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The Sleeping and the Dead
A Jackie Lyons Mystery
By Jeff Crook St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2012 Jeff Crook
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-01481-8
CHAPTER 1
I sat at the deepest corner of the bar away from the door, trying to get the bartender's attention without my hands shaking. He finally noticed and came over — young kid, obnoxiously cute with his manicured chin stubble, pouty moist bottom lip, lips too pretty for a guy. Lips I'd kill to have. He wore tight jeans with the circle of a snuff can lid worn into the back left pocket. "You got a cigarette?" I asked.
"No smoking. City ordinance," he said. He wiped his hands on a bar towel. He had good hands, no rings, no watch, long fingers, the skin moist and healthy-looking from the lotion he had just applied. But he was way too young. Way too young. But what was too young anymore? He was old enough to serve drinks.
"Waiting for somebody?" he asked.
"A bartender. Seen one?" He laughed at my joke as though he'd heard it before. "How about a beer?"
"What flavor?"
"Whatever's closest."
I took a bar napkin from the stack in front of me and blew my nose into the restaurant's logo. He pushed a pressed cardboard coaster across the bar to me, then drew a glass of Icehouse from the tap and set it in on the coaster. I didn't take it right away. I watched the bubbles rise in the thin yellow beer while I pulled a blister pack from my shirt pocket and shoved the last two red sinus pills through the foil onto the bar, Frisbeed the empty pack into the garbage pail behind the bar, popped the pills into my mouth, washed them down with about half the beer, feeling it burn through the bilge layers coating the back of my throat. I returned the glass carefully to the bar and tried not to suck air while I waited for the shakes to go away.
When the phone rang, I had a couple more beers in me and the sinus pills were starting to kick in. I was back in battery so I answered it. "What's up, Adam?"
"You moved, Jacqueline."
"I got a new place on Summer Avenue across the street from the Methodist church," I replied. "I was going to call you."
"I heard about the fire. I didn't realize it was your apartment until I stopped by and saw the crater." I could hear the sound of his car engine, the radio squawking something unintelligible in the background as he spoke. "I checked with a guy I know in arson. The fire started with a candle in the bathroom. You were using again, Jackie."
"I can't light a match without you thinking I'm sticking needles in my arm!" I was angrier than I should have been. "I'm in control, for once, maybe for the first time in my life. I'm taking things one day at a time, recalibrating my life. I turned the page, Adam." True, I had only turned the page yesterday, but you got to turn it sometime. In the olden days, I would never have dropped two grand on a new camera, like I had just done. That kind of money buys a hell of a lot of bonita.
"So in control you almost killed yourself?" He wouldn't let it go.
"It wasn't that bad."
"Shit, Jackie, they said you were floating so high they had to carry you out. Another three minutes and I'd be going to your funeral."
"Don't hate me because I'm lucky."
"You ain't lucky, Jackie." He stated fact. "You're the unluckiest shit I ever met. You got lucky once and now you think Judas is your friend. You got to come back to NA."
"I'm still going." Adam was my Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, but I hadn't been to a meeting with him in ages. I had made it past the first few of their twelve steps, admitting my life was a hopeless shambles. That was easy, but by that time, I'd been to enough meetings to see even the leaders hadn't done anything more than switch addictions, from drugs to God, whatever got them through the day. Addiction is addiction and I couldn't see the difference, but the court said I had to go, so I went.
"Where's your meetings?"
"Some dump off Tutwiler. Is that why you called?"
"I'm still your sponsor, but that's not why I called." I heard him stop his car, open the door and get out. "I'm calling because you got a job."
"I'm meeting somebody." I winced as the tension over the phone jacked up about eight notches.
"Somebody who?"
I knew what he was thinking. The only people I ever met were ambulance chasers, junkies and dealers. "I'm buying a new camera. I'm meeting the seller to give him the rest of his money."
"Do you want this job or not? Meet me at the Orpheum. I'm there now." He hung up. Adam wasn't usually such a hardass, but hearing he was at the Orpheum gave me a pretty good idea what had put him in high order.
I paid my tab and left. It was pouring outside and I didn't own an umbrella. The normally busy street looked like a parking lot, a fire truck blocking most of the lanes, cars backed up for miles, cop cars and ambulance lights flashing through the rain. Every exit from the parking lot was blocked and I wasn't going anywhere soon, so I ran to my car and grabbed my Canon from the backseat. The day before, I had dropped two grand on a new Leica M8 digital camera. I still owed five hundred on it, and I had just paid first and last month's rent on a new apartment, so I needed every bit of folding money I could broom together. I barely had enough to pay for the beers. If I could steer a little business toward one of my lawyer friends, he'd pay me for the photos of the accident.
I hurried across the parking lot and started shooting pictures. A Memphis Police Department cruiser had T-boned a white Skylark. The Skylark sat on the sidewalk under a bus-stop canopy advertising personal-injury-lawyer services. The patrol car was folded up on the median strip. I got some shots of blood on the open passenger-side door before the rain completely washed it away. There was blood pooled in the passenger-side seat. The firemen were in no hurry to get their equipment cleared, as the wreckers hadn't showed yet. The cops on the scene looked like they had eaten a shit sandwich. They didn't even try to stop me.
I gave the driver of the Skylark a business card. They had just taken his wife and mother-in-law away in the ambulance. I don't know if they survived. He was an older white guy, dressed in gray slacks, white shirt and blue windbreaker. The front of his shirt was pink with somebody else's blood. He didn't have a scratch on him.
"You need a ride to the hospital?" I asked.
"My cousin's coming to get me," he said.
There were spiderwebs in the cruiser's windshield where the cop's face had smacked it. I saw him standing alone by his wrecked car with his face torn up and bloody, his uniform shirt hanging open, EKG wires dangling from his chest. I raised my camera to get a picture of him, but he didn't appear on the viewscreen. Just his wrecked cruiser. He wasn't really there.
"You work for a lawyer?" the driver asked.
"Preston Park, like it says on the card." I lowered the camera. The cop wandered over to the curb and sat down. "Do you see that policeman?"
"Hell no, I didn't see him coming. He didn't have his flashers on," the driver explained, misunderstanding my question. "If I had seen him, I never would have pulled out. They said he was responding to a call. He should have had his flashers going."
"Did you see what happened to him after the accident?"
"I don't know. They took him away in the ambulance about ten minutes ago."
I could still see the cop sitting on the curb with his bloody face in his hands. People were walking right past him, not even looking at him. I tried to push him out of my mind. I looked back at the driver and said, "Give Mr. Park a call and I'll forward your pictures."
"I can't pay you." He put the card in his wallet.
"Not a problem." Preston would pay me and add the expense to his share of the settlement.
"How much do you think I'll get from this?" the guy asked.
I didn't bother answering. I took a few more pictures of the scene and left him thoughtfully rubbing his neck. Traffic was starting to inch along. My cell phone was ringing when I got in my car. It was Adam again. I let it ring.
CHAPTER 2
I hated driving in the rain at night, but that's all it ever did in Memphis in November. The raindrops sounded like somebody dragging a chain across the roof of my car. The wipers bumped back and forth, streaking the greasy windshield. My phone rang again, but this time it wasn't Adam. I answered it.
"I'm at the bar. The traffic was killer," James said. He was the guy selling me the new camera. We were supposed to be meeting tonight so I could pay him the rest of his money.
"I got called out on a job."
"What kind of job?"
"Crime scene."
"Are you a cop?"
"Not anymore. I just take pictures now. There's a dead body at the Orpheum. It'll be all over the news tonight. You should watch, maybe you'll see me on television."
"That's incredible. When you said you were a photographer, I had no idea you did that kind of ... thing." I couldn't tell if he sounded pleasantly surprised or scared surprised. Some guys freak when they find out you take pictures of dead people. Why wouldn't they? James St. Michael wouldn't have been the first, but I didn't think that was his particular problem. At least he wasn't pissed that I had stood him up. It was just a dinner date, after all, and not even a real date. That's what I told myself and I almost believed it, too. At the same time, I got the feeling he was in a hurry to hang up. But so was I.
I helped him out. "I'll call you tomorrow."
"OK." We hung up, but there was a new tension between us and I didn't know what it was. I didn't have time to think about it.
The marquee lights of the Orpheum Theatre were dark but Beale Street was lit up like Vegas. I parked beside an MPD squad car in the middle of South Main. The three local news stations had their vans set up across the street. The sidewalk was packed with people, curbs blocked by cop cars, a fire truck and an ambulance idling in front of the main entrance. Busy night for everybody.
I was climbing out of my car when a young male traffic cop grabbed my door and told me I couldn't obscenity park there. "She's with me!" Sergeant Adam McPeake shouted from the front door of the theater. He waved me over. I smiled at the traffic cop as he reluctantly stepped aside, then ducked under the police tape and hurried through the rain. Adam held open the door next to the box office. "Jesus, Jackie. You don't look like shit for once," he snarked, looking me up and down. My friend.
They had all the crystal chandeliers lit up inside, bright as opening night. The lobby was filled with cops dicking the dog and scuffing up the carpet with their wet shoes. Nothing like a murder to flush the bastards out of the walls. I stopped beside the concierge desk and waited while Adam spoke to a guy with bruised shadows in the hollows of his eyes. Adam brought him over and introduced him as the theater manager. "Dave found the victim," he explained. We shook hands. His grip was weak and shaky, his hand hot and damp, like he had just washed it. He had short dark hair combed back from a sharp widow's peak, and thick, close-set eyebrows that drew closer together as he glanced at the cops in the lobby parlor. Some were leaning against a wall decorated with publicity photos of celebrities who'd played the Orpheum over the last umpteen years. The theater was built in 1890, burned to the ground in 1923 during a striptease vaudeville, rebuilt in 1928, and completely refurbished and reopened in 1984, my senior year in high school. I remember my parents bringing me for the grand opening, but not what they were showing that night — I just remember hating it on principle because I was too Fonzie-cool to enjoy anything my parents liked.
Advertisements around the lobby announced several upcoming shows — Rent opened the day after Thanksgiving, High School Musical in December, and Verdi's opera Macbeth in January. I wouldn't have minded seeing Rent, or maybe Holiday Inn, which was showing just before Christmas, if I'd had money for tickets, which I didn't. I thought about asking the manager if he could hook me up, but I had already forgotten his name.
The doors opened again and Dr. Paul Wiley, city medical examiner, entered lugging two tackle boxes full of equipment. He spotted me right away and glared, his liver spots flushing. He had his own people to take crime-scene photos. I smiled, extended my hand. He stopped but he didn't return the gesture. He smelled like Old Spice and latex.
"Jacqueline," he said. "I hope you don't plan to walk all over my evidence this time."
"I'll try to stay out of your way," I said.
"See that you do."
"If you promise to keep your big head out of my pictures," I added. I had nothing personal against him but he was dreadfully famous old money and didn't like dealing face-to-face with us peons, especially peons of the female persuasion, unless we were dead. Being an early disciple of Spanky and Alfalfa's He-Man Woman Haters Club, he was almost as famous for his militant, anachronistic misogyny as his talent as a professional body snatcher. He refused to be interviewed on air by female reporters and had gotten himself in trouble a few times with the Equal Opportunity bureaucrats. Paul Wiley came from an old Memphis family, mostly surgeons; his great-uncle Ted had been a part of Boss Crump's political machine. Wiley sat on the board of just about everything of consequence, from the hospitals to the utility company to the Memphis Ballet.
Deputy Chief of Investigative Services W. E. Billet swept down the grand stairs from the mezzanine, entering the lobby in his dress blue uniform, polished brass buttons sparkling under the crystal chandeliers. The only person Wiley hated more than me was Billet.
Billet was young, brilliant, black, photogenic, and a favorite of the mayor. He and Wiley had an ongoing feud and were forever seeking new ways to sabotage each other. That's why I was there; that and the deputy chief liked having his own crime-scene pictures. For his part, Wiley was habitually slow with his findings, forcing Billet to wait days for even the most basic forensic test results. Meanwhile, a serial murderer was walking the streets and these two politicians conducted ongoing ratfucking evolutions preparing for the day when one would be named director of the Memphis Police Department and the other forced to retire or run out of town completely.
Sergeant Adam McPeake was my connection to this bag of dicks. He recommended me to Chief Billet four years ago, before the Playhouse Killer had cooked his first victim. McPeake was younger and better-looking than Billet, carved from mahogany so rich he almost glowed, and smart where it counted. Smart enough never to cross his boss or get between him and a camera. I had brought him up from traffic when he was a rookie and introduced him to vice. He made it into homicide through a combination of hard work and the golden horseshoe lodged up his ass. He'd overcome a cocaine addiction that nearly cost him his career, but he was also a shrewd politician and knew how to play the system, so he'd been able to hang on to his job. I had pissed mine away.
Chief Billet trailed Wiley into the theater. Adam and I followed, along with what appeared to be half the police department. "Don't these people have jobs?" I said as I turned on my cameras. I had brought my Canon, my work camera, in addition to the new Leica.
"Everybody thinks it's the Playhouse Killer," Adam said.
"Isn't it?"
"I don't think so." For some reason, I was relieved by that. I had learned a long time ago to treat this like a job, but the Playhouse murders got to me.
From the back of the auditorium, the body looked like a pile of old bedding left on stage. It lay in a pool of white light. Wiley's assistant was already circling it, snapping photos. The victim lay facedown under an old mattress freckled with overlapping liver-colored stains, with only his naked brown legs visible from the knees down. As soon as we got on stage, I secured a flash to the top of my Canon and started shooting.
At the first snap, Dr. Wiley glared up from his open tackle boxes. "Keep her back!" he shouted. Chief Billet smiled and waved me on, so I continued to shoot. I took several photos of the bottoms of the victim's feet, which were black with grime. I saw no signs of blood on either the stage or the mattress.
Dr. Wiley had his techs spread a sheet of plastic next to the body and then lift the mattress aside and lay it on the sheet. Dave, the theater manager, turned green and asked Adam if he could leave. Adam nodded and he hurried up the aisle with one hand over his mouth.
I snapped some shots of the cops standing around the stage in this surreal overhead light, with the darkness stretching up and away behind them. At the rear of the highest balcony, I noticed a young girl standing under an Exit sign, watching us work. I turned my Canon on her and looked at her through the viewfinder, but the screen was empty. I didn't say anything. Nobody else would be able to see her.
Wiley spoke into a digital recorder, describing the state of the victim. "Black male, early twenties, approximately five-ten, one hundred and thirty pounds, nude, discovered lying facedown beneath a mattress. A three-foot length of electrical conduit is lodged in the victim's anus."
"I think the cause of death is obvious," Chief Billet said.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sleeping and the Dead by Jeff Crook. Copyright © 2012 Jeff Crook. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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