Dead_Wood

Forty-six

This is what it must be like to go insane. Black sky. Flashes of brilliant white. Ear-shattering cracks of thunder. A roaring motor. And the voices. The voices that shout your name. That shout nonsense. The voices that keep shouting long after you’ve tried to stop hearing them.

I went out and when I came back, all I could tell was that everything felt soft. I felt a needle go in my arm.

And then more blackness.

• • •



“Laying around in bed,” I heard a voice say. “How typical.”

I struggled to open my eyes, but it was like jerking open an old garage door. The hinges felt rusty. The light that poured in was bright and stabbing. I closed my eyes again to try to stop the pain that seemed to pierce the middle of my head.

“Gross, look at how much he drooled on his pillow,” the voice said again. This time I recognized the bemused irony.

“Ellen,” I said. My throat felt like 60-grit sandpaper.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up,” I managed.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “I let you saw logs all night. I know how much you need your beauty sleep, but it’s time to make your statement.”

“I already did. I said shut up. That’s my statement.”

She sighed and I heard the scrape of a chair across the floor. Now the voice was next to me. I opened my eyes and she was handing me a glass with orange juice in it.

“Drink up, Gilligan,” she said.

I took a drink and tried to sit up. My ribs ached and I had a few thousand sore spots on my body. I took another drink and turned a small corner toward feeling human again.

“Start with when you left the scene of Molly’s murder,” she said.

It took me the better part of a half hour, with plenty of breaks, to describe the shootout with Erma and Freda, the connection I made between Rufus Coltraine and Memphis Bornais and then my decision to meet Shannon on my boat.

When I got to the part about Teddy and his hired killer showing up, I said, “It was him, Ellen.”

“Who?”

“The guy with Teddy. It was him. The guy who killed Benjamin Collins.”

“Come again?” she said.

“I haven’t lost my mind, Ellen.”

“You need to rest,” she said.

“No, I don’t. It was him, Ellen. The guy I turned Benjamin Collins over to. The guy who cut him up and tossed him in the lake.”

She held up her hands. “Okay, okay, let’s finish talking about this later.”

“But—”

“Shannon Sparrow showed up at the station this morning,” Ellen said. “She has a little tape recorder she carries around for song ideas. She recorded her manager admitting to orchestrating the murders of Memphis and the others.”

“And Teddy?”

She shook her head. “Gone.”

That made sense to me. If he was connected, whether to the Mob or just the criminal underground in general, he’d probably have a way to hide. Who knew how much of Shannon’s money he had squirreled away?

Ellen left, then, and I retreated into my favorite hobby.

Sleeping.





Forty-seven

People from across the border in Canada, people from Ohio, Indiana and as far away as Chicago began to show up as early as eight hours before the concert. Everyone was talking about the event on the radio. ‘Shannon Sparrow’s free concert!’ they boomed across the airwaves.

Coupled with the media attention the murders had created, Shannon’s name had been splashed across the public’s eye more times than could be counted. Some had even put forth a conspiracy theory that it was all a giant publicity stunt.

The show was being put on in the middle of the village. There were cop cars everywhere, roads had been blocked off, and the village was swarming with people.

I took Anna and the girls, and picked up Clarence Barre on the way. Shannon had given us all v.i.p. passes so we could watch the concert from off to the side of the stage.

One of Shannon’s roadies provided us with five chairs and we sat down, at least the adults did. The girls were singing and dancing around, too keyed up to sit.

“Is this what your shows were like?” I asked Clarence.

“Yeah,” he said. “I gave a lot of free shows, too – but only because no one would pay me.”

I had never really seen a happy Clarence before. Not that I would call him ‘happy’ per se, but it did seem that a giant weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He’d taken the news well when I told him that a songwriter, Memphis Bornais, had arranged to have Jesse killed. And that, ultimately, Shannon’s manager had tried to cover it all up.

He shook his head. It upset him that Jesse hadn’t told him she was beginning to write songs. It made sense to me, from what I’d learned about her through Nevada Hornsby. Jesse was independent. She didn’t want to tread on her father’s name. And knowing that if she told him, he’d probably call up producers and performers he knew, using his contacts to give her a break, she had decided to go her own way.

“Gosh, they’re beautiful,” he said, gesturing toward my daughters. Isabel and Nina now had their arms around each other and were doing some kind of chorus line. Christ, what a couple of hams. Take after their mother, obviously.

Anna put an arm around Clarence’s shoulders.

“I’m glad John could help you,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, but I can guess that it feels good to have it resolved.”

He nodded, his big silvery mane flowing like expensive silk. Damn, Kenny Rogers was back.

A local disc jockey appeared on stage and did the usual big introduction for Shannon, and then amid thunderous applause and a few pyrotechnics, she appeared.

Shannon wore a short skirt, cowboy boots, and a white blouse. I recognized her bandmates even though most of them now looked sober. I’d only seen them when they were drunk or getting stoned.

Anna, Clarence and I all applauded.

She slung the guitar over her shoulders.

It was a beautiful instrument, handmade by Jesse Barre. The cops eventually found it at Memphis Bornais’ farmhouse, in her music room. On public display. The cops actually gave it to Clarence, but he felt that it was intended all along for Shannon, so it was hers now.

Shannon stepped to the microphone.

“I’d like to dedicate this concert to a very special person,” Shannon said. “Her name is Jesse Barre. She had beauty inside her. And she created beauty in everything she did.”

I stole a glance at Clarence. He was already starting to cry.

“She made this guitar,” Shannon said, and she lifted it off her chest away from her toward the crowd. It truly looked spectacular under the lights. The very embodiment of beauty.

“She also had just begun to write songs, before her life was tragically taken from her.”

Clarence stood, and Shannon looked at him.

“I’m going to record her songs and put out a CD next year,” Shannon said. “The proceeds of which will go to the Jesse Barre Foundation.”

The crowd applauded and I admired Shannon. She was trying to do the right thing.

“Here’s a little something she wrote. I don’t know if she had her father in mind when she wrote it, but I had a feeling she did.”

Shannon put the pick to the strings and the song seemed to flow out of her. I thought of all the tragedy, the killing and lives wasted over the music I was hearing now.

I hugged Anna.

I hugged the girls

And I even hugged Clarence.

Shannon was right.

Jesse Barre created beauty.

I was seeing it right now.





Forty-eight

Ellen was in a meeting with a task force from Wayne County formed to track down a prostitution ring that was believed to be bringing in teenage girls against their will from cities like Chicago and Cleveland.

I sat in Ellen’s office, listening to the cop chatter in the hallways, the traffic out on Mack Avenue.

For the first time in my life, I felt hope. Hope that one day I might catch the man who killed Benjamin Collins. They say that you never know what life will bring you. That what initially appears to be great misfortune can often turn into great opportunities.

When Teddy Armbruster showed up on my boat, I thought it was all over.

Now, I realized, it was a new beginning.

• • •



“Haven’t you given me enough paperwork to deal with?” Ellen said, breezing into her office, the leather of her gunbelt creaking like an old saddle.

“Hey, I’m just another taxpayer making sure I get my money’s worth. Public servants like you need to be kept to task, my dear,” I said.

“God you’re such an ass,” she said.

“I want the Benjamin Collins file.”

She laughed outright. “Oh, sure. A private citizen demanding police files – open cases at that. What next? You want a shotgun? Borrow a squad car? Take a couple Kevlar vests for the kids?”

“The case is open?” I asked.

“Did I say that?” she said.

“Yeah, you did.”

“Well, I guess it is, then.”

“Had it been moved from the cold case files?”

She didn’t answer that right away.

“Come on, Ellen, it’s me, John. Your brother.”

This softened her just a bit, although she still didn’t say anything.

“Has Teddy started talking?” I asked.

Armbruster was busted in Chicago, trying to go undercover with his Mob friends, but he got caught on a FBI surveillance camera going into a house. He was brought back to Detroit the day before.

She shook her head. “He’s dummied up with the best Mob defense lawyer money can buy.”

“It’ll be a long trial,” I said.

She nodded.

I took a deep breath.

“I need that file, Ellen.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

I knew what she meant, but instead, I said “Go to Kinko’s and copy it – have it back on your desk in fifteen minutes. No one the wiser.”

She looked at me, really studying me. “Are you going to do anything stupid?”

“Of course I am, that’s my whole modus operandi.”

“I know, but something that will get you killed and leave Anna and those girls without a father?”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not. But now that I know Benjamin Collins was most likely a hit – a contract kill – that changes everything.”

She sighed and pulled the file out of one of her desk drawers. I knew she didn’t usually keep files there, so she had it ready for me. This was all a pretense – a warning to take it easy and take it slow.

I would do my best.

I took the file and said, “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “That’s a copy.”

She smiled at that.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Just trying to keep the taxpayers happy,” she said.





Forty-nine

It had all started with the lake.

I pulled my car off Lake Shore Drive, parked it on an opposing street and walked down to the water’s edge.

It was a calm morning, the lake a sheet of blue green glass. I had the file in my hand and I sat down on the grass. The grass was cold and damp, but somehow, everything felt good and felt right.

I felt like I belonged here.

They never found the man’s body. The next day, divers had gone down to my boat which had broken up into a few hundred pieces. They found lots of debris; wood, and pieces of the radio and minutia from the boat’s cabin.

But they didn’t find a body.

I knew there was no way he could have survived being impaled, and then taken underwater. He would have had to somehow swim to shore with a devastating injury in the middle of five foot waves.

Impossible.

It didn’t matter to me, though.

He was alive now in my memory. And dead or alive, I knew he would lead me to the final answer to what happened to Benjamin Collins.

That’s really all that mattered.

I looked at the file in my lap. This was going to be my chance to set things right. Redemption, I guess.

I took a deep sigh and ran my finger along the inside of the file’s cover.

I held my breath.

And opened the file.

THE END