From A Dead Sleep Read online

  “Guess what, Sean?”

  “What?”

  “The river doesn’t flow all the way to New Mexico.”

  “I know. It’s a figure of . . . Oh, forget it.” Sean crossed the room and collapsed back down into the recliner. He leaned back, placed his hand to his head, and gazed up at the ceiling.

  “What are you doing, Sean?” asked Toby.

  “Thinking.”

  “About what?”

  Sean turned his head to the boy, uncertain where to begin. Toby was now leaning back on a wooden kitchen chair with his own hand pressed to his own head, emulating Sean. A soft thunk could be heard from Rocco conking his head up against the kitchen pantry.

  “I’m thinking that Rocco needs breakfast,” Sean said with a sigh. “Want to give him some?”

  “Sure!” The boy rose from his seat in excitement. “What do you feed him?”

  Sean motioned to the same pantry that Rocco had just bumped up against.

  “Bottom shelf.”

  Toby went to work while Sean glanced out a window. It was a beautiful day; the sun was strong and encouraging.

  “We should look for that dead guy,” Toby stated after returning the bag of dog food to the pantry.

  “We’d never find him, Toby.”

  “We should still look. You never know. He might turn up—maybe get hung up on a branch or something. If he has bright blonde hair, he might stick out.”

  Sean shook his head.

  “Did you already throw away the comic section?” Toby asked, picking up the scrap of newspaper from the kitchen table.

  “No. That ain’t even our paper,” Sean answered, marveling at how spontaneously the boy’s attention pivoted.

  The boy’s eyes darted along the scrap’s wording like the print head of an old dot matrix. Toby then said, “Who do you know in Traverse City, Michigan?”

  Sean’s face displayed puzzlement. “No one. What are you talking about?”

  Toby looked up at the big man with a mischievous grin draped across his full face. “You sent a big letter to someone in Traverse City, Michigan. I saw it.”

  Sean leapt up from his chair and pressed Toby to clarify. Toby pointed to the written notes in red ink on the newspaper and slyly boasted that he recognized Sean’s handwriting. Sean quickly snatched the paper from Toby and re-read it.

  “I didn’t write this, dumb-ass! Someone else did!”

  Toby’s shoulders lowered and his expression turned to one of puzzlement. “So then . . .” he started. “You know someone who knows someone in Traverse City, Michigan.”

  “Toby, you’re starting to piss me off. What are you saying?”

  Toby retold the story he had told Sean the previous day, about running into the town’s postal carrier with his bike, resulting in a bag of letters spilling out over the sidewalk. While helping the angry mailman pick up his letters, Toby’s eye had taken notice of a large envelope with the address labeled in red ink.

  “One-fourteen Bluff Walk Road,” Toby added.

  The boy explained that the handwriting on the envelope was the same as on the newspaper before him. Typically, Sean would have disregarded such a claim as nonsense or a child’s imagination, but Toby’s statement triggered a not-so-distant memory. At Toby’s birthday party months earlier, Sean had watched in awe as the boy successfully identified the giver of each gift by matching the handwriting on the outside of each card with his memory of the returned RSVP cards. Though he knew that Toby’s autism came with mental gifts that he couldn’t understand, Sean was initially convinced the display was some sort of trick. However, some of the other boys and a couple adults continued testing him by each writing a few words on scrap paper. Toby had then rattled the correct names off without hesitation.

  “Look at me, Toby!” Sean said soberly.

  The boy rarely looked anyone in the eyes, but for Sean he did so reliably.

  “Are you sure the handwriting’s the same? It’s really important.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “How sure?”

  “I’m positive. It looks like it was written with the same pen, too.”

  Sean read honesty and certainty in the boy’s eyes. He knew that Toby had no reason to deceive him, and he wasn’t sure he was even capable of deception.

  “Are you going to tell me who wrote this?” the boy pressed before lowering his eyes back to the newspaper.

  Sean watched the boy’s attention turn to the map for the fishing contest. Toby began carefully tracing the roads with his finger.

  Several emotions filtered down through Sean’s head: unspoken gratitude to the child for his help connecting missing pieces to the puzzle, some guilt for how he typically treated Toby, and a strong sense of relief, as if a release valve had been opened in the corridors of his mind. After a few moments, he answered the boy’s question.

  “Toby, once I find out, you’ll be the first to know.”

  He placed the palm of his large hand gently along the top of Toby’s head. A dash of familiarity quickly flirted with Sean’s memory. It was the image of Sean’s father doing the same to him the night before he had left for good.

  Toby repeated the address again at Sean’s request. Sean wrote it down on a notepad. It made sense why Toby originally thought the handwriting was Sean’s. Sean hadn’t RSVP’d to his party, nor given him a birthday card. Toby had never seen Sean’s handwriting and naturally assumed that the writing on the newspaper belonged to him.

  “What was the name?” Sean asked, his eyes glaring at the address.

  “What name?”

  “The name on the envelope. You know, above the address.”

  “L.”

  “Elle? As in Elle Macpherson?”

  “Who’s Elle Macpherson?”

  Sean glared at Toby in apparent disgust. “You seriously don’t know who Elle Macpherson is? Please tell me you’re joking. You like girls, don’t you?”

  Toby’s cheeks turned red, and his gaze dropped to the floor. “It wasn’t someone’s name,” he said in embarrassment. “Just the letter L.”

  Sean asked the boy if he had seen another address in the top, left corner—a return address. Toby answered that there was none.

  Sean glanced back at the address in his notepad and then re-read the mysterious, pen-written notes from the newspaper. A lightbulb turned on in his head and he scooped up the empty book of postage stamps that he’d found in the dead man’s brief bag.

  “There were a bunch of stamps on the envelope, weren’t there?”

  Toby nodded, his eyes not leaving the map.

  “And the stamps were Liberty Bells.”

  The boy nodded again.

  Sean’s thoughts leapt back to Lumbergh. He could hand over the address to the chief who could possibly use a computer in the office to find out what was there. Sean sure as hell didn’t know how to get the information on his own. He had no access to the Internet, and the local library was closed on Sundays. He wasn’t convinced either could have helped him anyway. There were few people more computer-illiterate than Sean Coleman.

  The police station computers would have surely been the best resource, but after thinking it over for a minute, Sean was convinced that Lumbergh wouldn’t go for it. He recalled one of the events Lumbergh had rubbed in his face the previous day at the police station—Sean’s suspicions that a teenager who was working at the local gas station was a terrorist.

  Tariq was his name. He was a young man probably close to twenty—a hitchhiker making his way west. Arabic, with thick black hair and a matching beard, he stuck out like a sore thumb in Winston. Sean was driving through town the day he was dropped off by an old van with out-of-state license plates, heading south. Wearing sun-faded clothes, worn-down shoes, and a large army-green backpack over his scrawny shoulders, he walked into the only gas station in town—Perry’s Pump-It.

  What Sean didn’t know as he drove out of town was that Perry, an elderly and overweight man in his seventies, was laid out on th
e floor behind his cash register at the time, suffering a heart attack. Tariq found the immobile station owner and quickly phoned the police. Perry lived and felt so much gratitude toward the young outsider that he offered him a paying job and the back room of his station, where a cot and washroom were turned into a makeshift home.

  The town largely accepted Tariq, but Sean had always been suspicious of him. Having recently watched a Denzel Washington thriller titled The Siege, the small-town security guard had formed a heightened sensitivity toward what he deemed as odd behavior coming from the Middle Easterner. He had noticed Tariq making several late night calls from the phone booth outside the station and had overheard from others that the outsider spent a lot of time up by the Cedar Canyon Dam north of town. When in town, Sean found himself keeping a close eye on Tariq.

  His suspicions were amplified after he saw Tariq stroll out of Bernard’s Pawn Shop one day with a bag that looked to be quite heavy, judging by the way he was walking. Being that Sean was a regular customer, Bernard had no problems addressing his inquiry about the purchase. Tariq had bought a metal ammo can and a handheld stun gun.

  Twenty minutes later, Sean barged into the police station, demanding action. With the chief out of town, Jefferson was successfully bullied into starting a computer background check on Tariq. When the chief returned and caught wind of the situation, he was absolutely furious. Jefferson took an epic verbal beating and was ordered never to use any of the office’s technology for anything relating to Sean Coleman, short of it being used to book him.

  Days later, Tariq was gone. Back hitching along the road, having given Perry the ammo box as a parting gift and carrying the stun gun for protection during his journey.

  The chances of Lumbergh having a change of heart on tracking down a lead from Sean: slim to none. However, Sean was exceedingly coming to terms with the fact that his interest in the dead man and the puzzlement surrounding his death was a venture he was pursuing alone. It was almost better that way.

  Lumbergh had written him off. He didn’t believe Sean’s story. No one in Winston would either.

  Sean had something to prove: he wasn’t the immaterial blow-hard and useless town drunk they pegged him for. A man had died right in front of him. The reason behind the death was a significant riddle that deserved an answer. For Sean, it needed an answer. Regardless if it was for the benefit of the man’s family, the benefit of the truth, or the benefit of himself, Sean would find that answer.

  Then he would find some respect.

  Sean leered at Toby and asked, “Toby, how would you like to look after Rocco for a few days?”

  Chapter 14

  On his way out of town that morning, Sean made a quick stop outside Roy Hughes’s house. He felt The Winston Beacon reporter’s car had far too much air in the tires, so he remedied the problem with the blade of a four-inch buck knife. All four tires.

  Sean was at ease leaving Rocco in Toby’s care. The boy asked if the grouchy dachshund could stay at his place, but Sean knew the boy’s mom wouldn’t be too keen on that. Besides, the blind dog would spend the next few days cracking his skull on every piece of furniture over there. At home, the placement of the room was familiar. Sean left instructions for two check-ins a day and didn’t tell the boy where he was headed—just that he was going out of town. Most people would have asked where, but Toby didn’t. He was too focused on his new job as caretaker. Sean didn’t want anyone to know anyway.

  It was still early when he made it onto I-70. He hit some thick Sunday traffic, mostly weekenders returning from Copper Mountain, Breckenridge, and Vail to head back to work the next day. Once out of the mountains, he headed north, advancing along the foothills.

  He found a gas station that accepted a personal check shortly before he crossed the state line. He signed the check with a garbled signature that couldn’t possibly be confused with his natural one. Above it, he wrote his driver’s license number with a few digits out of place, laying the groundwork for a fraud claim once the check inevitably bounced. He gambled on the droopy-eyed, gum-smacking teenager at the cash register not noticing the discrepancy, and he won that bet. He hoped to use the same technique to finance more of the trip if he needed to. Within minutes, he was cruising through the farm lands of Nebraska.

  The old Nova was dependable—one of the few things in Sean’s life that was. Other than a shot muffler, it ran smooth. Zed helped him maintain it over the years, and he seemed to take pride in doing so. It had been years since Sean had driven out of state, and he had forgotten the sense of freedom that came with it.

  Outside of Winston, he was a stranger. There was no monkey riding his back out on the open road—just fellow travelers adjoined only by their shared anonymity. When a couple of bikers on Harleys passed him on the left, he perused them with mild envy. Most people may have looked at guys like them as hoodlums who’d voided their lives of any real responsibility. Sean, however, found himself admiring them and the way they embraced independence. They lived with the wind in their face, exploring new places and meeting new people. What was so wrong with that?

  Sean had a long drive ahead of him, but with each new stretch of pavement and every slope and bend came a heightened sense of conviction that had eluded him most of his life.

  Chapter 15

  “Stifle it!” Edith Bunker shouted at her husband Archie, much to the delight of the studio audience who roared with laughter and broke into applause.

  A thin strand of drool dropped from Delores Coleman’s slanted lower lip when she opened her mouth to unleash an abrupt chuckle. Diana leaned forward over her mother who was seated stiffly in a firm, tightly cushioned chair stationed across from a twenty-five-inch television in the corner of the living room. With a dash of sadness tainting her faint smile, Diana reached for a napkin held to Delores’s chest by two alligator clips strung around the elderly woman’s neck like a piece of jewelry. A few dabs did the trick.

  She planted a quick kiss on her mother’s cheek, taking a moment to search for a hint of reaction in her mother’s eyes. There was none. The sitcom had her full attention. Diana returned to the side window where a half empty bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels rested on the narrow ledge below. She felt the inviting warmth from outside taunt her hands and face while she continued wiping the single-paned glass in a circular motion.

  This wasn’t quite where she saw her college degree taking her— working as a full-time caregiver for her mother in the small Colorado town that she’d grown up in. Like her husband, she missed the city— the museums, the dining, and even the shopping, though she never considered herself a girlie-girl. But Illinois never felt like home. The small town of Winston—the place she’d spent years daydreaming of leaving—tugged at her heart while she was away. For her, the return didn’t stem solely from the sense of responsibility she had to her mother. Life was simple in Winston. Easy. Safe. The folks, most of whom she’d grown up around, were usually friendly and always genuine. Here, she knew the hand she was dealt. The Chicago area was a wildcard.

  Three months before her mother’s stroke, Diana had received an unexpected, late night call from her husband—one that chilled her to the core. She hadn’t a clue what her sober-sounding but out of-breath husband was talking about when he kept repeating, “I’m okay,” over and over again.

  She’d turned off the television early that night to curl up with a new book in their small but cozy townhouse, else she would have seen the grainy video of flashing emergency lights as a lead-in to a breaking news report. Gary had been involved in a shootout.

  He was accompanying a gang unit officer whose regular partner was at a nearby hospital witnessing the birth of his first child. The officer was working a lead in a homicide investigation in the downtown area. There’d been some miscommunication on the address of a possible witness. Moments after knocking on the wrong apartment door and identifying themselves, the unsuspecting policemen were greeted with a round from a shotgun through a rusty mail slot just in
ches from them. Directly through his knee, Officer Jose Torrez took a mixture of shrapnel from the slug and a metal plate blown loose from the wall. Gary, luckily, wasn’t hit.

  While Gary pulled the fallen policeman around a hallway corner to safety, the man inside the apartment tried to flee through the aged fire escape that dangled outside his rear window. In his haste, he lost his footing and fell three stories into a life of permanent paralysis below the hips.

  It turned out that the shooter had been running a small meth lab out of his kitchen. An avid user of his own product, his chemically induced paranoia led to the end of one man’s career and another one’s legs. It also served as a weighty wake-up call to the lieutenant’s wife.

  Diana knew that a career in law enforcement was laced with a heightened degree of danger. Gary had been very honest with her about that fact as far back as when they started dating. But it wasn’t until that night that the romanticism of being married to a highly respected officer was trumped by the grim reality that the job was one of life or death. What if Gary had been standing to the left side of that dimly lit apartment door instead of the right? What if the gunman had aimed a couple feet higher? What if her husband had been alone that night working that lead?

  Those questions conducted a provocative dance in her mind for months. The city of Chicago had lost its esteem, and her husband’s responsibility to it no longer felt rewarding. Dark alleys that used to go unnoticed were now precarious to Diana. Incidental eye contact with strangers on the street now brought uneasiness. Perhaps most disturbing was her husband’s stoic demeanor following the incident. He was all business, as if it never happened. My God, she found herself thinking, was the cloak of the city strapped so tight that it couldn’t let out what it pulled in? She never admitted it to Gary, but she felt her mother’s stroke may have opened a window to a better life.

  So there she was, back home and taking care of the woman who’d taken care of her for most of her life. Delores wouldn’t have taken to a nursing home, and leaving Sean in charge of her well-being wasn’t even a consideration. Too much bad blood between the two, and a lack of reliability, maturity, and patience on her brother’s part. Unlike Sean, Diana had always had a tight bond with her mother. Their relationship had once resembled that of two sisters, acting as each other’s best friend and support systems through good times and bad. Throughout the years, Diana was often forced into a parental position, portraying the role of mediator in her mother and brother’s loud and animated squabbles. It was an unnerving and tedious job, but she did the best she could.