.”

“Of course I'm upset, Detective.” Thorne folded his arms. “But I am the Vice President and Chief Security Officer …”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bear groaned. “I got that—twice already.”

Thorne nodded. “Yes, of course. I should find Marshal—he's the bank President and William's son. He should have been here by now.”

“Mr. Thorne,” Angel said, “I'll help you find Marshal.”

“It's Franklin, Professor.” He smiled and I wanted to puke. “Or, may I call you Angela?”

“Of course.”

Now I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on. There's a dead guy in the vault and Captain Wonderful is making
goo-goo
eyes at you, Angel.”

She took a deep breath. “We should let the
detectives
work.” She led Thorne back through the anteroom gate and up the stairs.

When they were gone, Cal went to the rear of the anteroom and pulled out his cell phone. When he was out of earshot, I turned to Bear. “Hey, partner, do you smell the smoke?”

He looked around and took a deep snort of air. “No, should I?”

I gave him a quick summary of my vision of the fiery basement. “What do you think?”

“I think you watch too much TV.”

“Yeah, I do, but that's not it.” I went inside the vault door—Bear wouldn't venture in again until the crime scene team processed at least some of the scene. “This wasn't just a heist, you know that, right? I mean, fire or not.”

“You sure?” Bear looked around. “What are you thinking?”

“William Mendelson knew his killer.”