From A Dead Sleep Page 9

  The stranger had to have been the one who buried the bag in the forest, but Sean hadn’t a clue why. However, he did have a clue where the man had come from—Lakeland. It was the only explanation for that page of the newspaper that led Sean to discovering the bag. He had worked all throughout the area and had never seen it sold anywhere other than in the town itself. Judging by the way the stranger was dressed, he probably didn’t live there, but he had certainly come through that way.

  Still, there was nothing concrete and certainly nothing that would convince Lumbergh. Sean pictured the condescending expression the chief would have on his face if he marched back into his office and dumped out the contents of the bag on his fancy desk—“Which five ‘n dime store did you buy this stuff from, Sean?” Sean needed more.

  Rubbing some sand from his eyes, he picked up the pen and studied it—the third time he had done so since opening the bag. He half expected it to have some convenient information inscribed on its side, like the name of a company. Stuff like that happened often enough on television. This was real life, however, and there was no inscription.

  Still, Sean glanced along its side again. He leaned back in his chair to stretch out his back, rapidly clicking the pen open and shut with his thumb.

  Curled up on a shaggy, brown rug on the tile floor inside the kitchen, Rocco’s ears raised and his head tilted at the sound of the pen. This caused Sean to smirk.

  His eyes narrowed, and he soon found his fingers twisting the pen open, pulling out the deep red ink cartridge and holding each end up to the light, taking turns staring through the cylinders as if they were telescopes.

  “Stupid,” he muttered to himself, knowing before he even began that dismantling it was a lame idea—as if some rolled-up treasure map would spill out to the table top.

  He dropped the pen parts to the table and held the brief bag itself upside down, above his head, shaking it wildly—for the second time. Nothing.

  The book of stamps looked like they could have been bought anywhere. Liberty Bells. First class.

  The stocking cap was pretty standard. Most of it was deep purple in color, but the shaggy trim along the bottom sported a lighter shade of purple. Sean held it to his face and breathed in deeply, searching for a scent. He found one: it seemed to him to be perfume. An interesting peculiarity in his mind, as the person on the bridge was undoubtedly a man. He dumped it back on the table with a sigh.

  He eyed the page of the newspaper again, lying in a crinkled up wad by itself at the corner of the table. He leaned forward, grabbed it, and began spreading it out as flat as he could along the table top. It was still a little damp, but he was careful not to let it fall apart. The torn edge was fairly smooth, as if someone had placed the full newspaper down on a flat surface, held it down with one hand, and used the other to yank the front page off quickly.

  Latching onto the sweating bottle of cold Coors beer beside him, Sean scanned the headlines. There were stories about a new casino opening, a group of lynx that had been spotted in nearby Summit County, a proposal to increase local builder fees, a children’s fishing contest, and a few other typical mountain town items highly unlikely to drive a man to kill himself. He took a swig of beer and flipped the page. His eyes shifted from left to right, like a typewriter, before dropping to the bottom of the page.

  It was then that he felt a large lump swell in his throat and his eyes widen. Along the bottom of the edge were a couple short, pen-written sentences, the ink red. He didn’t understand how he had missed it earlier, and wondered if his own fat fingers had gotten in the way. Written in a style that seemed to be partially cursive and partially in manuscript, he read the notes; Holdings entered into Amendment No. 2. A briskly drawn arrow pointed to the abbreviated sentence, Orig. agreement. Beside the writings, along the margin of the paper, was a single, standard-looking math problem. Long division, with more digits in the numbers than Sean used to struggle with back in school.

  Sean’s lips mouthed the cryptic verbiage as he read it. Maybe it was written by the dead man. Maybe it wasn’t. But the ink was red, which matched the pen.

  Slivers of sunlight gleamed through the narrow openings of dusty, half-drawn blinds at the top of Sean’s kitchen window. Abrasive snoring sent steady quivers through the small room as if there were a multicar locomotive engine roaring down a track only ten feet away.

  Without warning, a fierce eruption of pounding bounced off the walls of the small home, causing Sean’s groggy body to snap forward in his recliner. With his eyes still closed tightly and his head pleading for coherence, a half-full bottle of beer nearly dropped from his grasp, but he managed to catch it by the neck.

  “Coleman!” shouted a sharp, familiar voice from outside the front door. “Coleman! I know you’re in there! Open up!”

  “Bailey,” Sean cursed under his breath, still wearing the ripe gray undershirt and dirty jeans from the night before. He had racked his brain until about three a.m., when he slipped away, unsuccessful in his painstaking attempts to make sense of the day before. The dead man’s motivations were still a mystery, as were the clues Sean had unearthed from the mud.

  Rocco’s nose went to the ceiling and the tips of his long ears drooped to the floor. Delayed in his reaction to the landlord’s commotion, he ejected a loud, sickly howl into the air—the sound of which echoed that of water jetting through rusty pipes.

  Sean trudged out of his chair with an artless stumble, a palm fastened to the side of his head. He yanked open the front door just as his landlord was about to subject it to another rapid beating. Bailey’s fist nearly swiped Sean’s chin.

  “Jesus, Bailey! What do you want?” Sean asked, already knowing the answer.

  Hank Bailey was a short, stocky man with a round face, round nose, and a reddened, bald head that shone like a bulb under the morning light. He looked half-dressed with his torso clad in a snug, white, tank-style undershirt with frayed armholes. His hairy, thick arms and shoulders were decorated with ancient tattoos from his days as a Marine. They were so faded and stretched that they looked like large splotches of bread mold. His short, stumpy legs were attired in gray, creased trousers with a waistline concealed by his protruding gut.

  Sean found Bailey’s scornful, baggy eyes honed in on him like torpedoes.

  “Need the rent! Now!” he barked like a drill sergeant. “Now!” Bailey always spoke loudly and in short bursts.

  “Just . . . calm down,” Sean replied, wincing and raising his hands in the air as if he was trying to avoid touching something. “Just a minute.”

  He retreated into his bedroom and grabbed the forty bucks his uncle had given him from the pocket of his damp work shirt that was crumpled up in a corner on the floor. He scrounged together another eighteen from his wallet and dresser.

  Bailey was left standing outside on the steps, and Sean knew the man had his arms crossed in front of him. It was his signature pose, and he could hear him breathing heavily the entire time.

  “What is this? What is this?” Bailey snorted turbulently as Sean returned and padded his palm with the disorganized bills.

  Sean nodded to the money.

  Bailey shuffled the wad in his hands. A light breeze ruffled the gray, wiry hairs sprouting from his ears, but it did nothing to cool his temper. “This ain’t even sixty bucks. You owe me two-fifty!”

  “Two hundred fifty?” Sean feigned confusion.

  “Wipe that stupid off your face, boy. You know what you owe me. Where’s the rest of it?”

  “Listen . . . I’ve got some stuff I’m going to take over to Bernard’s first thing Monday. I’m going to get the rest of your money—”

  Before Sean could continue, Bailey snarled and slammed his fist hard against the doorframe. Rocco yelped.

  “Monday? Monday? I gave you ‘til today! Two month’s rent! Right now!”

  “You’re not listening! I’ll have it on Monday!” Sean shouted grudgingly over the yap of the fiery ex-soldier. “I just need a day! Just gotta ma
ke it to the pawn shop. It ain’t open ‘til then.”

  Sean knew he couldn’t come up with the rest of the money by Monday. He had nothing left to pawn but cheap junk. Still, the disingenuous words kept flowing naturally from his mouth. He had become a five-star bull-shitter when it came to buying himself time. He had plenty of practice, but it wasn’t working this time.

  Bailey was at his wits’ end. “Whatcha got to pawn, Sean? Empty beer bottles?”

  He slid his head in through the doorway, looking at the musty disaster of a living space inside. Broken glass on the floor. Clutter everywhere. Sean navigated his body to block Bailey’s view.

  “You’ve got money to fork over to Moses Jones, but none for the Big Boy!” Bailey sometimes referred to himself as the Big Boy.

  Sean clenched his fist at the reference to Friday night’s pool game. He pictured his hands clasping the neck of Roy Hughes at The Winston Beacon and not letting go. The kid had made Sean’s life an open book of folly for the entire town. The fact that Bailey knew about the money he lost to Jones was particularly infuriating.

  Bailey launched his body inside the apartment, his stout frame firing past Sean like a cannon ball. Sean was surprised by the landlord’s quickness and angered by the imposition.

  “Whatcha got? Whatcha got?” Bailey repeated, his head flipping from side to side like a tetherball. “I wanna see what you’re gonna sell. If you’ve got it all figured out, I wanna see what you’re gonna sell.”

  The tenacious landlord clearly wasn’t buying Sean’s story. His bluff had been called. Sean’s mouth opened, but the words didn’t flow. He looked like a fish snagged by a hook.

  Bailey threw up his hands in the air, waiting impatiently for a response with arched eyebrows and wild eyes.

  Ding-ding!

  Sean’s body almost collapsed to the floor. The loud chirp of Toby Parker’s bike bell from outside the open front door pierced Sean’s skull like a bullet. As always, the kid’s timing was impeccable. Sean clenched his fists, and his eyes lost their focus. He felt himself off-balance, the room spinning.

  “What the hell is that?” Bailey asked, his own attention seemingly redirected.

  Sean’s shoulders hung low, like a wire clothes hanger supporting a heavy coat. “The Parker kid,” he muttered in a glazed tone, shaking his head a little.

  “No. That!”

  Clearing some cobwebs, Sean’s eyes went to Bailey’s hand, which was now pointing to the distinctive, black goggles resting on the kitchen table.

  “Um. Goggles.”

  With an intrigued elevation in his voice, Bailey asked, “Night-visions?”

  “Yeah.”

  The sound of footsteps could be heard creeping carefully up on Sean’s short front porch. Neither man paid the noise any attention.

  Bailey’s tongue slid along his lower lip. His hands rose to his hips and his anger seemed to turn to curiosity before Sean’s very eyes. A glimmer of light flicked on in Sean’s head.

  “Bernard wants those,” asserted Sean, gauging Bailey’s reaction.

  A creak of a floorboard at the front door caused Bailey to crane his neck over Sean’s tall shoulder. There stood the buoy-shaped silhouette of Toby Parker, silently standing at the doorway, waiting to be noticed. He was wearing a tight, yellow t-shirt with black horizontal stripes along with black sweats and his trademark black high-top sneakers. He somewhat resembled a portly bumblebee.

  Sean didn’t turn around. Bailey gazed back at the goggles.

  Sean continued. “He offered me a hundred, but I think he’s trying to lowball me. We’ll get it straightened out tomorrow.”

  “A hundred?” The wrinkles along Bailey’s forehead deepened. “And he’s already seen ‘em?”

  “Yeah,” replied Sean, trying hard to sound convincing. “But you know Bernard—always trying to get something for nothing. I walked away.”

  Bailey did know Bernard, and he knew the pawnshop owner to be as shrewd as a snake. If he was offering a hundred for an item, it was certainly worth more. Bailey’s left hand went to his chin, and his right snatched the goggles up off the table. He held them up to the beam of light that was shining in through the doorway, turning the contraption in his hand and studying it.

  Sean could hear the gears turning in his landlord’s head. He was buying the story, and Sean knew it. Sean bit the inside of his cheek to conceal the curls that were forming at the end of his lips.

  “Hey, Sean . . .” Toby whispered from behind.

  Sean turned his head to the boy, angling his eyebrows and waving him off with his hand. He was reeling in Bailey and he feared Toby would find a way to cut the line. When he turned back to his landlord, he was struck by the awkward sight of two thick, black, long-scoped eyes glaring straight up at him. Bailey was now wearing the goggles. A large, thirsty grin of uneven teeth decorated his round face, making him look like a villain from a Mad Max movie. Bailey snapped his head to the side and stomped over to the open door of Sean’s bathroom, where it was dark with no windows.

  “What’s he wearing on his face, Sean?” Toby asked, now standing beside Sean. The boy’s wide eyes glowed in awe of Bailey’s creepy appearance and erratic movements.

  Sean didn’t answer the boy’s question but shared in the bemusement of the spectacle. He had only hoped to convince Bailey that he had the means to make a rent payment. He wasn’t expecting a personal interest in the item. But it suddenly made sense to him; Bailey had often bragged about technological advances in the Marine Corps that either weren’t around or weren’t standard issue when he served. Now, he had one of those advances laced around his head like a turban, and he was acting like a kid in a candy store.

  Bailey let out an enthusiastic whistle and howled, “This is high-quality shit! Slick as you know what!”

  He raised the goggles to his forehead and looked out the doorway. “Where’d you get these babies? They’re not hot, are they?”

  Sean shook off the assertion and claimed that he won them from a Super Bowl bet with a friend up in Lakeland. Bailey asked if the friend was in the Corps. Sean claimed that his friend knew someone who was.

  “I’ll take a hundred off your rent for these,” stated Bailey after slipping the headgear up off his shiny head as he marched back to Sean. “That matches Bernard’s offer, and it saves you a trip.” His eye twitched as he stared up at his tenant.

  Sean’s mind raced. The goggles were evidence of what he had seen on Meyers Bridge the previous morning, but they weren’t enough to prove anything to anybody. He also knew Bailey didn’t intend on reselling them right away, so they’d be right downstairs if they needed to be acquired later.

  “Two hundred,” Sean said with a straight face.

  “Two hundred?” Bailey crowed. “Yah kidding me? That’s double what you could get from Bernard!” His teeth were showing, nostrils wide in indignation.

  “A hundred was his first offer. We both know he’d go higher than that.”

  Bailey knew Bernard all too well. “One-twenty!” he barked.

  “One-seventy!” Toby shouted excitedly.

  Sean grunted and turned to Toby, displaying an annoyed glare. “Don’t,” he snarled, before twisting his head back to Bailey and saying, “One-seventy-five, and I get ‘til Wednesday to get you the rest of the rent.”

  Bailey folded his arms in front of him, breathing heavily. “One-thirty,” he said in a tone that felt final.

  “One-fifty!” Toby shouted.

  “Toby!” Sean snapped angrily after his head flipped back to the child’s smiling face. “Do you have a hundred and fifty dollars?”

  “No.”

  “Then shut up!”

  Toby’s eyes went to the floor.

  “Yeah, shut up,” added Bailey.

  The two men haggled for another minute before reaching a deal at a hundred and fifty dollars, plus a three-day grace period for the rest of the rent. Bailey triumphantly strutted his way out the front door with the goggles still suctioned to his
forehead, sure of himself that he had gotten a bargain. Before he even made it outside, Sean noticed that Bailey had left the original fifty-eight dollars behind on the table, having placed the crumpled up bills there when reaching for the goggles. The landlord had forgotten about it in all of the excitement. Sean quickly snatched up the wad and jammed it deep into his pants pocket. If Bailey came back later to retrieve the money, Sean would insist he’d left with it.

  “I heard about the dead fella,” said Toby with wide, shiny eyes, looking up at Sean.

  The child’s words were spoken loudly enough to prompt Sean to hurry to shut his door, not wanting Bailey to catch any of the conversation.

  “Who told you about that? Milo?” he quickly asked.

  “No. It was in the paper this morning. Mom read it to me while I was eating Lucky Charms. I like that cereal, but I am a far bigger fan of the marshmallows than the oats. The oats just don’t have much of a taste. I suppose you need the oats though, or else it wouldn’t be cereal. At least with Count Chocula, you get the chocolate corn bits along with the marshmallows, so—”

  “Stop!” Sean interrupted. “It was in the paper?”

  “Yeah. I know you’re telling the truth, Sean. Mom thinks you’re making it up, but I told her you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Jesus,” Sean whispered.

  “Did he really have bright blonde hair, Sean?”

  Sean guessed it had to be either Milo or Jefferson who squealed to Roy Hughes of the Beacon. Lumbergh wouldn’t have done it. It probably would have violated some policy, and the chief followed policy like it was gospel. Not that it mattered. The news was out, and soon the whole town would start giving him strange looks again. Bailey must not have read the morning’s paper; otherwise, he’d have said something for sure.

  Sean lifted an eyebrow. “Why are you here, Toby?”

  “I want to help you find that dead guy.”

  At least someone believes me, Sean thought. Too bad that someone was a mixed-up kid. “We aren’t gonna find him, kid. His body could be halfway to Santa Fe for all I know.”