Never Go Home (13 page)

“Let me worry
about that, Leon.”

“What about the
cop?”

“Did he see
you?”

“Yeah.”

She sighed.
“Take him someplace.”

Leon glanced at
the man on the floor. He didn’t need to hear anything else. “OK.”

After Vera
ended the call, Leon looked around for something to use to destroy the crime
scene. He knew enough about forensics to keep from getting caught. There was
little he could do to get rid of all the blood at this stage. Besides, the
crime scene was old enough that they would have gathered all the evidence they
needed. But Vera gave him an order, so it was best to carry it out.

He found the
laundry room at the end of a hall off the kitchen. On a shelf he saw a bottle
of bleach and a bottle of ammonia. He grabbed both, and carried them to the
kitchen. The deputy moaned and rolled over. Leon kicked him in the head three
times. The guy stopped moving.

Leon opened the
back door. He saw a hose coiled up on the ground. It had a spray nozzle
attached to the end. He turned the faucet on and dragged the hose through the
kitchen and into the living room.

He squeezed the
nozzle’s trigger and aimed the powerful stream at the wall and the floor. Dried
blood began to liquefy and slide down the wall. After a minute of dousing the
area, he emptied the bottles of bleach and ammonia on the wall and the floor.
The mixture of the two burned his throat and nostrils. He ran through the room
and the kitchen and burst through the back door. He filled his lungs with thick
fresh air.

He knew that
was a bad combo, but he hadn’t expected that reaction.

Leon waited a
few minutes. He wanted to hang outside longer, but knew time was critical. He
followed the green hose through the house and scooped it up by the spray
nozzle. Then he aimed the jet of water at the wall and the floor.

“That’ll have
to do,” he said.

He carried the
hose into the kitchen. The guy had scooted to the wall. Leon sprayed him down.
The deputy screamed as the high-powered jet of water hit his open wounds. Leon
laughed at the guy as he tossed the hose outside.

He walked back
to the deputy and squatted down in front of him. The man looked away.

“That’s what I
thought,” Leon said.

The deputy said
nothing.

Leon pulled him
to his feet and pushed him into the garage. The deputy tripped. Somehow he
managed to turn so that his side hit the concrete floor first.

“Wait here,” he
said. “You so much as move, I’m going to kill you.”

Leon exited the
house, picking up the deputy’s pistol along the way, jogged down the street and
got into the Tercel. He raced toward the house, backed into the driveway and
butted the rear bumper up to the garage door.

He waited
behind the wheel for few minutes, watching his surroundings.

Inside the
garage, Leon belted the sheriff again, almost knocking the man unconscious. He
lifted the garage door just enough to shove the deputy into the trunk of the
Tercel. Leon watched as the man rolled his head back and forth, trying to talk.
Blood covered spittle flew a few inches into the air and crashed back down on
his face.

“Save it,” Leon
said, closing the trunk lid.

He got behind
the wheel and pulled out of the driveway. The guy banged against the frame and
the backseat. Leon turned up the music and drowned the noise out.

The morgue
loomed ahead like a gateway to hell. The dark hid the bulk of the building. Landscape
lights set at ten-foot intervals were aimed upward, highlighting long thin
stretches of the building’s concrete facade.

April pulled
into the parking lot and double-parked near the door. She left the car running
for a minute. For the first time, it felt like the air conditioning had cooled
me off.

She said,
“You sure you’re ready for this, Jack?”

I said, “I’ve
seen plenty of bodies, April. Some were my fault, others weren’t. Some were
friends. Some of those friends died because of me. I can handle this. It’s the
only way we’ll figure out what happened.”

We exited the
vehicle and met in front. We walked silently to the morgue’s entrance. Inside,
April signed us in. The older guy on the other side of the counter wore a white
coat, blue jeans and a t-shirt. He had messy hair and was unshaven. We’d woken
him up, and he looked pissed about it. He looked at me, then at her. I presumed
he wanted to say something. He didn’t.

“That’s him,”
April whispered.

He led us
down a narrow hall that deposited us into a chilled room. The walls to my left
and right were fifteen feet high and lined with chambers. There were three rows
on each side, with fifteen frozen caskets to a row.

When the hell
would there be ninety bodies needing a place in the morgue in Clearwater?

The guy
looked at his chart. “Let’s see, Jessie Staley.” He traced his finger down the
page. “Ah, there we go.” He led us to the other end of the room. He turned a
handle and pulled Jessie’s chamber open.

Her dark hair
was matted against the pale skin of her face. Her eyes were closed. Blood caked
her eyebrows. Her lips were parted slightly. The top one was split in the
middle. One of her teeth had been knocked out and another broken.

The ME moved
her head to the right. He pointed at the obvious bullet wound above and
slightly forward of her ear. “Entrance.” He turned Jessie’s head a little more.
His fingers walked around her skull and came to a stop a few inches behind the
first wound. “Entrance. And, you can’t see it, but exit just an inch behind.
That bullet grazed along her skull and popped back out.”

“That
explains the hole in the wall,” I said.

“And the
blood on the baseboard,” she said.

“You notice
anything else?” I said to the ME.

“Obvious
trauma to her mouth.”

“How did she
fall?” I said.

The ME shuffled
through her file and pulled out a photograph. Jessie lay on her side right. Her
right arm stretched out along the floor. Her left fell across her chest. One
leg was straight, and the other pulled forward. The back of her head rested on
the floor. The last thing she saw lay somewhere between the man who shot her
and the ceiling.

“That rules
out the fall knocking her teeth out,” I said.

The ME
reached out and opened Jessie’s mouth. “I found the full and partial teeth
inside. I’m waiting on results.”

“What would
that tell us?” April said.

“If a weapon
other than someone’s fist did it.”

“You’ll be
able to tell?” she said.

He shrugged.
“That’s why I sent it off.”

We stood
without speaking for a moment. I stared at Jessie. April stared at me. The ME
tapped his foot and cracked his knuckles.

I looked over
Jessie’s body. Her face and head took the brunt of the attack. She had a fresh
scar on her arm. I noticed nothing else.

“Anything
else?” he asked after a minute.

“Jack?” April
said.

I looked up.
I had plenty of questions. Not for him, though. I wanted to be able to ask
Jessie what happened. How did it happen? What led to it happening? I wanted to
tell her I was sorry for how things ended, and the trouble I dragged her into a
decade ago.

“Jack?” April
said.

“Yeah, sorry.
Let’s go.” I nodded at the ME. He turned away.

I heard
Jessie’s body being slid back into the frozen tomb that precluded her eternal
stay underground.

We sat inside
the car. I grabbed the back of my head and exhaled. It didn’t feel real. Even
after seeing her corpse, I couldn’t believe that Jessie was dead.

“You OK?”
April placed her hand on my shoulder.

I shifted in
my seat so I faced her. “Tough to take in, you know?”

“Remember
what happened to my mom?”

I thought
about it for a minute. There had been an accident a year before I left for the
Marines. April’s mother and father had been out on the water. He went below
deck to grab a couple beers. When he came up, she was gone. That was the story,
at least. It never sat well with me. But the man telling it was the only
witness and he was also the town’s sheriff. How could you doubt him? An
independent investigator came in at her father’s request. The Mayor picked the
man out. The guy found no evidence of foul play, said it was an accident. She
had been drinking, fallen overboard, and the tide carried her body away.

“I remember,”
I said.

“Still keep
hoping she’ll just show up one day. Come walking up along the river and find
her way to my house.” April looked away. “Or at least that her body will wash
up. I suppose I should let that go considering it’s been twenty years.”

Neither of us
spoke for five minutes. She started the car, but we didn’t leave. The air that
came out of the vents smelled like stubbed out cigarettes at first. The smell
faded, leaving behind an ice-cold breeze that hit the middle of my face.

“You know
what I think?” I said.

“What?” she
said.

“I think
those guys know more than they were letting on. I think that little message was
more than them trying to get under my skin.”

“You think
they were involved?”

“Them, and
Glenn. Hell, Matt’s his brother. Think about the scene. That could have been a
two-man job. Definitely not suicide. I think one of them held her while the
other went to shoot. She moved. The bullet hit but didn’t kill. One guy punched
her. She stopped. The other shot and killed her.”

“Plausible.”

“Probable.”

“So what
should we do?”

“I think you
should go over and question them.”

“What about
you?”

I stared out
the front window at the blackness beyond the parking lot. “I’m going with you.”

She shifted
into drive and crossed the parking lot, turning right and taking us toward
town. She bypassed Main Street. We prowled along the outer edges of the
historic center. Streetlights lined one side of the street, not the other. She
turned into an older neighborhood. Thirty years ago, my grandparents lived
there. Now it looked nothing like it did then. The houses were worn down. The
lawns were messy, full of weeds, or just brown. Some of the homes we passed
looked abandoned, or inhabited by squatters. I saw the house my grandfather and
his brother had built themselves. Someone had painted it purple.

“What the
hell happened here?” I said.

“The
economy,” she said. “Most folks bugged out some time ago. Went to Jacksonville,
Gainesville, Tampa and Orlando. However few jobs those cities have, it was
better odds than here.”

The economic
state of the country wasn’t something I dwelled on. Since becoming an adult, I
worked either for the government or as a contractor. There were plenty of jobs
available in my line of work. And they paid well.

“There it
is.” She pointed ahead.

The house
looked like the rest in the neighborhood. The gutter hung off the roof on one
side. Siding was missing in a few places. The lawn had grass two feet high
mixed in with bare spots.

April blocked
the driveway with her cruiser. She left the engine running.

“Take this.”
She tossed a key toward me. “That’s a spare. If you need to run, you do so.”

“I’m not
going anywhere without you.”

There were no
blinds or curtains covering the wide front window. The TV lit up the far wall.
Images flashed on the screen. I couldn’t tell what they were watching. Two of
the men occupied opposite ends of a couch. Glenn sat in a recliner against the
left wall.

A dog barked
as we walked up the driveway.

Matt rose off
the couch and walked toward the window. His frame blocked my view of the
television. He cupped his hands to his face and leaned into the glass. He
shouted something. The other two men rose. Glenn went to the back of the house.
Jed went to the front door. Matt met him there. The door swung open and both
men stepped out. Jed held a baseball bat.

“You might
want to rethink that,” I said.

“Wasn’t the
warning at the house enough for you, Noble?” Matt said.

“Put the bat
away, Jed,” April said.

“You brought
the cops, Jack?” Matt said. “Can’t fight fair and square?”

“Fair and
square got both of you knocked out in five seconds. She’s here for your
safety.”

Matt took a
few steps forward and spit in my direction. It missed me and hit about ten long
blades of grass on its way to the ground.

“Where’d
Glenn go off to?” I said.

“Don’t know
what you’re talking about,” Jed said.

“Saw him
through the window. He went to the back of the house. It’d be best for you all
if he came outside.”

“Piss off,”
Matt said.

“I can get a
warrant,” April said.

I almost
questioned her.

Matt did.
“For what? We ain’t done nothing. If anything, I want to press charges against
Jack for assaulting me. So, there, take him away Ms. Sheriff.”

Both men
laughed.

I looked at
April. “I’m growing tired of this.”

Matt took a
few more steps toward me. “So what are you gonna do about it?”

I said
nothing.

“As far as
I’m concerned,” he said, “you’re trespassing on my property. Get the hell off
it before I kick your ass.”

April said,
“You rent this house.”

“Don’t
matter,” Matt said. “I know that much.”

He stood
inches from me. A wave of tequila and corn chips and his body odor blew past
me. I might as well have been standing in a dumpster.

“Get going,
Jack.”

I didn’t
move.

“Jack, we can
get another car out here. Craig’s close. I’ll call him. We’ll watch the house.
These drunks aren’t going anywhere.”

I said
nothing, kept my eyes on the man in front of me.