From A Dead Sleep Read online

  “Hi,” she heard herself timidly say.

  “Hey,” answered the man, whose lumbering hand went quickly to the back of his head where he appeared to scratch an itch.

  A large black bird balancing on a tree limb high above them cackled loudly.

  Lisa waited for the strange man to state his business. He was clearly uncomfortable and seemed almost confused. In a way, it reminded her of the behavior she’d seen from boys back in high school who were building up the nerve to ask her out on a date. But this wasn’t high school, and the prolonged awkwardness was beginning to send a chill up her spine. She felt like a fool for opening the door before looking outside, and even had an impulse to quickly slam it shut and turn the deadbolt before any possible harm could come to her.

  Sean read fear in her eyes as he stood there facing her and understood the obvious tension she felt from his presence. Just say something, he said to himself.

  There were several ways that he could have eased into a conversation with the woman to try and pry information out of her—information that would have helped explain the hard-sought identity of the man from the bridge. However, there was something in his gut that told him that the answers didn’t need to be extracted through one of his bullshit stories. He’d come so far, and the woman standing before him didn’t appear the slightest bit threatening. It was time to be bold and direct, and hope that he was making the right call.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he began. “But I think someone you know is dead.”

  “What?” she yelped. She clearly thought she hadn’t heard him correctly. “What do you mean? Who are you?”

  He shook his head at his own poor phrasing. He then forced himself to breathe and looked her straight in the eyes.

  “My name is Sean. Sean Coleman. Three days ago, I was in Winston, Colorado. That’s where I live. I saw a man kill himself.” He noticed the confusion and fear spreading in her. He kept talking. “That same man sent something to this address before he died.” He could only imagine what thoughts had to be sprinting through this young lady’s mind.

  She said nothing and appeared almost paralyzed by his words.

  “Listen, I know I sound crazy here,” he said with a forced chuckle. “But I’m telling you the truth. I’m here because his body fell from a bridge and into a river . . . and it’s gone. I don’t know his name, and no one even believes me, that I saw what I saw. I just know that he sent something to this house, so you must know him.” He realized he was rambling, but the required words were coming out.

  “And if you don’t know him, maybe I have gone crazy,” he concluded with a tremble in his voice.

  Sean watched her body begin to shake and her eyes begin to well up. Her hand latched onto the doorframe as she turned faint, trying to steady herself. Her eyes left his and went blankly up over his shoulder. He didn’t read doubt in her reaction but rather morbid realization.

  She barely managed to ask, “What did he look like?” It came out in a quick gasp before she looked as if she swallowed some bile.

  “He had really blonde hair and . . .”

  Before he could continue, she let out a piercing howl that echoed off the surrounding trees, making birds there quickly flee. She collapsed down to her knees in a heap before Sean could catch her by the arm.

  Her hands went to her face and her eyes bulged in terror. “Oh, God!” she screamed. “Oh, God!”

  Chapter 28

  “That’s him,” he answered somberly.

  Lisa closed her moist eyes and lowered her head. The framed photo she’d taken from the mantel dropped from her trembling hands and cartwheeled across the lush, carpeted floor. It ended face-up.

  Sean experienced a guilty sense of vindication. After all, he had proven them all wrong—Lumbergh, Jefferson, Coltraine . . . even Uncle Zed. And Sean wasn’t one to let them forget it. He thought of the exuberant grin that would surely be pinned across Toby Parker’s loyal face once he learned of the news—the news that son of a bitch Roy Hughes would have to write about in the paper for the whole town of Winston to read. Sean fought back the urge to smirk.

  The end zone dance would come later, though. Right now he was audience to a world of pain. He had leveled a wrecking ball against the young, broken lady who stood adrift before him. Her face, twisted with emotional pain, told a story of helplessness and disarray.

  Sean understood loss. He understood the pain and the tears of this woman who had abruptly been left by someone vitally important to her. Someone irreplaceable.

  “You should sit down,” he suggested, nudging his head toward an armchair just beside them.

  Lisa found herself seated at the center of the surrounding room. The living area now felt completely foreign and unwelcome to her, as if she was in someone else’s home. The walls seemed taller than before, the ceiling so high above that she couldn’t tell where it met the walls. The large, rugged man beside her who had altered her world in a snapshot of time felt like part of the room rather than a person. She observed him as if he were a painting—a brash canvas covered with abstract meanings and untold origins.

  Sean examined the sprawling interior of the affluence that encircled him. Large leather couches, framed art and lacquer vases everywhere, an imposing fireplace built with enameled river rock, and the largest coffee table he’d ever seen. Its glossy, oak top was about the dimensions of the pool tables with which he was all too familiar. Lights were everywhere—dome lights, track lights, tall lamps, a large chandelier above. At the edge of the living room stood a wide open kitchen with a glistening hardwood floor, stone countertops, stainless steel appliances, and a towering, ceiling-mounted rack that hosted a hodgepodge of metal pots and pans.

  His gaze traced a spiral, steel staircase that led up to an upstairs area. He assumed it led to the lofted room above that looked out over the living room. This woman and her late husband had money.

  He glanced back at her and found her watching him.

  “Nice place,” he said, feeling like an idiot the moment the casual words left his mouth.

  To his surprise, the distraught lady who sat before him burst into a chuckle, finding some instinctive amusement at the absurdity of the remark. It quickly changed back to sobbing.

  “Is there someone you can call?” he asked uncomfortably. “You know . . . a friend or something? Your parents?”

  Consolation had never been Sean’s strong suit. Yet, even for a man who was well-known in his hometown for demonstrating a sharp deficit in the area of compassion, it didn’t sit right in his gut to just walk out the door after dropping a grenade on someone. And at that moment, he felt that it didn’t make sense for him to be anywhere else. He was broke. He didn’t have enough gas money to make it back out of the state, let alone back to Winston. Over two days of traveling, practically every scenario imaginable of what he’d find at 114 Bluff Walk Road had danced through his mind. He hadn’t pondered once, however, what he’d do once he finally found his answer.

  Achieving some momentary composure, Lisa lowered her hands from her face and asked, “Why are you here?”

  “What?”

  “You drove all the way from Colorado to tell me my husband’s dead? Couldn’t you have just called or notified the local authorities and had them contact me?”

  Before he could respond, she continued, raising her voice and clenching her fists. She quickly rose to her feet, prompting him to take a step back.

  “My husband’s been dead for how many days now?” she asked curtly.

  “Three,” he answered under his breath.

  “Three days! And I’m just now finding out!”

  Her exasperated voice echoed along the walls of the house. Her face was a wet mess that she repeatedly used the palms of her hands to dab at. He cringed as she tore into him.

  “My God! How do I even know you’re telling me the truth? Who are you? I don’t even know who you are!”

  He raised his hands out in front of him and it was all he could to do not
to shove her. She was inching closer and closer, and he wanted to plant her back down into the chair behind her. He chose a different tactic.

  “Knock if off!” he roared with such ferocity that Lisa was nearly taken off of her feet. “Everything I’m telling you is true! I didn’t call you because I didn’t have a name or number! Just an address! I did tell the authorities, back in Winston! They thought I was full of shit because there was no body!”

  Her shoulders lowered. She took a careful step back.

  “I watched your husband shoot himself and fall into a river! Those are the facts! What was in the letter he sent you? Didn’t he say what he was gonna do? ”

  Her eyes welled up again. She slowly sank back into her chair as if being lowered steadily by a pulley. “I never got any letter,” she muttered before weeping again.

  He exhaled and let his chest deflate. “Listen,” he said. “Is there someone you want me to call?”

  Her glazed eyes didn’t react.

  “Your mom? Are there people in Colorado who might be looking for him? Friends? His family?”

  Her eyes narrowed upon mention of his family. She bit her bottom lip and began shaking her head in disgust.

  “Oh, I’m sure his family is looking for him.”

  She raised her gaze back upon Sean. This time it was fueled with such an unexpected and unsettling presence of pure rage that he was taken aback. Her eyes seemed to burn right through the straggling tears that remained above her cheeks. He wasn’t sure what he could have said to cause such a stark change in her demeanor, but a nerve had somehow been struck.

  She soberly asked, “What’s your name again?”

  “Sean. Sean Coleman.”

  “Mr. Coleman, I appreciate what you’ve done . . . Bringing me this news. I didn’t mean to blow up at you.”

  To Sean, it was as if he was suddenly talking to an entirely different person. He began wondering if she had snapped.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he answered calmly.

  “I hope you don’t find this rude, but would you mind leaving?”

  “Leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure if I should . . .”

  “I’ll be fine, Mr. Coleman. I need to be alone right now.”

  He was speechless. Was he really being asked to leave? Just like that? He’d driven 1,500 miles in two days, gotten hardly any sleep, his wallet and stomach were empty, and now it was time to leave? He never envisioned a reward for his persistence, but he had hoped to experience some grand sense of closure that didn’t seem to be materializing.

  “We’re gonna need to call the police chief in Winston,” he said. “We need to let him know that the guy I saw was your husband—that he was for real. It’s the only way they’re going to look for the body.”

  She nodded. “There’s a notepad on the kitchen counter. Leave his number and I’ll call him.”

  “Just let me use your phone and I’ll call him right now,” said Sean as he made a beeline for the kitchen.

  “No!” she snapped, stopping him in his tracks. “I need you to leave, Mr. Coleman. Please! I promise I’ll call him. I need to be alone right now.”

  Sean cocked his head at an angle, looking like an alert canine who heard a whistle from a distance. His mind strained to puzzle together her request. He thought about how he’d react if the situations were reversed. He supposed that wanting to be left alone made sense, but he couldn’t grasp the passiveness toward recovering her husband’s remains. He accepted what he deemed irrationality. He’d leave and find a pay-phone in town to call Lumbergh. He at least had enough money for that. Maybe he could even get the Winston P.D. to spring for a little compensation for doing their job for them. Of course, that was all reliant on Lumbergh even believing him without the dead man’s wife on the line to vouch for him.

  “Fine,” he said as he walked toward the counter. “Can you give me the number here? So I can reach you?”

  She hesitated but complied, rattling off the digits that he took down on the notepad. He wrote the number for the Winston police station on a separate sheet and left it attached to the pad.

  He eyed the phone again, a little annoyed that the woman was making things complicated for him. He noticed a small machine resting along the counter in front of it. It had a keyboard on its face but was smaller than an old fashioned typewriter, and didn’t appear to be a laptop computer. Sean had seen one before but it took him a few moments to place where. He recalled the image of a heavy person describing one to a dark-haired man when it suddenly came to him; an episode of Jake and the Fat Man.

  A lightbulb lit up in Sean’s skull and his head whipped back to Lisa. “Was your husband deaf?”

  Her eyes peered up at him in a demeanor that looked to Sean to be one of annoyance.

  “Yeah. So?” Before he could respond, she spoke again. “How did you know that?”

  “I just noticed your phone. Isn’t that a . . . ?” His mouth was left hanging open when he couldn’t recall the term for the contraption.

  “A TDD. A telecommunications device for the deaf. It’s how we talk . . . talked.” Her gaze dropped to the floor again and she swallowed to compose herself from another weeping spell.

  Sean took the queue to concede that he’d worn out his welcome. “All right then,” he concluded.

  He made his way toward the front door, feeling a little as though his tail was between his legs. He didn’t like the sensation of leaving the business unfinished one bit. He opened the door and was halfway out before he stopped, hesitated for a moment, and craned his head back inside.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

  She offered an acknowledging nod through dreary eyes.

  He closed the door softly behind him.

  Standing on the front porch, it occurred to Sean that another lingering question had just been answered by his discovery of the TDD. When he had raced along the dirt road toward that bridge on Saturday morning in the futile effort to stop her husband from killing himself, he’d yelled his head off and never received even a hint of recognition from the man. It puzzled him at the time that the man didn’t appear to hear him, even with the clamor of the roaring river and the sheer focus written across his face. The real reason was that he physically could not hear Sean’s cries.

  He scanned the perimeter, trying to judge how to best get back to his car. As he did, he heard a chain lock rattle from inside the door—another less-than-subtle indication that he’d overstayed his welcome.

  He knew his car was parked somewhere southwest of his location. He was certain about that. But something nagged him the same way that the itch at the back of his head often did, which he took a moment to rub. It was another unanswered question that he felt he’d earned the right to have resolved. He’d come too far not to. After making his way down the driveway, he headed southeast, back toward the road.

  Lisa watched the tall stranger disappear around the corner through a parting of open curtain. The sunlight glistened along her wet, sunken face. She palmed her eye and marched for the phone resting on the countertop, brushing the notepad aside in her haste. Her index finger pounded eleven digits with memorized accuracy. After a single ring, there was a hesitation, then a woman’s voice.

  “You have reached the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Las Vegas Division. If you know your extension, please enter it now. Otherwise, please select an option from the following menu . . .”

  Chapter 29

  “What in the hell is going on?” Lisa screamed in frustration at the phone receiver gripped tightly in her hand.

  Her arms trembled in anger and a new weeping spell ensued over the obstructionist voice menu that once again looped her back to the opening options without letting her speak to an actual person at the Bureau. It was as if the entire office was out to lunch, which couldn’t possibly be the case. Ten minutes of redirects were enough to push her over the edge, if she hadn’t already crossed it.

  She slammed down the ph
one in defeat, but quickly picked it back up after biting her lip to dial 411. A sentient voice on the other end let her breathe a sigh of relief.

  “I need the number for the FBI office in Las Vegas, Nevada,” she sputtered out.

  When the number was read back to her automatically, she compared it with the one she’d always used in the past and found that it was slightly different. Two digits off. She found the discrepancy odd, but quickly marginalized it by considering that the number she’d routinely used to reach her husband’s office might have been reserved solely for digital communication.

  The front door was suddenly rattled by a loud knock. Her balmy lips twisted in aggravation and she laid the receiver back down on its base.

  “Please, Mr. Coleman, I just need some time,” she pleaded loudly as she approached the front door, wiping a tear from her cheek.

  She twisted the knob and pulled open the door. It only opened two inches before coming to a snapping halt. She had forgotten she’d chained it.

  Poking her head around the opening while fiddling with the chain, she continued. “Listen, I know you’ve come a long way, but—”

  Her words stopped short and her eyes widened when she realized that the man standing at her front steps was not Sean Coleman. What she had expected to be the coarse mug of the man from Colorado was replaced by the kind smile of an older gentleman, perhaps in his late sixties. It took her by surprise.

  Dressed in a full-rimmed canvas hat, yellow polo shirt, and khaki shorts, the tall, wrinkly-faced man with basset-hound jowls lowered his head down to her eye level.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you ma’am,” spoke the voice of a polite, articulate, and seemingly well-educated gentleman. “I was hoping this was the right house, but it seems I’m mistaken.”