Dead of Night

The radio buzzed. “Unit Four, what’s your status?”

JT lifted the handset and clicked the Send key. “Dispatch, I’m code six at Pinky’s. You got something for me, Flower?”

Flower Martini, twenty-eight-year-old daughter of love generation boomers, was the dispatcher, secretary, booking photographer, and court stenographer for the Stebbins County Department of Public Safety. She looked like Taylor Swift might look if her career took a sharp downward turn past a long line of seedy country and western bars. She was still cute as a button, and JT was pretty sure she had her eye on him, age and race differences notwithstanding.

“Yeah,” said Flower, “Looks like a possible break-in at Hartnup’s Transition Estate.”

She overpronounced the name, giving it a nice blend of wry appreciation and tacit disapproval. The Hartnup family had been morticians in town for generations, but in the mideighties, during the New Age inrush, the son, Lee, had given the place a makeover. Changed the name from Hartnup’s Funeral Home to the trendier “Transition Estate.” Nondenominational services and a lot of Enya music. It actually sparked a rise in business that drew families from as far as Pittsburgh. Now, with the New Age covered in dust, the name was a local punch line. People still died, though, and the Hartnups still prettied them up and put them in the ground.

“Cleaning lady called from the mortuary office,” said Flower. “Witness is a non-English speaker. All I could get was the location and that something was wrong with the back door. No other details, sorry. You want backup?”

“Dez is with me.”

“Copy that.”

There were only two units on the road at any one time despite the size of the county. Unit One was reserved for Chief Goss and Unit Three was in reserve.

“We’ll investigate and call in if we need backup.”

“Respond Code Two. Proceed with caution … JT.” There was the slightest pause between “caution” and his name, and JT thought he heard Flower start to say “Hon—.” She called him “honey” off the radio all the time and was constantly getting yelled at by the chief. She was the mayor’s sister, and it was more than the chief’s job was worth to fire her.

“Roger that.”

JT clicked off and then tapped the dashboard button to give the siren a single “Whoop!” A moment later the door to Pinky’s banged open, and Dez Fox came out at a near run, a white paper bag between her teeth and two extra-large coffees in paper cups in her hands. She handed a cup through the open window then leaned half inside and opened her mouth to drop the bag in his lap.

“What’s the call?” she asked, looking irritated that police work was interfering with the ritual of caffeine and carbs. JT knew that it was sacred to her.

“Possible break-in at Doc Hartnup’s place.”

“Who the fuck would want to break into a mortuary?”

“Probably a drunk. Even so, I could use some backup.”

“Yeah … let’s do ’er, Hoss … But lights, no sirens though, okay? My head’s held together with duct tape right now.”

“Won’t make a sound,” he promised.

Dez reached in and took the bag back and carried it with her to her cruiser.

“Hey!” JT yelled. She gave him the finger again. When she looked back, JT stuck his tongue out at her and Dez cracked up, then winced and pressed a hand to her head.

“Owwww.”

JT leaned out the window. “Ha!” he yelled.

A few seconds later Dez blew out of the parking lot in a spray of gravel. She hit the blacktop, punched the red and blue lights, and the big engine roared as she rocketed north on Doll Factory Road. JT sighed, snugged his coffee into the holder, and followed at a discreet seventy miles per hour.

CHAPTER SIX

GREEN GATES 55-PLUS COMMUNITY

FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

The old doctor sat on a hard wooden chair in the kitchen and stared at the phone. The call from the warden at Rockview Prison—where the old man worked as the chief medical officer—had been brief. Simply the warden conveying an interesting bit of information. Six words stood out from that conversation.

“We transferred his body this morning.”

Those six words, so casually spoken, were like knives in the doctor’s chest.

We transferred his body this morning.

Forcing his voice to sound calm, forcing himself not to scream, the doctor had asked for, and been given, the names and phone numbers of the mortician who had arrived to take the body and the relative of the deceased who had made the arrangements. A relative the doctor had not known existed. No one had known. There were not supposed to be any relatives. The corpse was supposed to go into the ground after the execution. It was supposed to be in the ground now.

“Oh my god,” the doctor whispered.

He got up from his chair, walked like a sleepwalker into the living room, up the stairs, into his bedroom. He opened the closet, reached up onto the shelf, removed a zipped case, opened it, and stared dazedly at the gun. A Russian Makarov PM automatic pistol. He’d bought it new in 1974. When he had defected, the CIA took the pistol away, but eventually returned it to him. A sign of trust. He sat down on the edge of the bed. There was a box of shells in the case and three empty magazines. The doctor opened the box and began feeding shells into a magazine. He did it slowly, methodically, almost totally unaware of what he was doing. His mind was elsewhere. Miles away, in a small town where a mortician would be opening a body bag.

“God,” he murmured again.

He slid the last bullet into the magazine and slid the mag into the frame. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and held it for ten seconds, then exhaled it slowly as he pulled the slide back to feed a round into the chamber.

The gun was heavy and cold.

It would be quick, though. He knew where and how to place it so that death would be certain. All it would take was a moment’s courage. If courage was the right word. Practical cowardice, perhaps.

Two cold tears boiled out of the corners of his eyes and rolled unevenly over the lines that age, anger, and mania had etched into his cheeks.

He weighed the gun in his palm.

“May God forgive me for what I’ve done,” he whispered.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HARTNUP’S TRANSITION ESTATE

The mortuary was tucked a hundred yards down a winding dead-end road that had been officially renamed Transition Road. The road was bordered by lush evergreens and rampant wildflowers. It always cracked Dez up that there was a big yellow “No Exit” sign right at the turn.

The owner was Lee Hartnup, known as Doc—not because of any medical background, which he did not have, but because he had a PhD. It didn’t matter that his doctorate was in literature with a minor in philosophy, the fact that he had a doctorate at all put him in a very small club within the Stebbins community.

Dez liked Doc. He was a bit of a stiff at times but he was “real people.”

There were several small functional buildings tucked behind a faux mansion used for viewings. There were no lights on and no cars in the lot. The mortuary was around back, so Dez and JT looped behind a thick stand of pines to the service lot. Two cars were parked near a functional-looking rear door. The aloof gray nose of a Cadillac hearse peered out of the shadows of an open garage. A second hearse was up on blocks near it. Dez and JT pulled their cruisers side-by-side, blocking the parked cars. They opened their doors and studied the scene for a moment, then got out.

JT raised his chin at the larger of the two passenger cars, a four-year old silver Lexus. “That’s Doc Hartnup’s. Other one must be the cleaning lady’s.”

The second vehicle was a Ford that was so old and battered that it was virtually impossible to tell the model, year, or color.

The rest of the lot was empty, the morning quiet except for a light breeze that stirred the treetops. The red and blue of their dome lights slashed back and forth across every reflective surface—window glass, the polished skin of the mortician’s car, the dead headlights of the vehicle on blocks.

“Looks quiet,” said Dez.

JT keyed his shoulder mike to channel one. “Dispatch, units on scene. Can you provide location of the witness?”

“No, hon,” said Flower. “I mean, negative. I told her to wait in her car, but she hung up.”

“Copy that.” JT turned to Dez. “Flower said she told the cleaning lady to stay in her car. Maybe she went inside.”

They unsnapped their sidearms as they approached the mortuary, each of them fading to one side to be out of a direct line if someone fired through the door. They came in on good lines of approach, working it like they worked every potential crime scene. The town may have been a no-Starbucks wide spot in a farm road, but they took their jobs seriously.

The cleaning lady had been right. There was something wrong with the back door. Dez saw it first and nodded toward it. JT leaned over and saw that the door was a half inch into the jamb but not far enough for the spring lock to engage.

“How do you want to play it?” he asked quietly. They didn’t speak in whispers. The sibilant ess sounds of whispers carried farther than ordinary voices speaking low.

Dez studied the door. “No sign of force. Lock’s intact. But I don’t like it, Hoss. Boy Scout motto,” she said.

He nodded and they drew their guns. Glock 22s with a round already in the chamber and a fifteen-round high-capacity magazine in the receiver. They both lived by the “Be Prepared” wisdom.

This felt good to Dez. Just the thing to erase the memories of the Love God laying in his puke on her bedroom floor. This kind of entry—or a call to a bar fight or serving a warrant on a child molester—made her blood pump. It made her feel like crawling out of bed in the morning had some purpose. Dez knew, however, that JT hated this part of police work. He was at the opposite end of the evolutionary scale, and Dez knew it. JT actually believed that the “peace” in “peace officer” meant that the job was all about keeping things dialed down to a no-violence, no ass-kicking state.