The Dead Play On BY Heather Graham
Dedicated to our men and women in the military, past and present.
And to the USO and International Thriller Writers—especially Sloan D Gibson and John Hanson of the USO, Tom Davin and Chris Schneider of 5.11 Tactical and Kim Howe of ITW.
To those who work at Walter Reed, the hospitals and bases in Kuwait, Ramstadt and Mildenhall.
And to Kathleen Antrim, Harlan Coben, Phil Margulies and F. Paul Wilson—with whom I shared one of the most amazing experiences of my life, a USO tour to visit our servicemen and women.
We can never thank those who serve—who risk everything—enough.
Prologue
TYLER ANDERSON KNEW the band’s set list; hell, he’d been playing with the B-Street Bombers for years. They could change things up when they wanted, but it was a Wednesday night, and most Wednesday nights they just kept to the list. They played hard, and they played well, but the weekends tended to be way crazier, with bachelor parties, conventions and the crowds—mainly tourists—that thronged the French Quarter. Wednesdays they did their most popular songs, cover songs by Journey, the Beatles, the Killers and other older songs, along with some newer hits that had made the Top 40 list.
And then something happened.
He picked up his sax—his beloved saxophone, his one precious memento from his friend Arnie Watson.
Arnie was dead and buried now. He’d survived three tours in Afghanistan, only to come home and die of a drug overdose. Arnie’s brokenhearted mother had insisted that Tyler take his saxophone. After all, they’d learned to play together on the sometimes mean streets of New Orleans, working their way up over the years from dollars tossed in their instrument cases to playing scheduled dates in real clubs.
And so Tyler had decided that he could keep his friend close by playing the sax.
But when he picked it up that night, something—he didn’t know what—happened.
They were supposed to go into Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory,” but he didn’t give anyone a chance to begin. He was suddenly playing—and he didn’t know why. He wasn’t even sure he knew what he was playing.
And then he did.
Out of nowhere, he realized, he’d started playing The Call’s “I Still Believe,” which had enjoyed a moment of glory in the vampire film The Lost Boys. It was a good song—a great song for a sax player, with a challenging arrangement. Arnie had loved to play it.
But he had never played the song himself. Didn’t know it.
But he did now. It was as if the damned sax was playing itself.
And as he played, Tyler felt as if the room was drifting away in a strange fog. And suddenly he was seeing things that Arnie might have seen. Sand and mountains and withered shrubs. He heard explosions and men shouting. There was blood.
But...
Arnie had returned from Afghanistan. He’d gone “down range” from his base in Kuwait three times, but he’d come back.
Then the sounds of the explosions dimmed and he saw a New Orleans street.
Rampart Street.
Where Arnie had died.
They’d estimated his time of death at about 5:00 a.m. There should still have been a few people about. Rampart was the edge of the Quarter; Treme was across the street, and while not the best part of town, it had been all right since the summer of storms and the television series. Yeah, there should have been plenty of people around. While a certain song might claim that New York was the city that never slept, everyone knew that title really belonged to New Orleans.
In the wake of his vision, Tyler felt as if he were being physically assaulted, and he found himself gripping the sax as he played as if it were his lifeline. And as he played, the club began to fade again.
He felt as if he were with his old childhood friend, walking down Rampart. They knew it well, having grown up in the Treme area. Not far from St. Louis #1. And churches! Hell, there were churches everywhere around here.
But Arnie was scared, and Tyler could feel it.
Arnie started to run.
It was the oddest damned thing. Tyler could vaguely see reality—the crowd in the Bourbon Street bar. And he could see somewhere else deep in his mind, where Arnie was. It was almost as if he were Arnie.
Beneath the sound of the music he heard a rumble...and a whisper.
“You’re dead, buddy. You’re dead.”
Cold. Cold filled him. Cold like...death.
Then, suddenly, he wasn’t playing anymore. The night was alive with the sound of applause. He blinked—and he was back at La Porte Rouge. His fellow band members were staring at him as if he’d turned pink.